CAUSE: She died aged 84 in London from a stroke.
Bob Todd
Born December 15, 1921
Died October 20, 1992
Comedic stooge. Born in Faversham, Kent, he is best known as one of Benny Hill’s straight men yet he actually began his working life breeding cattle. It was only when that business failed in 1962 that he turned to acting, making his television début in Citizen Jame s and his film début in Postman’s Knock (1962) as the district superintendent. He soon became a stalwart of British comedy, working with Michael Bentine, Dick Emery, Marty Feldman and Des O’Connor. His films included: Carry On Again, Doctor (1969), Scars Of Dracula (1970) as Burgomaster, She’ll Follow You Anywhere (1971), Adolf Hitler – My Part In His Downfall (1972) as Referee, Digby, The Biggest Dog In The World (1973) as The Great Manzini, The Ups And Downs Of A Handyman (1975) as Squire Bullsworthy, Confessions Of A Pop Performer (1975) as Mr Barnwell, Come Play With Me (1977) as the Vicar, Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse (1978) as Mr Buchanan, Superman III (1983) and The Return Of The Musketeers (1989).
CAUSE: He died aged 70 of natural causes.
Mike Todd
(AVRAM HIRSCH GOLDBOGEN)
Born June 22, 1907
Died March 22, 1958
Flamboyant producer. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Rabbi Chaim Goldbogen, he earned his first money as a boy shining shoes for a nickel and stealing cigars to sell at 3¢ each. He later sold worthless watches for $5. He began producing musicals, burlesque and strip shows. On February 14, 1927, he married Bertha Freshman by whom he had a son, Mike Jr (see below). After 20 years he wanted a divorce, which she refused to give him. He was seeing Joan Blondell and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee at the time. Shortly after the divorce papers were issued Mike and Bertha fought and she cut herself on a kitchen knife, severing the tendons in her hand. Todd suggested she needed hospital treatment. He drove her there but she died under anaesthesia, reportedly from shock. Todd was cleared of any malfeasance in her death, despite rumours that he had bribed the anaesthetist. In July 1947 he married actress Joan Blondell at the El Rancho Vegas Hotel in Las Vegas. He spent her money, went bankrupt for a second time and they divorced on June 8, 1950. He also broke her arm during a fight. He began romancing Evelyn Keyes but dumped her for Elizabeth Taylor, whom he married on February 2, 1957. He gave Taylor a 29.5 carat engagement ring that cost him $92,000. Their daughter, Elizabeth Frances ‘Liza’ Todd, was born in New York six months later, on August 6, 1957. All this despite the fact that Todd once proclaimed: “I’ll never marry an actress. To live with an actress ya gotta be able to worry about her hair. And when their bosoms start to drop they get panicky and run to head shrinkers.” Todd developed a widescreen camera system called Todd-AO to enhance viewing pleasure. It was shown to advantage in Around The World In 80 Days (1956), for which Todd wanted to include 50 stars, 68,894 extras filmed in 13 countries and wearing 74,685 costumes. Todd, already wealthy, became a very rich man indeed following the success of Around The World In 80 Days. He spent $3,000 a month renting a Lockheed Lodestar that he nicknamed The Liz and another $5,000 to put a phone on board. He also had cigars made especially for him, rented a yacht, bought two cinemas and rented mansions in Beverly Hills, Palm Springs and Westport, Connecticut. And as if that wasn’t enough, he also gave Taylor amazing amounts of jewellery every Saturday night to mark the ‘anniversary’ of the day of the week they met. Perhaps Todd had some prescience. He told a friend: “I’m aware that this is the best time of my life. But I’m so happy it almost scares me. Being a gambling man, I know the law of averages and I get spooked I’ll have to lose something to compensate for being so damn lucky.” What he lost was his life.
