Some suspected that Jack poisoned his wife, while others thought she overdosed intentionally after discovering her husband had exposed her to the dreaded infection. At the time, her husband, Jack, brother of Hollywood star Mary Pickford, had been taking mercury bichloride to treat syphilis.
Thomas had passed away in 1920 after an overdose of mercury bichloride, and the circumstances of her death are shrouded in mystery. The sightings were strange for two reasons: One, Thomas wasn’t scheduled to perform at the venue. In the early 1920s, people started spotting a performer named Olive Thomas at Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre, where she had previously appeared in Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s show Midnight Frolic.
Actress Olive Thomas / John Springer Collection/GettyImages
