The Forgotten Flapper: A Novel of Olive Thomas

PROLOGUE

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, today

You know, it’s really no fun haunting people who refuse to be afraid of you. When you say, Boo, they’re supposed to scream, not say, Hi Olive. Just so you know, I’m not one of those chain-rattling, doom-and-gloom ghosts. It’s not my style. Instead, I rearrange the scenery and materialize for the folks who work here. Keeps ‘em on their toes.

I live at 214 West 42nd Street, New York, New York. That’d be the New Amsterdam Theatre for you non-showbiz types. I used to perform here back in 1915. In my day, this was the place to be. Bright lights, hooch, and the girls of the Ziegfeld Follies. The most lavish musical revue of its day, and I was there for it.

See those fixtures up there? Those murals? Fancy, huh? Decades ago, this was the biggest venue in New York. I was just a dumb appleknocker from Charleroi, Pennsylvania. The New Amsterdam was the most glamorous place I’d ever seen. I spent the happiest time of my life here, dancing, singing, and chatting with everyone. What a gay time we all had! Whether it was champagne and roses backstage, dancing ‘til dawn at Bustanoby’s or Murray’s Roman Gardens, dining on oysters Rockefeller at Delmonico’s or even the butter cakes at Childs, it didn’t matter to me. I loved it all.

I went to Hollywood too. But that didn’t turn out quite like I planned. I ended up back here on this ghostly plane, the century barely begun. I guess that was my problem. I was never happy with what I had. I always wanted something else.

In the 1930s, the owners turned this place into a movie palace. But with sound, we silent stars were forgotten when the new stars like Clark Gable and Greta Garbo showed up. It wasn’t fair. We were just as glamorous as they were. I couldn’t help thinking how I should have been up on that screen too. Instead I watched from the wings like I never existed. Goddamnit, I once had the world wrapped around my little finger. What the hell happened?

By the 1960s, life as a ghost at the New Amsterdam had definitely lost its luster. The dark corridors got a little drearier, the once-vivid red, green, and gold patterned carpet was nearly black with fifty years of wear, and the moisture and mildew seeped into every ornamented crevice. For the first time in my life, I wished I’d had a book to read. Any day the bulldozers would show up, and what the hell was I supposed to do when that happened?

In the 1970s, I sat twiddling my thumbs while the whole country went through its selfish phase. This place was a shithole, and it smelled even worse. The roof had leaks no one bothered to fix, and mushrooms were sprouting in the orchestra pit. They were hawking God-knows-what out on the street in Times Square.

My days and nights blurred together after years of boredom. From my perch in the mezzanine, I watched that dishy Chinaman in his kung fu movies. When it wasn’t Bruce Lee double features, I had to sit through crap like Beware the Blob or Jacqueline Bisset in her wet T-shirt.

Disney arrived in 1995. I was intrigued when the suits showed up, pointing and planning. Then the hardhats arrived. They set up scaffolding, and the hammers and paintbrushes started flying. They brought in artists to restore the murals and the sculpted rosettes and sconces. When all the work was finished, I felt a huge lump in my throat. The old girl was beautiful again.

They threw a hell of a party in 1997 for the reopening, and the New Amsterdam was back to live theater—musical versions of Disney favorites. It was Broadway’s newest showplace: refurbished electric, updated plumbing, commercial carpet, fancy paint job, and the murals like they were supposed to be—pictures of goddesses and muses and all that stuff.

The audience was full of conversations about the area and its rebirth. The theater district sprang to life like never before, with families drawn to the shows, the shopping, and the restaurants. Now, theatergoers showed up with shopping bags from places like Aéropostale and Ann Taylor. Much different from the hookers and bums I’d seen the previous decade or two. The actors and actresses and musicians and prop people livened up my life more than anyone had in years! This was the place to be again, like it had been in my day.

The first few performances of a new show were always my favorite times. Even though I’d seen the players rehearsing for weeks, it was almost like being at the Follies again. Only in the audience this time.

