She was the first Flapper, that kick up your heels icon of 1920s female liberation, she starred in over twenty films, and was known as "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World," adoring fans called her "Everybody's Sweetheart," yet today Olive Thomas is remembered for how she died, under a dark cloud of mystery that still hovers over her memory, instead of for how this vibrant butterfly lived.
Her life story reads like the script of one of her own movies. Olive excelled at playing "poor girl makes good," "rags to riches," roles and never forgot where she came from. She was the schoolgirl in curls who, with spunk and luck, climbs the ladder up from poverty to success and wins the hero's heart along the way. The story begins on October 20, 1894, in the harsh, dingy coal-mining town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, where Olive Duffy was born into a poor, working class family. After her father's death in a work-related accident, the family was left destitute and Mrs. Duffy was forced to go to work to support her children. Olive left school at fifteen to do her share, taking work behind the gingham counter in a local department store, and at sixteen, to give her mother one less mouth to feed, she married Bernard Krug Thomas on April Fool's Day, April 1, 1911.
But Olive was dissatisfied with the life of a ordinary housewife, she dreamed of bright lights and big cities, especially New York, that city became the beacon to her ship of dreams. In those days when the faces of celebrated beauties, like the Ziegfeld Follies girls, graced candy and cigar boxes, and appeared on small souvenir cards inserted in packs of cigarettes, Olive would compare herself to these famous beauties and assert that she was every bit as pretty as they were. Olive looked like a porcelain doll despite her sensual, exuberant, party-girl personality, with her petite 5'4" frame, porcelain-fair complexion, eyes of violet-blue long before Elizabeth Taylor made that unusual hue famous, and abundant brunette curls kissed with a sheen of gold. She was an artist's dream stepped out of a magazine cover or portrait frame come to true and vibrant life.
The marriage ended in 1914. Exactly why is unclear, although cruelty and desertion have variously been cited. Bernard Krug Thomas may have found being married to Olive was like trying to capture moonbeams in one's hand. Beautiful, vivacious Olive was just not made to be a working man's helpmate in Pittsburgh.
Ready to make her dreams reality, Olive moved to New York, found work in a department store, behind the gingham counter yet again. Then, just like one of the poor little shopgirls dreaming big dreams, she would later portray on screen, Olive entered a beauty contest hosted by popular artist Howard Chandler Christy, whose portraits of beautiful, active modern girls often graced the covers of popular magazines like Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, and McCall's. The winner of the contest would have her portrait painted by Mr. Christy and published in newspapers. Olive won, and her star began its steady rise. She soon became one of the most sought after artists' models, posing regularly for such popular artists of the day as Harrison Fisher, William Haskell Coffin, and Alberto Vargas, who immortalized her in the nude.
But modeling was just a stepping stone, and Olive soon found herself gracing the stage of the Ziegfeld Follies, and soon afterwards, Ziegfeld's more risque Midnight Frolics on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre. In one popular musical number, in the 1916 Ziegfeld Follies, beautiful girls costumed to represent the various nations paraded gracefully across the stage and climbed into a gigantic melting pot, then out popped Olive Thomas, the perfect melding of all the nationalities--the quintessential American beauty. Olive quickly became the darling of the moneyed set, courted and fawned over by wealthy and powerful men, who gave her jewels and sables. She even became Ziegfeld's mistress and a serious threat to his marriage to actress Billie Burke (best remembered today for her role as Glinda The Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz). But Olive's heart wasn't for sale, and she soon gave it to wild-boy Jack Pickford, the reckless, perpetually in trouble, brother of Hollywood's biggest and brightest star, "America's Sweetheart," "The Little Girl With The Golden Curls," Mary Pickford, famous for her golden curls, winsome, childlike innocence in "Pollyanna" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" type roles.
Jack and Olive were two of a kind, so much alike that one can argue that their subsequent marriage was an act of enablement and destruction on both their parts. They were like two children playing at marriage. Both loved to dance, party, and drink, drive fast cars, which they inevitably wrecked, and spend money with reckless abandon. Olive's bank account was almost always overdrawn, she was generous to a fault, always sending money to her family, and giving Jack gifts as lavish as those he gave her. She once spent her entire weekly movie star salary on a dog for Jack. Though only 20 in 1916 when he met Olive at a dance at a beach-side cafe, Jack was already a confirmed alcoholic, drug addict, and womanizer, also dogged by rumours of bisexuality, but Olive captured his heart. He gave her a platinum cigarette case engraved with the words "To Olive Thomas--The Only Sweetheart I Will Ever Have."
