Olive Thomas (October 20, 1894 – September 10, 1920)

Olive Thomas (October 20, 1894 – September 10, 1920)

 Thomas began her career as an illustrators' model in 1914, and moved on to the Ziegfeld Follies the following year. During her time as a Ziegfeld girl, she also appeared in the more risqué show, The Midnight Frolic. In 1916, she began a successful career in silent films and would appear in over twenty features over the course of her four-year film career. That year she also married actor Jack Pickford, the younger brother of silent film star Mary Pickford. She kept the marriage secret because Thomas did not want people to think her success in film was due to her association with the Pickfords. Her first film for Triangle Pictures, Madcap Madge, was released in June 1917. 


Thomas' popularity at Triangle grew with performances in Indiscreet Corrine (1917) and Limousine Life (1918). In 1919, she portrayed a French girl who poses as a boy in Toton the Apache. Thomas later said that she felt her work in Toton was "the first real thing I've ever done." She made her final film for Triangle, The Follies Girl, that same year. On September 10, 1920, Thomas died of acute nephritis in Paris five days after consuming mercury bichloride. Although her death was ruled accidental, news of her hospitalization due to the poison and Thomas' subsequent death were the subject of media speculation. Thomas' death has been cited as one of the first heavily publicized Hollywood scandals. There were rumors that Thomas was plagued by a drug addiction, that she and Pickford had been involved in "champagne and cocaine orgies," or that Pickford tricked her into drinking poison in an attempt to murder her to collect her insurance money. Olive Thomas is interred in a crypt at the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.

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