6. Olive Thomas, Jack Pickford, and the bichloride of Mercury
Jack Pickford was the brother of Mary Pickford, arguably the most powerful woman in Hollywood in 1916. Pickford was a notorious man about town, with the result of being stricken with syphilis, then treated with highly toxic mercury. Olive Thomas was a former Ziegfeld Girl, called the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (if so existing photographs don’t do her justice), and soon Pickford’s bride, though their marriage was what today would be called a long-distance relationship. According to acquaintances when together they fought constantly and with equal exuberance. Whether Olive was aware of Jack’s medical problem is debated, though he had his mercury with him when the couple spent time together in Paris in the summer of 1920. On September 9, Jack called a doctor to their hotel room after learning that Olive had taken a liberal dose of his bichloride of mercury. She died that night, in considerable pain, as a result.
The ensuing scandal was multi-pronged. Some said that Jack deliberately placed his medicine where his wife would confuse it with nostrums of her own and thus take it accidentally. Others claimed Olive committed suicide after learning of the reason her husband carried the mercury with him on his travels. The existence of a large insurance policy on her life, with Jack the beneficiary, gave credence to the former belief. Still others, cognizant of the fact that Mary Pickford despised her sister-in-law, believed Mary arranged for Olive to ingest the mercury through means not fully explained. The French authorities decided the poisoning was accidental, but their finding did little to stop wagging tongues in Hollywood and Paris over the untimely death. Her funeral was studded with Hollywood celebrities and her ghost is said by some to haunt the New Amsterdam Theater in New York, where she had first gained attention as one of Flo Ziegfeld’s girls.