But soon her friends began raising questions. The coroner quickly ruled that accidental carbon monoxide poisoning had killed Thelma Todd. The garage sat on a hill high above her night club, and it was owned by Roland West. She sat at the wheel of her showy convertible Lincoln Phaeton. Thelma Todd was found in a closed garage on the morning of Monday, Dec. In the wake of Todd’s mysterious death, attention would immediately focus on two men. “They were just being friendly,” she said. We don’t take familiarities from men in New England,” she said, but she soon learned not to take offense. “At first when I was making a picture and men hailed me as sweetheart or honey or came up and put an arm around me when they wanted to tell me something, I was insulted. Thelma Tood told a newspaper interviewer that for a Massachusetts girl, Hollywood took some getting used to. The airbrushed version of her life would soon crumble. She didn’t worry about wrinkles or a few extra pounds because she would have the cafe.Īs Christmas 1935 approached, her family back in Lawrence hoped that 29-year-old Thelma might visit for the holidays. The supper club, she said, would be her financial stability when her career petered out. She knew the shelf life for a Hollywood starlet was not a long one. Thelma roared through 1935 on all cylinders. Her partner in the club was Roland West, her former lover and director. The restaurant was a draw for tourists because it was popular with Thelma’s celebrity friends. She opened a restaurant and supper club in Pacific Palisades: Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe. That same year Thelma decided to spread herself even thinner.
With so many being discussed in Hollywood I wouldn’t have a chance to get any sort of publicity.”īut the divorce did come through, in 1934.
She addressed the rumors with a sly wink: “I’m afraid it would be silly to make a divorce announcement now. Newspapers floated a rumor that the star was contemplating divorce. She had traveled to London for work and returned to Massachusetts to visit family. But by 1933, Thelma was showing just how savvy she had become. It was punctuated by frequent, loud arguments fueled by alcohol. The marriage to DiCicco would last just two years.
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She had gotten married in an elopement in 1932 to Pasquale DiCicco, a movie producer/agent/small-time hood. In her personal life, Thelma had been linked with many Hollywood men. Attractive, slim – one interviewer noted she had dropped 20 pounds since she left Massachusetts – and disciplined in her acting, Thelma was in demand.
#Young starlet died professional#
She now had two professional outlets for her talent, starring in comedies with the likes of the Marx Brothers and Bing Crosby and in dramatic films playing off leading men such as John Barrymore and Ricardo Cortez.īy now Thelma Todd was a bankable actress. To hammer home the point that her role marked a departure in her career, Thelma used the name Alison Lloyd in Corsair. (Watch it here.) At the time of their affair, West had a wife who was apparently not troubled by it. Together they planned to launch her in a new direction in his dramatic film Corsair. Thelma Todd began dating director Roland West. Thelma, though, wanted more from her career. She established her comedy chops playing the straight women to the Marx Brothers in two of their films. MoreĪctresses ZaSu Pitts and Patsy Kelly co-starred with her in these films. Thelma Todd played the adorable working girl trying to retain her poise while being dragged into her friend’s shenanigans.
Together they would work their way in and out of comical situations. She belonged to a duo – one sensible woman, the other a clown. Her roles would be familiar to viewers today. Movie producer Hal Roach – the director behind Laurel and Hardy – signed Thelma to a contract and began casting her in zany short comedies. There, her instructors praised her for her talent and warned her to watch her weight. They recommended her for the Paramount School for Junior Stars, run by the Paramount Movie Studio. She also caught the eye of Hollywood talent scouts. In 1925 she was crowned “Miss Massachusetts” at the state Elks convention in Swampscott. Buster Keaton, Thelma Todd and Jimmy Durante in Speak Easily (1932)
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