To the Closing of the surf Boulevard, where after many turns and turns, the road reaches its climate end in the Pacific Ocean, there is a building that has remained for almost 100 years. It is one of the few structures that has survived the fire of Palisades, which has destroyed approximately 7000 properties in western Los Angeles, including almost several directions in the list of reference points of the historical society of Palisades Palisades. However, through the marine breeze and the silver mist, 17575 Pacific Coast Freeway rises as the shadow of a dream, its Mediterranean arches of the 1920s resemble the gates of link to a lost world. Millions have gone through their imposing architecture throughout the decades, but today not everyone knows the history of The Sidewalk of Thelma Todd, or his homonym, actor Thelma Todd, who died mysteriously a cold night in 1935 in the Neblinas streets from CastellamMare from above. Once one of the most widely covered stories in the history of Los Angeles, the enigma of Todd’s last night has persecuted and confused for almost a century, as well as the stairs and secrets of the building that remain.
On December 16, 1935, Thelma Todd, 29, left home for a party with his mother, who would leave the way along the sunset. She descended the stairs with a shiny blue night dress and blue heels, a mink coat covered her cold shoulders. His convertible Lincoln Phaeton of Chocolate Brown was parked on the streets on the restaurant that bore his name, in the garage of his lover and commercial partner, filmmaker Roland West. When he put Todd and his mother in the car at night, West told Todd to return at 2 in the morning, Todd took a look, he turned his eyes blank and turned: “I will return to 2:05 ” The director bristled, and in an attempt at discipline, he reminded him that the door would be closed at 2 in the morning, whether he was at home or not.
The door in question referred to its shared life agreement, the secret of the true nature of its relationship, which began several years before. When Todd and West worked for the first time together in the Catalina group of the crime drama prior to the code Privateer In 1931, the moment could not have been more Splendid for two people looking for reinvention. Todd had been a film star since 1925, when he left her previous professional career as a school teacher in Lowell, Massachusetts, and finally signed with Paramount Fotage. Period known for his work in comedy, where he played the “direct woman” with inexpressive beauty in a duo with Zasu Pitts, one of the only comic acts led by women of the time. He also starred in a sheet or love interest with Laurel and Hardy idols in Hal Roach Studios, the Marx brothers and Buster Keaton.
Thelma Todd’s Inn along the Pacific coast road in 1941.Jim Heimann Assortment/Getty Pictures.
During the 1920s, Todd embodied an emerging woman of a modern woman, playing sociality with an elegant knowledge and ingenuity that would later be the distinctive seal of comedians such as Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow. His classic journal beauty as a statue of Venus, as if he had been carved in marble, then melted to become the “ice cream blonde” of the United States. She personified the new society. But despite his success in noisy comedies, Todd longed for being taken seriously as a dramatic actor. Twenty years, West, West had made a name in the vaodevil and now represented a new race in Hollywood: the aspiring aristocrat.
While West was a success in both theater and cinema, his passion was in real estate development, and discovered that the first neighborhoods of the Pacific Palisades were the perfect place for their fantasies. An enclave in front of the sea known as Castellammare, just west of Malibu, owned the most dramatic (and virgin) views of the Pacific, its few sinuous streets with notches on the slaughter hillside evoked the splendor of the Italian coast. In 1927, West had built a coastal castle called Castillo del Mar. With vaulted fairy tale stained glass, La Fortaleza Period a chimera of Italian, Spanish and Arab styles. The stairs zigzaron on the land of the austere turrets, giving the place the ominous romance of a gothic novel. With so few houses so far in Castellamare, the unique period castle in its isolation. Under the moon on a night without stars, with the immense darkness of the sea roaring from each window that opens, it must have been ecstasy to be so close to such a raw beauty. However, it was alone. West needed a queen, since an earlier version of the dream had gone wrong. He was separated from his first wife, the star withdrawn from the silent film, Jewel Carmen, who still lived with him in Castillo del Mar.
The development of Castellammare had gone from great optimism in the 1920s to a completely abandoned project for 1930 due to the overwhelming economic blows of the great depression. Just below Castillo del Mar in the PCH, a community center of Castellamare Early designed by the legendary developer Alphonzo Edward Bell Sr. (for whom Bel Air is named) and originally conceived as a beach membership, Post Office and Retail Center For residents of the residents of the Hillside, vacant sitting. But West refused to let his dream die, and when he met Thelma Todd, he saw that his vision returned to life with platinum fire.
In the summer of 1934, West and Todd became commercial partners in a coffee that opened on the ground floor of the empty community center. By baptizing Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk coffee, they expected the charm of Thelma’s stellar power to attract Hollywood to reach Soundown Blvd., where her restaurant would be the first exclusive beach establishment of her kind. Todd herself acted as the host of the restaurant, welcoming the guests with warmth that they had only glimpsed on the screen. In his 18 -month career, Sidewalk coffee became a brilliant attraction, a symbol of what possible period after depression. Between Castillo del Mar and Café, West hoped to inspire new constructions in Castellammare, to form a glamorous and very close community in paradise. Journal an early vision of everything that the Pacific Pallisadas would eventually represent.
Groucho Marx and his boy boy with Thelma Todd in a scene of Horse feathers1932.Paramount Fotage/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Pictures.
While his first wife, Jewel, stayed in his single tower from above, West moved to homes on coffee to be able to better monitor business, or so said. Thelma Todd moved to her own rooms, also on the second floor. It is difficult to imagine that in a shared space so tight, Todd and West were doing anything except living together (“in sin”, according to the standards of the 1930s) and dreaming of their future.
Until the night of the party in December 1935.