CAUSE: In March 1958 Todd was elected Showman of the Year by the Friars Club of New York. He decided to fly in The Liz to New York, stopping off in Chicago to watch Sugar Ray Robinson fight Carmen Basilio before the return flight to Hollywood. Todd invited Joseph Mankiewicz, Kirk Douglas, publicist Warren Cowan, agent Kurt Frings and journalist James Bacon to accompany him. All declined, Bacon because of the bad weather. At 10.11pm on March 21, the plane took off, with pilots William S. Verner and Thomas Barclay, Todd and his biographer Art Cohn aboard. Todd kissed Taylor six times before he drove to Burbank airport and promised to call her when the plane refuelled in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As it approached Tulsa the plane encountered a storm and the pilots asked traffic control for permission to climb to 13,000 feet and above the turbulence. However, the storm raged just as fiercely at that altitude and at 2.40pm, with its wings frozen, The Liz crashed into the Zuni Mountains in New Mexico. All aboard were burned to death and only dental records enabled the bodies to be identified. Todd had been married to Taylor for 414 days. He had spent $25,000 to put a bedroom aboard the plane but just $2,000 to improve the de-icing equipment. According to the manufacturer the plane’s payload should have been no more than 18,605lb. With the additions Todd had put on board, it now weighed 20,757lb – a weight that proved fatal.
Mike Todd, Jr
Born October 8, 1929
Died May 5, 2002
Creator of Smell-o-Vision. The only son of legendary Broadway and film producer Mike Todd and his first wife, Bertha Freshman (d. 1946), Todd Jr is best known as the producer of Scent Of Mystery, the first, and thankfully the only, film to use “Smell-o-Vision,” a technique of piping scents into a cinema to synchronise with the action on screen. The film premièred in Chicago in 1960, and with an all-star cast including Denholm Elliott, Peter Lorre, Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Dors, the publicity was overwhelming. “First they moved (1895)! Then they talked (1927)! Now they smell!” The film featured 30 different smells, released via tiny pipes connected to the back of each seat. The smells were produced by a New Jersey-based company that was founded by Raoul Pantaleone, an Italian immigrant, who claimed that Pope Urban VI was one of his ancestors. The whiffs included baking bread, pipe tobacco, grass and clover, cheap perfume (for Diana Dors). The film flopped in America because the cinema was unable to synchronise smells and on-screen action. Time magazine wrote: “Customers will probably agree that the smell they liked best was the one they got during the intermission: fresh air.” In Britain the film flopped for another reason. Cinemas could not afford the expensive “Smell-o-Vision” equipment and without the pongs the film took on a surreal quality, since there was no reason why, for example, a loaf of bread should be lifted from the oven and thrust into the camera for what seemed to be an unconscionably long time. Born in Los Angeles, Todd quickly joined his father in the entertainment business and worked with him on his 1956 blockbuster Around The World In 80 Days. It was Todd Sr who developed Smell-o-Vision but died before he could develop the project. The system Mike Todd, Sr had used for his Cinerama productions was named “Todd AO;” the system Todd Jr employed for the first smelly fiction film was unkindly dubbed “Todd-BO”. Todd, who never made a successful film, emigrated to Ireland in 1973. In 1953 he married Sarah Weaver, who died in 1972. They had three sons, Cyrus, Daniel and Oliver, and three daughters, Susan, Sarah and Eliza. In 1972 he married Susan McCarthy and he had two more sons, Del and James.
CAUSE: Todd died aged 72 of lung cancer at his home in Borris, County Carlow, Ireland.
