"At the beautifully restored New Amsterdam Theater, Olive Thomas -- 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World-- still takes center stage as she did when this was the home of the glamorous Ziegfeld Follies. In her hand, she clutches the small blue bottle which was the last thing she saw in life. It is the ghost of Olive Thomas."

Olive Thomas came from a mining town in Pennsylvania where, at the age of ten, she started posing nude for her grown-up brothers in pornographic photographs. She was married at twelve to a twenty-six-year-old miner who liked to show Olive off naked to his drunken friends. Sometimes he would get her to give a demonstration of her sexual skills before an invited audience of pals....poor child.

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 risque, nude 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.

On September 10, 1920, Thomas died of acute nephritis in Paris five days after consuming mercury bi-chloride. Although her death was ruled accidental, news of her hospitalisation 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 publicised Hollywood scandals.

For many years I wondered why no one every wrote a book on Olive Thomas.There are now one or two about, but, perhaps because she is so little-known today, because few of her films still exist, they are scarce. She should, however, be far more well known. One of Hollywood's early actresses she had a vibrant career that no doubt would have put her in the same category as Mary Pickford, who interestingly enough was her sister-in-law, or many of the other stars of stage and screen before "talkies".
A career that sadly ended far too soon and under tragic and rather disturbing circumstances.
Olives real life was very sad, a true tragedy.To me she always looks so sad in her pictures. Yet, this poem is still a love poem-for love is the greatest gift of all, and love can conquer (nearly) all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raFlRS1YSw4 a touching haunting tribute to Olive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIXavaiFLSE


"I think that you die when your time comes and not until then. I feel the same about other things as I do about death. I don't think you can change anything that is going to happen to you any more than you can change anything that has happened to you. That's why I never worry, and that is why I don't think people should get conceited and think themselves better than others." - Olive Thomas

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