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Della Pringle (August 20, 1870 – November 9, 1952) was a well known repertory theater actress who performed frequently in the American west and mid-west between 1888 and 1921. She also had a brief career in silent films as a member of Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops organization.
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Early career
Born Cora Della Van Winkle in Trenton, Missouri, she began her professional career at age eleven playing juvenile roles for the Robert Neff Chicago Comedly Company. She acquired the stage name of Della Pringle when she married Johnny Pringle in 1891.
Accomplishments
From humble beginnings in Knoxville, Iowa, she would go on to become the leading lady and manager of her own troupe, amass a fortune in the traveling repertory theater business and claim to be "the actress who made Iowa famous." While largely unrecognized today, in the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century thousands of American theater-goers knew and loved her. Although not a national celebrity, there was not a town of any consequence in the West or Mid-west where she was not welcome visitor and her name a household word. Della Pringle, often called "jolly" because she loved to laugh and provoked so much merriment in her audiences, led a life as dramatic as any play she ever presented. Like a female Horatio Alger, she rose from teenage hotel maid to become a lady of wealth, clothed in latest Paris fashions and traversing the continent in her own private Pullman car. She faced sudden death three times, survived railroad and stage coach accidents, escaped from burning theaters and endured both freezing winters and searing summers. In an age when divorce was rare, she married and divorced five times.
Jolly Della Pringle never appeared on Broadway or ever claimed to be a great actress. She had no formal training in the craft. Yet, her natural talents in acting,singing and dancing, her well formed figure, her long golden hair, her well featured face and her witty, vibrant personality made her a star in her realm, the small towns, mining camps, logging camps, military outposts and cow towns of western America. In spite of her modest claims about her talents as an actress, she earned critical acclaim when she did appear in larger cities like Denver, Salt Lake City, Des Moines and Los Angeles. On her only tour through north eastern and New England states the press found her to be the equal of any eastern repertory actress.
Tours
On occasion Della Pringle settled in place to operate as a resident stock company, but for most of her long career she was on tour. She traveled from coast to coast (Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon), border to border (El Paso, Texas, to Canada), from the heights of Colorado's Rocky Mountains to the depths of an Arizona gold mine. Audiences in thirty-two of the then existing forty-eight states attended her productions.
Acquaintances
Della Pringle knew an impressive number of persons in the show business of her time. Scores of actors and actresses were members of her various companies during her thirty-year career. She also visited with other touring groups when their paths crossed. Della spent two years in the California film industry and appeared in nine silent films. While there she made friends with such celebrities as Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, Ben Turpin and Gloria Swanson. She acted for Mack Sennett in his classic Keystone Kops slapstick comedies. She knew Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley and visited with Cody on several occasions up through 1915. Through her marriage to her first husband she became a virtual stepmother to silent screen idol, John Gilbert. Her correspondence and pictures appeared frequently in the theatrical trade papers and twice her photograph appeared on their front pages.
Actress/Manager
In Della Pringle's era many repertory theater companies bore the name of their leading ladies, but the troupes were managed by and the productions directed by men. Della was not only a leading lady,but produced and directed her own shows. Through experience she became accomplished in all aspects of show business on and off stage. She knew what pleased audiences and supplied it in abundance. Della was resourceful, hard working, inventive and persistent in all endeavors. In addition to acting on stage and in films, she pursued farming, real estate investing, rooming house management, millinery, running a costume rental business, drama education and Boston bulldog breeding.
Wardrobe
Della's stage wardrobe was almost as important as her talent. Women attending plays expected to see a display of elaborate and fashionable gowns usually not available in their community. Della Pringle's collection of costumes did not disappoint expectations. She possessed the finest up-to-date wardrobe of any leading actress on the western stage. Early in her career she used her sewing skills to create her own costumes, but by 1898 she made a practice to purchase imported Parisian fashions from major clothiers in New York and Chicago. For one season alone she spent thousands on Paris gowns. She saw to it that her supporting actresses also had impressive wardrobes.
Retirement
After leaving show business in 1921, Della Pringle retired to Boise, Idaho, her base of operation since 1908, where she founded the only costume rental business between Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon. In the late 1930s she served as a drama instructor for the local Public Works Administration. Her fortune got lost in the Great Depression, old age and illness forced her to become a resident of the Boise poorhouse where she died in November 1952.