Ice Cream Blonde

You might remember Thelma Todd, the "Ice Cream Blonde," from her appearances in Marx Brothers movies. 

She so attracted men that, at age 15, Thelma was fired from her job as a dime-store clerk in Lawrence, Massachusetts, because the owner disapproved of the fellas lurking in his aisles.

Jobless, Thelma enrolled in teacher's college and began entering beauty contests for cash.

A Lawrence theater manager spotted her at a tryout for the Miss America pageant and wired Thelma's photo to a Paramount Pictures executive in Hollywood. 

The 20-year-old's career path was settled, overnight. For her part, she was glad for the opportunity, glad to get away from Lawrence, and glad to get away from an abusive Irish father.

Her first movie role (as a dance-hall girl) was in 1926's God Gave Me 20 Cents.

On the beach at Malibu

Studio-head Hal Roach noticed her in the film and quickly plunked Thelma into his Laurel and Hardy comedies. 

She was so funny on screen, Roach soon gave Thelma her own series of slapstick shorts, and began loaning her to other studios, which was how she wound up playing with the Marx Brothers.

Thelma made, in total, 50 films in less than nine years. 

But she knew her looks wouldn't last, and did what many aging Hollywood stars do: she opened a gambling casino.

Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café—a 15,000-square foot nightclub on the ground floor of her Malibu home—proved an immediate sensation among tourists, screenwriters, celebrities, studio executives, gangsters, and gamblers. 

It appeared Thelma was now set for life.

But it wasn't to be.

The Ice Cream Blonde had a dark side.

An inveterate "party girl," Thelma drank heavily and played around with married men. She dated mobsters; eloped with one, then got divorced and took up with another. She cracked up cars and was arrested for drunk driving. And she gobbled amphetamines to fend off weight. (Hal Roach inserted into her studio contract the proviso that she'd be fired if she gained five pounds; he named it the "Potato Clause.") The amphetamines made her manic.

Friends said she was drawn to dangerous men, men who, like her father, were physically abusive.

Thelma was found dead by her maid on the morning of December 16, 1935, her body wedged behind the wheel of her Lincoln, which was parked in the garage of her business partner and lover, who lived next door to the casino. 

The Lincoln had been running, and the garage door closed, when the maid came upon her.

The actress's nose and mouth were bloody.  

A grand jury ruled the 29-year-old actress's death was a suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning.

The ruling came despite the fact that an autopsy revealed Thelma had a broken nose, bruised throat, and two cracked ribs; and despite the fact that none of her acquaintances believed she was suicidal.

In the trunk of Thelma's Lincoln, the grand jury was informed, were wrapped Christmas presents, meant for lovers, friends and family.

Postscript: In 1987, Hal Roach (age 90) told writer Marvin Wolf that three Los Angeles sheriff's detectives visited him the day after Thelma Todd's death and told him her business partner and lover had confessed to murdering the actress. Roach, wanting no scandal, advised the detectives to cover up the crime. "I told them I thought they should forget about it," Roach said. "He wouldn't have gone to jail anyway." Thelma's partner and lover confessed to the murder a second time 16 years later, while on his deathbed.