Thelma Todd
Born July 29, 1906
Died December 16, 1935
‘The ice cream blonde’. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the daughter of a police lieutenant, 5́ 4˝ Thelma was an adorable baby with an overly protective mother. As a teenager Thelma shocked her neighbours by rarely wearing a bra and dressing in very short shorts. However, although she teased and flirted with men, often making suggestive remarks, she didn’t actually go to bed with any of them. She kept men at a distance because of the remoteness from her own father, whom she idolised. In 1923 she enrolled in Lowell State Normal School, a teacher training college. Thelma wanted to be a schoolteacher but was inept at chemistry until she began seeing the class hunk, who helped her to get through her course, to the detriment of his own amb
itions. He spent so much time helping Thelma he failed his own exams. Thelma worked as a model to pay for her schooling. In the summer of 1925 the Todd family holidayed on a farm in northern Massachusetts. During the break, Thelma’s brother, William, was killed when he fell into a grain silo and was suffocated and then crushed to death. His body was never found. In August of that year, Thelma learned she was a finalist in the Miss Massachusetts beauty contest. A beau had entered her picture without telling her. Thelma ignored the first telegram from the organisers and so they sent a second. Her mother intercepted the letter, and substituted one of her own, saying Thelma would be thrilled to enter. Unsurprisingly, Thelma won the competition. That resulted in a call from Hollywood and Thelma made her film début in Fascinating Youth (1926) as Lorraine Lane opposite Buddy Rogers and Josephine Dunn. That led to a highly successful movie career working as a foil for virtually every comedian in pictures. She appeared with Ed Wynn in Rubber Heels (1927) as Princess Aline, Charley Chase in Snappy Sneezer (1929), Crazy Feet (1929), Stepping Out (1929), Harry Langdon in Sky Boy (1929), The Shrimp (1930) and All Teed Up (1930) among others, with the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931) as Lucille and Horse Feathers (1932) as Connie Bailey, and with Laurel & Hardy in Unaccustomed As We Are (1929) as Mrs Kennedy, Chickens Come Home (1931) as Mrs Hardy and On The Loose (1931). By 1935 she was receiving 500 fan letters a week. Four years earlier, in May 1931, she met Pasquale DiCicco (b. 1909, d. New York, 1980 of natural causes) known as Pat. DiCicco was a handsome playboy who supposedly made his money from being an agent, though friendships with various hoodlums made this claim somewhat suspect. He also had a fearsome temper. On July 18, 1932, the couple eloped to Prescott, Arizona. Thelma confessed to a friend that she wasn’t in love with her new husband but that she needed a friend. Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky wrote of the newlyweds: “His pet name for her is Lambie. She never argues with him. He says she hasn’t sense enough to argue …” Within weeks of the marriage they were living separate lives with DiCicco spending much of his time in New York. Whenever Thelma asked where he had been and with whom she received a punch in the face for her troubles; she quickly learned not to ask. She had had an alcohol problem before her marriage but her husband’s cruelty and indifference pushed her back into the bottle and she began taking drugs as well to numb the pain of her loveless match. One day DiCicco came home to find his wife doubled up in pain and assumed that she was high, drunk or both. Luckily, he realised she was ill and she was taken to hospital where she underwent an emergency appendectomy. The stay in hospital gave her time to once again wean herself off her addictions and DiCicco also became more attentive for the first time since their wedding. It didn’t last long and soon DiCicco was off on another of his jaunts. Thelma found solace with recently separated producer and director Roland West (b. Cleveland, Ohio, 1887, d. 1952). He became Thelma’s financial manager, and together they opened the Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway, north of Santa Monica. Thelma and DiCicco were divorced on March 2, 1934. That year she began an affair with gangster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano (b. Lercara Friddi, Palermo, Sicily, November 24, 1897, d. Capodichino Airport, Naples, Italy, January 26, 1962, of a heart attack) who ‘arranged’ for her to become hooked on diet pills, knowing he could use them to keep her subservient. Luciano began pressing Thelma to let him use a room at the Sidewalk Cafe for a gambling den but she refused, screaming at him in the Brown Derby restaurant “Over my dead body” to which the man they called Charley Lucifer responded: “That can be arranged.”
