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OLIVE THOMAS (1894-1920), THE MARILYN MONROE OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

© Joyce E. Eberly

Like Marilyn Monroe, Olive Thomas was ethereally beautiful, a school dropout, and married in her teens. That marriage, to Bernard Krug Thomas, ended in divorce. Also like Marilyn, she gave various versions of her "real" name. Some reports say she was born Olive Elaine Duffy, others that she was born Oliveretta Duffy. Again like like the legendary Marilyn, this lovely girl's first job was in a factory in her home town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania. She was born in 1894, and her father died in a work-related accident in 1906. Olive and her brothers were farmed out to their grandparents where they lived on a farm while their mother, Laurena, worked in one of the local factories.

Olive married Thomas in 1911 to escape a life of poverty in the oppressive Pennsylvania industrial atmosphere and was divorced in 1914. The brief marriage was marked by physical abuse, and Olive went to Harlem to live with a relative. Life in New York was still difficult, not very different working in a department store from working in a factory in Pennsylvania.

Her extraordinary beauty offered a way out of poverty when she entered a contest for the "Most Beautiful Girl in the World," and won. Like Marilyn, she worked as a model. One of her employers, Harrison Fisher, wrote a letter of recommendation for her to Florenz Ziegfeld. However, in a 1919 magazine article, she claimed she went to Ziegfeld and asked for a job. Whichever is true, as with many Ziegfeld girls, she had an affair with Ziegfeld. She also posed nude for the artist Alberto Vargas. The portrait, which was commissioned by Ziegfeld, hung in Ziegfeld's office for many years, much to the distress of Ziegfeld's second wife, Billie Burke.

Although Olive appeared in only the 1915 Follies with such luminaries as W. C. Fields, Ed Wynn, Eddie Cantor, and Ina Claire, she also became a star of Ziegeld's "naughtier show," The Midnight Frolic, from 1915-1916. As a result of these appearances, she soon found a place in the movie industry from 1916 to 1920. She became an instant box office favorite, along with such "names" as the Gish sisters, Mabel Normand, Norma Talmadge, Gloria Swanson, and others. She didn't quite rank with Mary Pickford, and was not socially accepted by that grand lady of silent films, but she soon was connected with the Pickford family.

In 1916, she met Mary Pickford's notorious actor brother, Jack Pickford, at a dance. The two became so infatuated with one another that Olive broke off her relationship with Ziegfeld.and married Pickford in October 1916. By this time, her film career was in full swing, and the two delayed their honeymoon for over a year because of her movie commitments.

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