Round about the twentieth performance, when I could sing Hakuna Matata or Spoonful of Sugar from memory, I’d climb up to the roof to get away from the music, and I’d reminisce about the old days.

I overheard one of the foremen say there were too many ancient problems up top and they couldn’t bring it in line with modern building codes. So Disney sank all their cash into the ground floor and used the roof garden for air conditioning units. Why, we used to entertain the richest men in the world up there!

I can’t stay on the roof too long or my eyes get misty. I have to go downstairs searching for company, like this poor sap Dennis in the hallway just now. Only a few days into this job, and he still hasn’t met me yet. He’s not like the pros who’ve been at the theater for years and gotten blasé about me.

He’s a looker, ain’t he? Reminds me of Tony Moreno when he was just starting out. Smooth, with fancy white caps on his teeth. But he lisps, and he wears too much gel in his hair. Definitely a faygeleh, as Lil Tashman used to call them.

If there’s new blood, I like to parade down the hallway to see who notices me. I’ve been wearing this same green outfit and feathered headdress for years. When I got to the Great Beyond and told them I wasn’t ready to wrap it up yet, they told me that if I planned on staying I’d have to pick something to wear. This was my favorite costume— velvet bodice, bare shoulders, and yards of flowered tulle for a skirt. Why not make the most of it? I thought. I hadn’t considered how cold I might get in this drafty old theater—I just liked the reactions I got. Even the raccoon collar around my neck didn’t help ward off the chill much.

Watch this. I’ll do a little turn toward Dennis and give him the ole smile and wink. Then I’ll slip through the wall.

His mouth is gaping, and the paintbrushes are clattering on the linoleum. Ha! His hands are shaking, and he’s hotfooting it upstairs. Knocking on the manager’s door, he doesn’t even wait for an answer before stumbling in. That’s usually how it works. Hear him telling the old guy about me? We can watch if you want. Sometimes people can see me, sometimes they can’t. I haven’t quite figured out the trick, but I love eavesdropping the way I never could in life.

The big guy at the desk is Mr. Wright. He’s been at the theater since The Lion King, Disney’s first big success here. I like him. He respects me and my paranormal clout. He’ll let Denny jabber for a bit, then cut him off.

Denny, relax. You’ve been on the job, what, four days? They should have told you when they hired you. She’s very famous.

Tell me what? Who’s famous?

You said golden-brown hair and a green costume, right? You saw Olive, that’s all. She’s our resident phantom.

Phantom? A little overdramatic, don’t you think?

Who is she? Why is she here?

Why am I here? I live here, son.

She was a silent movie actress, but she was a Ziegfeld girl before she went to Hollywood. Died very mysteriously.

She winked at me, Denny says.

Yeah, that’s Olive. Mr. Wright nods. She flirts with all the guys. Come with me for a second.

Ooh, they’re going downstairs. Come on, I love this part. Those pictures on the wall? All spit curls and expressive eyes and bee-stung lips? That’s me Mr. Wright’s pointing at. That’s the costume I wore as Miss January.

This was Ollie. Supposedly, her eyes were violet blue. You know, like Liz Taylor? You might notice that when we get to the theater in the morning, and when we leave at night, we always say hello and goodbye to her. It tends to keep the peace with the old girl, so she doesn’t toss the scenery all over the place.

Old? Hmmph. And toss? I beg your pardon. I kicked a wooden tree over once. Okay, twice. I hate being upstaged.

The only time she gets upset nowadays is if we have old vaudevillians attending tributes. That sort of thing. Doris Eaton Travis visited a few years ago, and Olive lost her mind throwing stuff around. She doesn’t appreciate it when we rearrange the office either—desks and chairs and file cabinets. She likes things the way they are, thank you very much.

What can I say? I don’t like change. And I’m more famous than Doris what’s-her-name ever dreamed of being. I couldn’t see why they were rolling out the red carpet for a wrinkled-up old biddy like her. People love me because I’m twenty-five forever, and because they think I never left. Like Dennis with his eyes glued to my portrait. He’s interested now, huh?

