It was like the plot of a film noir: a young movie star at the peak of her fame found dead in the car of her sometime-lover’s garage. The coroner ruled that there was nothing to see here. The death, he said, was an accident or suicide. But questions lingered.
First, there was no indication that Thelma Todd, one of the most popular comedy movie stars of the early 1930s, was distressed that evening. There was also that pesky problem of her two cracked ribs and broken nose, which the coroner wrote off as somehow caused in the course of her carbon monoxide poisoning. And then there was the line-up of shady characters who had motive: her ex-husband, her lover-cum-business partner, his wife, the West Coast mafia—even her own mother.
It’s been 85 years since the Monday morning in December of 1935 when Todd’s maid discovered her body, but many still wonder: what actually happened to the “Ice Cream Blonde?”
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The making of a mystery
Todd has been called the Marilyn Monroe of her day. She was a gorgeous, talented bombshell who lived with a verve that defied the stereotypes of the day: she danced and drank, took lovers and divorced an abusive husband, opened her own business and chose radical roles that portrayed independent women. She radiated charm and joie de vivre.
Plus, she had one of those stories that Americans love to eat up: a nobody-to-somebody, local girl-to-celebrated actress.
Todd was born in Massachusetts and was discovered by a talent scout after winning the state’s top beauty pageant. Two years later, when her star was starting to rise in Hollywood, the story of her discovery would be recounted in the New Britain Herald with all the bias of a local paper reporting on its hometown hero.
According to the Connecticut paper, the burden of beauty plagued Todd’s pre-Hollywood life. She tried to get a job at a five-and-ten-cent store, but was fired after only a day because her looks were too distracting for male shoppers and passersby. She next took up modeling, a job for which she was surely well suited. Yet again, she was canned for unintentionally diverting attention away from the product. So, she set her mind to becoming a teacher.
Before she could enter the classroom, where she no doubt would have been a distraction if the New Britain Herald had anything to say about it, she got her big break. The local Elks of Essex organization was holding a beauty pageant, and the winner would have the chance to compete to become Miss Massachusetts. Todd’s friends begged her to enter, but she refused, agreeing only to attend the event.
The big day arrived, the contestants took the stage and the Elks judges found themselves in a bind: the showing that year was lackluster; there were no women who shone.
But Todd saved them from having to compromise their high standards when she “rushed from the group with which she had entered and climbed upon the stage… She stood there for a moment, her face faintly flushed from the exertion, her golden curls slightly deranged, her lips parted showing her smoothly pearl-like teeth as she smiled back at the audience. The judges glanced at each other and in a chorus they gave the title of ‘Miss Essex County’ and the beautiful loving cup to ‘The Unknown Beauty.’”
She would go on to win Miss Massachusetts and the attention of a Paramount scout, though it should be noted that other less enthusiastic sources say it was her mother who pressured her into the pageant life.
At first, Todd didn’t distinguish herself as a member of the Paramount Junior Stars, a training program for up-and-coming actors that Paramount had just launched. “Whether through shyness or inexperience, she was rather consistently overshadowed by the other girls in press coverage, and it would be several years before she came into full flower on the screen,” J.B. Kaufman wrote in a 1990 issue of Film History.
But she was resilient. She played the minor roles she was given, and slowly began to distinguish herself. She hung on when the class was whittled from 16 to 6 and then began to carve out a niche for herself in comedies. She would go on to star alongside leading men like the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton.
By the fall of 1934, Todd’s star was high in the Hollywood firmament. Not only was she a famous actress, but she had recently opened “Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe,” a popular Malibu haunt for the Golden Age glitterati. The restaurant was a joint effort between Todd and her lover, the director Roland West, with additional financial investment from West’s ex-wife.
Matters were further complicated by the building’s layout: well-coiffed patrons wined and dined in the bottom floor restaurant, while upstairs Todd and West lived in adjoining living quarters; his ex-wife toggled between the restaurant apartment and a nearby house owned by her ex.
