Olga Steck was a talented opera singer who committed suicide in 1935.
She was born as Olga Stech on January 12, 1893 in Alameda, California. Her father, John Stech, was a shoemaker from Austria. Olga was a talented opera singer who made her stage debut at the age of seven. When she was a teenager, she joined an opera troupe and became a popular vaudeville performer. The petite singer was four feet, ten inches tall and weighed just 100 pounds. The nickname for her was “the pocket prima donna”. She married Thomas L. Matkins, a wealthy businessman, on December 17, 1912. The wedding had to take place in a hospital because she had suffered appendicitis earlier in the week. Olga took a break from acting and moved with Thomas to Utah. The couple had two sons: Thomas Jr and Robert. They divorced in 1918 and she resumed her career. She made her Broadway debut in the 1922 revue Frank Fay’s Fables. She later appeared on the shows Sue, Dear and Springtime Of Youth. In 1923 she was a featured performer in the Ziegfeld Follies. She also frequently sang on the radio.
By 1930, his career was in trouble and he had a serious drinking problem. She married Everett Saxe, a liquor salesman, in 1933. They divorced in December 1934, and Olga claimed that he hit her. A few months later the couple reconciled. She desperately wanted to come back, so she started singing at a nightclub in San Francisco. Shortly after midnight on December 18, 1935, she got into an argument with Everett and threw her shoe at his head. Olga then went to a party at a local hotel with her ex-husband Thomas L. Matkins. She got drunk and asked Thomas for $250 so she could put together a new show. When he refused, she went into hysterics and climbed out a window. The forty-two-year-old woman clung to the window sill for several minutes before falling twelve stories to her death. After a brief investigation, her death was ruled a suicide. Olga was buried in the Irvington Memorial Cemetery in Fremont, California. Everett told reporters that he did not believe she committed suicide because she “loved life too much.”
