"You Must Remember This"

If you aren't already listening, I want to pop in quick and recommend the podcast "You Must Remember This" hosted by Karina Longworth.  It's a podcast about Hollywood, mostly old and golden age, but some a bit newer.  It's one of my favorite podcasts and a new season just started last week.  There's a lot to catch up on and enjoy if you're not already listening, though!

Part of why I mention this now is that today's episode is about Olive Thomas, the subject of my first posts on this blog (Part 1, Part 2).  The episode is found here.  Enjoy!

The End of Olive Thomas

So, in the last post was Olive’s rise to fame, her marriage to Jack Pickford, and their second honeymoon to Paris.  This time… The rest of Olive’s life.

            On the night of September 4-5, Olive and Jack were out late, partying in Montparnasse.  They returned to their hotel around 3am that night.  Jack passed out pretty quickly upon their arrival back at the hotel.  Olive went to the bathroom to take medicine of some kind: aspirin, sleeping medicine, cold medicine, or even just water, it’s not clear.  What is clear is that, instead of taking whatever she had intended, Olive took bichloride of mercury liquid.  This either had a label in French, or no label, causing the confusion over what she was taking.  It seems like the mercury was Jack’s for his syphilis.

            After she realized she’d taken the wrong thing, Olive started shouting.  Jack woke up and “forced water, egg whites, milk and butter down her throat” (1).  He carried her to the bed and called for an ambulance.  Olive was taken to the American Hospital in Paris where doctor’s tried their best to keep her alive. Olive “lost the power of speech and sight” and so was unable “to explain how she came to make the mistake of drinking from the bottle” (2).   Olive died at 10:15 on the morning of September 10, 1920, a month shy of her twenty-sixth birthday.

It’s not clear if she took the mercury “accidentally, committed suicide or was murdered by her husband” (3).  The reasons for a possible suicide included: supposed trouble adjusting to fame, Jack’s infidelities, Jack’s having given her syphilis.  There were also rumors that Olive had a drug addiction, or that Jack tricked Olive to take the mercury so he could collect insurance money on her.  Michelle Vogel, author of Olive Thomas: The Life and Death of a Silent Film Beauty, believes that “the actress drank the poison accidentally” but that Jack’s “alcoholism and incurable womanizing contributed” (4).  Whatever it was that caused Olive to ingest the poison, her death was ruled an accident, having been caused by nephritis from the mercury bichloride.

At the inquest into her death, “maids and valets of the hotel” were “unanimous that up to the hour of her death Miss Thomas was … of a happy disposition and serene and content with her life and its future prospects.”  Additionally, it was reported that Olive “was planning to come back to Paris” to work for Mary Pickford’s ex-husband, and had “been busy buying frocks for new plays in which she was to appear” (5).

After Olive’s death, Jack gave interviews to newspapers and was quoted about how hard both Olive and the doctors struggled to keep her alive.  He gave his full account of what happened to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.  Jack brought Olive’s body back home to the United States.  It was rumored that he tried to commit suicide on the voyage over, but was talked out of it.  Years later in her autobiography Mary Pickford says he confessed that to be true.

Olive’s funeral was held on September 28 at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York.  Fifteen thousand mourners tried to pack into the church, so many more so than expected that “it was found necessary to increase the number of policemen on duty from ten to twenty-five” (6).  Women fainted and men’s hats were crushed, the crowd was so thick.  Olive’s casket was “blanketed in purple orchids, topped by a spray of yellow and brown orchids from Jack Pickford” (7).  Olive was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, originally just in a vault, but in 1921 was “put in the recently completed Pickford mausoleum” (8).

Olive’s estate was split between her mother, brothers, and Jack.  Jack did not take his share, giving it to her mother instead.  In November, Olive’s things were sold off in an estate sale.  “Nearly $20,000 was realized from the sale of the jewelry, and one of her two automobiles was sold for $5,000.  The entire proceeds of the sale were about $30,000” (9).  Items sold also included a cigarette case, a gold toilet set, and a sable coat.

Olive is fascinating in her death.  This was one of the first times the media really sensationalized a Hollywood star.  Her death was also one of the first Hollywood scandals; hers and others that soon followed led to morality clauses being written into actors’ contracts.  As Dr. Jeanine Basinger, chair of Wesleyan University’s film studies program, said “Had he not been Mary Pickford’s brother, had they not been married, had they both not been in movies, the death would not have been sensationalized in the same way it was” (10).

Rumor has it that her ghost still haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre (the theater where she worked in the Ziegfeld Follies).  In 1997, “a security guard resigned after seeing a woman in lingerie wandering the stage clutching a green bottle, and cast members still touch a portrait of Olive as they leave the stage door every night” (11).  Others say her ghost is “crying, in a white dress trimmed in silver;” supposedly “she was buried in a white dress trimmed in silver” (12).

So that’s Olive Thomas.  I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to Olive’s story.  For sure she ticks off many boxes of my favorite things – old, silent Hollywood; flappers; tragic death – but some of those I didn’t really realize until I started researching her for this.  I didn’t know the movie that made her a star was The Flapper, or if I had known I’d forgotten; maybe it still niggled in my head and made me want to know more somehow.  At any rate, she has such an interesting history and such a tragic end; I wish more people knew of her.

1, 3, 4, 10, Marylynne Pitz, “OliveThomas, the original ‘Flapper’ and a Mon valley native, still fascinates,” Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, September 26, 2010.

2 “Olive Thomas Near Death,” The New York Times, September 10, 1920.

5 “Miss Thomas’ Death FoundAccidental,” The New York Times, September 12, 1920.

6, 7 “Women Faint at Olive ThomasRite,” The New York Times, September 29, 1920.

