12/16/1935 - Hollywood produces an unfilmed murder mystery full of cliches come to life and huge personalities when 29-year-old movie star, Thelma Alice Todd, known about town as "Hot Toddy" and the Ice Cream Blonde," dies in a closed garage above her Pacific Palisades restaurant at 17535 Pacific Coast Highway, Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe ... a death a befuddled Los Angeles grand jury will rule is the result of carbon monoxide poisoning that is "... accidental with possible suicide tendencies." Suicide indeed if being mob boss "Lucky" Luciano's girlfriend is factored into the equation.
Todd - 1933
At The Sidewalk Cafe
The short life of Thelma Todd begins with her birth in Lawrence, Massachusetts on July 29, 1906. Her father is John Shaw Todd, an upholsterer from Ireland who joins the city's police force and eventually becomes a powerful politician in the town and state ... an occupation that draws him away from his family. Quite often left alone and becoming bored with the machinations grasping for power can require, her mother, Alice Elizabeth Edwards Todd, an immigrant from Canada, puts her time and energies into her two children (Thelma's brother, William, will be born in 1911), becoming what will one day become known as a "stage mother" when she begins running her daughter's life by entering her in beauty pageants and modeling contests, which an uninterested Thelma often wins. Born beautiful, the future actress discovers early how to manipulate first boys, and then men, into giving her whatever she wants ... blue eyes, a creamy complexion, a nice figure, and vanilla ice cream colored hair are put into a package that includes piling up her curly locks atop her head when most young girls wear long sausage curls, wearing short-shorts and flimsy blouses before graduating into going braless, wearing clingy satin dresses and long flowing scarves, and flirting with boys and men incessantly. And at first what she wants the most is to work with children and become a school teacher by graduating from the Lowell State Normal School (now the University of Massachusetts, Lowell). Accepted into a program for budding teachers at the prestigious Hood Practice School, Thelma future appears quite bright, but in the summer of 1925 her life changes forever.
Young Thelma
Summer vacationing in northern Massachusetts, the Todd Family is struck by tragedy when ten-year-old William is accidentally suffocated and then crushed to death riding on a grain elevator. Now with only one child to throw her energies into, Alice makes the monumental decision to tear-up Thelma's letter to the Miss Massachusetts Beauty Pageant that she would be going to teaching school soon and would not be participating in the state's 1925 contest (unknown to Thelma, she has been entered in the contest by the Lawrence Elks Lodge 65) and substitute one of her own in which Thelma would be thrilled to participate. Browbeaten into following through on her mother's promises, Thelma shows up for the pageant, and of course wins ... and as fate would have it, there is a talent scout in the crowd representing the interests of Paramount and Famous Players-Lasky Studios, the most prestigious movie studio in the country with offices in both California and New York. Goading her daughter again, Alice talks Thelma into the obligatory screen test required for signing a screen contract, and test taken and passed, the youngest Todd's school teacher dream comes to an end and she becomes one of the participants (there are sixteen aspiring thespians in Thelma's class, the most famous of which will be Buddy Rogers, who steals Mary Pickford away from Douglas Fairbanks and stars in the first movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, 1927's "Wings" from director William Wellman) in The Paramount Players School-Stars of Tomorrow located in Astoria, New York. Pursuing her mother's dream, when Thelma gets off the train that takes her from Massachusetts to New York, she is carrying one suitcase, fifty dollars in cash, and is still a virgin.
Contest Entrant
Thelma At The Paramount School
At the Players School, Todd takes classes in dancing, speech making, diction, etiquette, and singing, trains in swimming and horseback riding, and acts in everything from drama to comedy, learning how to do everything from taking a pratfall for the camera to how to kiss onscreen. And she also falls in love for the first time, with a handsome, dark-haired fellow student named Robert Andrews. After six months of intensive training and classes, in the spring of 1926, Thelma takes part in the group's graduating assignment, taking roles alongside Paramount stars like Adolphe Menjou, Richard Dix, Clara Bow, and Chester Conklin in a production called "Fascinating Youth." After filming, she learns how to open a film, when she debuts "Fascinating Youth" at the Palace Theater in her hometown of Lawrence. Next up is a role in an early Technicolor film called "The American Venus," Thelma then appears in "God Gave Me Twenty Cents," a film that angers Todd's mother when she sees publicity photos of her daughter clad in clingy body stocking that makes Thelma look like she is nude. Wild women at the gate, when Alice Todd creates a scene at the Players School, the authorities there decide that instead of ruining Todd's career before it really has a chance to begin, they will separate mother from daughter by giving Thelma four days to put her affairs in order and move to Paramount's studio in Hollywood, California (she will soon arrive in Southern California herself and become enmeshed in her daughters career.
