Hollywood’s First Scandal D
in 1920 all of Thomas’s glittering world came to a gruesome end after a night out she accidentally took a fatal dose of Mercury from her medicine cabinet but it was why the Mercury was there that was truly shocking but more on this later all of Thomas’s early life reads like the beginnings of a Hollywood rags to Rich’s story born in 1894 in a small steel town in Pennsylvania there was nothing much to suggest that she would become one of the most eccentric and exciting stars of her day her early life was sleepy and quiet until that is she experienced a daughter’s worst nightmare in 1906 Thomas’s Father James Duffy a steel worker perished in a brutal workplace accident Thomas was just 12 years old
and she and her siblings were now fatherless scrambling to make ends meet her mother Reena uprooted the family to mck Rocks Pennsylvania while there The Matriarch worked long hours in a factory and Thomas mostly grew up with her grandparents still it wasn’t enough soon Thomas had to sacrifice even more almost as soon as she turned 15 Thomas dropped out of school to take up a a full-time job and help support her family although the young girl may have dreamed of stardom even then her jobs weren’t nearly as glamorous as her fantasies and she often worked for pennies a day selling fabric out of department stores but as it happened this was a date with Destiny from a young age all of Thomas was an absolute looker as one of her
friends later noted the beauty of all of Thomas is legendary the soon to be Starlet had the loveliest violet blue eyes framed by famously long and dark eyelashes and set off by her pale skin in other words it didn’t take long for men to start noticing Olive it was just that they were often the wrong men the same year she quit school the 15-year-old Olive met Bernard Thomas a local resident of mck rocks they were young eager and made an extremely stupid decision thinking herself in love and desperately sick of going it alone Olive married Bernard in 1911 when she was just 16 needless to say this couldn’t end in any other way but disaster right the newlyweds were so green and inexperienced they actually spent their first days of marriage living with
Bernard’s parents although they did eventually move into their own apartment for a while Olive was happy as Bernard went off to work for a car company and she mostly stayed back and took care of the home then in a blink of an eye it all went sour the teenage Olive might have thought she knew what she wanted when she married Bernard but it quickly became apparent that the life of a household wife would never satisfy her her response was Swift and brutal she up and left Bernard moving to New York in 1913 to try her hand at being a model only she hadn’t heard the last of him it took up until 1915 for Olive to obtain a divorce from Bernard and time hadn’t made either of the ex-lovers any kinder to each other Bernard’s grounds for divorce were
desertion and cruelty and he later all but called Olive a gold digger who was too concerned with luxury and improving her station to save their marriage but you know what Olive went off and proved him right in 1914 just after moving to New York Olive made a scandalous name for herself not only did she get her brand out there after winning the most beautiful girl of New York contest but she also started working as an artist model posing for the likes of many influential people of her time mostly in her birthday suit oh but that wasn’t all after barely a year in the Big Apple Thomas really hit the big time earning a spot in the zek fold folies the Folly showcased beautiful women in luxurious theatrical reviews in other words it was everything Thomas
knew she deserved and she got the job in a Down right ballsy way although some accounts insist that all of Thomas won her part in the Foles after one of her artist employers wrote Florence zold a letter of recommendation Thomas told a much spicier story instead of a traditional route to stardom she claimed that she nabbed a roll because she walked right up and asked for the job either way this is where Thomas’s notoriety started to truly take off off Thomas was such a hit at the Z fold Foles that her boss decided to put her into the midnight Frolic show too if that sounds even more naughty that’s because it was the Frolic took place after hours and away from prying Eyes On The Rooftop of the New Amsterdam theater featuring only the most beautiful Z fold
girls in their scandalous outfits the Frolic turn Thomas from an innocent babe into a downright bad girl what happened in the midnight Frolic didn’t exactly stay in the midnight Frolic and we now have hair raising details from these crazy nights Thomas became Infamous for wearing only balloons which men would try to pop with their cigars besides that the clientele were distinctly upscale and she entertained some of the richest and most famous men in New York and around the world during her time in the Foles Thomas committed an illicit act she began sleeping with her own boss even though the man was very much married to the Angelic actress Billy Burke the woman who would go on to play in The Wizard of Oz not that bad girl Olive seemed to care about that wrapped
