Olive Thomas, another beautiful Ziegfeld Follies girl (like Martha Mansfield), tied tragically young:
After over a year together in California making pictures, with the usual occasional separations brought about by going on location (for example, Thomas was in Louisiana January - March, 1920, making a movie), Pickford and Thomas sailed from New York for Paris on Aug. 12, 1920. Upon arrival they checked into the Hotel Ritz for what was planned as a "second honeymoon" designed to save a failing marriage.
On the evening of Sept. 9 they went out on the town returning to their rooms about 3 a.m. Within a couple of hours, Pickford reportedly called downstairs that his wife had taken an overdose of medicine and needed a doctor. A doctor arrived in ten minutes to find Thomas "writhing in pain."
In his book, Foster provides a theory that many have ascribed to -- that Thomas took a large quantity of mercury bichloride which was prescribed to Pickford for his venereal disease and which he had also passed on to Thomas. He goes on to say that Pickford's doctor had admitted to prescribing the medicine for Pickford in 1917 as a treatment for syphillis.
Eyman quotes Pickford as saying he was in bed when he heard Thomas shriek from the bathroom, "Oh, my God!" He rushed to the bathroom and caught her in his arms. She had swallowed a lethal dose of mercury bichloride.
In her book Pickford, the Woman Who Made Hollywood (The University Press of Kentucky, 1997), author Eileen Whitfield said the couple had gone to bed after an evening of visiting "the bistros of Montmartre." A half hour later, Thomas was unable to go to sleep and reached for sleeping pills in the dark mistakenly grasping a bottle of bichloride of mercury. "Jack woke to Olive's screams as the pills burned through her throat and stomach. Or perhaps it was a maid who came to Olive's rescue - another story has it that Jack had slipped out for a last-minute round of drugs," she said.
Another version of the story, albeit not as popular, is that Thomas, who was known to be impetuous, took the pills to commit suicide, possibly after a row with Pickford.
Whatever the true story may be of what happened that night, Thomas suffered for another four days before she passed away.
(source: silentsaregolden.com)
Some say her ghost still haunts New York:
"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. "
Allyn King, Sucide:
A former Ziegfeld Follies girl and Broadway star.
When in the early 1920s it became fashionable for an actress to have a rather boyish figure, her contract mandated that she weigh no more than 115 lbs.
Died from injuries after jumping out a fifth story apartment building window. She had recently suffered a nervous breakdown believed to have been brought on by the stress of losing weight.
She was 29. (imdb.com)
(no picture yet =[ )
Then we have Bessie Poole:
Ziegfeld Follies dancer and mistress of W.C. Fields. She gave birth to William Rexford Fields Morris August of 1917. He was allegedy the illegitimate son of the great man. She gave the son up for adoption and tragically died ten years later in a barroom brawl defending a man in a speakeasy. (findagrave.com memorial, not the most detailed site..)
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