Mike Todd

Overview

Film producer Michael Todd was one of the major contributors to technical innovation in the film industry in the 1950s. Having worked with Fred Waller and Cinerama, he got tired of the three-panel format, left the company and tried to find the process for making "Cinerama coming from one hole". He joined forces with the American Optical Co. and developed a system using 65mm cine cameras at 30 fps and wide angle-photography (approx 150 degrees). The system was named Todd-AO after its inventors and was by far the best big-screen system ever seen, when it was introduced with Oklahoma! (1955). The Todd-AO prints used 70mm film with a 2.2:1 ratio. Sound was six-track magnetic only, with five channels behind the screen and one surround channel, with Perspecta coding (a switch stereo device) The 70mm Todd-AO productions were premiered through Magna Theatre Corp., which also co-produced the pictures. Due to the non-standard speed, the first two Todd-AO pictures (the other was Around the World in 80 Days (1956)) were parallel-shot in 35mm CinemaScope with 24 fps for general release, but for the third production, South Pacific (1958), the Todd-AO pictures were all shot in 24 fps. Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958, but his system lived on, adopted as the wide super format of 20th Century-Fox, which used it all through the 1960s. During that period a number of alternate processes developed, of which Super Panavision became the most used.
- IMDb mini biography by: Stefan Adler

The biography "The Nine Lives of Mike Todd" reveals that he briefly was suspected of murdering his first wife Bertha, who died mysteriously in 1946, freeing the way for Todd to marry his mistress, Joan Blondell. Blondell later claimed that Todd fleeced her.
Killed, along with journalist Art Cohn, when his private plane went down in a blizzard just outside of Albequerque, New Mexico. The plane's ironic name was "The Lucky Liz".
In 1957, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his Oscar-winning film Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Todd staged an elaborate party at Madison Square Garden for his then-wife Elizabeth Taylor and hundreds of guests. The evening eventually deteriorated into a giant food fight. The party was treated as a serious news event by CBS, which sent Walter Cronkite to cover it. The next day newspaper critics tore the event to shreds. It became what Cronkite considers the low point in his career.
In the 1940s, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee fell in love with Todd, who was then famous as a Broadway theatrical impresario. Todd produced two Broadway shows starring Lee, "Star and Garter" and "The Naked Genius" (the latter of which was written by Lee). Gypsy married William Alexander Kirkland in 1942 in an attempt to make the already-married Todd jealous. They divorced in 1944.
Father, with Elizabeth Taylor, of daughter Liza Todd.