Mary Nolan
Toronto Daily Star, March 16 1932
Mary Nolan (1902-1948) had a very difficult and tragic life. (Warning: there may be some triggers here.) Raised in an orphanage after her mother passed away, she became an artists' model on moving to New York. She then became a wildly popular member of the Ziegfeld Follies under the stage name of Imogene "Bubbles" Wilson. She was fired after engaging in a public affair with blackface comedian Frank Tinney.
After finally ending her relationship with the sometimes-abusive (and married) Tinney, Nolan appeared in films in Germany between 1925 and 1927 under the stage name of Imogene Robertson. (Her birth name was Mariam Imogene Robertson.) She was widely acclaimed for her work there, which led her to being offered a contract with United Artists.
On her return, she chose her third stage name, Mary Nolan, to help moviegoers forget about her earlier incarnation as Bubbles. She began another affair with a married man, studio executive Eddie Mannix. When he ended the relationship in 1929, she threatened to tell his wife, so he beat her badly enough to require 15 surgeries on her stomach over six months. The treatment for her injuries led her to become addicted to morphine.
Ms. Nolan, as she still was, lost her last major studio job in 1930 after getting into a dispute with director Ernst Laemmle. After this, she only got roles on smaller pictures until her career ended in 1933.
In 1931, she married stockbroker Wallace T. McCreary, who had just lost $2 million on bad investments. They opened a dress shop, which went bankrupt. Shortly after the jail sentence described in the photo above, the two divorced.
In later years, Ms. Nolan, now calling herself Mary Wilson, was hospitalized for a year after overdosing on sedatives and she also ran a bungalow court. She died of an overdose of barbiturates at the age of 46 - the age at which her mother had died of cancer.
Created September 17, 2025.