The couple were secretly married on October 25, 1916. By then Olive had decided that she would aim her star for Hollywood, but, proud and fiercely independent, she was determined that it never be said that she had used the all-powerful Pickford name to open the right doors for her, and to this end resolved to keep her marriage secret until she had had a chance to prove herself. She would make it on her own or not at all! And that is exactly what she did. Olive soon became Hollywood's fastest rising star, entirely on her own steam, she rocketed to the top and exploded like fourth of July fireworks in moviegoers' hearts, and gave her sister-in-law Mary Pickford a run for her money in ingenue type roles. But Olive wasn't the dewy-eyed innocent, she had vivacity and sparkle that leapt right off the screen. Besides ingenues and schoolgirls, she also became adept at what were known as "baby vamp" roles, using her wiles to get her way, with a pretty face and innocent appearance to mask her intentions, the antithesis of the sultry, dark, exotic sirens in seductive gowns like Theda Bara, the vamp of all vamps, and the movies' first sex symbol.
But Olive wanted to be much more than just a movie star. She had an inquisitive mind that soaked up knowledge like a sponge. She could drive people absolutely bonkers asking "Why?" and "How?" in question after rapid-fire question. She wanted to understand every aspect of filmmaking both before and behind the camera, she wanted to direct, and also write scripts. One of the saddest parts of Olive's story is that she died with so much potential unrealized, there is just no way of knowing what she might have been had she been gifted with the lengthy lifespan of Mary Pickford, or some of her other contemporaries.
In 1917 Olive and Jack publicly revealed their marriage. The public adored them, they were two of the brightest bright young things. Their escapades filled newspapers and magazines. But their work often kept them apart. In the early days of silent movies, Hollywood was not the pulsing heart of moviemaking it would eventually become, many films were also made on the opposite coast, there was a solid film base in New York, and many movies were filmed on location as well. Jack and Olive spent much of their marriage working on opposite coasts. When they were together they were like thunder and lightning, there were passionate reunions and equally passionate quarrels. Though the private details of their marriage cannot now be known, infidelity was a very real probability. We know that Jack continued his wild womanizing ways and even contracted syphilis in 1917, which led Hollywood to dub him "Mr. Syphilis." After the couple quarreled they would make up by sending each other lavish presents. Jack would give Olive costly jewelry which she carelessly lost, and Olive would give Jack cars. They were particularly fond of giving each other automobiles, which they always wrecked with their reckless driving. On separate occasions, both Jack and Olive struck a young boy while driving the same car within a week of each other; fortunately neither incident proved fatal.
In 1919 when her contract with Triangle Pictures expired, Olive signed with the newly created Selznick Pictures, spearheaded by Lewis, Myron, and David Selznick. Myron Selznick was very much smitten with Olive, though tantalizing rumours suggest that all three Selznick men might have been her lover at one time or another. Some even go so far to claim that when David Selznick added "O" to his name as a middle initial, he did so in loving tribute to the late Olive Thomas. Whatever the truth of these rumours, there is no doubt that the Selznicks treated the premier star of their company like a princess, making frequent deposits to replenish her perpetually overdrawn bank account, and paying for her wardrobe (in those days it was not uncommon for actresses to wear their own clothes in their films so a fine and varied wardrobe was a professional necessity.)
In 1920 Olive played the role that would define a generation in "The Flapper." This is the only Olive Thomas film readily available to modern audiences on DVD, the rest of her more than twenty movies are either lost, due to the decay and deterioration of the highly combustible nitrate filmstock that was used in the early days of film, or survive only in fragmented condition in archives throughout the world. "The Flapper" is a charming comedy about a schoolgirl who, longing for sophistication and excitement, becomes entangled with jewel thieves. In an attempt to realize her dreams, she puts on the stolen jewels, dresses up in grown-up glamorous gowns, paints her face with makeup, and goes out to play the jaded vamp, and woman of mystery, with amusing consequences, smoking, drinking, and going to nightclubs, before the inevitable happy ending.
In August 1920, amidst rumours of a divorce on the horizon, and needing a much needed rest from the hectic life of moviemaking, Olive and Jack embarked on a belated honeymoon to Paris. Many accounts refer to this trip as a "second honeymoon," however, the couple never had a first honeymoon, so "belated" is a more accurate description. In Paris, they plunged into the wild decadent world of Parisian nightlife, prowling the notoriously and slightly shady Montmartre nightclubs, such as L'Enfer (Hell) and Le Rat Mort (The Dead Rat), places where narcotics were readily available and openly consumed, some even kept cocaine in salt shakers, and one could witness staged "cat fights" where beautiful women fought viciously and tore each other's clothes off, watch a large Negro bite the head off a giant rat, or laugh at the antics of a drunken pig. Some flower sellers offered bouquets sprinkled with cocaine, and the brandy and ether cocktail was amongst the most popular of mixed drinks; one could as readily add a dash of liquid morphine to one's drink as soda-water. Here it must be said, although Jack Pickford was known to habitually indulge in illegal narcotics, heroin and cocaine being his drugs of choice, no evidence exists that Olive herself used drugs, if she did, it was most likely only occasionally; by all accounts her preference seems to have been for champagne.
