MODEL, ZIEGFIELD FOLLIES GIRL, FLAPPER, SILENT MOVIE STAR, MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD (1914)
..I was born Oliveretta Elaine Duffy into an Irish-American working class family in a Pittsburgh suburb. My father died when I was a little girl and so I had to leave school to help support my mother and siblings. I did a little modeling locally to keep the family fed. At the age of 14, I married Bernard Thomas, who was older than me. I worked at Horne's Department Store in the basement at the thread counter, the youngest saleslady there. I got to be a very good judge of ginghams. No one could put anything over on me in that line. My ideal of those days was Miss Milligan, the head of the ginghams. She was small and cute, and to be like her some day was the top
hope of my childhood!
The marriage to Bernard was doomed and only lasted a short time. I won a divorce on the grounds of cruelty. I left Pittsburg, long overdue, and went to stay with an aunt in New York City and worked in a department store in Harlem. God I loved New York! I determined to never leave! It gripped me as it has gripped its other million. So I stayed and in 1914 I saw this ad for a contest: the search for "The Most Beautiful Girl in New York City" run by the celebrated commercial artist in all of NYC at the time: Howard Chandler Christy. Well of course I knew who Christy was -- we all did -- he painted all the portraits of showgirls and movie stars on the movie magazines and Saturday Evening Post. He would be today like -- well, like the Annie Lebowitz of the Jazz Age. I was 'stoked' (to use modern skater slang) and I entered the contest. I won.
I modeled for Christy, and then everyone came calling: Penrhyn Stanlaws, Haskell Coffin and other famous painters including Harrison Fisher (you can say I ADORED him, wink wink!) which landed me eventually the cover of "Saturday Evening Post." It was wonderful pay for me: fifty cents an hour. Then my big break came when I was hired by the Ziegfeld Follies at first as a girl who stood in a box on the stage, and then Flo booked me for the much racier revue, "The Ziegfeld Frolics," a show staged after hours in the roof garden of the New Amsterdam Theatre for mainly male patrons with plenty of money to bestow lavishly on us folly dollies! It was semi nudie stuff, but all very elegant, Ziegfield was really like the Hef' of his day -- he didn't go in for sleaze.
Before long, I was the center of attention of the in-crowd such as those associated with Condé Nast and was being pursued by a number of very wealthy and powerful men. You just can't even believe what it was like then. We were given bouquets of roses with diamonds inside the petals...it was unlike any other time on earth, and I lived that.
I was approached by an executive from Triangle Pictures, and was put under contract and in 1916 made my motion picture debut using my married name, Thomas. I was working mostly in New York until the studio decided to send me on a train west.
Then...
I met the love of my life...
...actor Jack Pickford dancing at Nat Goodwin's nightclub in Santa Monica near the pier. Jack was such a wonderful dancer! Swoon! He was younger than me, but mercy we had such fun together! Sadly, his sister, Mary Pickford who was the biggest star in the world at the time, and their mother Charlotte disapproved of me. We hadn't grown up too dissimiliar Mary and I, it's too bad she never was able to see that.
..
Jack and I married in October 1916. We eloped, just slipped over into New Jersey and were married without any of our family members to protest. The brilliant actor Thomas Meighan acted as our chaperone and stood sponsor for us two youngsters -- Jack immediately dubbed him "our illegitimate father" -- and I love him forever for having helped us to marry.
Oh we were MAD about each other but we had our ups and downs -- stormy periods always followed by lavish making up through expensive gifts, and days in bed together and laughter and tenderness. We drank too much and partied too much, but we were young, and rich and hugely famous and unlike young stars today -- we were the first to live like that, we had to navigate that all by ourselves.
Navigating the hills of Hollywood in our jalopies was not our strong suit either -- we were forever in car crashes. I was a very clumbsy -- I guess you could say I was an airhead behind the wheel. It's like my passions were always way ahead of me, while my body was busy trying to catch up and crashing cars and making messes in the meantime.
..
In 1918, film mogul and master promoter Lewis J. Selznick signed me for Selznick Pictures Company. This really excited me. Cause fame and adoration aside, I really really ached to do good serious work. I wanted to be seen for my talent and I really felt the life I had lived could be taken on by the characters I played and reach out to girls like Ollie Duffy sitting in some dreary mill town in a little matinee hall wishing for something better for herself. I appeared in more than twenty Hollywood films in four yearsafter leaving The Follies, including the starring role in "The Flapper" written by the great Francis Marion. (By the way, do not let any one else make the claim of 'original flapper', not Clara Bow, or Louise Brooks or any of those fine young hellions after me, and don't get me wrong, I utterly ADORE them all -- but -- dollies -- I owned that character!)
