Actress Thelma Todd rose to fame and fortune in comedy movies beginning in the silent film era. But it would be her shocking and bewildering death inside a garage on a seaside bluff in Castellammare that would make Todd a lasting Hollywood name.
Born in Massachusetts in 1906, Thelma Todd became a screen actress in the mid-1920s. This was not supposed to be the then-young starlet’s fate. She had brains, spoke several languages and attended college.
She began her working life as a schoolteacher in Lawrence, Massachusetts. But her gorgeous looks interrupted her career plans.
Todd told Motion Picture magazine in the late-1920s that “teachers are popularly supposed to be dried up old maids…but, of course, there are many very attractive, modern young women teaching.” The leggy Todd was one of the very attractive ones.
The future film star had been crowned “Miss Massachusetts” in 1925. This helped pave the way for Todd to bolt from the classroom setting to studio lots and film locations where her memorable smile could be put to use for movie fans.
In 1926, still a teenager, Thelma Todd was playing in a comedy film in called Fascinating Youth. The actress, who was posed in multitudes of photograph and movie stills wearing fashionable outfits, was kept busy in silent films.
Todd also had a screen career in the talkie era. Her voice perfectly fit her screen persona. She did plenty of comedy shorts with Zasu Pitts.
One of Todd’s signature performances was in the 1931 Marx Brothers film Monkey Business. Off screen, in the early 1930s, Todd had plenty of monkey business going on in her social life. The wavy blonde-haired Todd had no trouble attracting men.
One man she attracted was a Hollywood wannabe named Pat DiCicco, who was trying to break into the movie business as an agent. Todd and DiCicco married in 1932, but there was trouble in paradise from the get-go.
Despite Todd telling Motion Picture that “men in Hollywood are very crude creatures,” she became romantically entangled with director Roland West, a married man.
Both Todd and West were living apart in Castellammare in 1934 while seeing each other. The year was a busy one for the fast-living Todd.
The actress who was often referred to by film promoters as “The Ice Cream Blonde” and “Hot Toddy,” divorced DiCicco and open a business with West.
Todd and West partnered in the Palisades with Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café. It was located at 17575 Roosevelt Highway, now Pacific Coast Highway, inside a multi-level building. The sprawling Spanish-style structure faces the ocean.
The café was an immediate hit with the Hollywood glitterati. The stars would take in the sounds and smells of the close by Pacific Ocean as they entered the pricy establishment. Big names, such as Clark Gable, walked through the mosaic archway of the café to eat and enjoy the venue.
While running the restaurant, according to Thelma Todd expert and author William Donati, the actress was renting a home on Tramonto Drive, “just a few minutes from the café.”
And, if her romantic life was not giving her enough trouble, other pieces of her life were not much better during this period.
Donati, who wrote a 2012 biography of Todd called The Life and Death of Thelma Todd, was contacted for this piece. In an e-mail exchange, Donati wrote about a February 1935 threat the actress received.
“Thelma began receiving extortion notes demanding money and threatening her life,” Donati explained. “In June, thieves burglarized her rented home and stole expensive clothes and perfume. Terrified, she began living exclusively above the café.”
Todd didn’t live in the apartment above her eatery much longer as tragedy befell her in December of 1935.
On the night of the 14th, English actor and singer Stanley Lupino, his wife, and daughter, actress Ida Lupino, threw Todd a party in West Hollywood.
Todd was chauffeured home from Café Trocadero on the Sunday morning of the 15th. By Monday morning, the 16th, the 29-year old actress was discovered dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in her chocolate Lincoln Phaeton. She was nicely dressed, as if heading out for a night on the town.
The Lincoln was parked inside a garage fronting Posetano Road that belonged to West. It was part of the director’s bluff-hugging house, Castillo del Mar, which was a few streets above the building holding Todd’s apartment and her café.
How the actress ended up there and why is a cause of much speculation, most of which revolves around the theory that she was murdered.
One of the most batted-around theories is that somehow mobster Charles “Lucky” Luciano had Todd killed due to a dispute over her refusal to allow him run a gambling operation above her café. But Donati, who spent decades studying Todd before writing her biography, shot down that theory. The author tells of Luciano being “under police surveillance in Hot Springs, Arkansas when Thelma was discovered in the garage.”
The death of Thelma Todd remains one of Hollywood’s most-mysterious events.
Her apartment above her café in Castellammare was Todd’s last address. “Thelma never owned a home anywhere,” Donati wrote. One could perhaps add that Thelma was still searching for a figurative home when she passed.
Donati concluded his e-mail correspondence with a single line about Thelma Todd – “She died so young but had quite an exciting life.”
Michael Oldham, co-author of Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten and author of the novel The Valentino Formula, can be reached at HollywoodLandings@sbcglobal.net.
FOR SALE
The historic building located at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway, known to many as Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café, has hit the market with an asking price of nearly $8 million, according to CBRE.
The two-story building facing the Pacific Ocean has been used by Paulist Productions, a production company that works on religious film and TV projects, since the 1960s.
Highlights include a 360-degree view from the top floor, access to a bridge leading directly to the beach, productions studio on the ground floor and nearly 16,000 square feet of rentable office space. The parcel is about 22,000 square feet.
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