EPISODE COMING SOON
Olive Thomas haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York. So they say.
This is my favorite Broadway theatre. It is absolutely gorgeous, and Disney did an amazing job of restoring it after taking out a 99-year lease on the place.
It’s also one of the most storied venues in New York. This was the original site of the Ziegfeld Follies, Florenz Ziegfeld’s famous celebration of All-American Beauty, “glorifying the American Girl.”
Olive Thomas was a beautiful, vivacious young woman who was on the verge of superstardom when she died in 1920. She was the top model in New York, a top attraction on Broadway, and a rising attraction at the cinema. She had married into Hollywood royalty when she wed Jack Pickford, the ne’er-do-well younger brother of Mary Pickford.
It’s been a bit of a struggle getting definitive information on Olive’s background. Many sources, for example, say her father died in a work-related accident. They say her father’s name was James. They say she was the oldest child of three. They say she had brown eyes.
In the documentary Everybody’s Sweetheart, we clearly see on her birth certificate that her father’s name was Mike. The film also presents the 1900 census, which again shows her father’s name as Michael, and lists the three children’s birth dates. Olive’s birthday is second, not last. She was the middle child.
I’ve managed to dig up the registry of her father’s death in Allegheny, PA. It states that his cause of death was “pneumonia” (though the writing is a bit difficult to make out).
I’ve actually updated the Wikipedia entry on Olive to reflect this research.
I have an old book about the Ziegfeld Follies that claims Olive’s eyes were brown. Mary Pickford, meanwhile, in her autobiography, says “the girl had the loveliest violet-blue eyes I have ever seen.” Contemporary paintings (there were no color photographs) also portray her as having blue eyes.
A chronology of Olive Thomas’s life:
- Born Olive (or Oliva) R. Duffy in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, in 1894 – a smoky mill town pressed between the river and the rail lines. Her family lived modestly.
- Her father, Mike Duffy – that’s the name on Olive’s birth certificate, though some accounts claim his name was James – died in 1906, when she was just 12 years old.
- Most accounts say he died in a work-related accident, however the legal record of his death cites pneumonia as the cause. It also lists his name as Michael Duffy and his occupation as brick layer.
- Her mother, Lourena – Rena – was left alone with three children to raise. She worked odd jobs, sold what she could to keep the family going.
- Ultimately, Rena moved the family to McKees Rocks, PA.
- Olive dropped out of school and got a job selling gingham at Kaufman’s Department Store in Pittsburgh.
- She married Bernard Krug Thomas at age 16. He was a timekeeper at a local factory.
- She said she married Bernard to give her mother one less mouth to feed.
- They married on April Fool’s Day 1911.
- She filed for divorce less than two years later, claiming cruelty.
- In 1931, Krug told a different version of the story to a Pittsburgh newspaper: He said he saw she was destined for success and stepped aside so she wouldn’t be burdened with a husband.
- In early 1914, she left Pennsylvania for New York, arriving during one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history.
- She stayed with a relative in a tenement flat in Harlem.
- She got another job working at a department store, sending money home to help her mother and siblings.
- Krug came to New York in 1914, hoping to reconcile with Olive, but this was unsuccessful (according to Everybody’s Sweetheart).
- After only a few months, she saw an ad in a New York paper: Famous illustrator Howard Chandler Christy was holding a contest for “Most Beautiful Girl in New York.”
- Olive called in sick and went to the artist’s studio, where hundreds of other girls – all young, all beautiful – waited to audition for the artist.
- She won the contest.
- Very shortly, she was able to quit her job at the department store. She became one of the most in-demand models in New York, working with all the top illustrators. Christy later said she was his favorite model.
- Artist Harrison Fisher said he wrote a letter of recommendation to Florenz Ziegfeld. This resulted in her joining the Ziegfeld Follies.
- She was an instant favorite – beautiful, tempestuous, full of life. Within a year she graduated to Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic.
- Florenz Ziegfeld was smitten with Olive. They had an affair. Ziegfeld was married to actress Billie Burke – who would go on to play Glinda the Good in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.
- Billie Burke temporarily quit her acting career to focus on her marriage, but Ziegfeld continued his affairs – particularly with Olive.
- Olive got her first job in movies – appearing in episode 10 of the serial Beatrice Fairfax, which was filmed in Ithaca, NY.
- She started shooting movies in Queens and New Jersey, sometimes reporting to the set at 9am after working the Frolic until three or four in the morning. She decided she was going to be the greatest actress in film.
- Olive broke with Ziegfeld when he refused to leave his wife.
- She relocated to California to work in film.
- September 1916: Within a month of arriving in California, she met Jack Pickford – younger brother of the Queen of Hollywood Mary Pickford – at Cafe Nat Goodwin on the Santa Monica Pier.
- The two hit it off and became inseparable, though their relationship was turbulent.
- Mary Pickford did not approve of the match. Some say she wanted to protect Olive from her brother; others say she felt that Olive was not good enough for the family. It may have been a combination of both.
- Olive and Jack were secretly married in October – in New Jersey.
- Olive signed with Triangle Pictures in California – possibly in part capitalizing on her new tabloid fame.
- She started getting regular work in film, becoming well-known as an actor.
- Olive continued to send money home to help family.
- Her co-workers on film productions said she was inquisitive, smart, mercurial, wanted to do and know everything.
- Olive and Jack fought and made up and fought and loved and fought and worked.
- They decided to take a second honeymoon, to reconnect. They went to Paris.
- September 5, 1920: After a night out, Olive and Jack returned to Hôtel Ritz around three or four in the morning.
- Olive, in the bathroom, mixed mercury bichloride with water and consumed it. Within seconds she knew she had done something terrible. She cried out. She collapsed. She was rushed to the hospital.
- For five long days, she fought. In and out of consciousness.
- She died September 10, 1920. She was twenty-five years old.
- Jack returned with her body, distraught, allegedly considering suicide during the voyage (some say he traveled on the Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic, but there is no evidence of this).
- Hundreds attended her funeral at St Thomas church in midtown New York – across from where Rockefeller Center stands today. The hymn “I Need Thee Every Hour” played as the procession made its way out of the church.
- Her effects were sold at auction in New York, generating about $30,000. Equivalent to almost half a million today.
- Her mother received the proceeds.
- She was buried alone in the Bronx – in a tomb meant for her and Jack. The inscription reads only “Pickford.” Jack and the rest of the family were buried far away in California.
Just for fun, AI visualizations of Olive and Mary as contemporary young women:
Stay tuned for the upcoming episode on this turbulent, magnetic, ultimately tragic woman – and her continued haunting of one of the most magnificent theatres in the world.