A “Woman” You Should Know — Lucille Ricksen
By the time of her death her list of acting credits was exhaustive. With over thirty films, her leading men included Jack Pickford (Mary’s hard partying younger brother), Sydney Chaplin (another famous actor’s hard partying brother), William Haines (future interior decorator to Joan Crawford), and Marshall Neilan, a name mostly forgotten today but the handsome hyphenate (actor-director-screenwriter-producer) had a hugely successful career during the nascent years of motion pictures. He wrote “Hell’s Angels” for Howard Hughes that made Jean Harlow a star, directed Mary Pickford in “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” and was one of the highest paid directors of the 1920s.
Ingeborg Myrtle Elisabeth Ericksen was born August 22, 1910 in Chicago to Swedish immigrants, mother Ingeborg and father Samuel. She was an exceptionally comely girl with blonde hair twisted into curls and chocolate-colored eyes who began modeling by the age of four. Soon the gregarious child was on stage acting and by age five landed her first role in the Selig production “The Millionaire Baby.” The silent film was based on a book by “the mother of the detective novel” novelist Anna Katherine Green and involved the disappearance of a baby who stood to inherit several fortunes. In the film, the millionaire baby’s mother, a former Burlesque Queen (I’ll say it again, all roads lead to burlesque), gives her up for adoption. She soon regrets that decision and tries to get her baby back, however, the adoptive mother hides the baby, and well, all turns out well in the end. Little Ingeborg is credited as “baby Erickson.”
Perhaps it was publicity for the film, or just another round of modeling, but the golden-curled Ericksen is soon posing nude wearing only a lace curtain (she is standing in front of a window, sunlight streaming onto her bare shoulders), an angelic expression on her face. She was already perceived as being far older than her age.
Soon the sunny child’s career was taking center stage and drove a wedge between mother and father. They separated and Ingeborg’s mother took her ten-year-old daughter and thirteen-year-old son Marshall to Hollywood at the behest of Samuel Goldwyn who signed the baby model for a series of short films pictures “The Adventures of Edgar Pomeroy” series.
With a quick name change, she was now Lucille Ricksen, she performed as the female lead opposite Edward Peil, Jr. (Peil’s father was a prolific actor with almost 400 credits to his name) in the Edgar Pomeroy films. Newspapers delighted in the new actress, calling her a “capricious, blonde sweetheart.”[1] One of the directors of the series was Paul Bern, Jean Harlow’s future husband and a decade away from a scandal that rocked her career, after he (supposedly) shot himself. Lucille and her mother would rely on Bern’s career advice in the coming years, considering him a trusted friend and mentor.
With the successful series and rounds of publicity, Lucille began a scrapbook where she enthusiastically recorded her comings and goings. She cut newspaper articles and glued them to the pages, writing captions underneath in her tidy cursive.
[1] Indianapolis Star 9–18–21
To all she was a joyful, obedient child, though it was not a “childhood” she was enjoying. Her “friends” were leading men twice, three times her age; her “toys” were props on film sets. She had no time for real play. Though supposedly content to be working, she was her family’s sole source of income (brother Marshall only made a few films and could not have been contributing much) and had to feel the pressure to keep the bills paid.
Though she told reporters she did not want to grow up, she was cast in more mature parts in films with adult themes. She was billed as “the youngest leading lady on the screen.” But did she want to be? Did she even know what being a “leading lady meant? Did she fully understand some of the sophisticated scenarios she was acting in?
With the help of the studio’s makeup and hair department Lucille now looked years older on set and in still photographs. She might be twelve, but her hair was piled atop of her head and her lips lined with dark lipstick, heavy kohl rimmed her eyes making her appear to be years older, and more sexually available. By the time she was thirteen the studio often claimed she was sixteen. Apparently, the publicity department was a bit schizophrenic, as it vacillated between her actual age and a four-year advancement.
Was her mother on set? Maybe. Maybe not. Was anyone looking out for her mental health? Doubtful. This was decades before rules and regulations for adults let alone children. A compliant girl she did as she was told and what was expected of her. She might even have been happy if slightly ignorant about the full story lines of her films and the ribbing with her adult costars who she claimed, though they were in their 30s, were her best buds.
In 1922 she was signed by director Marshall Neilan to play a flapper in “Strangers Banquet.” By the following year her work was “lapping.” Lapping meant while working on one film, Lucille would start working on another at the same time, before finishing her current project. This would occur four times that year alone. Presumably pushed by the studios and her success it would have been an intense roster for the still pre-teen. She signed a three-year deal with prolific producer/director Thomas Ince who was credited as the “father of the western.” (his death, unrelated to Lucille’s story (but tangents are fun) would end on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht and create decades-long speculation (still unresolved) as to how and why the forty-four-year-old Ince suddenly died after a night of partying with his pals, including Sydney Chaplin’s brother Charlie. Oh, the “Golden Age” of films.
Prior to all that, Lucille was now a hot property. She worked hard and diligently, like so many at the time, film after film, promotion, touring, little rest. It was continuous work and endless publicity, traveling the country making personal appearances before each showing of her films, greeting eager fans, signing autographs. Many of her films were also filmed on location and accommodations could be primitive. She was not living a pampered movie star’s life.
