Mike Todd
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Michael Todd (June 22, 1907 or 19091–March 22, 1958) was an American theatre and film producer best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture.
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[edit] Life
Todd was born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Chaim Goldbogen (an Orthodox rabbi) and Sophia Hellerman, both Polish Jewish immigrants. Todd was one of nine children in a poor family, and his siblings gave him surname "Toat" to mimick his difficulty pronouncing the word "coat."
Early on, Mike Todd did not take well to school. After his family moved to Chicago, he was expelled from his sixth grade class for running a game of craps inside the school. In high school, Todd put up a production of The Mikado for the school play, which proved to be a hit. However, he later dropped out of high school to work as a pharmacist, shoe salesman, and store window decorator.
On Valentine's Day 1927, at the age of 17, Todd married Bertha Freshman. In 1929, she bore him a son Mike Todd, Jr. Freshman died in 1946, and on 5 July 1947 Todd married actress Joan Blondell. They subsequently divorced on 8 June 1950, when she alleged that he abused and extorted her. He went on to marry actress Elizabeth Taylor on 2 February 1957, and they had a daughter Elizabeth Frances (Liza) Todd on 5 August of that year.
On 22 March 1958, Todd's private plane Lucky Liz crashed near Grants, New Mexico. The plane—a Lockheed Lodestar—was downed by engine failure while being operated grossly overweight at the limit of its altitude capability, and the crash killed all four on board. Todd is buried in Chicago at Beth Aaron Cemetery, #66.
[edit] Work
Todd began his career in the construction business, where he made, and subsequently lost, a fortune. He later served as a contractor to Hollywood studios, and during the 1933–34 Century of Progress Exposition he produced the attraction called "the Flame Dance." (In this spectacular number, gas jets were designed to burn part of a dancer's costume off, leaving her naked in appearance.) Later, he formed a company and toured with a production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettaThe Mikado, his high school favorite. When this tour closed, he revamped the show as the jazzier The Hot Mikado, which ran at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Todd went on to produce thirty Broadway shows during his career.
Todd's business career was volatile, and failed ventures left him bankrupt many times.
In 1952, Todd produced an extravagant production of the Johann Strauss II operetta, "A Night In Venice," complete with floating gondolas at the newly constructed Jones Beach Theatre in Long Island, New York. It ran for two seasons.
In 1950, Mike Todd formed The Cinerama Company with the broadcaster Lowell Thomas and the inventor Fred Wallis. The company was created to exploit Cinerama,a film process created by Wallis which used three film projectors to create a giant composite image on a curved screen. The first Cinerama feature was 'This is Cinerama, which was released on September 1952.
Soon after its release, Todd left the Cinerama Company to develop a new widescreen process which would eliminate some of Cinerama's flaws. The result was the Todd-AO process, designed by the American Optical Company. The process was first used commercially for the successful 1955 film adaptation of Oklahoma!. Todd later produced the film for which he is most famous, Michael Todd's Around the World in 80 Days, which debuted in cinemas on October 17, 1956. Costing only $6 million to produce, the movie earned $16 million at the box office. In 1957 Around the World in 80 Days won a Best Picture Academy Award.
[edit] References
- ISBN 0-304-36226-3 (?)
- ISBN 0-19-516255-2 (?)
- Walker, Alexander. Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor. Grove Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8021-3769-5
[edit] Footnote
1. Sources cite either 1907 or 1909.
| Preceded by Michael Wilding |
Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor |
Succeeded by Eddie Fisher |
