Edmund Reid

The Ice Cream Blonde: The Whirlwind Life and
Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd
Michelle Morgan
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press, 2016
ISBN 978-1-61373-038-6
hardcover; 264pp; illus; notes; biblio; index.
£17.76 hardback/£16.68 ebook
The beautiful young woman was dead. She’d turned on the engine of her car, maybe to use the heater
or maybe just to warm the vehicle prior to driving somewhere, but she’d she’d fallen asleep, and in
the almost airtight garage she had been overcome by the exhaust fumes. She was known by a couple
of nicknames, the Ice Cream Blonde and Hot Toddy. Her name was Thelma Todd. She was a movie star.
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Thelma Todd was an intelligent woman destined to become a
housewife and a teacher, but her mother encouraged her to enter beauty pageants and after winning the Miss Massachusetts
title, she was recognised by a Hollywood talent scout and quickly became a star. A distinguished comedienne, she made
roughly 120 movies between her first, Fascinating Youth, in 1926 and her last, The Bohemian Girl with Laurel and Hardy,
in 1935. They were mostly shorts, but she was one of the lucky silent screen actresses to successfully make the transition
to talkies.
Away from the screen, Todd displayed an appalling choice in men, but a good business sense, running a successful
restaurant, the Sidewalk Cafe, which she co-owned with Roland West and his ex-wife.
The morning of Monday, 16 December 1935, Thelma Todd was found slumped in her Lincoln convertible inside the
garage of Jewel Carmen, the former wife of Todd’s lover and business partner, Roland West. She was dead from carbon
monoxide poisoning, apparently a suicide. On Saturday night, 14 December, she had had an unpleasant exchange with
her ex-husband, Pat DiCicco, at a party at the Trocadero, but had left the party in good spirits. LAPD detectives
concluded that Todd’s death was accidental, a Coroner’s Inquest jury decided the same, as did a grand jury, but there
was no motive for suicide and no suicide note, and speculation that Todd was murdered, either by Roland West or by
gangsters has continued. In her book Hot Toddy (1991), Andy Edmonds suggesting that the hit was ordered by mobster
Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who wanted to open an illegal casino on one of the Cafe’s floors, possibly with the intention of
luring studio bosses into getting huge gambling debts which would give Luciano a way of taking over the studios.
Other commentators have questioned
the factual accuracy of Andy Edmonds’
book, claiming in particular that there is no
evidence that Luciano had any involvement in
Todd’s death. Most notable of these is William
Donati’s The Life and Death of Thelma Todd
(2012). Unfortunately, it was published by
McFarland, so it has a high price tag, putting it
beyond the reach of the interested but casual
reader, but he returned to original sources
and had access to previously unseen material,
footnoting his sources, and eschewing
fabricated dialogue. Donati had previously
written Lucky Luciano: The Rise and Fall of
a Mob Boss and he dissected Edmonds theory
with surgical skill.
Michelle Morgan, who authored the
Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals and
has otherwise written about Monroe and
Madonna, tells the story of Todd’s life and
recounts the circumstances leading up to her death. she discounts any involvement with Luciano, either romantically or
in business, but she does home in on Anthony Cornero Stralla, a booze-runner supplying alcohol imported from Canada
to the thirsty Prohibition club and restaurant goers of Los Angeles. However, Morgan doesn’t come down on any sides,
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