“I began to realize that somewhere in the direction of the setting sun, there lay a city where the marvels of fame, wealth, and success were attainable if one could only find the keys. One day, I said to mother, ‘Let’s go to Hollywood. I’ll be able to find work in the motion pictures and then we’ll have a cunning little bungalow with loads of flowers and maybe a Ford.’ ” – Olive Borden
“Almost any girl taken from obscurity and spot-lighted, highly paid and catered to, would go haywire. Precious few have escaped the stage of distorted viewpoint unless they had very wise management.” — Olive Borden
“In all things I am an extremist – way up or way down. The slightest disappointment enfolds me in the blackest gloom, and when things go right I’m so thrilled that I can’t sleep or eat or even sit still.” – Olive Borden in 1927.
Artist: Charles Gates Sheldon. Year: 1927. Pastel. 34 x 28 inches. Created for the cover of Photoplay Magazine. It sold at auction for over $2,300.
“Honestly I would much prefer to be more modest in my work. However, I have made considerable money by capitalizing my figure and as long as producers are willing to pay me a big salary for doing that I would be silly not to. I don’t consider the manner in which I dress from a standpoint of morals at all. There can’t possibly be any harm in showing your legs for people to admire in a picture. If there is, it’s in the minds of those who see them.” — Olive Borden
Photo: Max Munn Autrey (1929)
“I wanted money, a lot of it. Why? I don’t know except that earning it pleases ego, spending it whets vanity. It adds to that absurd importance. With the inflated estimation of self, the more money you get, the more you want, to increase prestige. And it is handy to purchase places and such trinkets.” – Olive Borden
“The picture business is a great game, if you live through it!” — Olive Borden
Love in the Desert (1929)
OLIVE BORDEN, FORMER STAR, DIES IN POVERTY AT 40
Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1947
Olive Borden, 40, star of silent films, whose earnings from the old William Fox Studio at the height of her career in the mid-twenties were $1500 weekly and more, yesterday died broke in the Sunshine Mission, 558 S. Wall St.
She died of pneumonia after a short illness. At her bedside was her mother, Mrs. Sibbie Borden, manager of the commissary department of the mission.
Miss Borden entered films in the early 1920s and reached the peak of her career in 1926 and 1927 when she starred in 11 pictures for Fox Studio. At that time she refused to take a salary cut asked of leading players at the studio and ended her connection with it. Since then she made only a few pictures for other studios, retiring from the films in 1938.
In 1943 she joined the Wacs and after her discharge returned to Hollywood and attempted to resume her film career, but met with little success. She was married twice, her first marriage to Theodore Spector, stockbroker, being annulled, and her second, to John Moeller, ending in divorce.
Funeral services will be conducted at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Sunshine Mission Church, with Mrs. Essie Binkley West, pastor, and founder, officiating, followed by burial in Forest Lawn Memorial-Park. The mission is paying for the funeral expenses, according to Mrs. West.
During the last two years, Miss Borden had been a worker at the mission periodically.
