TODD CIRCUMSTANCES

Early deaths usually leave unanswered questions.

Above are two of the more famous death scene photos from Hollywood’s golden era, showing film star Thelma Todd inside her luxury convertible, where she was found today in 1935. She was only twenty-nine. Her car was parked in the garage of her friend Jewel Carmen, who was the estranged wife of Roland West, who was a friend, business partner, and paramour. Todd and West had opened, on the Pacific Coast Highway in the northwestern suburbs of Los Angeles between Santa Monica and Malibu, a hotspot known as Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café. The place was a smash success. Some websites claim it was a speakeasy, but it actually opened in 1934, after the repeal of Prohibition.

Todd was extravagantly famous at the time she died. She had the nicknames, “The Ice Cream Blonde” and “Hot Toddy,” and had accumulated more than one hundred film credits, including roles supporting the Marx Brothers, Charley Chase, Laurel and Hardy, and Zazu Pitts. The LAPD ruled her death accidental, caused by carbon monoxide poisoning from warming up her car to drive or, alternatively, using the heater to stay warm. A coroner and grand jury agreed, but the cops did leave open the possibility of suicide. Others demurred, and today on some websites you’ll see Todd’s death labeled an “unsolved murder.” Well, could be. But probably not. You can read an excellent account of the event here.

We’ve had the misfortune to learn early, and have had reinforced repeatedly, that questions around premature deaths are the norm. You probably won’t have questions if you’re in the room as someone breathes their last in bed, but how often does that happen? We’ve dealt with a surprise suicide, a COVID-era death under circumstances the family still refuses to divulge, been stunned by an Asian tsunami drowning that’s a total black box, had a relative somehow go out a health clinic window, and more. Add a helping of fame and fortune to the normal unanswered questions around early deaths and you have the ingredients for many a Hollywood mystery. Todd. Murder? Could be. But probably not.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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