A 1934 Lincoln from the same era as Todd's Phaeton; her car's whereabouts are unknown. Photo: rsaxvc / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
On the morning of December 16, 1935, Thelma Todd’s maid went up to the garage above the Pacific Coast Highway and found the actress slumped behind the wheel of her chocolate-brown 1934 Lincoln Phaeton. The ignition was on. Todd was dead.
The cause was carbon monoxide poisoning, and it was officially ruled accidental. More than 90 years on, plenty of people still aren’t buying it.
The star
Todd was a working comedy star of the early sound era: beauty pageants first, then Hal Roach shorts with ZaSu Pitts and Patsy Kelly, and features alongside Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
By 1935 she was a businesswoman too, running Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café on the Pacific Coast Highway with her lover, director Roland West. The garage where she was found sat up the hill from the café, at the top of a long flight of steps.
The official version
The night before, she’d been at a party at the Trocadero in Hollywood. According to the official account, she was dropped off at the café in the early hours, found herself locked out of the apartment upstairs, climbed the steps to the garage and started the Lincoln to keep warm. The engine ran, the garage filled with exhaust, and she died.
That account holds together right up until you picture it.
The problems
There were reports of blood on her face and injuries that didn’t fit neatly with a quiet accident. There was the climb itself, a long walk uphill in the cold in evening clothes. And there were plenty of people with possible motives, from her volatile ex-husband Pat DiCicco to underworld figures who may have wanted a piece of her café. A grand jury looked into the case. No one was ever charged.
Those theories are still theories. Anyone who claims to know exactly what happened that night is guessing. But the gaps in the record are why the case never closed, and why the Lincoln still comes up whenever people talk about Hollywood’s unsolved deaths.
The car
The Phaeton was a big, expensive open Lincoln, the car of someone who wanted Los Angeles to know she’d arrived. Hers was chocolate brown. On its own merits, Todd’s would be a desirable prewar classic today.
The collector angle is complicated. A documented connection to a famous person usually adds value. A connection to a famous person’s death is a different matter, as the curse stories around James Dean’s Porsche show. Whoever owned Todd’s Lincoln would have to tell the whole story every time someone asked.
As far as we know, the car’s current whereabouts haven’t been publicly documented. If it ever surfaced with a solid ownership trail back to Todd, it would test exactly that question: whether buyers pay more for proximity to a death, or less. The Lincoln’s real story is simpler and worse than a curse: a case nobody closed, and the last seat Thelma Todd ever sat in.
Accident, or something else? Which detail can’t you get past: the uphill climb in evening clothes, the blood, or the list of people with a motive?
Sources
About the Author
