Olive Thomas (October 20, 1894, Charleroi, Pennsylvania – September 10, 1920 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) was an American silent film actress and socialite.

Born Oliveretta Elaine Duffy into a working class family in the Pittsburgh area town of Charleroi, her father died when she was young and she was forced to leave school to help support her mother and two younger brothers. In April 1911, at the age of 16, she married Bernard Thomas. The marriage lasted only two years. A beautiful and ambitious teenager, she went to stay with an aunt in New York City where she worked in a department store.

In 1914, she won The Most Beautiful Girl in New York City contest run by the celebrated commercial artist, Howard Chandler Christy. She then modeled for well-known artist Harrison Fisher and eventually wound up on the cover of Saturday Evening Post. Hired by the Ziegfeld Follies, she subsequently worked for the much racier revue of the Ziegfeld Follies called the Midnight Frolic, a show staged after hours in the roof garden of the New Amsterdam Theatre (it was primarily for famous male patrons with plenty of money to bestow on the young and beautiful female performers). Before long, the gorgeous Olive Thomas was the center of attention of the in-crowd associated with Condé Nast and she was being pursued by a number of very wealthy and powerful men. She was absolutely outstanding and men went wild over her beauty. She also posed nude for famed Peruvian artist Alberto Vargas. As a result of her sudden fame, she was signed to a contract with Triangle Pictures. In 1916, she made her motion picture debut using her married name. She went on to appear in more than twenty Hollywood films over the next four years.

Thomas met actor Jack Pickford (1896-1933) at a dance at Nat Goodwin's on the Santa Monica pier. In her autobiography (Off With Their Heads, The MacMillan Company, 1972), screenwriter Frances Marion remarked, " . . . I had seen her often at the Pickford home, for she was engaged to Mary's brother, Jack. Two innocent-looking children, they were the gayest, wildest brats who ever stirred the stardust on Broadway. Both were talented, but they were much more interested in playing the roulette of life than in concentrating on their careers."

A year after they met, Thomas commented in an interview, "Jack is a beautiful dancer. He danced his way into my heart. We knew each other for eight months before our marriage, and most of that time we gave to dancing. We got along so well on the dance floor that we just naturally decided that we would be able to get along together for the rest of our lives." Thomas married Pickford in October 1916, and although she was the love of his life, the marriage was stormy and filled with highly-charged conflict, followed by lavish making up through the exchange of expensive gifts. Alcohol began playing an exponentially large role in Thomas's life: in a short span, she crashed her automobile on three occasions.

In 1918, film mogul and master promoter Lewis J. Selznick signed her for Selznick Pictures Company. The following year, gossip columnists such as Louella Parsons were gushing over her, while magazines were filled with stories and photos of her soaring career, and the name "Olive Thomas" was emblazoned in electric lights on Broadway.

By 1920, she had become one of the brightest young stars in America. Renowned artist Alberto Vargas painted her portrait, nude from the waist up. Florenz Ziegfeld hung the painting in his New Amsterdam Theatre office, much to the chagrin of his wife, actress Billie Burke.

While doing film preparations (combined with a vacation) in France, the Pickfords went out for a night of entertainment at the famous bistros in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris. Returning to their room in the Hotel Ritz around 3:00 a.m., an apparently intoxicated Olive picked up what she thought was a flask of drinking water and accidentally ingested a large dose of mercury bichloride, which had been prescribed for her husband's chronic syphilis. She was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, where Pickford, together with her former in-law Owen Moore, remained at her side until she succumbed to the poison a few days later. A police investigation followed, and Thomas' death was ruled accidental.

Jack Pickford brought her body back to the United States (family friend and film director Allan Dwan had to talk him out of committing suicide en route). Olive Thomas' funeral service was held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York. She was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.

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 Olive Thomas' short life titled Olive Thomas: Everybody's Sweetheart.

In 2007, McFarland Publishing Company released author Michelle Vogel's <a class="externalLink" href="http://www.michellevogel.com/OliveThomas.html">biography of Olive Thomas ttitled Olive Thomas: The Life and Death of a Silent Film Beauty..

* [[Tom Sawyer (1917 film)|Tom Sawyer</a>] (Uncredited, 1917) * Indiscreet Corinne (1917) * Broadway Arizona (1917) * An Even Break (1917) * Madcap Madge (1917) * A Girl Like That (1917) * Heiress for a Day (1918) * Limousine Life (1918) * Betty Takes a Hand (1918) * Out Yonder (1919) * The Glorious Lady (1919) * The Spite Bride (1919) * Prudence on Broadway (1919) * Love's Prisoner (1919) * Upstairs and Down (1919) * The Follies Girl (1919) * Toton the Apache (1919) * Everybody's Sweetheart (1920) * Darling Mine (1920) * The Flapper (1920) * Youthful Folly (1920) * Footlights and Shadows (1920)

*Olive Thomas at The Internet Movie Database *Olive Thomas Homepage *Silent Ladies - Olive Thomas *New Coven of Olive Thomas *"Memories of Olive" *Hollywood's First Scandal: The Death of Olive Thomas (1920) *Gone Too Soon - Olive Thomas *Archive of Olive Thomas press clippings *Michelle Vogel's page for her upcoming Olive Thomas biography

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