(Photo Courtesy Of Marilyn Slater)
When Olive stopped making movies the press quickly forgot about her. In 1946 a reporter discovered that she was living in a Los Angeles women's shelter. Here is an article about Olive's new life at the Sunshine Mission -
STAR OF '30'S ADOPTS MISSIONARY CAREER
The Old-Time Faith has a new convert. She is Olive Borden, twinkling-eyed star of silents and early talkies, whose career was snuffed out like a light in the early '30's. Miss Borden, The Times learned exclusively last week, "got religion" several months ago. The miracle was brought about through her mother, long the dominant force in Olive's life. For two years Mrs. Borden has been a tireless worker in the interdenominational home which is known as the Sunshine Mission. It is located at E. Sixth and Wall Sts., in the heart of "Skid Row," and is dedicated wholly to the needy among women and children. Mrs. Borden is the house superintendent. Her unfailing cheerfulness is an inspiration to all who enter its open doors - and sometimes that means as many as 100 in a day. To them she is simply Sister Sibby. In the words of the home's own publication, it was Sister Sibby who, "having received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in our mission services, could not rest until we had interceded with prayer for her daughter, that she also would find Christ. "God has marvelously answered prayer, and now this extraordinarily talented young woman has accepted Christ and has dedicated her life to fallen humanity and the Lord's work." They welcome her, the children especially, with glad cries of "Ollie!" whenever she enters. Chubbier now and older (she is 38) Miss Borden still has the warm vivacious smile that once flashed from so many screens.
Apparently she has found happiness in serving others, as well as an escape from herself. "Does she ever wish she were back in pictures?" I asked her mother. "Yes," admitted Mrs. Borden. "At times. She gets restless, of course. Sometimes, looking back, I think I mothered her too much..." But it was Olive herself, Mrs. Borden added, who made the fateful decision not to take a salary cut when, in 1927, Fox asked it's leading players to do so, and so caused the eventual severance of her career at the studio. She made few pictures after that. In the intervening years Olive Borden disappeared from the Hollywood scene. An elopement with Theodore Spector, a stock broker; ended in annulment when Spector was charged with bigamy. A second marriage, to John Moeller, culminated in divorce. More recently, Miss Borden has been a Wac. She returned here following her discharge, but the town had changed. When she attempted to pick up the threads of her life they slipped through her fingers. Olive was close to despair when fate - and her mother - intervened. At the mission she keeps busy. Sometimes she poses in the tableaus that illustrate sermons. At others "you hear her voice on the mission telephone, 'This is the Sunshine Mission and God bless you;' you see her dressing some ragged little child or helping her mother, Sister Sibby..." It is a strange new casting for Fox's onetime "Joy Girl," a role of dignity and peace.
- This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times on June 16, 1946
* Olive shocked everyone by leaving the Sunshine Mission in the Spring of 1947 and when she returned three months later she was penniless and suffering from pneumonia. On October 1 forty-one year old Olive died in her small room with her beloved mother Sibbie at her bedside. Her funeral was held in the mission's chapel and her friend Sister Essie Binkley West gave the eulogy. Sibbie Borden continued to live and work at the mission until her death in 1959.