On September 6, 1920, sometime around 3:00 a.m. Olive and Jack returned to their hotel, the Ritz. Here is where the mystery that ensured Olive's immortality begins. According to various accounts Jack Pickford gave to the authorities, newspapers, and family members, Jack went straight to bed, but Olive, despite complaining of a headache, stayed up to write a letter to her mother, until Jack urged her to take an aspirin or a sleeping pill, accounts vary on this detail, and come to bed; the desk lamp was keeping him awake and hurting his eyes. Olive went into the bathroom; whether she bothered to turn on the light or not is unknown. Moments later a glass bottle shattered on the tile floor and Olive screamed for her husband. She had ingested deadly mercury bichloride, used as a topical treatment for Jack's syphilis. In the days before penicillin and other antibiotics, mercury was the cure for syphilis, a course of treatment could take years, inspiring the saying "a night in the arms of Venus, a lifetime on mercury." Jack immediately summoned help, he forced milk, eggs, butter, and twelve to fifteen glasses of tepid tap water, down her throat to induce vomiting and dilute the poison. But his attempts to save Olive's life unwittingly prolonged her agony, instead of dying a quick, painful death, Olive lingered in agony for four days while the world watched and waited, speculated and moralized, and doctors issued frequent bulletins on her condition. She was rushed to the American Hospital and given every care, but there was nothing anyone could do; there is is simply no coming back from mercury poisoning. Olive went blind and deaf before acute nephritis (kidney failure) finally ended her suffering on the morning of September 10, 1920. She was a little more than a month away from her 26th birthday.
Because the caustic poison burned through Olive's vocal chords, she was never able to tell what really happened. Was her death merely a tragic accident, or was it something more sinister? Rumours quickly erupted suggesting drugs had somehow been involved, or that she had been murdered by Jack, perhaps for the large insurance policy recently taken out on her life, or that Jack had forced her to ingest the poison after she told him she was leaving him. But all evidence suggests that Jack was not the murderous type; in his brief life--which ended in 1933 at age 36 when complications from syphilis and substance abuse finally caught up with him--Jack hurt himself more than anyone else. After Olive's death, Jack contemplated suicide--one might even in fact go so far as to call the rest of his life "a long and lovely suicide" in the words of Oscar Wilde. He renounced all claim to Olive's estate in favour of her mother, so he profited from her death in no way. Some believe Olive's death was a rash, impetuous suicide, learning that Jack had infected her with syphilis, Olive decided she could not live with the disease and chose to end her life with the medication that was supposed to effect a cure. There are contradictions as to what form the mercury was in when Olive ingested it, some accounts say granules, others tablets, or liquid solution. When dissolved, mercury is colourless and odourless, so Olive, tired, with a headache, and her mind on other things, might have absentmindedly picked up what she thought was a glass of water Jack had left on the bathroom counter to wash down her sleeping pills or aspirin. Or, if the mercury were in pill form, in the same tired and distracted frame of mind, she might have picked up the wrong bottle and taken the mercury tablets instead of aspirin or sleeping pills. All are possible, but the only thing that is certain is that we will never know the truth.
Olive Thomas was the first movie star to die under tragic, mysterious circumstances. Her death was the first in a long line of Hollywood scandals that within the next few years would see the death of matinee idol Wallace Reid from morphine addiction, the still unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor, which ruined the careers of two popular actresses, Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter, the trial of comedian Fatty Arbuckle for the rape and manslaughter of starlet Virginia Rappe, and the strange and sudden death of director Thomas Ince aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht. The public clamored for a last look at "Everybody's Sweetheart," and theatres did a thriving business with the re-release of her films, some even decorated their lobbies with paper coffins, a rather ghoulish and macabre touch. Olive's funeral was a star-studded affair, mobbed by spectators, with throngs of the curious outside the church. And Alberto Vargas, in a loving tribute to his former muse, painted the gloriously erotic "Memories of Olive," which he kept in his private collection until his death in 1982.
Olive's ghost is said to haunt the New Amsterdam Theatre, a flirtatious spirit, she appears primarily to men, sometimes in a beaded green gown from her Ziegfeld Follies showgirl days, with a blue glass bottle (the poison perhaps?) in her hand, other times she is seen in a white and silver dress, said to be the one she was buried in, forever the party girl, with a champagne glass in her hand. A theatrical legend, or the manifestation of an unquiet spirit who died too soon with so much promise left unfulfilled?
Let's remember Olive Thomas for her brief but brilliant blaze of glory across the silver screen and for how she lived life to the hilt, not for one tragic night in a Paris hotel room that left us with a mystery, asking the same questions Olive herself was so fond of asking: "How?" and "Why?"
Anyone interested in seeing Olive Thomas in action can purchase "The Flapper" on DVD, it's a handsomely restored print of the 1920 film, and also comes with a documentary about her life. Michelle Vogel has also written the only full-length biography "Olive Thomas: The Life and Death of a Silent Film Beauty." Both the book and dvd are available at Amazon.com
10 December 1815, London – 27 November 1852
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