Mary Nolan

Actress Mary Nolan was a versatile performer whose career spanned stage, film, and burlesque. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she began working in show business around 1919, at the age of 16. Under the stage name Imogene "Bubbles" Wilson, she gained early fame as a Ziegfeld girl in the 1920s. Her involvement in a highly publicized affair with comedian Frank Tinney led to her dismissal from the Ziegfeld Follies in 1924. She then left the United States and appeared in 17 German films from 1925 to 1927, using the stage name Imogene Robertson.

Upon returning to the United States in 1927, she reinvented herself as Mary Nolan and signed with Universal Pictures in 1928. She found some success, but by the 1930s her career declined due to drug abuse and a reputation for being temperamental. After leaving Universal, she could not secure work with major studios and spent the rest of her film career in low-budget independent productions. She made her final film appearance in 1933. Nolan then moved into vaudeville and nightclub performances. Her later years were marked by drug problems and hospitalizations. She returned to Hollywood in 1939 and lived in obscurity until her death from a barbiturate overdose in 1948, at age 45.