Jolly Della Pringle

The story of American repertory theatre actress Jolly Della Pringle is best described as an odyssey filled with travel, adventure, dramatic events, romance and many changes in fortune. She lived an extraordinary life in interesting times on the closing frontier of the American West.

In the days before radio, motion pictures and television, traveling repertory companies used wagons, stagecoaches and railroads to bring entertainment to cities and towns across America. No history of this movement would be complete without the tale of Jolly Della Pringle who was a major star to the people in the gold fields, cow towns, logging camps, military forts rural communities in the West and Midwest during the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century.

Here for the first time is Della Pringle's saga including her rise from teenage hotel maid to a magnificently gowned star of her own theatrical company, her amassing of a fortune, her coast to coast fame and her appearances in Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops comedies. She knew most of the performers in the show business of her time including Buffalo Bill Cody, Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert and Gloria Swanson. Her personal life was equally eventful: she married and divorced a “sinful” five times.