Movie Poster
Thelma
Alice Todd
The Hollywood Todd arrives in is still experiencing the wildness of the Jazz Age, transitioning from silent movies to talking films, and trying to get past scandals that could kill the budding business, tragedies like 25-year-old beauty Olive Thomas dying in a room at the Hotel Ritz in Paris after accidentally drinking her husband, Jack Pickford's, syphilis medicine, juvenile star Bobby Harron killing himself after being passed over for a role in director D.W. Griffith's "Way Down East," comedian "Fatty" Arbuckle being accused of murdering starlet Virginia Rappe in a San Francisco hotel, the unsolved murder of homosexual director William Desmond Taylor, Rudolph Valentino's sudden death in 1926, comedian Mabel Normand developing a $2,000 a month cocaine habit, Paramount star Wallace Reid dying in a Los Angeles sanatorium while secretly trying to kick an addiction to morphine, 29-year-old starlet, Barbara La Marr, dying from pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis helped on by her addictions to morphine and heroin, the cocaine related death of actress Alma Reubens at the age of 33, and the unsolved murder of producer, director, screenwriter, and actor (he will be known as "The Father of the Western"), Thomas H. Ince while he is aboard the yacht Oneida, one of the many toys of millionaire newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (for years it will be rumored that Hearst is gunning for Charlie Chaplin for being involved in affair with his mistress, actress Marion Davies, and hits Ince by mistake). Contract signed giving Paramount the rights to Thelma's talents for five years at $75 a week (with raises bringing up the total to $500 a week in the final year of the contract), the contract also gives the studio the right to loan Todd out to other studios and she is soon working at a variety of studios making everything from westerns to dramas to comedies.
Arbuckle Mug Shot
With Paramount losing interest in Todd due to her continuing unwillingness to be shipped about Hollywood studios and Adolf Zuckor's dismay at having to deal with Thelma's mother, it appears her Hollywood adventure might soon come to an end, but film producer Hal Roach, a master of the comedy genre sees potential in Todd as a comedian, signs her to an exclusive contract with his studio, and seeking to create a female version of his hit makers, Laurel & Hardy, pairs Todd with Zasu Pitts (and then Patsy Kelly after Pitts leaves the studio in 21 more films) in a series of seventeen short comedies (each about 20 minutes long). Supporting roles and star turns, Todd is a bonavide star by 1931 (she will appear in over 100 films during her brief career) and makes her presence known acting with the Marx Brothers in "Monkey Business" and "Horsefeathers," playing the love interest in several Charley Chase short comedies (the pair also ignite off-screen but decide to just be friends based on their martial status at the time). opposite the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey, sparring with Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in "Speak Easily," mugging with comedian Joey E. Brown, appearing as the widow Iva Archer in Warner Brothers first version of "The Maltese Falcon," as the girlfriend of Chester Morris in the bootlegger drama, "The Corsair," and as a comic foil for Laurel & Hardy (her last appearance on film will be in the Laurel & Hardy comedy, "The Bohemian Girl") Bubbly personality, beauty, and talent all wrapped together in one package, Todd appears to have it all, but there are also problems which will reach critical mass in 1935 ... there is her meddlesome mother, the development of addictions to booze (she parties through the night at times and the liquor dulls the hurt of failed romances) and drugs (speed to control her weight), and the anguish of being typecast as being only a comedian and kept from dramatic roles in which she feels she can really shine.
With Groucho
With Chico
Pitts And Todd
With Laurel & Hardy
And in Hollywood she meets the men (all with aspects of her powerful father in their makeup) who will all be suspects in her untimely death ... producer Hal Roach who kills loan outs to other studios for dramatic roles (who tires of dealing with both Thelma and her mother and their lack of appreciation for what he has done for Todd's career, which also includes keeping her from playing the Jean Harlow part in Howard Hughes' hit production of Hell's Angels), her divorced hustler husband and purpointed mobster, Pasquale "Pat" DeCicco (the pair has many drunken fights ... in one DeCicco has his nose broken by a plate, in another, Todd goes in for an emergency appendectomy ... and it will be DeCicco who introduces Thelma to Charles "Lucky" Luciano), Lucky Luciano who will have a sexual affair with Todd and gets her strung out on amphetamines (trying to set up gambling at Todd's restaurant, Thelma will tell Luciano that gambling will take place "over my dead body" and Luciano will respond in front of a host of witnesses, "That can be arranged" ... tired of the relationship and Luciano's attempts to strongarm her into accepting gambling on her property, Todd has called the Los Angeles district attorney's offices stating she has information about the gangster she'd like to provide to the authorities, and with a mole in the district attorney's office, Luciano finds out in minutes what a threat his former girlfriend has become), United Artists director Roland West who casts Todd in the dramatic film, "The Corsair" (they meet on cruise to Catalina Island), has an affair with the actress, and becomes a co-owner of Todd's restaurant project (along with his wife ... all of whom live on the cafe property, Todd and West in an apartment they platonically share above the cafe, and Jewel in a house above the complex on Pasetano Drive), and Charles Smith, the cafe's treasurer, a man whom both Todd and West believe is juggling the restaurant's books and putting profits from the enterprise into his own pockets (a planned audit of the books is killed shortly after Thelma's death).
