Olive Thomas
Olive Thomas was an American silent-film actress, art model, and photo model. Her birth certificate appears to list her name as Oliva, but this is widely thought to be an error. In the 1900 census, she is listed as Olive R. Duffy.
Thomas began her career as an illustrator's model in 1914, and moved on to the Ziegfeld Follies the following year. During her time as a Ziegfeld girl, she also appeared in the more risqué show The Midnight Frolic. In 1916, she began a successful career in silent films and would appear in more than 20 features over the course of her four-year film career. That year, she married actor Jack Pickford, the younger brother of fellow silent-film star Mary Pickford.
On September 10, 1920, Thomas died in Paris five days after ingesting mercury bichloride, which brought on acute nephritis. Although her death was ruled accidental, news of her hospitalization and subsequent death were the subject of speculation in the press. Thomas's death is considered one of the first major Hollywood scandals.
Early life
Olive Duffy was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. She was the middle child of three born to Lourena and Michael Duffy, both of whom were of Irish descent. She had two brothers, James and Michael.While most sources claim her father's name was James Duffy, that he was a steelworker, and that he died in a work-related accident, Olive's birth certificate states that his name was Michael. The record of his death in the City of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, also shows his name as Michael, indicates that his occupation was "bricklayer," and states that his cause of death was pneumonia.
After her father's death, the family moved to McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, a small mill town. Olive and her brothers often stayed with their grandparents while their mother Rena worked in a local factory. Rena Duffy later married Harry M. Van Kirk, a worker on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. Their only child together, daughter Harriet, was born in 1914 and died in a car crash in 1931.
Olive left school at 15 to help support her siblings. She got a job selling gingham at Joseph Horne's department store for per week. At 16 in April 1911, she married Bernard Krug Thomas in McKees Rocks. During the two-year marriage, she reportedly worked as a clerk in Kaufmann's, a major department store in Pittsburgh. After their separation in 1913, Olive moved to New York City and lived with a family member. She later found work in a Harlem department store.
Career
Modeling
In 1914, Thomas entered and subsequently won the "Most Beautiful Girl in New York City" contest held by Howard Chandler Christy, a commercial artist. Winning the contest helped establish her career as an artists' model, and she would later pose for Harrison Fisher, Raphael Kirchner, Penrhyn Stanlaws, and Haskell Coffin. Thomas was featured on many magazine covers, including that of the Saturday Evening Post.Stage
Fisher wrote a letter of recommendation to Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., resulting in Thomas' being hired for the Ziegfeld Follies. However, Thomas later disputed this, claiming she "walked right up and asked for the job". She made her stage debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915 on June 21, 1915. Thomas' popularity in the Follies led to her being cast in Ziegfeld's more risqué Midnight Frolic show. The Frolic was staged after hours in the roof garden of the New Amsterdam Theatre. It was primarily a show for famous male patrons who had plenty of money to bestow on the beautiful young female performers. Thomas received expensive gifts from her admirers; it was rumored that German Ambassador Albrecht von Bernstorff had given her a $10,000 string of pearls.During her time in The Follies, Thomas began an affair with Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld, who was married to actress Billie Burke, had affairs with other Ziegfeld girls, including Lillian Lorraine and Marilyn Miller. Thomas ended the affair with Ziegfeld after he refused to leave Burke to marry her.
Thomas continued modeling while appearing in the Follies. Alberto Vargas, Florenz Ziegfeld’s artist-in-residence who painted many stars of the Ziegfeld stage, immortalized Thomas in the portrait he painted of her from memory after her death and titled it Memory of Olive Thomas or The Lotus Eater. "Lotus Eater" was a reference to Lotus-eaters of Greek mythology. The portrait depicts Thomas nude from the waist up, covering her left breast with her left hand while holding a rose with her right above her upraised face. The painting remained in his personal collection until his death in 1982 and was sold by his estate to a private collector in 1986. Vargas called Thomas "one of the most beautiful brunettes that Ziegfeld ever glorified."
Silent films
In July 1916, Thomas signed with the International Film Company. She made her on-screen debut in Episode 10 of Beatrice Fairfax, a film serial, which was shot in Ithaca, New York. In 1917, she made her full-length feature debut in A Girl Like That for Paramount Pictures.That same year, she signed with Triangle Pictures. Shortly after, news broke of her engagement to actor Jack Pickford, whom she had married a year prior. Thomas and Pickford, who was the younger brother of Mary Pickford, kept the marriage secret because Thomas did not want people to think her success in film was due to her association with the Pickfords. Her first film for Triangle, Madcap Madge, was released in June 1917. Thomas's popularity at Triangle grew with performances in Indiscreet Corrine and Limousine Life. In 1919, she portrayed a French girl who poses as a boy in Toton the Apache. Thomas later said that she felt her work in Toton was "the first real thing I've ever done." She made her final film for Triangle, The Follies Girl, that same year.
