Aileen Pringle | WatchedThis
Aileen Pringle
Acting
Biography
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
Filmography Movies
Acting
A Single Man
Robin Worthington (Lew Cody), a middle-aged man attracted by a young woman, at first avoids her, then falls for her. He undergoes a profound change in temperament, but in the end he marries his secretary, Mary Hazeltine (Aileen Pringle), who had gone away plain and come back strikingly beautiful and wearing the latest new fashions.
The Phantom of Crestwood
Five men have to prove their innocence when a blackmailer is murdered.
Subway Express
Inspector Killany of the New York City police department is called in to investigate the murder of a subway passenger and the usual-and-unusual suspects climb on and off at each stop.
Convicted
A criminologist investigates the murder of a Broadway producer on an ocean liner.
The Wife of the Centaur
Jeffrey Dwyer is a writer and a poet who wrestles with the conflicts between his idealism and his passion. The two sides of his nature are personified in the women he loves: the sweetly innocent Joan Converse, and the sexy, charismatic Inez Martin.
A Kiss in the Dark
Based on a Frederick Lonsdale Broadway play.
Love Past Thirty
When a woman's boyfriend dumps her for a younger girl, she hatches a scheme to get revenge by going after the girl's former boyfriend.
The Night of Nights
A playwright has his career ruined when he is drunk on the first night. His wife dies having left him, and when his daughter triumphs in the revival of the play he dies contented.
Criminal Lawyer
Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.
Murder at Midnight
Wealthy Mr. Kennedy shoots his secretary, Channing, during a parlor game, but it turns out the gun was loaded with real bullets. Luckily, criminologist Phillip Montrose is on hand to help the police. When Kennedy quickly ends up dead as well, the police think it's a tidy murder-suicide, but the family lawyer knows of a letter that voiced Kennedy's suspicions about someone who was out to get him. Soon, the cops are on the trail of a ruthless and clever killer who is one step ahead of even Montrose.
Gallery
