At the sorrow-filled age of thirty-one
I felt as though my life as a man was done.
Hating my lot, for my days were a chore.
Dreading each day, as it brought nothing more
Than a meagre wage, scarce enough to eat,
With no love in my life, I felt nought but defeat.
Alone, working hard at the theatre one night
I witnessed a strange but beautiful sight-
The face of an angel, the voice pure and light
She smiled at me softly
It was love at first sight!
This beauty was something sent from a dream
Her face like a picture
All peaches and cream.
Her hair falling down
To her shirtwaister's seam.
She looked like a breath-taking girl of nineteen.
There was something ethereal about her I knew,
She suddenly seemed almost too good to be true.
A blue bottle she held, and I suddenly knew.
The rumours about Olive Thomas were true.
So fair was her smile
So lovely her face
That only a movie star's screen could it grace
And I knew then and there, why she dwelled in this place.
I had long heard of Olive
The first Vargas girl.
She was known
'The most beautiful girl in the world'.
She gestured to me,
And then dimpled and twirled,
And her story of fifty years past, it unfurled.
I'd heard all the stories
Of the wild life she'd led
And the long string of lovers
She'd taken to bed
But to me, she was an angel
Yet my angel was dead.
She whispered melodically
"Come with me now"
And her beautiful face swam before me somehow-
She gently and gracefully reached out her fair hand
And, drawn by her eyes
I obeyed her command.
"I am ever so lonely! I have watched you for years!"
Her beautiful violet eyes brimming with tears
"I have fallen in love, and my love it has grown
OH! Please stay with me, don't leave me alone!"
And in the theatre
A ghost I am now.
But happier than I was in life, somehow.
I live with the most beautiful girl I have seen
And a life of a drudge, became a lover's dream.
The only traces of me
I left behind
Was a bottle of blue,
Of the poisonous kind.
Yes, I took my sad life for the promise I'd made
To the one they called Olive, and forever her slave!
We fly through the skies on the waves of the mists
For together we are always at our strongest.
And a kiss from my love makes my past life seem drear
Together forever, with my darling dear.
We can travel the world, it seems, as a pair
And with my sweet Olive, I'm waltzing on air!
Would I ever go back to the half- life I endured?
It's like asking a leper if he wants to be cured!
My life was spent shivering in a damp hovel
Or shovelling coal, or a behind- the- scenes grovel.
But now as a spirit, I hunger no more,
And my body is no longer painful and sore.
My Olive saved me, as I saved her too
And looking back, nothing differently I would do.
When you find true love there's just one thing to do.
I was meant for my Olive, and her for me too!
Olive Thomas as painted by Vargas aged 18.
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Author Notes
"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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