Aileen Pringle

Acting

Born Jul 23, 1895

From San Francisco, California, USA

Died Dec 16, 1989

Aileen Pringle's favorite film was a mid-1920s silent based on a book by Elinor Glyn: Three Weeks (1924), sort of a "Lady Chatterly's Lover". She recalled in a 1980 telephone conversation: "The film was in good taste; some people thought the book was trashy". Anita Loos wrote in "A Girl Like I", the first volume of her autobiography, vaudeville comic Joe Frisco telling Glynn: "Leave me get this straight. You want to find some tramp that don't look like a tramp, to play that English tramp in your picture. But take it from me, that kind of tramp don't hang out in Hollywood". Aileen had spent her 20s married to Charles McKenzie Pringle, the son of Sir John Pringle, a Jamaica landowner and a member of the Privy and Legislative Councils of Jamaica. Aileen lived in Jamaica until she went on stage with George Arliss. When she began divorce proceedings against Pringle in 1926, Hollywood gossip columnists speculated she would marry H.L. Mencken. She did not remarry until 1944 when she became the bride of James M. Cain, author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice". I opened my 1980 telephone conversation with Aileen by mentioning that the day before I had been reading her correspondence with Mencken at the New York Public Library. "But all the letters were destroyed", she said. I knew that Mencken had asked for all of his letters to her back at the time he became engaged to Sara Haardt. Aileen was the only woman who received such a request from Mencken at that time. "It was your letters from the late '30s and '40s I was reading", I told Aileen. "In one of them Mencken was urging you to write a book. Did you ever finish it?" "No. I got married instead." In a 1946 letter she wrote to Mencken. "If I had remained married to that psychotic Cain, I would be wearing a straitjacket instead of the New Look." Date of Death 16 December 1989, New York City, New York

Aileen Pringle

Known For

Laura

The Women

They Died with Their Boots On

Nothing Sacred

Since You Went Away

Wife vs. Secretary

Piccadilly Jim

Calling Dr. Kildare

Appointment for Love

Too Hot to Handle

Filmography — Acting

Laura

The Women

They Died with Their Boots On

Nothing Sacred

Since You Went Away

Wife vs. Secretary

Piccadilly Jim

Calling Dr. Kildare

Appointment for Love

Too Hot to Handle

Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case

Happy Land

Camille: The Fate of a Coquette

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Vanessa: Her Love Story

Criminal Lawyer

Between Us Girls

Tin Gods

Adam and Evil

My American Wife

Subway Express

The Wife of the Centaur

Earthbound

Beau Broadway

Name the Man

Body and Soul

1925 Studio Tour

Should a Girl Marry?

She's No Lady

Souls for Sale

The Phantom of Crestwood

In the Palace of the King

A Thief in Paradise

Jane Eyre

The Christian

Wanted: Jane Turner

Puttin' on the Ritz

Sons of Steel

The Age of Consent

The Hardys Ride High

Murder at Midnight

The Baby Cyclone

Wall Street

A Single Man

One Year to Live

John Meade's Woman

Police Court

The Tiger's Claw

Dream of Love

The Mystic

The Great Deception

Soldiers and Women

Three Weeks

The Strangers' Banquet

Prince of Diamonds

The Unguarded Hour

True As Steel

The Cost

Once to Every Bachelor

Night Parade

A Kiss in the Dark

By Appointment Only

The Night of Nights

His Hour

Don't Marry for Money

Life in Hollywood No. 7

Wildfire