Olive Thomas: The Poisoned Chalice

For the next three episodes Tales of History and Imagination is going Hollywood, with three related - but separate Tales. In 1919, many of the folks who brought America Prohibition of alcohol turned their sights on a new ‘peril’ - the Movie industry. These joyless wowsers were convinced Hollywood was an evil, decadent place that needed shutting down. 

Hollywood took these people seriously, and by 1934 had bound itself to a restrictive morality code. Why did they do so? For one, Tinseltown was rocked by a number of serious scandals in the 1920s. We’re looking at three of the bigger ones in the following weeks, the Fatty Arbuckle case, the murder of William Desmond Taylor - and first, the story of Olive Thomas - Hollywood’s first scandal. 

Sources this week include:

(Sorry all, I’ll fill in later this week)

The blog post of the episode is here.

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