Mike Todd
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Michael Todd (June 22, 1907 or 19091–March 22, 1958) was an American film producer best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture.
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 shcool 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 remarried to 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 in Grants, New Mexico. The plane—a Lockheed Lodestar—was downed by fog, snow and thunderstorms, and the crash killed all four on board. Todd is buried in Chicago at Beth Aaron Cemetery, #66.
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 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 the 1950s, Mike Todd founded a film company called Cinerama, which intended to make films for projection on screens as wide as the human field of vision. Cinerama debuted to the public on September 1952, with the film This is Cinerama. The Cinerama company soon made a deal with American Optical Company which led to the creation of the Todd-AO process. This process was first used commercially for the sucessful 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 and raised Todd to the top of the movie business. Todd followed up with another Todd-AO process movie, South Pacific in 1957. The same year, his newly created technology earned him an Academy Award.
References
- ISBN 0304362263 (?)
- ISBN 0195162552 (?)
- Walker, Alexander. Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor. Grove Press, 2001. ISBN 0802137695
Footnote
1. Sources cite either 1907 or 1909.
| Preceded by: Michael Wilding | Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor | Followed by: Eddie Fisher |
External links
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