How to Be a Movie Star (28 page)

And he wanted television cameras in attendance at all times. The new medium would be put to work for him. By early 1957 he was already planning a major spectacle celebrating the one-year anniversary of
Around the World
that would be broadcast live on CBS. "By the time most movies are a year old," said Mike Todd Jr., "they have practically completed their theatrical distribution, but we were just starting." The film made money for a solid eighteen months.

Todd had the instincts of an entrepreneur even as a kid. Born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen in Minneapolis in 1907, he was one of nine children of Jewish Polish immigrants. His father, a rabbi, took odd jobs to support his family, but some weeks young Avrom made more money than his father by selling discarded umbrellas and hats on the street. Later the Goldbogens moved to Chicago, where Avrom—called "Toat" by his siblings, hence the eventual "Todd"—was expelled from the sixth grade for running a game of craps. Eventually he gave up on school altogether. He took jobs selling shoes and laying bricks, which led to construction work, which led to a fortune before he was nineteen. But the following year, after gambling and bad investments, he'd lost it all.

While still a teenager, he'd married Bertha Freshman, and had a son to support. So he headed to Hollywood after landing a lucrative deal soundproofing stages for early "talkie" films. Encouraged by his success, Todd hung out his shingle as a general contractor. But the deepening Depression meant that jobs were scarce, and it wasn't long before he returned to Chicago, penniless once more.

At the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, the year Elizabeth Taylor turned one, Todd found his true calling. "Mike was born to be a showman," said Miles White. "He could have done anything he set his mind to, but it was show business where he flourished." That was for sure. At the World's Fair, barkers announced Mike Todd's flame dancer, a pretty girl in a gauzy costume that got burned off nightly, leaving her naked. Or at least she
appeared
to be naked, since the flesh-colored asbestos bodysuit wasn't visible to the audience. The act, no surprise, was a huge hit. "I burned up four girls before I got it right," Todd told reporters. Right from the start he gave good copy.

New York was the next logical step, and no city has ever fit a man so well as this one fit Mike Todd. "He was big like New York was big," Miles White said. "He was over the top the way New York can be over the top." His first two shows tanked, but he came back with
The Hot Mikado
in 1939, a jazz version of Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Mikado
with an African-American cast. Over the next twelve years Todd produced thirty shows, including
Hamlet
with Maurice Evans and
Catherine Was Great
with Mae West.

His success was due less to the productions (some were excruciatingly bad) and more to the outlandish marketing of publicity wizard Bill Doll, who would serve as press agent for nearly all of Todd's shows. A hard-drinking go-getter from West Virginia, Doll "could charm a gorilla," one colleague said. Or at least a bear: To draw attention to the visiting Moscow Circus, Doll checked one of their grizzlies into a Manhattan hotel.

It wasn't just Todd that Doll promoted. He also hyped Silly Putty and Louis Armstrong and the New York World's Fair. But it was Mike Todd's shows that really let the publicity man shine—literally. It was Doll who came up with one of Times Square's first animated signs, a thirty-second repeating lightbulb display of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, star of
The Hot Mikado,
in his famous stair case tap dance. Doll kept Todd's name in the papers with a very simple scheme. He convinced the
New York Times
that he was a legitimate entertainment reporter, thereby securing several articles about Todd under his own byline.

Mike learned a great deal from Bill Doll. Rather than let negative advance press for his show
The Naked Genius
wreck the box office, Todd used it to his advantage, printing posters that proclaimed guaranteed
not
to win the pulitzer prize. Telling stories on himself enhanced rather than hurt his reputation. He loved informing reporters that his second show,
Call Me Ziggy,
had been such a flop that it was the only production on record to close during the second act of its first performance. That the story wasn't true—
Ziggy
actually ran for three full performances—didn't matter; what counted was the way Todd told it. For him, a play wasn't just a play, it was a show, and he wasn't just a producer, he was a showman. When he staged an extravagant production of the Strauss operetta
A Night in Venice,
Todd brought floating gondolas to the newly constructed Jones Beach Marine Theater on Long Island.
That
was how you put on a show.

