Thelma White

Biography

Sassy comedienne Thelma White became a rather reluctant entry into cult film history with her infamous role as blonde vixen "Mae Colman", who pushes marijuana ("demon weed") onto unsuspecting school-age youths in the classic 1930s turkey Reefer Madness (1938) (originally titled "Tell Your Children"). It was not how she would have liked to be remembered, but obviously the fates decided differently. In the long run, Thelma managed to become a fairly good sport about the whole thing, finally making peace with the cult embrace. She was born Thelma Wolpa in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1910, the daughter of itinerant carnival actors who traveled throughout the Midwest. She was barely two-years-old by the time she found herself part of the family circus act and received prime billing as "Baby Dimples". By age 10, she was old enough to join the popular singing and dancing team of "The White Sisters". Thelma peaked fairly early on the vaudeville circuit with both the Ziegfeld Follies and Earl Carroll Revues, and went on to appear on Broadway alongside such stars as Milton Berle. Radio work started coming Thelma's way and, then, the movies. RKO signed her up in 1928 and, while there, saw occasional freelancing trades to other studios for some of their two-reeler talkies. A number of these comedies, as well as some musicals, notably a series of Pathé, Vitaphone and MGM shorts, showcased the brightest comics of the day including Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol. In her heyday, Thelma got to appear with the likes of W.C. Fields and Jack Benny. Progressing to "B" level feature work by 1935, the starlet co-starred with Richard Talmadge in the crimer Never Too Late (1935) before being pressured by the studio into appearing in the over-the-top propaganda drug film written by an overzealous religious group. In "Tell Your Children," Thelma played a predatory vamp who is goaded on by her dope-pushing boyfriend into luring young students back to her apartment for a toke of the weed and resulting sex parties. She ends up regretting her ways and commits suicide by jumping out a window. The film was a certifiable bomb. The acting was horrible, the direction was wildly melodramatic and the writing inane and unintentionally funny. Nobody escaped its wrath and it pretty much poisoned Thelma's film career. The movie was re-discovered in 1972 and given the cool, updated, hip name of Reefer Madness (1938). It had audiences rolling in the aisles, especially the ones who were high, and deservedly earned its place in the leagues of film cultdom. As for Thelma, she continued on with her career as best she could. Better known for her active private life, which included affairs with members of both sexes, she was reduced to bit roles once again with the exception of some prominent billing in the "Poverty Row" pics Spy Train (1943) and Bowery Champs (1944). During the war, Thelma gamely went overseas as a USO performer alongside other such personalities as Carmen Miranda, but was forced to abandon her plans after contracting a rare form of polio while performing in the Aleutian Islands. Left bedridden and partially crippled for a number of years, she recovered enough to appear in a few more films and made her last with Mary Lou (1948). She subsequently became an agent for a number of Hollywood stars, including Debbie Reynolds, Robert Blake, James Coburn and actress-turned-cloistered-nun Dolores Hart. She also ventured into occasional film and TV producing. Two failed marriages to actors Claude Stroud and Max Hoffman Jr. in the 30s and 40s led to a long and happy one with actor-cum-costume designer Maurice Millard. She was widowed in 1999 after 42 years. She had no children by her marriages. Thelma died of pneumonia at the age of 94 on January 11, 2005, at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.