GoogObits: Thelma White, ‘Reefer’ Star, Dies at 94

One Thinks of What One Hoped to Be, and Then Faces Reality

Two things here:

1/ I loved marijuana. Near-religion status. I am addicted to marijuana. One day at a time, I do not smoke marijauana.
2/ One is not always remembered as one hoped to be.

January 18, 2005
Thelma White, ‘Reefer’ Star, Dies at 94
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17 – Thelma White, an actress best known for playing a drug addict in “Reefer Madness,” a 1936 antimarijuana propaganda film that resurfaced decades later as a cult classic, died here last Tuesday. She was 94.

The cause was pneumonia, said Michael Homeier, her godson and only survivor. She died at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in the Woodland Hills section.
Ms. White played a hard-boiled blonde named Mae who peddles “demon weed” to unsuspecting young people in “Reefer Madness,” a low-budget cautionary tale written by a religious group. In the film, she lures high school students to her apartment for sex and drugs, turning them into addicts who shoot their girlfriends, run over pedestrians and go insane.

A musical and comedy actress who made more than 40 movies, Ms. White was horrified when RKO Studios picked her for the antidrug film. But because of her contract, she had little choice but to accept the role.

“I’m ashamed to say that it’s the only one of my films that’s become a classic,” she told The Los Angeles Times in an interview in 1987. “I hide my head when I think about it.”

Born Thelma Wolpa in Lincoln, Neb., in 1910, Ms. White was a carnival performer as a toddler before moving on to vaudeville, radio and movies.

“Reefer Madness” was destined for obscurity, but in 1972, Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, discovered it in the Library of Congress archives, bought a print and screened it at a New York benefit.
Robert Shaye, founder of New Line Cinema, saw the film and recognized its appeal as an unintentional parody. He re-released it through his then-fledgling company, holding midnight showings.

Ms. White twice saw an off-Broadway musical that spoofed the movie. The musical “was campy and over the top, and she loved it,” Mr. Homeier said.