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Published on: 10/8/2009
Last Visited: 10/8/2009
Mike Todd
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Mike Todd
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Mike Todd at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island, 1952.
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Michael Todd (June 22, 1907, - 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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Todd was born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Chaim Goldbogen (an Orthodox rabbi) and Sophia Hellerman, both Polish Jewish immigrants.
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Todd was expelled in the sixth grade for running a game of craps inside the school.
In high school, he produced the school play, The Mikado, which was considered a hit.
He eventually dropped out of high school and worked a variety of jobs including as a shoe salesman and store window decorator.
At the age of 17, Todd married Bertha Freeman on Valentine's Day 1927..
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Freeman died in 1946, and Todd remarried, to actress Joan Blondell July 5, 1947.
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The bag containing what was left of Mike Todd was found under a tree near his plot.
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 1933-1934 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 operetta 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 30 Broadway shows during his career.
Todd's business career was volatile, and failed ventures left him bankrupt many times.
In 1945, Todd floated the idea of holding the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in newly-liberated Berlin.
Although baseball's new commissioner, Happy Chandler was reportedly "intrigued" by the idea, it was ultimately dismissed as impractical.
The game was finally cancelled due to wartime travel restrictions.
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 (who founded Capital Cities Communications) and the inventor Fred Waller.
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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.
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