Wright’s going to tell him my whole story. You wanna hear?

CHAPTER ONE

This may surprise you, but I didn’t have a theatrical background when I joined the Follies. That Booth fellow who shot Lincoln? They always said he came from a theatrical family. Same with my Jack. But nothing for me, unless you count my brother Jim putting on a scene every time he had to eat string beans. Now that was some entertainment.

Ollie, what’s your favorite thing about New York? people used to ask me.

The sun, I’d say. No hesitation at all. And blue sky. The color it’s supposed to be.

Black as a Hottentot’s ass. That was the color of the sky in my neck of the woods. Like nighttime even during the day. And the air reeked to high Heaven. Like a sickening mixture of coal, sulfur, and skunk cabbage. Imagine the lobby of the New Amsterdam at intermission, and know that the smoke was a hundred times worse. When it rained, you swam through a foul paste. And the steel factories, beehive coke ovens, smelters, and Bessemer processing plants shook the earth for miles in every direction. The only other noise you could hear were the church bells, tolling for everyone who died working in those places.

Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is a little town not far from Pittsburgh by way of the Monongahela River. In my day, it was known for two things: its plate glass company, and the oh-so-respectable Mrs. E.C. Niver, governor-appointed Assistant Censor of Motion Pictures for Pennsylvania. Because God forbid anyone might go to a flicker and actually enjoy it.

There’s another city called Charleroi in Belgium, Mamma told me once. That town had to be much nicer than ours. There wasn’t much to recommend our town (or Pennsylvania on the whole) that I could see. But it was still home.

As a little girl playing on the stoop of our house, I’d cringe when the men trudged home at the end of the day, their boots leaving deep pits in the yellow mud that served as a road. Their faces were covered in soot, and the eyes that peered out had lost all hope. I could sense it even then.

Mamma, why are the men’s faces black?

She sat down on the porch with me, wrapping an arm around my shoulder.

Ollie, she said, those men have the hardest jobs in the world, pulling coal out of the ground to keep us warm in the winter, or baking it to make iron and steel. They deserve your respect.

They all looked like they’d tramped through Hell and come out the other side. In a way, they had.

Why, only two years before I came along, there was a huge battle up the river at Homestead. Mr. Andrew Carnegie owned a factory there. When the workers decided to strike, the factory goons tried to bring in scab labor and Pinkertons to rough them up. The whole town took up arms against them, and lots of people on both sides died. By fall, the bastards at the factory had broken the strike. Take it from me: you’d be hard put to find anyone in the Mon River Valley who’d set foot in one of Mr. Carnegie’s libraries after that.

They say the first man a girl falls in love with is her father. I’m no different. My father, Michael Duffy, was a huge man, built like a stevedore, with legs like pillars and arms like a great grizzly bear. His work boots were the size of the tugs plying the Mon.

Da’s parents came over on a boat from Ulster, so his blood was as Irish as a four-leaf clover, but he’d grown up in Ohio, so he was American through and through. He had a hearty laugh and loved my mother’s homemade sarsaparilla. He was a mason, lifting massive hunks of rock and stone every day for the buildings in Charleroi. I was fascinated by his hands. They were huge, rawboned, and knob-knuckled, usually red from a full day’s work. His work gloves, the most important piece of equipment he owned, were ragged and frayed from so much use. When I was very small, Da moved us to Pittsburgh where the work was better.

It was impossible to be blue about anything when Da was around. He’d scoop Mamma up in a big hug, lifting her off the ground as she giggled and squealed, batting at his hands.

Rena, me darlin’! Tell me all about your day! he’d say, setting her down and planting a loud, boisterous kiss on her in front of all of us.

I’ve made us lamb stew and an apple pie, she’d answer, blushing and looking up at him affectionately as she adjusted her apron.

