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

Author: Joyce E. Eberly
Published on: Nov 29, 2002

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.

Like Marilyn, Olive was always tormented by criticism that her success in films was the result of her beauty and not her talent. Until 1919, when she became a Seznick star, she had played a variety of roles, mainly ingenues. With Selznick, her “innocent sexuality” was exploited, and she was cast as a “baby vamp,” a sophisticated flapper, and a tomboy.

While her career was making her a true star, her marriage to Pickford was uneven. They rarely worked on the same coast, and rarely saw each other. Pickford, even before their marriage, was known as a womanizer, or “philanderer,” as he was called in the twenties. Although he seemed to be deeply in love with Olive, he never gave up his philandering ways. Their marriage was marked by dramatic battles followed by “lavish apologies” and expensive gifts. Pickford was also known as a procurer. He was once involved in a scandal in which he allegedly procured young starlets for officers. Another story says he procured them for “bluebloods.” Nevertheless, he remained a womanizer until Olive’s tragic death.

In September 1920, Olive and Jack were in Paris at the Hotel Ritz for what they planned to be a second honeymoon. Jack was widely rumored to be infected with syphillis and was undergoing treatment for the disease with mercury bichloride and had infected his young wife. On 5 September, in their hotel room, Olive (by one account) swallowed a large amount of the mercury bichloride, mistakenly believing it to be a sleeping potion. Other accounts say she intended to commit suicide. Mercury bichloride, when taken internally, is incredibly corrosive and its deadly effects are irreversible.. As with Marilyn, no one will ever know if her death was suicide or accident.

Olive died at the age of twenty-six in Paris of “acute nephritic inflammation.” Her body was returned to New York, where her funeral was held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. It was the first “Hollywood funeral” and was attended by huge hysterical grieving crowds. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx. Unlike Marilyn, Olive Thomas is virtually forgotten today, and her films are mostly lost.

Pickford continued making movies until 1932. He was married two more times, once to the former Ziegfeld star, Marilyn Miller, from 1922 to 1927, and to another Ziegfeld girl, Mary Mulhern, from 1930 to 1932. In 1933, Pickford died. The reported causes of his death ranged from a nervous breakdown to exhaustion. Or,as one biographer puts it, quoting the words of his neice, Gwynne Pickford, “ he died of too much of all the right things, women, drink and riotous living.”

Read synopses, excerpts, and reviews of my books at:

THE TANGLED WEB, http://londoncircle.com/tanglewb.html

SINS OF THE FATHERS, http://londoncircle.com/sins.html

CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL, http://londoncircle.com/captainofhersoul...

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