CAUSE: On December 14, 1935, Thelma attended a party at the Cafe Trocadero in Hollywood. Roland West had told her to be home before 2am or he would lock her out. DiCicco had wangled an invitation. Actress Ida Lupino, a friend of Thelma, recalled: “Pat had asked especially for an invitation to the party at which Thelma was a guest of honour. He was to be seated by her side at the dinner. This was at his request and Thelma’s. Instead, he came with [actress] Margaret Lindsay and they did not join her party. He and Thelma spoke, but she was very indignant. She berated him bitterly for slighting me and herself.” At 12.15am DiCicco made a telephone call. An hour later, he and Margaret Lindsay left the gathering. Thelma had told Lupino: “I’m right in the middle of the loveliest romance I’ve ever had.” She didn’t name anyone but said the man was in San Francisco. Lupino asked if West knew and Thelma said she thought he probably did. At the end of the evening, recounted Lane: “Thelma stood facing the entrance of the Trocadero, just before she got into her car, and with an extravagant gesture of salute said: ‘Goodbye!’ This struck members of the party as very strange. It seemed a salute of farewell.” Before she left the Trocadero at 2.45am, Thelma was told by a waiter that a man was waiting to see her. He was an acolyte of Lucky Luciano, but Thelma refused his ‘invitation’ to the beach where the gangster was waiting. Thelma had invited some of the party-goers to her cafe for an informal Sunday evening social. She had also let it be known she’d be attending a Sunday afternoon party that actor Wallace Ford’s wife was giving at home. Thelma had arrived at the Trocadero alone and left that way. She had had a few drink-driving incidents and was ‘advised’ not to drive, especially at night, so she hired a chauffeur, Ernest Peters, to drive her around. Back in the car Thelma urged Peters to put his foot to the floor until they got back to the Sidewalk Cafe at 3.30am. Peters didn’t walk his employer to the door as was his custom. Breathing heavily, Thelma watched her car drive away. Then she heard another, a brown Packard, driving slowly through fog towards her. The headlights were off. As it stopped by her, a door opened and a voice told her to get in. It belonged to Lucky Luciano. For six hours they drove around until the car stopped in front of a tobacconists where Thelma rushed in and asked the owner, W.F. Persson, to dial a number for her but as he did so she vanished. At 10.30am on Monday December 16, Thelma’s body was found by her maid, May Whitehead, slumped on the front seat of her Packard convertible in her garage at 17531 Posetano Road, the sliding doors slightly opened. According to Dr A.F. Wagner, Los Angeles County’s autopsy surgeon, Thelma Todd died at the hands of that silent assassin, carbon monoxide. It billowed from her car to smother her moans and turn her into the cherry-red corpse of asphyxiation. Dr Wagner fixed the time of death at between 6 and 8am Sunday – 24 hours before the maid said she found the body. As related above, Thelma was alive at 9am on the Sunday, an hour after she had, according to the coroner, shook off this mortal coil. What did Dr Wagner make of the patches of blood on Thelma’s face and on the seat and running board of the car? He suggested Thelma’s head struck the steering wheel when asphyxia set in and she lapsed into the coma preceding death. What did he make of the later findings in the autopsy analysis of her stomach contents – undigested peas and beans? Peas and beans weren’t served at the Trocadero on Saturday night. How did they find their way into Thelma’s digestive tract? Had she stopped off somewhere for a bite after Peters dropped her off? No answers to those questions. While there was no evidence of a struggle – her make-up and tinted nails, first casualties of modern woman in distress, suffered no damage – the blood left a lot to be accounted for despite Dr Wagner’s implausible explanation. Certainly it was a more than reasonable assumption that someone could have quarrelled with Thelma, then struck her and thrown her half-dazed into the car, started the motor, and sneaked away into the darkness. A simple bang on the head after lapsing into unconsciousness would not have dislodged a dental filling in her mouth, nor bruised Thelma’s lip. The investigation quickly focussed on what had been headline reading only 10 months before. Thelma had received notes threatening her life unless she paid $10,000. She had been uneasy about it until six weeks before her death, when the would-be extortioner was arrested in the Astoria section of Queens, the New York City borough. The day after her body was found, the note-writer was committed to a hospital for the insane and was subsequently ruled out as a suspect in her death. Roland West commanded a big share of the spotlight of suspicion. He told police that he waited