In 1920, I was honored to have my portrait painted by renowned artist Alberto Vargas, nude from the waist up. Jack adored it! Florenz Ziegfeld hung the painting in his New Amsterdam Theatre office, much to the chagrin of his wife, actress Billie Burke. But she knew I was Flo's favorite girl and she rather liked me of all his mistresses.
Jack and I had spent so much time of our marriage apart...and often I swear, I felt Mary had a hand in it -- everytime I'd get signed to a picture, she'd book him to star in one with her on the oppsite coast. So in September of 1920, Jack and I sailed to Paris, France for the honeymoon that our busy lives had made elusive until now. We had spent weeks there, and had such a mad fun time! One night, like any other mind you, Jack and I went out for a night of carousing and dancing in the Montparnasse Quarter. We stayed late with friends at my favorite nightclub, which was called "The Dead Rat" -- amazing right? So...punk rock! Well, Rimbaud had written poetry there by day some years before our flapper generation, it had "arty cred'" you would say nowadays.
I don't deny it, we were wasted, we partied so hard that night. And returning to our suite at the Ritz at around 3:00 in the morning, I wrote a postcard to my mother, and I can't begin to tell you what happened -- how I could have made such a disasterous mistake...but I went into the bathroom and by clumbsy mishap I apparently accidentally ingested a large dose of mercury bichloride. There have been stories about why the substance was there...I will comment on none of it. But there it was, and I can't tell you why I did it, I can only tell you it was not with the intention of killing myself. I loved my life, madly. I created it, it was awesome!
Poor Jack, poor dear Jack, he was such a fuck-up in most ways and now they were going to take him to task for this too. I shrieked -- I knew what I had done. He panicked -- he called for help. They poured eggs down my throat to try to wash the mercury away but there's really nothing you can do when such a ghastly mistake as that is made.
I was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, where my sweet young husband and his sister Mary's ex-hubby Owen Moore (poor Owen -- we were equally dispised by Mary and Charlotte!) stayed by my side for 4 horrible days until I at last succumbed to the poison. My voice was silenced first as my throat was burned, and then my sight, as I went blind, and slowly everything else that we all take for granted fell away from function. But I had these days with Jack, to tell him all I could about how I loved him, and that this was a foolish accident...a clumbsy girl...to never blame himself, I was so sorry he had to experience that. He had never seen anyone die before. He was just 23.
A police investigation followed and my death was ruled accidental. But the scandal around it was insane. Jack brought my body home by boat to the United States and on the return trip, Allan Dwan, the film director, had to talk him out of throwing himself overboard.
My funeral service was held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York. (Yes I was Irish Catholic, but the Pickfords were Episcopalian.) My pallbearers included the Selznick's, Irving Berlin, dear Owen Moore, and my adorable Harrison Fisher and many other famous gentlemen of the day. Flo Ziegfield paid for the entire funeral but couldn't bear to attend: poor Flo was petrified of death. My superstar sister-in-law Mary and her husband Douglas Fairbanks stayed away fearing their presence would cause a scene. HA! Such arrogance. I had my own fans -- thousands of them! City blocks were filled with grieving fans crushing into the church to catch a glimpse of me: women fainted, men's hats were smushed in the stampede inside. Do you think any star today could command that? Name one!
I was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York in a tomb far from the Pickfords, who were all buried together in Glendale, Ca. at Forest Lawn there, 3000 miles from my resting place. Mary justified this always, saying it was so as to be nearer my mother. The Pickfords also argued that my digs at Woodlawn were temporary. (Check out the photo of my tomb below -- does that look temporary to you?) Jack couldn't be bothered to argue with them...he was forever distraught. He knew I wasn't inside that tomb anyhoo, I was right there with him, always. Like a little cricket in his pocket.
Jack wore a black armband in mourning for a year following my death, and went on to marry twice, two more Ziegfield girls. I was happy for him. But the marriages were short lived and he continued on a downard spiral of drugs and drink. His sister generously said he was a finer actor than she -- and he truly was so special. Please see his movies, please. He wasn't just her shadow, he was such a fine talent, my Jack.
In 1933, 13 years after my death, Jack took a long long trip sailing on a cruise when he became critically ill from all his abuses. As fate would have it, the ship docked in Paris and he was taken to the same hospital where he had stayed with me as I passed away. He could look from his window in the hospital and see the window of the room where I had been. He died in the same hosptial at just 35 years of age.
In 2004, with funding from Timeline Films and with the help of Hugh Hefner and his film preservation organization, Sarah J. Baker premiered her documentary on my short fun filled art filled life titled "Olive Thomas: The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."
