They say she’s the ghost of OLIVE THOMAS, one of the loveliest girls who ever lit up the Ziegfeld Follies and the silent screen. Laini and her husband live in Edmonton, Alberta with their two cats.The Forgotten Actresses series combines real-life research with Hollywood Babylon flavor to create a sympathetic look at some famous Hollywood hard-luck cases.īook One: The Forgotten Flapper - A presence lurks in New York City’s New Amsterdam Theatre when the lights go down and the audience goes home. She highly recommends moving to another country and not being able to work for a year for finishing any novels you may have laying around. Ideas began to simmer.A graduate of the University of North Texas, she put the writing on hold for a while when real life got in the way (i.e.-she met and married her Canadian husband and headed north for maple-flavored goodies and real beer). When she realized there might be no escape from hairy tarantulas and bad guys with guns, she put her detective dreams on hold and wrote about them instead, finishing her first mystery novel with custom illustrations when she was eight. It was this love of mystery combined with a love of old MGM musicals and The Marx Brothers that led her to check Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon out of the library during her formative years. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Ī native of Austin, Texas, Laini Giles grew up the daughter of bookworms, and became a Nancy Drew devotee early on. Ollie's mysterious death in Paris’ Ritz Hotel in 1920 was one of Hollywood’s first scandals, ensuring that her legend lived on. Together they developed a reputation for drinking, club-going, wrecking cars, and fighting, along with giving each other expensive make-up gifts. After a stormy courtship, she married playboy Jack Pickforrd, Mary Pickford’s wastrel brother. When Hollywood beckoned, Ollie signed first with Triangle Pictures, and then with Myron Selznick’s new production company, becoming most well known for her work as a “baby vamp,” the precursor to the flappers of the 1920s. After winning a contest for “The Most Beautiful Girl in New York,” shopgirl Ollie modeled for the most famous artists in New York, and then went on to become the toast of Broadway.

From her longtime home at the theater, Ollie’s ghost tells her story from her early life in Pittsburgh to her tragic death at twenty-five. A presence lurks in New York City’s New Amsterdam Theatre when the lights go down and the audience goes home.

The Forgotten Flapper by Laini Giles