THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THELMA TODD BY WILLIAM DONATI

Book Description
ISBN-10: 0786465182 | ISBN-13: 978-0786465187 | Publication Date: January 5,
2012
American film favorite Thelma Todd was much more than the beautiful blonde of
the 1930s who played opposite Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and the Marx
Brothers. Todd's tragic death transformed her into an icon of Hollywood mystery:
The photograph of the 29-year-old actress slumped in her luxurious Lincoln
Phaeton shocked fans in 1935. How did she die? Was it murder, suicide, or an
accident? This definitive biography covers a fascinating era in Hollywood
history. In the course of his exhaustive research, the author interviewed Todd's
cousins Bill and Edna Todd, as well as such friends and coworkers as Ida Lupino,
Lina Basquette, Anita Garvin, Dorothy Granger, William Bakewell and Greg
Blackton. Also examined is Hollywood's first major sex scandal of 1913,
involving Jewel Carmen, the future spouse of director Roland West--the man
Thelma Todd loved.


You can preview this book online at Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Life_and_Death_of_Thelma_Todd.html?id=LQsB66qPGmgC

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THELMA TODD

New Book For Thelma Todd

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THELMA TODD by William Donati is a new book from a respected author. I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements as having provided information that Rudy Schafer sent me, his
father used to be the manager of Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe. It's too bad he
didn't live to see this book come out, he would have liked it.

Donati says that the historical record shows that Luciano didn't go out to the
Los Angeles area as some other accounts have said. The story that he goes by is
that the death of Thelma Todd must have been an accident. I wouldn't know for
sure myself, as I've said before when there was an argument on this
subject, I'm not an expert and am not really qualified to decide the issue.
Since it has never really been settled for certain, we don't really know. But I
am certain that this new book will be of interest to the fans. - the living
Thelma fan