up in Florence Z fold’s power and influence Thomas became desperate to stop sneaking around in the shadows with him sure she knew he had a string of Mistresses plucked right from his course lines but day after day Thomas needed him to divorce Billy Burke and make things official with her she was in for one rude awakening for once in her life all of Thomas didn’t get her way Florence zold had absolutely no intention of breaking breaking things off with Burke and going through a nasty divorce to marry another woman especially when he’d been having his cake and eating it for so long to be fair to Thomas she had self-respect out the Wazoo so when zek fold shut her down she walked right out of his life then
she got a beautiful Revenge if the best revenge is looking good all of Thomas had them all beat right around her breakup with zigfield she became the first Vargas girl when she posed for Peruvian artist Alberto Vargas whose styled pinup girls were about to take over the art World In His now famous portrait memories of olive Thomas stands naked from the waist up sensually smelling a flower when zek fold saw the portrait his reaction was very odd although Vargas refuted the rumor that zfi was the one who initially commissioned the painting zefi did something much weirder with it he bought it outright and hung Thomas’s bare all likeness in his office in the New Amsterdam theater it seems like someone regrets the breakup Olive on the other
hand was totally over it she was on to the next in 1916 Olive was finally free from her previous romantic entanglement when she met the strapping actor Jack pford while lulling around a beach cafe on the Santa Monica Pier it was practically the definition of a Hollywood meet CU but it gets even more Tinsel Town than this after all Jack had some friends in very high places Jack’s last name pford might not sound familiar to you but you can bet it was familiar to all of Thomas that’s because Jack’s sister was none other than Mary pford one of the most bankable stars of her day in the original America sweetheart well Thomas always did love people with powerful connections and their love story ramped up hard and fast Jack pford and Olive Thomas started
with a scandal with her new relationship blooming Thomas became much more interested in Jack’s cinematic line of work and less interested in her Broadway baby dreams with the folies she soon quickly quit the stage show and as Mary pford later revealed Florence zold never forgave Jack for stealing Thomas away hoping to complete her Breakaway from The Chorus Line and into the Silver Screen Thomas signed on with the International Film company after a debut in the film serial beatric Fairfax Tom Thomas’s career took off and the next year she made her first fulllength feature a girl like that and signed on with a new studio triangle pictures then the bottom dropped out all Olive Thomas ever wanted was the security of money Fame and power but with those glittering
dreams came scrutiny and nety the minute Thomas’s star started Rising the media began digging around her personal life and it wasn’t long before a journalist discovered the one secret that Jack pford and Olive Thomas were trying to keep to themselves see almost the minute that Thomas met Pigford she knew she was wild about him and that feeling was Mutual so in typical Thomas fashion she made a very Ras decision just weeks after meeting in late 1916 the paralo in October had kept it Hush Hush from the public because Thomas didn’t want anyone to think she was riding into stardom solely on the famous Pigford name well the secret didn’t last long and their relationship became common knowledge but behind the scenes they were hiding much
more scandalous Behavior Thomas and pford likely thought their Hasty wedding was the epitome of Windswept romance but that day had a darker side the Newly Weds didn’t just keep the wedding a secret from the Press they also didn’t tell their families and the only person present that day was fellow actor Thomas Megan who needed to be their witness why the Cloak and Dagger operation well they had a good reason for all that Jack pford was madly in love with Thomas his family were less than impressed with the upand cominging actress and alarm at how intensely the pair got together Jack’s famous Sister Mary pford though somewhat sympathetic to the girl admitted I always thought of them as a couple of children playing together still even rambunctious children couldn’t get as
wild as Jack and Olive the two love birds became Infamous around Hollywood for their Untamed love as well as their Untamed love for partying even by tinsel to standards rumors swirled that Thomas became addicted to elicit substances and that she and her husband participated in wild parties with champagne and elicit substances in their spare time that is when they weren’t making up and breaking up every other day simply rumors maybe but there’s also eyewitness accounts thanks to Mary pford and her equally powerful husband Douglas Fairbanks Olive Thomas had access to the notorious Pig Fair the couple’s enormous party Pat estate screenwriter Francis Marian often saw Olive and Jack over at the family