And you three scamps, he’d say, grinning at us. What mischief were you up to today? The house is still standing, so I’ve high hopes for the evening. He’d let out a hearty laugh and collapse into his favorite chair, his feet up on the hassock. Then one of us would bring his slippers.

My brother Jim was the oldest, and the smart one. Always with his nose in a book. Then came me, then little Spud. His real name was Bill, but nobody called him that. When he was little, he’d eat an entire plate of potatoes if you let him, so Da began calling him Spud. He’d been Spud ever since.

We kids all took after Da, with his red-gold hair and deep blue eyes, but Mamma said I was the most like him in personality.

How’s my little Rose of Tralee? he’d ask as I crawled into his lap. I’d smile up at him and pat his face, then nestle against his side. His smell was comforting—flannel just in from the smoky air and tinged with sweat, Blackjack gum, and the blackberry tobacco he packed into his pipe.

We were poor, but not as poor as some, and Da saw to it we were fed, clothed, and had a roof over our heads. We never wanted for anything. Especially love.

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, December 1902

God’s teeth, this bastard is heavy! Da said, stumbling in the door with a tall, lush fir. Its spicy evergreen scent filled the house.

Michael Duffy, you hush with that talk, Mamma said.

It’s a fine specimen, he said, bracing it as he placed it into the stand. Then he stood back to admire it. Took me an hour to chop it and get it back here.

You’re working too hard, Mamma said, wiping her hands on her apron.

Letting out a thunderous sneeze, he pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He tucked it back in his pocket and then wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He’d been helping lay the foundation of a new building downtown when he’d caught a cold the week before.

Mike, go lie down, please, Mamma said. I’ll bring you some of this chicken soup I made, and some Salada tea with a little lemon and a dram the way you like it.

I am feeling a little tired, he said. But there’s wood needs chopping.

I’ll get it, Da, Jim said. He looked up from his copy of Captains Courageous and began pulling on his coat and gloves. You go rest.

There’s a good lad, Da said, letting out a deep bark of a cough on his way to bed.

The cough went from bad to worse. Then the cold turned into pneumonia, and they admitted Da to Allegheny General. Mamma sat vigil with him for a week. Mamma’s parents, my Grandma and Grandpa McCormick, looked after us, and they brought us to the hospital that last day, Jim and Spud and me.

I barely recognized my father. He wasn’t the big strapping fellow I knew anymore. His ruddy complexion was a ghostly grayish-blue. And that cough—it was a hacking sort of honk that rattled from deep inside him.

Mamma softly sobbed into her handkerchief as Father Delancey sat near the bed saying prayers.

Almighty God, look on this your servant Michael, lying in great weakness, and comfort him with the promise of life everlasting, given in the resurrection of your son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Mamma put her arms around us and brought us closer to the bed, where Da could see us. He tried smiling but ended up wincing instead as he coughed. Pushing through the pain, he opened an arm to us, and we scooted closer.

We all stood there shaking and helpless, and he touched each of our faces, gazing deeply into our eyes.

You’re wee gems, all of you, he said, his voice a raspy whisper. Be good for your ma. And make me proud of you," he said. He gave a final wheezing breath, and then he was gone.

From that day on, I hated hospitals—the smells and the sounds of death. I never wanted to feel that fear again.

Family and friends gathered at the house and brought offerings of boxty and colcannon. Mrs. Szabo across the street brought goulash. Mrs. Gianelli next door made noodles and sauce. We would have eaten like royalty for a week if any of us had felt like eating at all. Then life got harder than I ever thought it could.

Mamma did her best, scrubbing floors, taking in wash, and selling baked goods to McBrendan’s Bakery, but it never went far enough with three children to provide for. I was able to watch Spud, and I helped her clean house. We ate a lot of cabbage soup.

The day our landlord told her he was evicting us, I found her crying at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea that had long gone cold.

Mamma, Mamma, what is it? I said.

She tucked me into her arms, her warm tears soaking into my hair as we sat together. She held me there, rocking back and forth, whispering how everything was going to be okay, when she didn’t know herself if it would be.

