Thelma White: 1910 - 2005
There are many kinds of fame. There’s the fame that comes from saving a kitten who has been trapped by the landing gear of a 747. And there’s the cruddy kind of fame that comes from climbing to the top of a clocktower with a high-powered sniper rifle.
Somewhere between the two falls Thelma White’s fame – the fame of an actress who appeared in the classic film Reefer Madness.
Born in 1910, White was a carnival performer as a toddler, progressed to vaudeville, radio and movies, then worked as an agent and producer for many years. During her heyday as an actress, she appeared alongside such legendary performers as W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Red Skelton and Jack Benny. What secured her place in Hollywood history, however, was a movie so awful that its memory still made her shudder 50 years later.“Reefer Madness” was a low-budget propaganda film written by a religious group to broadcast the dangers of marijuana. It was relegated to the cinema waste heap for almost 40 years until 1972, when Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws discovered it in the Library of Congress archives and paid $297 for a print. He then screened it in New York as a benefit for the advocacy group, unwittingly launching it on the road to cult-film history.
Thelma White passed away Tuesday.