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American silent-screen comedian Thelma Hill was one of the few Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties to make it into featured roles; she did so by often obscuring a pretty face with various tricks of the trade, such as unbecoming glasses and a frumpy wig. Hill, who starred opposite Ben Turpin, and a solo Stan Laurel, and with Bud Duncan in producer Larry Darmour`s Toots and Casper series, is remembered today only as one of the two girls (the other was female wrestler Ruby Blaine) involved in the monumental traffic jam in Laurel & Hardy`s hilarious Two Tars (1928). Hill retired shortly after the changeover to sound.

Hill was widely known as the "mah jongg bathing girl" because of the mah jongg bathing suit she was photographed in extensively.

As a youth she lived not far from the motion picture studios and was noticed by both Sennett and Dick Jones. During her school years she did atmosphere and bits on Saturdays, Sundays, and vacation time. As she became older Hill began to double for Mabel Normand.

She was first featured in a series of two-reel comedies with Ralph Graves, which were made for Sennett on Glendale Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.

Hill starred opposite Ben Turpin in The Prodigal Bridegroom; from 1927 to 1929 with Bud Duncan in Larry Darmour`s series of silent comedy shorts Toots and Casper and was Laurel & Hardy`s leading lady in 1928`s Two Tars. She completed her F.B.O. contract in 1927 and was signed by MGM for a role in The Fair Coed (1927).

She ended her career at the Hal Roach "The Lot of Fun" shortly after the changeover to sound, and by 1932 her life had taken on a dark side of depression and alcohol abuse. She would die before her thirty-second birthday from acute alcohol poisoning. Her husband at the time was actor John Sinclair. Sinclair`s residence was at 8229 Blackburn Avenue, Los Angeles, California. He was a writer for W.C. Fields.

Thelma Hill died at the Edward Merrill Sanitarium in Culver City, California in 1938. She was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park.