Thelma Todd: October 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween

From Bela Lugosi,

Clara Bow's onetime boyfriend, at the premiere of HOUSE OF WAX, circa 1953.

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Thursday, October 30, 2014

The characters of Superman and Lois Lane were at least partly influenced by stars of classic movies and Lois Lane is said to have been named after Lola Lane. Lola Lane married Roland West, inherited the Sidewalk Café from him, and gave it to the Paulists, who still own it today.

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Happy Halloween

From Betty Boop!

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Thelma Todd First National Publicity Photo

This photograph dates from the late 1920's.

ITEM: You are bidding on a 1920s original large format and erotically charged photograph of Hal Roach comedianne Thelma Todd, a soft focus and dramatic close up view by Harold Dean Carsey. Carsey was a master at these teasing views, which elude to the sitters irrepressable sensuality without crossing the line into actual nudity. Todd, here described on verso as a featured player for First National Pictures, is one of the most notorious Boulevard of Broken Dreams figures of the 1920s, and these vintage large format views of her are quite scarce. This is a beautiful and very early example with inkstamp for Carsey on verso.

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Happy Halloween

From the Three Stooges.

Happy Halloween

From Myrna Loy.

Happy Halloween

From Clara Bow.

Muriel Evans

From The Laurel And Hardy Archive on facebook

MURIEL EVANS
"Duck-hunting" gag photo
30s

Happy Halloween

From Clara Bow

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Happy Halloween

From Our Gang.

Tempters Gum Ad

From The Laurel And Hardy Archive on facebook.

Magazine advertisement forTempters Candy Coated Gum.
RKO stars that chewed Tempters: Sidney Fox, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, THELMA TODD, and Sidney Blackmer
1934

Gary Cooper And Thelma Todd In NEVADA

Gary Cooper and Thelma Todd on location during the production of NEVADA in 1927.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Soft Focus Publicity Photo

A photo from the earlier part of Thelma Todd's career at the Roach studio.

William Powell And Thelma Todd In NEVADA

William Powell and Thelma Todd in NEVADA, a silent movie which came early in their careers.

"The Boy Friends" Publicity Photo

From The Laurel and Hardy Archive on facebook,

DOROTHY GRANGER, GERTIE MESSINGER and MARY KORNMAN
HAL ROACH STUDIOS publicity photo
1930

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Kcet.org Blog

I saw something else about Thelma Todd and the Sidewalk Café at http://www.kcet.org/living/food/the-nosh/thelma-todds-tragedy-the-forgotten-life-of-the-original-celebrity-restaurateur.html

This one was hard to read, because they obscured the view with something that invited you to subscribe for fifty dollars. My advice would be to buy Donati's book instead, because that was probably where they got their information from anyway.

The story about Thelma Todd drinking three fingers of rye whiskey comes from Rudy Schafer ( he told it to me, I repeated it afterwards.) But that blog said something about Thelma Todd ordering "another round", which sounds as if she kept ordering more, and this was not in the original story.

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Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin has a blog, here's a little something he put on it recently.

Reblogged from http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/thelma-todds-cafe-can-now-be-yours-20141023?fb_action_ids=883303195047059&fb_action_types=og.shares

I always find it surreal to drive on Pacific Coast Highway and pass the attractive building that once housed Thelma Todd’s Café. It looks just the same as it does in postcards from the 1930s. For years it has been home to Paulist Productions, the company that produced Father “Bud” Kieser’s Insight television show. Now it’s up for sale, the price just shy of eight million dollars.

If Thelma Todd is remembered at all—except by diehard movie buffs—it’s because her untimely death in 1935 remains on every roster of Hollywood scandals and unsolved mysteries. I prefer to remember her as one of movies’ most delightful comediennes. The blonde beauty was a mainstay at the Hal Roach studio, where she appeared opposite Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, and other leading lights, and starred in her own short subject series with ZaSu Pitts and Patsy Kelly. Feature filmmakers generally typecast her as a vamp or femme fatale (she plays Miles Archer’s widow in the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon), but she also worked with all the comedy headliners of the 1930s: the Marx Brothers (in Monkey Business and Horse Feathers), Wheeler and Woolsey, and Joe E. Brown, to name just a few.
Having grown up on the “other” coast, I never dreamed I would wind up in Los Angeles, where one is surrounded by touchstones of Hollywood history. When I learned that an alleyway I passed every day on Cahuenga Boulevard was the spot where Buster Keaton ran from a horde of policemen in his silent comedy Cops, I had to pinch myself. I feel the same way about Thelma Todd’s Café. But until the recent real estate listing HERE I’d never seen the interiors, which preserve its original art deco design.

Matchbook from Thelma Todd's Inn

If I had eight million dollars to spare, I’d buy the place in a heartbeat. First and foremost, it’s beautiful, with an overhead walkway to the beach and a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean. It would connect me to an era I care about a lot…and one of its shining stars. Some people might find that creepy, since Thelma died in the garage of her home, which was perched above the restaurant, but I refuse to dwell on her death. She was radiant onscreen and much-loved by her friends and coworkers; that’s the Thelma Todd I conjure up in my mind, and it makes me smile.

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OK. But - I remember someone who said other people shouldn't focus on the death of Thelma Todd, and then that was all he'd ever talked about. Maybe some people need to practice what they preach.

- Benny Drinnon

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