What Happened to Mary Nolan?
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| The beautiful actress and Ziegfeld Follies girl died under mysterious circumstances at the young age of 45 in 1948. |
WARNING: If any of the topics listed below disturb you, viewer discretion is advised.
Violence, abuse, mentions of suicide, and drug/substance abuse.
"All types become stars. Different personalities and unpredictable success. I remember Mary Nolan, poor child. She was a strange girl. As I remember, she had been associated with some New York gangster or some damned thing. She was supposed to have one of her breasts bitten off by this guy in the very early days. I don't know whether you ever heard that story or not. I heard the story. But Jesus, she was a beautiful thing. She was positively ethereal, she was almost euphoria, she was so beautiful. Mary Nolan had a transparent, ethereal quality about her. Just a gorgeous thing to look at. I remember her..."
-- Hal Mohr
Mary Nolan was indeed a mysterious girl. She had a hypnotizing, translucent quality about her, but her tragic life and mysterious death make her an even more fascinating figure. Born Mariam Imogene Robertson on December 18, 1902, she was one of the five children of Africanus and Viola Robertson. When little Mariam’s mother died, her father, who was unable to care for his children, placed her in an orphanage. Mary left the orphanage in 1912 and headed to New York City to be near her sister Mabel. Eventually, she was discovered by Arthur William Brown and began to work for him as an artist's model.
While working as a model, she was discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld, and he hired her as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies. Mary soon became a popular showgirl in New York working under the name “Bubbles Wilson.”
For the record, Mary was involved in numerous scandals that sabotaged her career and ultimately -- her personal life. The first one surrounded her highly publicized affair with Frank Tinney, who drank heavily and physically abused her. It has been reported that he was so virulent, she attempted suicide on numerous occasions. In the meantime, their turbulent relationship attracted a lot of media attention which caused Mary to get fired from the Follies by Mr. Ziegfeld himself because he loathed negative publicity. Ziegfeld told the New York Times in 1924 that he fired her because she promised to break up her relationship with Tinney, but didn't. He remarked, "She broke her promise and I discharged her on account of notoriety and also to prevent a possible disruption of the morale of my cast."
After leaving the Follies, Mary headed to Europe where she was scheduled to appear in vaudeville. Her co-dependent relationship with Frank led to another ultimately abusive encounter. She decidedly left him in early 1925 and moved to Germany to work in films. During this time, she worked under the name "Imogene Robertson." She received good reviews for her work in German films and offers to appear in American films but turned them down until she finally gave into Joseph M. Schenck's contract offer in 1927.
It was then that Mary changed her name to what most of us know her as to cover up her previous scandals. She was signed to Universal Pictures and worked with big stars like Lionel Barrymore and Lon Chaney. The following year, she was loaned to MGM to star alongside John Gilbert in "Desert Nights."
Shortly after she signed with Universal in 1927, Mary began a relationship with studio executive, Eddie Mannix. Eddie was written off as a gangster by some and embraced as a straight shooter by others. He had a confirmed or suspected hand in covering up everyday misdemeanors like car wrecks, pregnancies, and some of the most horrible scandals in Hollywood history. Mannix regularly abused his wife Bernice and was thought to have murdered her, covering it up with a car accident. He was also heavily implicated in the death of Superman actor, George Reeves.
Mannix was also very abusive to Mary, as you probably assumed. It is rumored that she ended up having three pregnancies with him and he forced her to have an abortion each time. In 1929 Mannix abruptly ended the relationship. This angered Nolan and she threatened to tell his wife about their affair. When Mannix heard this, he became enraged and beat her unconscious. The aftermath resulted in Mary being hospitalized for six months--requiring twenty surgeries to repair the damage that Mannix inflicted on her abdomen. While hospitalized, Mary was prescribed Morphine for pain, which led her to become addicted. This worsened her public image even more other than the fact that she became increasingly difficult to work with on film sets.
Due to her drug use and temperamental behavior, she could no longer find work with any major studio. So for the remainder of her career, she appeared in supporting roles in low-budget films for Poverty Row Studios. Her final film appearance was in the mystery film "File 113" for Allied Pictures in 1933.
For the rest of her life, Nolan sustained a living by appearing in a vaudeville circuit and singing in nightclubs and roadhouses throughout the United States. In July 1937, the Actors Fund of America sent her to the Brunswick Home in Amityville, New York for psychiatric treatment. She was transferred from the Brunswick Home in October 1937 after overdosing on sedatives, where she remained hospitalized for a year. Upon her release in 1939, she returned to Hollywood and changed her name to Mary Wilson. She moved to Bungalow Court, where she later managed to earn money.
In 1941, she sold her life story to The American Weekly, serialized under the title "Confessions of a Follies Girl", and appeared in several issues. In the Spring of 1948, she was hospitalized again for malnutrition and was treated for gallbladder disorder. Shortly before her death, she began working on her memoirs titled Yesterday's Girl, with the help of writer John Preston.
A couple months later on Halloween, Mary was found dead in her Hollywood apartment from an overdose of Seconal, weighing only ninety pounds. Next to her body was a child's poem and a handwritten note that said "If this were only true." Her death was listed as "accidental or suicide."