For all his bottom-line business pizzazz, however, Todd wasn't heartless. When he had to close his underperforming show
January Thaw
in 1946, he penned a heartfelt note to his cast and crew. They had all been excellent, he wrote, "so it must be the producer at fault. I honestly hope I haven't let you down too much."

"He cared about his people and his productions," said Miles White. "He just overshot the mark a few times." Like when he bought the Del Mar Turf Club in 1946. A year later he had to sell the horseracing track near San Diego when his gambling losses necessitated a declaration of bankruptcy. "I lost a whole racetrack," he'd quip to the press with typical insouciance.

Federal investigators weren't so nonchalant—not with Todd's liabilities of more than one million dollars and the 116 creditors left with nothing. In December 1950 the FBI opened an investigation into whether Todd had concealed assets of $200,000 in loans and gambling wins. Stymied by "the fact that few books and records are available reflecting the true financial condition of Michael Todd," they amassed only circumstantial evidence, such as Damon Runyon's observation that Todd was the "greatest natural gambler he ever knew" and anecdotes of Todd winning and losing as much as $100,000 in a single day. None of that could be taken to court. Accordingly, David Carton, assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, declined any prosecution of Mike Todd nine months later. "No specific assets or bank deposits were shown to have been concealed by the bankrupt," he wrote to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, "nor is there any evidence to indicate that he has retained any of the proceeds of any loans."

Todd, meanwhile, had moved on to other things. His wife had died, and he'd married (and divorced) the actress Joan Blondell. He was restless. He'd conquered Broadway; now he looked westward to Hollywood. With the broadcaster Lowell Thomas and the inventor Fred Waller, he founded the Cinerama company, where they developed a process by which three film projectors cast a giant composite image on a curved screen. The three toiled in secret for over a year; Todd would later boast that it was the first time in his life "he'd kept his mouth shut."
This Is Cinerama,
a two-hour travelogue narrated by Thomas, was released in 1952. Despite only playing seventeen specially equipped theaters worldwide, it became the third-largest-grossing film of its time. In Hollywood the filming of the roller coaster scene had been a grand event. Even Lillian and Dorothy Gish showed up to watch. Todd figured that since they had been present for the dawn of one cinematic revolution, why not invite them to witness the birth of another?

But to really capitalize on the new technology, Todd needed a format that could play in every theater in America, not just a specialized few. He left Cinerama to develop a wide-screen process with the American Optical Company, called, appropriately enough, Todd-AO. Rights to the first film using the process,
Oklahoma!,
were given over to Rodgers and Hammerstein. But Todd wanted his own gigantic spectacle. And so:
Around the World in
Eighty Days.
It may have been officially directed by John Farrow and (after Todd fired Farrow) Michael Anderson, but Todd was always there, looking over his director's shoulder. Remarkably, the film cost just $6 million to produce. It earned back nearly quadruple that amount.

Established Hollywood both loved and hated Mike Todd. The twin emotions of gratitude and envy were consuming an industry in decline. Buddy Adler, head of Fox, hailed Todd for bringing back "showmanship and excitement to the movie business," but Hedda Hopper recognized the resentment that many filmmakers had for this newcomer, who enjoyed grosses of the kind they hadn't seen in years. Writing to congratulate Todd on his "standing room only" business, Hopper added, "You must know that most people in Hollywood are so jealous of you they could cut your throat."

Todd just laughed. Let them try. He felt invulnerable. Finally, after years of living on credit, he was rolling in some cold hard cash, though he often spent it as soon as it came in. Jensen remembered the telegrams that arrived daily from the theaters showing
Around the World.
They'd be in code, so the press couldn't read them before Todd did. The telegrams revealed the previous day's grosses, which Todd kept track of on huge charts, obsessively comparing them to
Gone With the Wind.
He was determined that he, Avrom Goldbogen, would be the biggest box-office champ of all time.

For the moment, however, he had to settle for Best Picture of the Year. On March 27, 1957,
Around the World in Eighty Days
was named the winner at the annual Academy Awards ceremony, beating out, among others, DeMille's
Ten Commandments
and a certain film by George Stevens called
Giant.
When his name was called, Todd leaped out of his seat and was halfway up the aisle before he doubled back to kiss his wife.

