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Born Oliveretta Elaine Duffy into a working class
family in a Pittsburgh suburb, her father died
when she was young and she had to leave school to
help support her mother and siblings. At the age
of 16, she married Bernard Thomas, but the
marriage lasted only a short time. A beautiful and
ambitious girl, she went to stay with an aunt in
New York City where she worked in a department
store. In 1914 she entered and won "The Most
Beautiful Girl in New York City" contest run by
the celebrated commercial artist, Howard Chandler
Christy. She then modeled for another famous
artist Harrison Fisher and eventually wound up on
the cover of "Saturday Evening Post." She was
hired by the Ziegfeld Follies and then worked for
the much racier revue, the Ziegfeld Frolics," a
show staged after hours in the roof garden of the
New Amsterdam Theatre for mainly male patrons with
plenty of money to bestow on the young and
beautiful lady performers. Before long, the
gorgeous Olive Thomas was the center of attention
of the in-crowd such as those associated with
Condé Montrose Nast|Condé Nast and she was being
pursued by a number of very wealthy and powerful
men.

Approached by an executive from Triangle Pictures,
she was put under contract and in 1916 made her
motion picture debut using her married name,
Thomas. She went on to appear in more than twenty
Hollywood films over the next four years. Through
her work she met actor Jack Pickford (1896-1933),
an alcoholic, drug-using, womanizer who lived
extravagantly off the wealth and fame of his
sister, Mary Pickford. They married in October
1916, and although Olive was the love of his life,
the marriage was stormy and sometimes filled with
highly- charged conflict, followed by lavish
making up through expensive gifts. Alcohol began
playing a larger and larger role in Thomas' life
and in a short span 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
about her career and the name Olive Thomas was
emblazoned in electric lights on Broadway while
magazines were filled with stories and photos of
her soaring career.

By 1920, she had become one of the brightest young
stars in America and renowned artist Alberto
Vargas painted another portrait of her, 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 mixed with a vacation in
Paris, France, she and her husband went out for a
night of entertainment at the famous bistros in
the Montparnasse Quarter. Returning to their room
in the Hotel Ritz Paris|Hotel Ritz at around 3:00
in the morning, an apparently drunk Olive Pickford
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 her husband and former in-law Owen Moore
stayed by her side until she succumbed to the
poison a few days later. A police investigation
followed and her death was ruled accidental.

Jack Pickford brought her body home to the United
States and on the return trip, family friend and
film director Allan Dwan had to talk him out of
committing suicide. Olive Thomas' funeral service
was held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New
York and 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: The Most Beautiful Girl in the
World.