On September 10, 1920, Thomas died in Paris five days after ingesting her husband's syphilis medication, mercury dichloride, that brought on acute nephritis.

Rena Duffy later married Harry M. Van Kirk, a worker on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad.

During the two-year marriage, she reportedly worked as a clerk in Kaufmann's, a major department store in Pittsburgh.

[2] In 1914, Thomas entered and subsequently won the "Most Beautiful Girl in New York City" contest held by Howard Chandler Christy, a commercial artist.

Winning the contest helped establish her career as an artists' model, and she would later pose for Harrison Fisher, Raphael Kirchner, Penrhyn Stanlaws, and Haskell Coffin.

Thomas' popularity in the Follies led to her being cast in Ziegfeld's more risqué Midnight Frolic show.

It was primarily a show for famous male patrons who had plenty of money to bestow on the beautiful young female performers.

Thomas received expensive gifts from her admirers; it was rumored that German Ambassador Albrecht von Bernstorff had given her a $10,000 string of pearls.

Alberto Vargas, Florenz Ziegfeld’s artist-in-residence who painted many stars of the Ziegfeld stage, immortalized Thomas in the portrait he painted of her from memory after her death and titled it Memory of Olive Thomas or The Lotus Eater (as noted on the label he placed on the back of the completed work).

[18] Shortly after, news broke of her engagement to actor Jack Pickford, whom she had married a year prior.

[17][21] In 1920's The Flapper, Thomas played a teenage schoolgirl who yearns for excitement beyond her small Florida town.

They married on April 1, 1911, and lived with his parents in McKees Rocks for the first six months of their marriage, then moved into their own apartment.

Krug Thomas worked as a clerk at the Pressed Steel Car Company while Olive took care of the home.

Although the couple never had their own children, in 1920 they adopted Thomas's six-year-old nephew, the son of one of her brothers, after his mother died.

Mother thought Jack was too young, and Lottie and I felt that Olive, being in musical comedy, belonged to an alien world.

[28] An intoxicated and tired Thomas ingested a mercury bichloride solution, a topical medication that had been prescribed to Pickford to treat sores caused by his chronic syphilis.

[29] While accounts vary, authorities speculated that Thomas thought the flask contained either drinking water or a sleeping tonic.

She was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where Pickford and his former brother-in-law Owen Moore remained at her side until she died five days later.

On September 13, 1920, Pickford gave his account of that night to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner:We arrived back at the Ritz hotel at about 3 o'clock in the morning.

He pumped her stomach three times while I held Olive.Nine o'clock in the morning I got her to the Neuilly Hospital, where Doctors Choate and Wharton took charge of her.

They told me she had swallowed bichloride of mercury in an alcoholic solution, which is ten times worse than tablets.

She even was conscious enough the day before she died to ask the nurse to come to America with her until she had fully recovered, having no thought she would die.She kept continually calling for me.

All stories and rumors of wild parties and cocaine and domestic fights since we left New York are untrue.

In her autobiography, Mary Pickford recalls her brother's disclosure that he had made such an attempt during the return trip:Jack crossed the ocean with Ollie's body.

[37] According to The New York Times, police escorts were needed at the event, as the church was crowded with "hundreds" of fellow actors and other invited attendees, as well as a horde of curious onlookers.

Several women were reported to have fainted during the ceremony, and several men had their hats crushed in the rush to view the casket.

[42] On November 22, 1920, the bulk of Thomas's personal property was auctioned off in an estate sale, which netted approximately $30,000.

[43] Mabel Normand bought a 20-piece toilet set, a 14-karat gold cigarette case, and three pieces of jewelry, including a sapphire pin.

[44] The press coverage of Olive Thomas's death was one of the first examples of the media sensationalism related to a major Hollywood star.

[45][46] Other scandals around the time—including the Fatty Arbuckle trial in 1921, the murder of William Desmond Taylor in 1922, and the drug-related death of Wallace Reid in 1923—caused many religious and morality groups to label Hollywood as "immoral".