8 “Olive Pickford Put in Mausoleum,” The New York Times, September 26, 1921.

9 “Olive Thomas Sale Amounts to$30,000,” The New York Times, November 23, 1920.

11 Tony Perrottet, “Traces ofZiegfeld’s New York,” The New York Times, May 8, 2015.

12 William Grimes, “A Gang ofGhosts Ready to Rumble,” The New York Times, October 29, 1993.

The Rise of Olive Thomas

Olive Thomas has popped up for me a few times over the last few years.  I don’t remember where I first heard of her; I know I’ve seen that picture of her before.  She resurfaced for me at the end of June, when I read The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum.  To give away her ending, Olive Thomas died in Paris from accidentally taking a bichloride of mercury potion.  Before her tragic end, Olive had been a Ziegfeld Dancer and a successful actress for Selznik Studios, appearing or starring in twenty-four films in just five years.  But, back to the beginning.

Oliva R. Duffy (or Oliveretta Elaine Duffy, depending on who you’re going by; Olive claimed Oliveretta), was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania on October 20, 1894, the oldest of James and Rena Duffy’s three children.  James was a steelworker, and died when Olive was just twelve.  After his death, the family moved and Rena got a factory job.  When Olive was fifteen she left school in order to work and help support her family; she sold gingham at a department store.  In April 1911, when Olive was 16, she married Bernard Thomas.  During their marriage he worked at a steel car company while Olive took care of their home.  By 1913, she had separated from Bernard, and had moved to New York to live with a family member.  Again, she worked at a department store to support herself.  Olive finally divorced Bernard in September 1915; Olive cited desertion and cruelty.

            In 1914, Olive entered “The Most Beautiful Girl in New York City” contest which was being sponsored by Howard Chandler Christy, a commercial artist.  With her “shining bob of curly dark hair, big violet-blue eyes, and a pale heart-shaped face,” she won (1).  Winning the contest established her as an artists’ model and she was eventually being featured on magazine covers such as the Saturday Evening Post.  One of the artists Olive modelled for was Harrison Fisher.  Fisher knew Florenz Ziegfeld at this time and recommend Olive to Ziegfeld, who hired her as one of his Ziegfeld Follies.  Olive always claimed she just marched right up to Ziegfeld and asked for the job.  However it happened, Olive debuted in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1915.  Her popularity in the Follies got her cast in Midnight Frolic, a more risqué show for famous male customers with money to spare on the performers.  It was rumored that the German ambassador gave Olive a $10,000 pearl necklace.

            While Olive was employed by Ziegfeld, she was also having an affair with him.  Ziegfeld was married to Billie Burke at the time (Glinda in the Wizard of Oz).  Olive broke off her relationship with Ziegfeld when he wouldn’t divorce his wife and marry her instead.  Around this same time, Olive was painted by Alberto Vargas, becoming the first Vargas Girl; the future famous pin-up artist was working for Esquire at the time.  Ziegfeld purchased Vargas’s painting, Memories of Olive, and hung it in his office.  Ziegfeld may even have commissioned the painting, but sources differ; Vargas also kept a copy of the painting.

            In July 1916, Olive signed with the International Film Company, making her debut in “Episode 10” of the Beatrice Fairfax serial.  Olive’s full length debut came the next year in A Girl Like That for Paramount.  Olive would eventually help to get her brothers work in the movies too, after their service in World War One; one as a cameraman and one as an assistant director.

            Late in 1916 Olive met Jack Pickford at a beach café; they eloped that October in New Jersey.  Jack adored Olive, but his family did not approve of their relationship; Olive was viewed as “a cheap chorus girl from a poor steel town” (2). Both Olive and Jack were known for partying and, although they loved each other, their relationship was tumultuous, filled with quarrelling over Jack’s supposed affairs.  Additionally, since they were both acting at the time, Olive and Jack could go months without seeing each other.  When they met up again they would exchange expensive gifts, “like cars and jewelry” (3).

            In 1917, Olive signed with Triangle Pictures.  After her signing, news broke that she was engaged to Jack Pickford.  While they’d secretly been married since October, Olive didn’t want it to seem like she was only successful because of her connection to the Pickfords; Jack’s older sister was the famous actress Mary Pickford.  At the end of 1918, Olive signed with Selznik Pictures Company, hoping she would finally get some more serious roles to play.  Her first film for Selznik, Upstairs and Down, established her as more serious and sexy.  According to Sarah Baker, co-writer and –producer of Olive Thomas: Everybody’s Sweetheart, Olive “served as a bridge between the reserved, Victorian heroines played by Mary Pickford (her husband’s sister) and the hot Clara Bow, a sexy, full-blown flapper” (4).

            In 1920, Olive starred in The Flapper.  This was a new direction for women in film; she was the first actress to play a flapper, and the film was the first to portray the flapper lifestyle.  The film made Olive a celebrity almost overnight, and was one of her most successful movies.  In August and September of 1920, Olive and Jack went to Paris as a second honeymoon, staying at the Hotel Ritz.  Olive had just finished shooting Everybody’s Sweetheart, which would come out that October, so they both finally had some time to get away.       

            That’s where I’m going to leave off today.  If I put everything about Olive in one post it would be ridiculously long, and nobody likes reading really long blog posts.  So, next time, Olive’s poisoning, hospitalization, funeral, and the aftermath.  I’ll leave you with this: The Flapper on YouTube.  Maybe you can watch it between posts or after both or… whenever.  Until next time.

1 Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 106.

2, 3, 4, Marylynne Pitz, “OliveThomas, the original ‘Flapper’ and a Mon valley native, still fascinates,” Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, September 26, 2010.