Olive Thomas
burst onto the scene at the age of eighteen, a violet-eyed brunette with
delicate looks and a zest for life. She won New York’s Most Beautiful Girl Contest
and from there joined Ziegfeld’s Follies. Olive was by all accounts sweet,
funny, and a natural bon vivant. She
married Jack Pickford, Mary Pickford’s brother, and the two endured a brief,
though turbulent marriage.
Movie star couplings were oftentimes
stormy. Despite the puritanical atmosphere in America during the early 20th
century, stars led wild and debauched lifestyles. Popular leading man Wally Reid battled a morphine addiction. Fatty Arbuckle hosted alcohol-fueled orgies,
one of which led to the death of actress Virginia Rappe and a highly-sensationalized
murder trial for Fatty. Chaplin married nymphettes; Garbo was rumored to sport
with other women. William Randolph Hearst shot a man on his yacht over Marion
Davies. For all the propriety and decorum of the silent film, the realities
behind the camera were shocking.
Jack and Olive fought constantly.
Jack himself was rumored to have a heroin addiction and Olive certainly had her
own demons. She was an alcoholic who
loved to cavort with other stars at parties and events. She nearly killed a
child with her automobile and survived several other wrecks, but wised up
enough to hire a chauffeur. Despite their epic tangles, Jack and Olive loved
one another fiercely. They were described as gay and wild “brats,” two
beautiful youths who made up as passionately as they came to blows. They licked
one another’s wounds with lavish and magnificent presents. Olive was making at
least $3,000 dollars a week from her contract with Selznick, and life was good.
Or so it seemed until the alcohol wore off, the party was over, and Olive
grappled with career dissatisfaction.
The problem was that Olive felt she
didn’t fit in as other starlets did. She despaired of not having a “type,” and
worried about her future marketability. In those days, most actors played a
certain type of role film after film. Jack’s sister, Mary Pickford, was
known for playing young girls. Pola Negri was a vamp, sexy and sultry. Jack
himself played affable young boys. Olive didn’t feel she fit into a type. In
today’s acting world, this would be somewhat of a gift. Back then, it was
important to have a type. Olive’s fears may or may not have been unfounded, but
she didn’t live long enough for the world to find out.
Olive and Jack felt they’d never had
a decent honeymoon, so in August of 1920 the two headed for Paris. Some
accounts, such as Ken Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, maintain that Jack wasn’t
even there when Olive died. He was finishing work on a film and planned to
follow Olive, who’d gone ahead to shop and explore Paris, when his work was
accomplished. Other accounts maintain that Jack was in Paris with her. Whatever
happened, Olive spent her time in Paris partying and living it up. She visited
bistros and cafes, shopped to her little heart’s content, and on the night of
September 5th, accidentally or purposely ingested mercury
bichloride. This liquid was a topical treatment for chronic syphilis, with
which Jack suffered, and thereby supports the theory that Jack was present at
the time.
The label on the bottle was in
French, Olive was exhausted from a long day, and it’s believed she assumed the
bottle contained a sleeping aid. She was taken to a hospital where she died
several days later, Jack and actor Owen Moore at her side. Olive was 25 years
old. Jack never recovered from her death and considered her to have been the
love of his life. He remarried several times following Olive’s death, but
passed away in 1933, an emaciated and ruined man.
Olive never attained enduring
stardom. She’s one of the lesser known silent film stars, but she was one of
the first starlets associated with the term flapper. Olive was high-spirited,
gorgeous, and generous. She adored a good time and lavished love, attention,
and gifts on her friends and lovers. She stood out onscreen and could have been
a great talent of the era.
The tragedy in this case is not that someone “great” passed
away so senselessly, but that someone passed away before any potential
greatness in them had an opportunity to unfold. Olive Thomas was a victim of
her lifestyle, as well as the directors, producers, and other moguls of the
entertainment industry. These vampires created a beautiful, romantic facade for
the public, but they built it on the life’s blood of their stars. They offered
these gifted, attractive people what was so scarce in an average American life
of that time, the illusion of comfort, security, and love. “You’re gonna be a
big star, baby, they’ll love you! You’ll never worry about anything again!”
Needless to say, there was a lot of compulsory sex in those times, though
thankfully this has long since died out.
These puppet masters smothered the talent with drugs, liquor,
and sex. Many of the early film stars came from impoverished or lower-class
families, like Olive Thomas. Some of them were foreigners ushered into a country
of which they knew little, Rudy Valentino and Pola Negri as two examples. Still
others came from parents with stark mental problems, like Clara Bow. They
stumbled into a world of beautiful people, cosmopolitan fashions, and a gushing
stream of money that lasted only as long as their sanity, popularity, and looks
held out.
The death of Olive Thomas was senseless, but not
extraordinary in an industry that sold dreams and illusions to a soul-starved
public.