After leaving Triangle, Thomas signed with Myron Selznick's Selznick Pictures Company in December 1918 for a salary of $2,500 a week. She hoped for more serious roles, believing that with her husband signed to the same company, she would have more influence. Her first film for Selznick, Upstairs and Down, proved successful and established her image as a "baby vamp". She followed with roles in Love's Prisoner and Out Yonder, both in 1919. In 1920's The Flapper, Thomas played a teenage schoolgirl who yearns for excitement beyond her small Florida town. Thomas was the first actress to portray a lead character who was a flapper, and the film was the first of its kind to portray the flapper lifestyle. Frances Marion, who wrote the scenario, was responsible for bringing the term into the American vernacular. The Flapper proved to be popular and became one of Thomas's most successful films. On October 4, 1920, Thomas's final film, Everybody's Sweetheart, was released.
Personal life
Thomas's first marriage was to Bernard Krug Thomas, a man she met at age 15 while living in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. They married on April 1, 1911, and lived with his parents in McKees Rocks for the first six months of their marriage, then moved into their own apartment. Krug Thomas worked as a clerk at the Pressed Steel Car Company while Olive took care of the home. In 1913, the couple separated and Olive moved to New York City to pursue a career as a model. She was granted a divorce on September 25, 1915, on the grounds of desertion and cruelty. In 1931, Bernard Krug Thomas gave an interview to The Pittsburg Press, detailing his marriage to Olive, implying that a cause of the demise of their marriage was her ambition and a desire to both obtain a life of "luxury" and "improve her station".In late 1916, Thomas met actor Jack Pickford, brother of one of the most successful silent stars, Mary Pickford, at Cafe Nat Goodwin on the Santa Monica Pier. Both Thomas and Pickford were known for their partying. Screenwriter Frances Marion remarked, "I had seen her often at the Pickford home, for she was engaged to Mary's brother, Jack. Two innocent-looking children, they were the gayest, wildest brats who ever stirred the stardust on Broadway. Both were talented, but they were much more interested in playing the roulette of life than in concentrating on their careers." Thomas eloped with Pickford on October 25, 1916, in New Jersey. None of their family was present, with actor Thomas Meighan as their only witness. Although the couple never had their own children, in 1920 they adopted Thomas's six-year-old nephew, the son of one of her brothers, after his mother died.
By most accounts, Thomas was the love of Pickford's life. However, the marriage was tumultuous and filled with highly-charged conflict, followed by lavish making up through the exchange of expensive gifts. Pickford's family did not always approve of Thomas, but most of the family did attend her funeral. In Mary Pickford's 1955 autobiography Sunshine and Shadow, she wrote:
I regret to say that none of us approved of the marriage at that time. Mother thought Jack was too young, and Lottie and I felt that Olive, being in musical comedy, belonged to an alien world. Ollie had all the rich, eligible men of the social world at her feet. She had been deluged with proposals from her own world of the theater as well. Which was not at all surprising. The beauty of Olive Thomas is legendary. The girl had the loveliest violet-blue eyes I have ever seen. They were fringed with long dark lashes that seemed darker because of the delicate translucent pallor of her skin. I could understand why Florenz Ziegfeld never forgave Jack for taking her away from the Follies. She and Jack were madly in love with one another, but I always thought of them as a couple of children playing together.
Death
For several years, Thomas and Pickford had intended to vacation together. Both were constantly traveling and had little time to spend together. With their marriage on the rocks, the couple decided to take a second honeymoon. In August 1920, the pair headed for Paris, hoping to combine a vacation with some film preparations.On the night of September 5, 1920, they went out for a night of entertainment and partying at the famous bistros in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris. Returning to their suite in the Hotel Ritz around 3 a.m., Pickford either fell asleep or was outside the bedroom. An intoxicated and tired Thomas ingested a mercury bichloride solution, which may have been prescribed to Pickford as a topical medication to treat sores caused by syphilis. While accounts vary, authorities speculated that Thomas thought the flask contained either drinking water or a sleeping tonic. The medication's label was in French, which may have added to her confusion. After drinking the liquid she screamed, "Oh, my God!" and Pickford rushed to assist her. She was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where Pickford and his former brother-in-law Owen Moore remained at her side until she died five days later.