Mamma moved us in with my grandparents in McKees Rocks so we’d still have a home. I loved Grandma and Grandpa McCormick, but their house was stifling for a girl my age. My grandfather rarely moved from his Morris chair near the fireplace except to feed his chickens in the backyard. There were doilies on every single surface, and the portrait of Jesus on the wall stared at me accusingly. The place reeked of mothballs, and our evening meal was usually some form of potato and a cheap piece of meat from Halsey’s Butcher Shop with all the flavor boiled out many times over. A year later, when she was returning from Halsey’s, Mamma met a brakeman named Harry Van Kirk on Chartiers Avenue.

Harry was a mild-mannered man. Where Da had been outspoken and loud and fun-loving, Harry was quiet and respectful and would never have dreamed of frequenting a saloon with the boys after work. I was happy Mamma had found someone, but Harry and I had nothing in common. To me, he had all the personality of a communion wafer. It took a lot for him to raise another man’s three children, and we were all thankful for that, but I couldn’t wait to get away. On the positive side, he did love my mother, and the house he moved us into on Patterson Street didn’t smell like camphor.

Harry seemed unable to form opinions of his own unless they’d been filtered through the other men he worked with at the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Company. And while the P&LE was a huge part of life in the Rocks, I found it hard to believe that two men there knew everything there was to know about life and living it.

Do you know what Mr. Dick Eberhardt told me? he’d say, taking a bite of pot roast. He said that the hospital is getting ready to add a new wing. The mayor told us there would be progress, now didn’t he?

When Dick Eberhardt was out, his second-in-command, Ernie Twitchell, provided the gossip for our dinner table.

Ernie Twitchell said today he read about a couple who left California and drove all the way across the country in a horseless carriage. Took ’em thirty-two days! How about that? Used to take the pioneers months and months to do that. Look at the Donner Party. Guess all they needed was a Packard.

I was only a wisp of a girl, dumb as a can of soup, honestly. Back then, when you were young and poor and female, your options were limited. But I missed Da, and I was tired of Harry’s secondhand opinions, tired of living at home, and tired of my life being decided by everyone else.

It wasn’t that I hated Harry. He was a decent fellow, but he wasn’t my father, was he? I’d barely begun to live, but I could feel myself dying a little more every day I was cooped up in that house. I despised the Rocks—the smoke, the hard winters, the smells of overcooked meat and potatoes, dinge and smoke, poverty and despair. I didn’t care what I had to do to get out, but whatever it was, I’d do it. Everyone always told me I was too pretty to waste my life there, and they were right.

MCKEES ROCKS, PENNSYLVANIA, early September 1910

Whatcha readin’? a voice beside me said.

I held up my copy of Theatre (The Magazine for Playgoers). I was reading an article about Kathlyn Williams and having a chocolate soda at Goldsmith’s Drug Store. At first, Snappy Powell put in a little extra seltzer because I asked him to. Now he just knew I liked them extra fizzy. Plus, he let me read the magazines—not like his boss, Mr. Goldsmith, who always said, We’re not running a library here, Olive. I think Snappy was sweet on me.

Doing okay, Olive? Snappy asked. His red polka-dotted bow tie distracted everyone from his buckteeth. They called him Snappy because he dished out drinks so fast.

Great, Snappy, thanks, I said, stirring to mix the syrup as it settled to the bottom.

Olive? the fellow at my right said. That’s a pretty name.

Thanks, I said, barely looking over. I laid five cents on the counter and gulped the rest down.

See ya later, Snappy, I said and hopped off my stool. Placing the magazine back in the rack just so, I left Goldsmith’s and continued strolling down Ocean Avenue.

Two nights later, my friend Helene Wise and I decided to go see a flicker at the Star Family Movie Theatre. It wasn’t much of a place. Someone had set up a projector inside the fraternal hall. But it was a chance to escape for a little while. Hel and I both worked at Horne’s Department Store in downtown Pittsburgh, and we both lived in the Rocks, so we’d gotten to be good chums.