Roach
Todd & DeCicco
Luciano
West
On the last weekend of her life, Todd sleeps past noon, calls friends, writes a few Christmas cards, listens to the radio, and takes a long, hot bath while drinking Scotch, then goes Christmas shopping with her mother before attending a private party (she arrives at the Saturday event at 8:15 in the evening) given her honor (leaving for the event, she quarrels with West about not spending time at their cafe with all the Christmas bookings the place has and that he will lock her out of their apartment if she isn't home by 2:00 in the morning ... multiple keys are required to get in and out of the various buildings and rooms on the property) by English stage comedian Stanley Lupino and his actress daughter Ida at the Cafe Tracadero nightclub on Sunset Blvd. At the party, while having fun with her friends and getting quite sloshed she discovers her former husband has invited himself to the event and the two argue before DeCicco leaves (he is interested in managing the new steakhouse that Luciano wants to turn into a private gambling casino). Finally done with her fun for the evening, Todd contacts her chauffer, Ernest O. Peters, to come and get her to take her home, while she has Sid Grauman, of Grauman's Chinese Theater call West to tell him that Thelma will soon be on the way home. Seeing it is now past 2:00, West immediately does as he said he would and after taking the pet the two share for a walk (a dog named White King, he begins locking and bolting doors on the property. Still in party mode, Todd finally leaves for home when a stranger informs her that Lucky is in town and wants to see her at the beach. Dropped off in front of the Sidewalk Cafe by Peters, instead of going inside, Todd gets into a chocolate-brown convertible occupied by Luciano (he has secretly flown into town and is staying at the home of a Beverly Hills friend) and a driver.
Cafe Complex
Map Of The Complex
Gangster in control, while Luciano talks about business and love, Todd is driven to Santa Barbara where the pair drink champagne on the beach. Back in Los Angeles later in the day (they are seen by several witnesses ... there is a stop at the cigar store of W. F. Peterson, a stop on the steps of the First Methodist Church at Eighth and Hope, a brief visit to a Beverly Hills drugstore, and a dinner of roast beef, potatoes, peas and carrots, and lots of champagne at the Beverly Hills home of a Luciano associate and the man's wife ... sightings that all take place after the time Todd supposedly dies), based on the information he has gotten out of Todd, Luciano makes his decision about his former girlfriend, and states for her naive benefit that he wishes her only the best and that she will never see him again. After calls a local phone number and states a single word, "Cominciare" (begin in Italian), the pair leave Beverly Hills at around 10:30 on Sunday evening. Arriving at the apartment she shares with West, the gangster lets Thelma out of his car and is driven away with Todd's last words burning his ears, "There are battles and there is war, Lucky. May you burn in hell." Moments later, after watching Luciano's car vanish into the cold night fog, Todd walks over to her garage her cafe, and is mercilessly attacked from behind by a stranger that has been hiding in the dark ... the left side of her face is pummeled, breaking Thelma's nose, and choked unconscious, she is moved into the garage and dumped into her car (an action that fractures two ribs). Then the killer turns on the car, closes the door to the garage, and vanishes into the night. Last moments an awful failed struggle for survival, growing drowsy as the carbon monoxide builds within the garage, Thelma hits her head on the steering wheel trying to reach up for the keys to turn off the ignition, fails, and falls sideways, wedging herself between the car seat and the steering wheel ... alone, the young actress passes away shortly after midnight on Monday, December 16, 1935 (the body will be discovered in the morning by Todd's black maid, Mae Whitehead).
Crime Scene Photo
Crime Scene Photo
Morgue Shot
No mystery with a modicum of effort by the authorities to solve the case, Todd's injuries are thought to be the result of her thrashing about in the car during her last moments, and when Roland West testifies about locking down the house over her late party attendance on Saturday night (the coroner, Dr. A. P. Wagner, absolutely butchers the time of death, and testimony that Todd was seen driving around Los Angeles on Sunday is discredited) fits into the story the district attorney (Buron Fitts, who commits suicide with a pistol shot to his head in 1973 at the age of 78) and police detectives settle on a ruling of accidental death by way of carbon monoxide poisoning as locked out of her apartment, Todd tries to warm herself in the car and tipsy from champagne, fatally falls asleep in her vehicle (to her dying day, Alice Todd will believe her daughter was murdered by a mob goon (contracted from the rolls of Detroit's Purple Gang) on orders from Lucky Luciano, but fearing for her own life, will not provide any evidence that such is the case to the grand jury that convenes on December 18). And so, a verdict that makes little sense to many is allowed to become official (and Luciano gets away with yet another murder) as time passes by and participants in Todd's life pass away (cremated, Thelma will reside on her mother's mantel in an ash urn back in Massachusetts by day, and by her bedside at night ... and when Alice passes away at the age of 92, Thelma's urn goes into Alice's coffin and the two are buried together). Gone but not forgotten, Thelma lives on in the work she left behind, still a very, very funny lady though decades have passed since her young death ... check her out the next time Monkey Business, Horsefeathers, or one of her collaborations with Laurel and Hardy is on a cable television station.
West In The Garage
Headlines
Saying Goodbye
12/16/1935 ... film star Thelma Todd is murdered in Pacific Palisades, California at the too young age of only 29.
Thelma
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