In 1923’s “Human Wreckage” Lucille played a bit part, but it was a very mature film. The film was produced by Dorothy Davenport, Wallace Reid’s widow. Reid had died of a drug overdose that same year and Davenport was on a crusade to let the world know about the dangers of drug addiction. Davenport said she wanted “action against dope traffic.”[1] What did Lucille even know of drug addiction or drugs for that matter in the sheltered life she existed in? The film showed “. . . how unsuspecting children are met outside a high school . . .” by a drug dealer. Presumably Lucille was one of the innocents.
The press marveled that this sixteen-year-old was Hollywood’s new leading lady with a bright future. She was actually twelve. According to one author it was around this time while performing grownup roles that Lucille stopped taking the care to record her accomplishments in her beloved scrapbooks, instead haphazardly throwing articles on the pages. Perhaps it was nothing untoward, perhaps this twelve-year-old was just really, really busy.
She lived near the studios in Culver City with her mother and brother, who also worked in films, though extremely short-lived.
[1] Chicago Englewood Economist 11–7–23
Her roles were those of mature women but presumably there was no time, and little inclination for an actual “mature” life of dating and boys. At thirteen, she was paired with Sydney Chaplin, then thirty-eight and known to canoodle with young girls (he followed his brother’s footsteps in that regard). The papers even claimed the two married, but that story seemed to die quickly, but not the rumors that the two were romantically linked.
In 1924 Lucille stared in “Rendezvous” as a “grown” young woman involved in a love triangle.[1] Her costars were Sydney and matinee idol Conrad Nagel who was twenty-seven-years-older than Lucille, her love interest. There are embraces, kisses, and Lucille is beaten by her film husband. Papers would say her performance “. . . is a singularly agreeable combination of professional maturity and youthful naivete.”[2] In “The Hill Billy” she was the leading lady opposite Jack Pickford, whose character (that was co-written by Jack and sister Mary) was described as “red-blooded boy of the hills, he-man . . .”[3]
[1] Laredo Times 3–18–24
[2] “Sydney Chaplin: A Biography” by Lisa K. Stein
[3] Ogden Standard Examiner 5–21–24
Along with Clara Bow and eleven others Lucille was declared a WAMPAS Baby Star (fan dancer Sally Rand would be one too, another burlesque connection). Hailed by the Associated Motion Picture advertising men as having the most potential to become full fledge stars this was only the third annual WAMPAS group. Clara was seventeen, the rest of the girls were nineteen and twenty. Lucille, at fourteen was by far the youngest.
Some cracks in Lucille’s fairytale story begin to appear. Perhaps all was not well with the kind of work she was given. One newspaper noted Lucille was the organizer of a group of starlets who planned to find “finer work” along the lines of actress Eleanora Duse.[1] Lucille was secretary of the group that called themselves the “Climbers Club.”
“Galloping Fish” was a Thomas Ince’s comedy filmed on the Colorado River. Along with pal Syd Chaplin, twenty-five years her senior, Lucille starred in the “masterpiece of buffoonery.” It might have been a blur because this was her tenth film in just seven months. She was being worked like no other. The year was 1924. In “Galloping Fish” she played yet another wife. Reporters began to sniff around and in print hinted at a Chaplin-Rickerson romance, even obliquely suggesting Syd got her pregnant and found her an abortionist. As part of the publicity she posed in lingerie, modeling what a beautiful bride might wear.
At the end of the hectic year, this child without a childhood fell sick. It was December and she needed rest. She needed no responsibility. She needed no burden as the bread winner for three. Always delicate, she stood only 5’2” and was slight of frame, she was painfully underweight. Perhaps the psychological gymnastics dealing with adult situations caught up to Lucille who suffered a mental and physical breakdown.
Her mother — seemingly back in the picture — confined Lucille to bed and kept Hollywood at bay. Or at least most of Hollywood. One allowed in was the adored and powerful Paul Bern. Every week he brought Lucille presents, sat by her bed and held her hand visualizing her return to health. He was a true friend and paid some of her doctor bills, but not all. Her doctor bills mounted and $4,000 was raised by her adoring public.
Actress and 1922 WAMPAS star, Lois Wilson, a great friend of Lucille, visited too. Lucille told Lois to be happy, she was on the mend. Sometime in January, presumably because there was now no income (and this the days before residuals) the family downscaled to a duplex at 1743 N. Gardner in Hollywood.
Lucille was not getting better and in February of 1925, still confined to bed, her forty-five-year-old mother, anxious and worried that her daughter had not rallied suffered a heart attack. She collapsed on top of her and died in her beloved, though extremely ill daughter’s arms.
The once buoyant, notably tireless “sunshine girl” quickly went downhill. Paul Bern showed up daily, reportedly speaking to her about her impending death of which they both must have been aware would be the final outcome for the once joyful girl with decades of stardom ahead of her.
Lucille quietly slipped into a coma in her final days. A wrecked Bern sat there daily holding her hand for her final three weeks until she breathed her last. At fourteen she succumbed to tuberculosis. Hollywood’s first childhood casualty — before Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe, and dozens of other tragic stories.
[1] Oakland Tribune 5–4–24
It is a shame she would not grow up to be a “woman” that we should know more about.
