Olive Borden

Olive Borden’s (1907–1947) obituary in The New York Times is short and sober. It notes in the opening paragraph that though Borden made an estimated $1500 a week during her Hollywood heyday in the 1920s, she died “penniless in the Sunshine Mission after a brief siege of pneumonia,” aged 40.

An entire life, and a fascinating one at that, is condensed into 145 words, as Olive Borden is filed away in the archive of forgotten film stars.

Hollywoodland

Well, not entirely forgotten. Thanks to YouTube and social media, we can get a glimpse of Borden’s early films (many of which have disintegrated or disappeared). There are also biographical fragments and Internet Archive PDFs of old magazines such as Picture Play, Photoplay, and Motion Picture Herald that bring her back to life in her moment, a decade when everything seemed possible.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1907, Borden had the kind of backstory that made moving from Norfolk to Los Angeles at age 15 seem like a reasonable decision. Her father, Henry Borden, died of typhoid fever in 1907, less than a year after Olive’s birth.

Her mother, Sibbie Shields Borden, had to raise two children while working as a housekeeper. By all accounts, the family had that early-20th century grit, even opening a candy store at one point in a bid to pay the bills.

Olive Borden’s story could only happen in a time before our era of nepo-babies and closed creative shops. Arriving in Los Angeles in 1922, the photogenic Olive quickly became a Mack Sennett bathing beauty and, in 1925, a WAMPUS Baby Star. Entrepreneur William Fox signed her to the Fox Film Corporation that same year, as Sibbie settled happily into the role of stage mother and money manager.

We Didn’t Need Dialogue! We Had Faces.

Olive Borden thrived in the silent era, starring in popular films with then big co-stars such as Tom Mix and George O’Brien. The magazines made much of her dark hair and eyes, positioning her as an elegant young woman with a hint of steel beneath the charm. Her persona lay somewhere between the ethereal Lillian Gish and the kinetic Clara Bow.

Looking at Borden now, she seems oddly modern, much more so than the brassy female stars of the 1940s or the breathy sex dolls of the 1950s. She doesn’t spark onscreen like Bow, who was a high-voltage transformer in human form, or smolder and suffer like Garbo, but she can play a range of roles from cute cowgirl to uptown debutante.

This was the pre-Code era, a short window of time in which women who were successful in Hollywood had a comparative amount of power and autonomy that would diminish quickly after 1930. Borden’s best photographs zing with an energy that is exuberant and feminine but not self-consciously sexy or vamp.

Her smile still radiates from these old images, and she seems to be having fun with fashion shoots like an early Twiggy. Her most noteworthy film, The Joy Girl, both critically acclaimed and financially successful, was released on September 3, 1927. A print of the film, with Czech intertitles, purportedly survives in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Fall

Olive Borden’s heyday lasted roughly two years. In a Hollywood plot turn now so shopworn it is hard to believe it was ever original, Borden fell from grace not long after the success of The Joy Girl. It was not the transition to sound that did her in, nor a murder scandal nor drug abuse nor wild parties. The mistake Olive Borden made was to ask for too much.

In Gods Like Us: On Stardom and Fame (2012), Ty Burr reminds us, “The very concept of the movie star was an audience urge forced upon the first movie producers against their will.” These reluctant producers nevertheless realized quickly that movie stars were the fulcrum around which the entire system revolved. A new industry of movie magazines also sprung up to narrate the alchemical process by which a Gladys Louise Smith, for example, became Mary Pickford.

Yet as the excesses of the silent era accumulated, the need to reign in and punish movie stars who flew too close to the sun became an essential part of the magazines’ brief. Olive Borden was one of the first stars to fall because she walked away from Fox Film Corporation during a pay dispute. Rudolph Valentino could successfully sue for a pay rise in 1923, but Olive Borden in 1928 certainly could not.

While ego was involved, no doubt, Borden simply decided that she did not want to take a pay cut just so William Fox could balance the books during the iffy transition period from silents to talkies. She opted to ply her trade independently with other studios such as RKO Radio Pictures. Though we cannot know for sure at this late date, the memory of poverty and the fact that her mother happily spent Borden’s movie star earnings may also have influenced her decision.

The End

The disciplining forces of the studio system fell swift and hard. Though one Hal K. Wells tried to revive her fortunes in Motion Picture Classic (July 1928), Borden never found her footing again. From the moment Picture Play puts her on its February 1928 cover with a bright red headline reading “Is Any Star Really Happy,” her sad fate seems as inexorable as Marilyn Monroe’s will be thirty-five years later.

Borden volunteered to serve in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) in World War II and made multiple attempts to prove to Hollywood that she was once again a dutiful journeyman actor, not a Star. Despite her efforts, Borden’s decline takes her finally to the Sunshine Mission for Women on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Her mother, who worked at the mission by that point, managed to ensure that her daughter at least had shelter and food.

Sibbie Borden was at her daughter’s side when Olive Borden died at the Sunshine Mission on October 1, 1947.

Author’s Note: This story is based on original research and was written without the use of AI.