Olive Thomas, one of Hollywood’s leading stars and billed as “the world’s most beautiful girl,” died under mysterious circumstances at the height of her youthful fame, in 1920. In her four-year movie career, Thomas made two dozen films and married into one of Hollywood’s royal families by becoming Mrs. Jack Pickford. Thomas’s life and work are chronicled in Olive Thomas: Everybody’s Sweetheart, a documentary by Andi Hicks. Hicks, who introduces the April 28 screening of the film, uses clips, stills, and period graphics to tell Thomas’s story. The documentary is augmented by interviews with several film historians and Daniel Selznick, grandson and nephew of Thomas’s mentors, Lewis J. and Myron Selznick. Olive Thomas: Everybody’s Sweetheart is followed by a screening of The Flapper, one of Thomas’s last and most successful films, directed by Alan Crosland, who went on to make Don Juan (1926) and The Beloved Rogue (1927) with John Barrymore, and The Jazz Singer (1927) with Al Jolson.
Organized by Charles Silver, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Media.
Special thanks to George Eastman House.