Thelma Hill was born Thelma Floy Hillerman in Emporia, Kansas. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California during her early teen years. Living just blocks from the Mack Sennett studio, Thelma became one of the star struck, wide eyed girls who hung out near the studio peering through the gates. It took her five years, but eventually, using her womanly wiles, she weaseled her way through the gates and quickly caught the eye of Sennett himself and F. Richard “Dick” Jones, a producer and director who would work with Thelma in over a dozen films.

Thelma did bit parts and extra work throughout her school years, working weekends and during vacations. Because of her youth, beauty, and spunk, she quickly became “everybody’s protégé.”

When Mack Sennett revived his famous “Bathing Girls,” Thelma the first to don the suit, as most of her parts up till then had been in bathing suits. In her first movie, “Picking Peaches,” she had dived off a pier.

Because of her “mah jongg” bathing suit, she became quickly known as the “Mah Jongg Bathing Girl,” although she’d already carried around a nickname since her first days on the set: “Pee-Wee,” the little black-eyed youngster who grew up on the old lot.

As she matured she was hired to double for Mabel Normand, who, because of a roaring cocaine habit often showed up late for work or not at all. It was about this time that Thelma became a flapper; a style of women who were known for their androgynous bodies, flimsy and revealing clothing, and the traditional male behaviors smoking, heavy drinking, and casual sex. It was the drinking that eventually led to Thelma’s downfall.