94: Thelma Todd (Dead Blondes Part 2)

You Must Remember This

Karina Longworth

Tv & Film

4.7 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2017

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thelma Todd - a curvaceous white-blonde who predated Jean Harlow - was a sparkling comedienne who began in the silent era and flourished in the talkies, both holding her own opposite the Marx Brothers and playing straight woman in one of cinema’s first all-girl comedy teams. She was also an early celebrity entrepreneur, opening a hopping restaurant/bar with her name above the door. But today, Thelma is best remembered for her shocking 1935 death, which was deemed an accident but still sparks conspiracy theories that it was really murder. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	That's fine.
0:16.2	Welcome to another episode of You Must Remember This, the podcast dedicated to exploring
0:37.0	the secrets and or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century, part of the Panoply
0:44.7	network. I'm your host, Karina Longworth, and this is another installment in our ongoing
0:52.3	series, Dead Blonds.
0:55.5	Where are you going?
0:57.7	Hollywood. Hollywood.
1:02.7	You come here for excitement. I'm better than a human woman.
1:09.8	Do you rather be a woman?
1:17.1	My dress. Do you like it?
1:19.1	I don't know. But you're short to see you dressed.
1:23.7	I'm so low, not just so low.
1:30.1	Today's Dead Blond would become the center of one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of
1:40.8	the 1930s, which was ironic, given that she had gotten her first big break, thanks to the
1:47.1	industry's attempts to prove that the scandals of the 1920s were over.
1:52.6	In actress and comedian, Felma Todd's body was found, one December morning in 1935, the
2:00.5	police who came to the scene believed that the cause of her death was almost definitely
2:05.3	an accident. And yet, thanks to an overzealous district attorney and a bloodthirsty press
2:12.6	that was happy to weave stories out of the finest of loose threads, rumors would circulate
2:18.0	that Felma Todd was murdered, maybe by her ex-husband, maybe by her married boyfriend,
2:25.3	or maybe by the mob. These rumors are still alive today, despite the fact that two investigations
2:33.2	into Todd's death declared that her demise was probably an accidental suicide.
	...

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