It was an unintentional oversight. Elizabeth had given him Hollywood bona fides in a way that Joan Blondell, a faded star from the 1930s, never could. It makes sense that, after getting a good look at her on the MGM lot, Todd nudged Kevin McClory aside and took Elizabeth for himself. For the Hollywood em pire he dreamed of building, there could be no more fitting consort—providing that they could keep any more episodes like the one at Heathrow from leaking to the public.

At the Forty-eighth Street pier in New York, newspapermen tripped over themselves as they scrambled up the gangplank, juggling cameras and notebooks. At the top, Mike Todd waited, his beady eyes watching them like a hawk. Bill Doll had cabled that Mr. and Mrs. Todd would be willing to pose for some pictures on their return to America.

Clapping the reporters on their backs and remembering all of their names, Mike led them to his cabin, calling inside to see if Elizabeth was ready. He'd instructed her not to keep them waiting, and she didn't. Wearing a light-colored maternity dress and a plumed hat, the beautiful star stepped forward and cameras immediately began snapping. The reporters noted that Todd kept his gaze fondly locked on his wife. Instantly, all rumors of tension in their marriage were dispelled. Kissing his wife's hand grandly, the showman told the newshounds, "This is for us, not for you." He insisted that he and Elizabeth were deliriously happy—and "not Hollywood happy either."

Mrs. Todd added a few words of her own about being happy, but mostly it was Mike who orchestrated the press conference, boasting about his wonderful wife and his soon-to-be-born baby and his upcoming production of
Don Quixote,
for which he was planning on "renting Spain." Reporters scribbled into their notebooks in a vain attempt to follow Todd's rapid staccato speech. Even the best shorthand had a hard time keeping up with Mike Todd.

Friends said that listening to Todd was like being assaulted by machine-gun fire. He talked fast, he walked fast, his hands were constantly in motion. It was impossible for him to walk by a telephone without picking it up to call someone. Before meeting Elizabeth, he'd smoked fifteen big cigars a day. Conference rooms were quickly filled with thick blue smoke after Mike Todd walked in. But when a doctor told him that he'd developed a precancerous condition inside his mouth called leukoplakia, Todd wrapped up all his high-priced cigars and gave them away. He never smoked again.

He wasn't tall but he was thickset, with a strong jaw and small, flashing, deep-set eyes—sexy in his self-confidence if not in his appearance. A study of incongruities, he drank expensive champagne with his corned beef sandwiches at Sardi's. When he'd inspect his custom-made shirts from London, he'd often hack off their tails with a pair of desk scissors because they were "too damn long." Mike Todd liked things his way, and no one was going to tell him otherwise.

"Dad's attitude was you don't ask a policeman if you can spit in a subway train," said Mike Todd Jr. "If you gotta spit, you spit, but you don't ask if you're allowed to."

Mike Todd never played by the rules. When he was filming
Around the World
in Paris, he plastered no parking signs over an entire block so that he could empty the street without the messiness of involving the authorities. For decades he never had a driver's license and instructed his wives and employees that if they were ever pulled over by a policeman, they were to take the rap for him for "forgetting" to pack his license. Given the way Todd drove, they were pulled over quite often. And never once did he get a ticket.

By 1957 everyone from cops to columnists was eating out of Mike Todd's hand. Part of that was due to the state-of-the-art team behind him, one that made the Metro publicity department seem very old-fashioned. Telephones rang simultaneously in Todd's offices at the United Artists Building at Forty-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue and at his homes in Manhattan, Connecticut, and Beverly Hills, making Todd, even when he was away, "very much a part of the office operation," according to Glenda Jensen. Elizabeth loved to visit the office and marvel at her husband's routine. "He'd have ten different ideas going on at once," she said. "He'd have two telephones in his hands, a different conversation going on over each phone, plus a Dictaphone going." The staff was similarly linked by home-office phones. "There was a lot of coming and going by the employees and very few had desks," Jensen said. "They just checked in regularly"—a 1950s version of telecommuting.