By this time, Todd had already developed a wild reputation. She had allegedly been involved in so many car accidents that her studio required her to use a driver. She had also just finalized a messy divorce from Pat DiCicco, a split she instigated on the grounds of “extreme cruelty,” a charge born out by her trip to the hospital after he assaulted her one night. (His second wife, a 17-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt, would second these charges of abuse.)
But despite her often turbulent life, the 30-year-old Todd seemed to be in good spirits as the 1935 holidays approached. She had just undergone a harrowing extortion ordeal, but the two men responsible had recently been arrested in New York. So, one can imagine that she was in the mood to celebrate when a party was thrown in her honor at Cafe Trocadero on Dec. 14.
Todd was still in an on-again-off-again relationship with West, though it is believed that she was excited about a new man she had recently begun seeing. While it’s unclear whether West knew of this romantic rival (he exclaimed, “She wouldn’t—she couldn’t! Why—we were partners,” in front of the grand jury), he was still trying to exert his control over the star.
The night of the party, he told Todd to be home by 2 a.m. At 1:50 a.m., she asked a fellow partygoer to call West and let him know she was on her way. But then she broke curfew and continued celebrating for another hour or so. During the Grand Jury inquiry, West revealed that when Todd was late getting home, he bolted the door to her upstairs apartment, locking her out of her own house.
Todd’s chauffeur said she was a bit subdued when he dropped her off sometime between 3 and 4:15 a.m. that night. She was never seen alive again.
Over 24 hours later on the morning of Monday, Dec. 16, Todd’s maid, Mae Whitehead, went to retrieve the star’s car from West’s nearby house. When she opened the garage, she found Todd slumped over dead inside.
The coroner quickly ruled it death by carbon monoxide poisoning, a verdict backed by the grand jury and blood work that showed lethal levels in her blood. The coroner said he couldn’t determine whether the death was accidental or deliberate.
But that was far from the only question. There were several glaring holes in the story that the man conveniently overlooked. If she had retreated to the warmth of the nearby garage after finding herself locked out of her apartment the night of the party (a theory West first introduced), why did the contents of her stomach not reflect the food that she was last known to eat at the party? Also, if she was responsible for her exposure to the carbon monoxide, why did she also have two cracked ribs and a broken nose?
More glaringly, why did a close friend swear that she had spoken with Todd over the phone the very next day? While no one had seen Todd since the Saturday night party, her friend Mrs. Wallace Ford said she was “positive, beyond all question” that she had spoken to the actress on Sunday afternoon to invite her to a gathering that same evening.
Ford recounted that Todd agreed to come, asked if she could bring a surprise guest, and said, “Oh, and another thing—I went to a party last night and I’m still in evening clothes. Do you mind?” Ford told her to wear whatever she wanted, but to come as soon as she could. Todd never showed.
There were also plenty of people in Todd’s life who had motive. Could it have been the ex-husband who was disgraced by the divorce (a man who would later discover he had been left a single dollar in Todd’s will)? Or how about her domineering mother who knew that she was the beneficiary of her famous daughter’s will and who was quick to agree that carbon monoxide poisoning was the culprit?
Then, of course, there was the sticky situation with the cafe. West was a jealous and controlling lover who may have discovered that Todd had eyes for someone else. His ex-wife was also a suspect, but for different reasons than one Hollywood may have chosen. While Jewel Carmen allegedly didn’t care about the couple’s involvement, she was upset by the poor business management of the cafe, which was having some financial trouble. Then, of course, there is the mob.
Todd had some dealings with Lucky Luciano in her life, and some alleged that the death might have been a mob hit in retaliation for Todd turning down Luciano’s request to open a casino in part of her restaurant.
Unlike a Hollywood whodunit, there is no glittering bow with which to tie up the possible murder of Thelma Todd. While most evidence points to her death being much more complicated than the official ruling, there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue any additional charges. The case remains closed, though many to this day still wonder: what actually happened to America’s favorite 1930s bombshell, the Ice Cream Blonde?