home and described them as the gayest wildest brats who have ever stirred the Stardust on Broadway although Maran noted their talent and undeniable love for one another she also noted that they were much more interested in playing the roulette of life than the concentration of their careers unfortunately for Thomas she eventually made the wrong gamble in this roulette and the consequences were utterly devastating for all that Olive and Jack were deeply in love their marriage hid a cruel problem behind bedroom doors namely that Jack pford had been unfaithful in even the short years they had been married there’s nothing to say Olive didn’t enjoy a few sinful Pleasures herself somewhere on the pfir estate but Jack’s infidelities caught up with him big time Karma certainly is a witch and sometime
in the Years between 1916 and 1920 one of Jack pigford’s illicit Affairs ended with him catching syphilis this diagnosis did nothing to help his troubling relationship with Thomas especially when both their acting schedules LED them to being apart for long stretches of time by 1920 their marriage was officially crumbling and they came up with a last ditch effort to save it in the summer of 1920 Olive and Jack decided to take a second honeymoon to Paris in order to rekindle their marriage and restore its foundations little did they know it would end in infy from the very beginning it had all the Hallmarks of their old habits while staying at the luxurious Ritz hotel the two often went out drinking and partying until the we hours of the morning then
one night disaster struck the next and final moments of all of Thomas’s life are shrouded in mystery and steeped in horror at 3: in the morning on September 6th 1920 she and Pigford staggered into their hotel to grab some sleep before starting it all over tomorrow but while Pigford went straight to bed Thomas stayed up for a while longer it would be her Doom out of nowhere Thomas’s husband awoke to a blood curdling sound from the bathroom the whiskey soaked Pigford heard Olive screeching oh my my God and he rushed inside to see what was the matter the still Tipsy and upset Thomas begged her husband to find out what was in the bottle that she had just drank as
Pigford recalled I picked it up and read poison then the details began to fall into place while ambling around the hotel room Thomas had gone to the bathroom cabinet and tried to drink either water or a sleeping tonic and instead in Cruel irony she had picked up pickford’s external medication that he was supposed to apply on his painful syphilis sores and ingested it the Mercury solution was potentially fatal and in an instant all of Thomas’s World spun and exploded as soon as Jack pford got a grip on what was going on he rushed his wife to the American Hospital in the suburb of Paris for nearly a week Thomas stayed in the hospital and fought for her life as the Mercury ravaged through her body yet outside the hospital walls a different and perhaps
more scandalous battle was raging every newspaper in America and Beyond fixated on all of Thomas and the circumstances around her poisoning some of the theories were incredibly dark many Publications suggested Thomas had tried to harm herself after finding out about pigford’s infidelities While others claimed the attempt was because pford had given her syphilis while all of Thomas grew weaker in bed she had finally become one of the first Hollywood scandals at the beginning doctors hoped Beyond hope that the actress would make a miraculous recovery and she was alert and awake from most of her stay in the hospital according to pford himself his wife kept calling for him and he never left her bedside if he could help it yet even as Thomas fought harder than she ever had in her life the
medic suspected the end was near as the hours turned into days ol of Thomas took a heartbreaking turn although she was conscious the Mercury was nonetheless destroying her internal organs all the while and eventually the doctors discovered the poison had paralyzed her kidneys it was the end for the beautiful Olive Thomas and it was as ugly as it was tragic during the last 12 hours that Thomas was alive she survived only by hypodermic injections yet had never had an epiphany about her mortality watching from her bedside pford said he knew the exact moment she was slipping away but the actress’s last words were gut-wrenching when pford asked how she was feeling Thomas only replied pretty
weak but I’ll be all right in a little while don’t worry darling an hour later she passed on leaving Devastation in her wake don’t forget if you’ve enjoyed this story or stories alike make sure to show some love by subscribing and liking this video stay tuned for some more informative and exciting stories like this one