As we paid our ten-cent admission, I heard a familiar deep voice at my side.

Hello, Olive. I looked up to see the fellow from Goldsmith’s. Hi, Helene, he added.

Hi, Krug, Helene said.

I remained silent but looked back and forth between the two, wondering who would be the first to do the honors. It was Helene.

Do you know each other? she asked a little tentatively.

Not for lack of trying, he said.

Oh. Ollie, this is Krug Thomas. He works for the railroad. Krug, this is my friend Ollie Duffy.

What kind of name is Krug? I said. Sounds like something pirates tote treasure around in. Or a beast in the jungle somewhere.

The corners of his lips curled up in a grin. It was my mother’s maiden name, he said. My real first name is Bernard.

I wrinkled my nose. Yeah, I guess I’d go by Krug too if I were you.

Ollie! Hel said, obviously horrified.

I shrugged. What was I supposed to say?

May I accompany you ladies in? he asked. He hung back for a moment.

Suit yourself, I said. At that, Hel gave my arm a pinch. Ow!

Must you be so disagreeable? she whispered. Krug’s a nice fellow.

What business is it of yours? I whispered back.

You remember me telling you about the guy who won the Coney Island dance contest a few weeks back at the Norwood Pavilion?

Yeah, so?

So, that’s him!

Really?

On second glance, I noticed how lovely and thick his light-brown hair was. And how nice his gray-blue eyes were. The more I looked, the more I saw a little resemblance to my father. He wasn’t as big, true, but he looked…dependable.

We sat through the flicker, Hel on one side of me and Krug on the other. I don’t even remember it. Some Selig one-reeler, maybe. All I remember now was that little bit of chemistry Krug and I felt as we shyly smiled at each other in the darkness. When the lights came up and the tinkling of the pianist had stopped, the three of us headed for home. He said he lived in the Bottoms with his parents. Helene broke from us at Island since she lived on Stewart Alley, but he continued all the way with me.

Miss Duffy, I’d be most pleased if you’d accompany me to the Pavilion this weekend for the West End Lyceum social.

I didn’t even have to think about it. Kicking up my heels with the best dancer in the Rocks? Of course!

The Norwood Pavilion was up on the cliffs overlooking the town. Like an eagle’s nest above the filth and stench, it gave you a gorgeous view of the Ohio River. Dancing up there gave me energy, and I had visions of what living outside stinky old Pennsylvania might be like—dancing somewhere glamorous. Broadway, maybe.

Krug was a great dancer, but when we weren’t dancing, we didn’t have much to talk about. He went on and on about railroad stuff—switching and brake yards—things I didn’t care a whit for. And when he wasn’t talking about that, he loved talking about President Taft.

You know what Taft said the other day? ‘I am president now and I am tired of being kicked around.’ Now that is something I’d love to say someday, he said, taking a sip of his egg cream. We were back at Goldsmith’s after seeing Rose Sydell and her London Belles at the Gayety Theatre in Pittsburgh.

You’re going to run for president?

Why not? In America, anyone can get rich, and anyone can run for president. This is the land of opportunity, Ollie. You can be my first lady.

Okay. You can buy me some gowns and jewels then.

Snappy stood nearby, pouring some strawberry phosphate, and let out a little chuckle. Krug and I looked at each other and smiled.

We went out a few nights a week. Krug would collect me after I got off work at Horne’s in the city, and we’d stay in town and see the military band play on the lawn at the Hotel Schenley, or go to a show if he could afford it. Sometimes we just strolled through the Jenkins Arcade, the giant market at 5th and Liberty, laughing at the season’s new hats or browsing the sewing machines at the Singer store or the Kodaks at the Hambly Camera Shop. We’d imagine the picnic lunches we would make of the fresh loaves, thick juicy hams, and wheels of yellow cheeses, or he might buy me