
Aileen Pringle
Born July 23, 1895 · San Francisco, California, USA
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
Notable Appearances
More Movies

Too Hot to Handle

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Wife vs. Secretary

Nothing Sacred

Should a Girl Marry?

Vanessa: Her Love Story

Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case

The Phantom of Crestwood

She's No Lady

Oath-Bound

The Night of Nights

The Hardys Ride High

Appointment for Love

John Meade's Woman

Souls for Sale

The Age of Consent

The Tiger's Claw

Calling Dr. Kildare

One Year to Live

Wanted: Jane Turner

Jane Eyre

Happy Land

A Kiss in the Dark

Puttin' on the Ritz

The Wife of the Centaur

In the Palace of the King

Between Us Girls

The Mystic

Life in Hollywood No. 7

His Hour

The Wilderness Woman

The Unguarded Hour

Criminal Lawyer

1925 Studio Tour

Piccadilly Jim

My American Wife

Camille: The Fate of a Coquette

True As Steel

A Thief in Paradise

Murder at Midnight

Name the Man

Tin Gods

Sons of Steel

The Baby Cyclone

Wall Street

Prince of Diamonds

Night Parade

By Appointment Only

Police Court

Wickedness Preferred

Don't Marry for Money

Subway Express

Tea For Three

The Strangers' Banquet

Dream of Love

Three Weeks

Soldiers and Women

The Christian

Earthbound

A Single Man

Body and Soul

The Cost

Convicted

The Great Deception

Stolen Moments




