Mike Todd

format_quote I have always advised people never to apply for a job you do not really want.

stars  He had committed himself to provide financial backing for Laurence Olivier's most cherished project, a film of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," shortly before his fatal plane crash. But after Todd's death, the funding didn't come through and Olivier was forced to abandon the project.

stars  Todd twice went bankrupt, once when he filed for bankruptcy for over $1 million as a young man and his construction business (which specialized in soundproofing Hollywood sound-stages, among other lines of business) folded during the Great Depression, and the second time around 1950, when his huge gambling losses and massive debts linked to his lavish lifestyle overwhelmed him. He remained ensconced in a splendid Hudson Valley estate in Tarrytown, New York with his second wife Joan Blondell, living the high life and spending like a pasha, as his second bankruptcy suit wound its way through the federal court system. When creditors' objections threatened to land him in jail due to apparent fraud (Todd had destroyed evidence of his gambling debts so as not to implicate his friends), Todd withdrew the suit and agreed to pay back his creditors. Subsequently, Todd owned over three-quarters of the gross profits of Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), a spectacular that racked up over $20 million in rentals in its first release (approximately $135 million in 2005 terms), a huge sum for the time exceeded by very few films. Despite the fact that he was again rich, and richer than ever (worth about $7-8 million at the time of his death, or about $50 million in 2005 terms), many observers at the time predicted that the profligate Todd would manage to bankrupt himself a third time. He never got the chance, dying in a plane crash in 1958. His widow, Elizabeth Taylor, still owns his share of the Oscar-winning film.

stars  His penultimate show was entitled "Michael Todd's Peep Show," running at the Winter Garden Theatre from June 28, 1950 to February 24, 1951 for a total of 278 performances. The music and lyrics for this musical revue, which featured female nudity, were by Prince Chakrband Bhumibol, who became the King of Thailand! In Art Cohn's posthumous biography of Todd, "The Nine Lives of Mike Todd," it is revealed that the naked girls featured in the show's mermaid sequence had difficulty getting the blue dye used in the water out of their pubic hair.

stars  In the 1940s, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee fell in love with Todd, who was then famous as a Broadway theatrical impresario. Todd produced two Broadway shows starring Lee, "Star and Garter" and "The Naked Genius" (the latter of which was written by Lee). Gypsy married William Alexander Kirkland in 1942 in an attempt to make the already-married Todd jealous. They divorced in 1944.

stars  His biographer, Art Cohn, died with him in the plane crash that took Todd's life. The biography was nearly finished and was completed by Cohn's wife and published as "The Nine Lives of Mike Todd" in 1958.