Positive And Negative

Most of the old publicity photos were shot in black and white on negative film. Prints were made from the original negative. This is all pretty basic, but a copy of a positive and negative of a Thelma Todd picture turned up, so I thought I'd put them on the blog.



Here we have a positive of Thelma Todd:

 

 

 

And here we have the negative, from which the photo was made.

This looks like sheet film to me. Most of the old publicity photos used to be shot with large format cameras, which usually used sheet film.








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Thelma Todd Photos

More Thelma Todd photos.

 

 

Teenage Thelma

Beauty Contestant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

Clam Glam

 

 

 

 

 

CAREERS

 

 

 

 

 

 

HORSE FEATHERS

 

With the Marx Brothers

 

 

 

 

SITTING PRETTY

 

 

 

 

 

 

TAKE THE STAND

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky Guy

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Dorothy Appleby - Fan Magazines

A little about Dorothy Appleby from the old fan magazines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Buster Keaton and Dorothy Appleby share billing in this MGM ad, but they didn't work together in this period. Later at Columbia they were frequent costars.

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SITTING PRETTY Flyer

SITTING PRETTY was a musical starring Ginger Rogers right before she started working with Fred
Astaire and became a big star. Thelma Todd was the "Other Woman" again.

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NAUGHTY BABY Flyer

The movie NAUGHTY BABY starred Alice White, but Thelma Todd was one of her costars.

 

The "It" business was more usually associated with Clara Bow, but Alice White was supposed to be like another Clara Bow.

 

 

 

Thelma Todd's name is on the cast list, but there aren't any pictures of her, just Alice White.







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LOOK OUT BELOW

LOOK OUT BELOW was released on August 18, 1929. It was the only Jack White comedy that Thelma Todd appeared in.

The story has Raymond McKee and Thelma Todd as two people who are married ( not to each other ) who go out together to make their spouses jealous. When their spouses do show up, Thelma insists that they are "serious" in order to make the situation more serious in order that comedy might ensue, resulting in a ruckus in which waiter Monte Collin's dishes are disarrayed and Raymond McKee goes out the window to engage in some Harold Lloyd - style antics on a skyscraper that is being constructed next door to the restaurant. Raymond McKee is wearing glasses to make it that much more Harold Lloydesque as he and his pals clamber about on the girders and suffer a number of indignities.

 
I found a couple of pictures from this film at http://www.silentcomedymafia.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=98 , one of which has Thelma Todd in it.

Robert Graves as Thelma Todd's husband

Robert Graves and Thelma Todd

Here are a few photos of other cast members, but not from this movie.


This photo shows Raymond McKee wearing glasses.

 

 

 

 

Raymond McKee was famous for starring the "Smith Family" series for Mack Sennett. Here we see him with costars Ruth Hiatt and Mary Ann Jackson.

 

Mary Ann Jackson was later one of the "Our Gang" kids.

                                                                     Monte Collins

 

From THE WOMAN HATERS CLUB, the first Three Stooges short at Columbia. Monte Collins appeared in a number of Three Stooge comedies as well as working with Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd and many others. He was credited as a writer on the last Laurel and Hardy movie, ATOLL K.

Although the site where I watched this film had an "embed" feature, it didn't work when I tried to embed it in this blog. So you'll have to click on the link below to watch this film.


Watch LOOK OUT BELOW:
http://silentbeauties.blogspot.com/2012/06/look-out-below-1929.html



Monte Collins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Collins

Robert Graves:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0336344/

Raymond McKee:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0571205/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm#trivia

http://travsd.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/stars-of-slapstick-33-raymond-mckee/

http://immortalephemera.com/20096/marguerite-courtot-biography/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_McKee

Jack White:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_White_(film_producer)


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Thelma Todd At Educational

Educational Pictures was advertised as "The Spice Of The Program". They were called "Educational" because they started out making educational films before switching to comedy films. Their logo represented Aladin's magic lamp out of the Arabian Nights.

