An apology to anyone interested in participating in a Wiki. It is an
interesting idea and I wish well to anyone who wants to do it. All I
was trying to do is suggest a few of the possible pitfalls.

1. Ollie's life is not neat and clean with rumors galore. Ex. In
1916, Ollie continued to work in the Frolic but was not in the
Follies. Personally, she was involved with Ziegfeld, engaged to a
scion of a wealthy and well-respected family who was never named and
took up with Jack Pickford during the summer and was rumored to have
eloped nearly every week. And she worked for three different film
producers.

2. There is a lot of information that is not documented according to
academic standards. Partly due to style, or standards of the time,
footnotes and bibliographies were not deemed necessary. The biography
of Mae Murray is a good example. Mae participated in this so it is
assumed that she is the primary source. As such, her accounts of
Ollie's off time from the Follies dancing with Rudy Valentino before
he hit it big are intriguing.

3. Related to the previous point is the legitimate academic
difference. To read the account of Ollie's last days in Paris
according to the Mae Murray is chilling with enough detail to suggest
how and why Ollie died. Unfortunately, as one of my best friends
suggested, Mae Murray was a loon who spent enough time in the ozone
to qualify her for perpetual "Space Cadet" status. There are some
areas of Ollie's life where there will be legitimate academic
differences: such as her birthdate, her father's name, her first
film, and her death where people will have honest differences of
opinions.

4. There are good sources and there are bad sources and sometimes
they are going to be both. One of the more heartbreaking stories
about Ollie's passing is from the New York Post explaining how
Ollie's mother learned that her daughter had died in a special
edition of a paper while on the train coming from her home in Eastern
Pennsylvania; breaking down and being sedated when she arrived at
Ollie's New York apartment. As dubious as this sounds, one relative
confirmed this as family history. However, the story continued
quoting one brother as the family's plans to have Ollie buried next
to her father in Charleroi. Problem, Ollie father is buried in
Pittsburgh. Does this raise doubts about the whole story even though
it is documented?

This is not to step on anyone's toes but to suggest that a WIKI might
take a great deal of effort to sort through the well documented myths
such as is included in a biography of Louis B. Mayer stating that one
of his starlets, Olive Thomas, killed herself jumping out a window in
Paris and falling to her death.

Again, my apologies and good luck on this project.

Your partner in limburger.