up for Thelma until 2am on the Sunday, then had gone to bed after locking the door. He said Todd had no key, so in effect, “I locked her out.” It was suggested that when she couldn’t get into the apartment, Thelma went to the garage, got into the car, and tried to sleep. But being December, it was cold. In a bid to keep warm Thelma turned the motor on for the warmth of the heater – and carbon monoxide poisoning killed her. But those deadly fumes would surely have escaped through the partly open garage doors and we know they were open because the maid said so. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of suicide but that was overturned by a grand jury order. At that hearing the maid May Whitehead revealed that she had given Thelma a key to the apartment, which ruled out West’s story that he had locked Thelma out. The key and valuable jewellery were found in Thelma’s handbag. Ida Lupino testified and said that although outwardly happy, Thelma was “one of the unhappiest persons who ever lived”. The Jury foreman, George Rochester, added his two pennyworth: “I and other members of the jury believe a plot is afoot to show that Thelma Todd had a suicide complex, even though she had youth, health, wealth, fame, admiration, love, and happy prospects. It looks as if they are trying to build up this case as a suicide, but in the actual evidence, I have found nothing to support this theory definitely. I suggest the possibility strongly exists this was a monoxide murder!” For the benefit of the grand jury, authorities even recreated Thelma’s so-called ‘death walk’ – the stroll she had to have taken to reach the scene of her death. A policewoman about the size of Thelma Todd climbed the 270 steps to the garage where the body was found. The slippers she wore in the test were considerably scuffed and caked in dirt. The dainty sandal slippers Thelma had on her feet when found behind the wheel of the car were spotless. She could not have made that long climb herself. That left unanswered the question of how she reached the garage from the street. Was she carried? Who was strong enough to haul her amplitudinous body all that distance? The cafe treasurer, Charles H. Smith, who slept above the garage, told investigators he heard no car engine running that early Sunday morning. Moreover, the touring car in which Thelma was found dead still had two gallons of petrol left in its tank. Why did the engine stop running? The ignition was on, but had someone turned it on to fake a carbon monoxide poisoning death? Mrs Wallace Ford lent the crowning touch to the mystery when she told the grand jury that she received a call at 4pm on Sunday from a voice that sounded “exactly like Thelma’s”. The message from Thelma was: “You’re going to be surprised at the person I am bringing to your party.” But how could she have spoken on the phone to Wallace Ford’s wife at four in the afternoon when Miss Todd was supposed to have died between six and eight that morning? The most surprising advocate of suicide came from a very strange quarter. Alice Todd, Thelma’s widowed mother, had travelled 3,300 miles from Massachusetts to put down the inquiry into her daughter’s strange death. She said: “This investigation and the manner in which it is being conducted is the work of cheap politicians looking for jobs at the expense of my daughter’s name. She is dead and is not able to defend herself. But I am here and I will defend her good name. I certainly am convinced that Thelma’s death was an accident. If I am satisfied, I don’t see why anyone else is interested.” On December 21 – five days after her body was found – the LAPD formally dropped their investigation into Thelma’s death. Captain Bert Wallis and Chief of Detectives Joe Taylor agreed with the county autopsy surgeon’s report and coroner’s jury verdict that the actress died “apparently accidentally”. Yet Deputy District Attorney George Johnson, who was in charge of the investigation for the prosecutor’s office, not only discounted the murder theory but also shied away from the idea Thelma’s death was an accident. “It seems too difficult to believe Miss Todd went to that garage and started the motor of her car to keep warm. I believe it was suicide.” The grand jury probe also came to nothing. Several weeks after her death, Mayor Hermon Peery of Ogden, Utah, attempted to reopen the case. He said a black-haired, well-dressed, middle-aged woman called from a pay phone and dictated a message to the Western Union office there, addressed to the Los Angeles police. She claimed a man, a resident of a local hotel since January, was Thelma Todd’s killer. She not only identified him but told police where he could be found. The message was relayed to Ogden Police Chief Rial Moore, who also wanted to begin an all-out investigation. The reply from the Los Angeles police: “No one is being sought in connection with Thelma Todd’s death. The case is closed.” So what happened? After interrogating Thelma to try and find out what she knew of his various scams and rackets, Luciano dropped her off at the Cafe. Thinking she was safe, Thelma made to go to her home but was grabbed by two men, one of whom punched her in the face, breaking her nose. The other carried her to her car and placed her on the front seat. He switched on the ignition and closed the garage door, but did not lock it. Some hours later, the door would open about six inches; unless it was locked, it always did. Weak from the beating, heady from champagne and tired, Thelma did not have the strength to open the car door, nor turn off the ignition. She died shortly after midnight on December 16, 1935. She was just 29 years old.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 170