 

 

 

A later version for the talkies.

Jack White* was actually one of the more important producers of comedy short subjects in the twenties. In 1929 Thelma Todd appeared in one of his comedies, LOOK OUT BELOW.


An ad for LOOK OUT BELOW from MOTION PICTURE.

Monte Collins appeared in many comedies in that period and worked with the Three Stooges as well as Buster Keaton at Columbia.




An ad for Educational Pictures lists Thelma Todd along with Mack Sennett, Anita Garvin, Phyllis Crane, and many others.

But after LOOK OUT BELOW, she never made another picture for them. The Hal Roach studio was becoming the leader of the short subjects field, and Thelma Todd did most of her work in short subjects there.




An ad for Educational pictures a little later in the decade features Buster Keaton,

who went to work for them after having been fired by MGM.



 Educational had seen better days prior to the thirties, and would be gone before the end of the decade, a victim of financial problems that affected the entire industry.



*Jack White was the brother of Jules White, and would later work for him at Columbia under the stage name of "Preston Black".


E.W. Hammons:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0358817/

LOOK OUT BELOW:
http://www.divshare.com/download/18232533-217

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349744/


Jack White:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_White_(film_producer)


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Roach Publicity Flyer From 1934

A flyer advertising Hal Roach comedies from 1934, which was Roach's twentieth anniversary in the movie business. This was in the period when Thelma Todd was teamed with Patsy Kelly, and they are shown together on the flyer, along with Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, and the Our Gang kids.

"More In The Attic" was the ebay name of a seller and does not appear on the original.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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SPEAK EASILY Flyer

A flyer for SPEAK EASILY


MGM didn't seem to know what to do with Buster Keaton, so they tried costarring him with Jimmy Durante. It didn't help.

 

 

 

Thelma Todd at left. 

 

 

She received a lot of publicity for her part in this film, which was a success in spite of the fact that Keaton's career was in a decline.












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Thelma Todd's Family's Cabin

Michael Williams is the owner of a cabin that used to belong to the family of Thelma Todd, this cabin was mentioned in Donati's book. Michael also has a scrapbook that was left in the cabin with pictures of some of Thelma Todd's relatives. Here are some of the pages and pictures from the scrapbook, along with some of his comments.



Reblogged from the Thelma Todd Club at groups.yahoo.com/group/thelmatoddclub/


"Todd Family Cabin As It Once Was
When Phil Fluet visited us he gave us some pics of the cottage before he remodeled it. So that is what it looked like when Thelma was here. The green building was a two seater outhouse. We do have modern indoor plumbing today . The outhouse is long gone.Best wishes Michael Williams"

 

 

 

 

Relatives

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Williams: Another pic from the lake house book. Looks like a family pic of Thelma's aunts and uncles The old woman seated in the middle is Thelma's grandmother Eliza. The little girl being held is Shirley Raymond. This must be somewhere in the late 20s

 

 

 

 

Shirley Raymond

 

 

 

 

 

Shirley Raymond in the canoe

 

 

 

 

 

 Signature of Mrs. Alice Todd, who was Thelma Todd's mother.

 

 

 

 

Another signature of Mrs. Alice Todd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shirley Raymond and her Todd cousins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The pic on the right is dated 1939 and it is of Shirley Raymond at age 16 doing something on the boat dock with Frieda Todd. Now the two pics on the left have to be much earlier cause I recognize Shirley in the center, she looks to be about 10. That would date the pics around 1933. The girl on the far right is of Edna Todd she and her brother Bill are the ones that helped Bill Donati with his book. He dedicated his book to them. The little blonde girl on the far left is of Thelma Todd the second"

 

 

 

 

A closer view of two of the pictures above.

 

 

 

 

 

Signature of  Thelma Todd's "niece" ( actually a cousin ) Thelma Todd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newspaper article about Donati's book. 

 

And finally, here is a picture of the "other" Thelma Todd that was published in a Lawrence newspaper in 1935.

 

 

 

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