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A Mack Sennett "Bathing Beauty" destined, they said, for better things, red-headed Mary Thurman (née Christiansen) instead became one of the silent era's most tragic personalities. A former schoolteacher from Utah, Thurman had skyrocketed to fame at the Sennett comedy asylum in the late 1910s and was establishing herself as a tragedienne when contracting malaria while filming Down Upon the Suwannee River (1925) opposite the equally tragic Charles Emmett Mack in Florida. Failing to fulfill her various contracts due to the illness, Thurman, according to gossip columnist Adela Rogers St. Johns, spent the remainder of her life in the care of fellow "Bathing Beauty" Juanita Hansen, herself a true Hollywood hard-luck girl who was battling drug addiction. Thurman succumbed to pneumonia on December 22, 1925, her death a shock to the entire industry.