In 1914, 20-year-old Pennsylvania native Olive Thomas was working in a Harlem department store when she entered a beauty contest run by a popular photographer.
She won the contest, was crowned the most beautiful girl in New York City, and went on to become a model, magazine cover girl, and socialite.
Her next move: joining the Ziegfeld Follies. Thomas performed as part of the racy Midnight Frolic, an after-hours show on the roof of 42nd Street’s New Amsterdam Theatre.
Thomas hit the silent-film circuit, married the brother of actress Mary Pickford, and then died on vacation in France in 1920 after accidentally ingesting medicine containing mercury.
She’s buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Supposedly her ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theater.
Tags: " Ziegfeld Follies, Mary Pickford, Midnight Frolic, New Amsterdam Theatre, Olive Thomas
Ephemeral New York 
June 10, 2009 at 3:38 am |
he ee you r very beautiful and very sweet
April 9, 2011 at 10:51 pm |
[…] So the 16-year-old from Pittsburgh made her way here in 1919, where she got work as a chorus girl, then a Ziegfeld girl. […]
November 29, 2012 at 6:40 am |
[…] shoulder bouquets . . . . It was just a lot of youngness: Lillian Lorraine would be drunk at the top of the New Amsterdam by midnight, and football teams breaking training would scare the waiters with drunkenness in the […]
August 3, 2015 at 6:42 am |
[…] theater, financed by William Randolph Hearst, opened to great fanfare; Florenz Ziegfeld’s renowned Follies were staged […]