WHO KILLED Thelma Todd?

THE FILM COMEDIENNE TURNED RESTAURATEUR DIED AT AGE 29 UNDER SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES

- Lindsay Hoffman

In 1934, Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café became the place to be seen on Los Angeles' Pacific Coast Highway. Housed in a beautiful Spanish-style building, it encompassed a fine dining restaurant serving lobster and oysters, a ballroom with a bandstand, and a private nightclub called Joya's, where the namesake star and coowner would throw frequent parties.

Thelma, a native of Massachusetts who arrived in Hollywood at 19, viewed the enterprise as her retirement plan. "Thelma enjoyed her career, and cared deeply about it, but she was savvy enough to know that Hollywood careers didn't last forever," explains Michelle Morgan, author of The Ice Cream Blonde: The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd. She hoped the café would provide "stability when she got older," Morgan says.