Avrom Hirsch (Goldbogen) Todd (1909 - 1958)

Born 22 Jun 1909 in Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota, United States

Husband of Rose Joan Blondell — married 5 Jul 1947 (to 8 Jun 1950) in Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada, United States

Died 22 Mar 1958 at age 48 in Grants, Cibola, New Mexico, United States

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Being broke is a temporary situation. Being poor is a state of mind.

Mike Todd

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Biography

Mike (Goldbogen) Todd is Notable.

• Fact: Residence (1930) Los Angeles (Districts 0001-0250), Los Angeles, California, United States
• Fact: Residence (1935) Illinois
• Fact: Residence (1940) Assembly District 7, Manhattan, New York City, New York, New York, United States
• Fact: Burial Beth Aaron Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois, USA
• Fact: http://familysearch.org/v1/LifeSketch Michael "Mike" Todd (born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen, June 22, 1909 – March 22, 1958) was an American theater and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in 80 Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. He is known as the third of Elizabeth Taylor's seven husbands and is the only one whom she did not divorce (he died in an accident a year after their marriage). He was the driving force behind the development of the eponymous Todd-AO widescreen film format.

Early life: Todd was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Chaim Goldbogen (an Orthodox rabbi) and Sophia Hellerman, both of whom were Polish Jewish immigrants. He was one of nine children in a poor family, the youngest son, and his siblings nicknamed him "Toat" to mimic his difficulty pronouncing the word "coat." It was from this that his name was derived.

The family later moved to Chicago, arriving on the day World War I ended. Todd was expelled in the sixth grade for running a game of craps inside the school. In high school, he produced the school play, The Mikado, which was considered a hit. (As Mike Todd, he would produce a jazz version of the musical on Broadway in 1939.)

He eventually dropped out of high school and worked at a variety of jobs, including shoe salesman and store window decorator. One of his first jobs was as a soda jerk. When the drugstore went out of business, Todd had acquired enough medical knowledge from his work there to be hired at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital as a type of "security guard" to stop visitors from bringing in food that was not on the patient's diet.

We don't know exactly when "Abe Goldbogen" decided to change his name to "Michael Todd", but we do know when he made it official. Abe's father Chaim Goldbogen died in Chicago on September 30, 1931. On that day, Avrom Goldbogen died as well, but was replaced by Michael Todd. Abe knew that his father would never have approved of the name change, so he waited until his father's death to make the change official.

On March 22, 1958, Todd's private plane named "Lucky Liz" for Miss Taylor crashed near a storm in the Zuni Mountains of western New Mexico near Grants. The plane, a twin-engine Lockheed Lodestar, suffered engine failure while being flown, grossly overloaded, in icing conditions at an altitude which was too high to sustain flight with only one working engine under those conditions. The plane went out of control and crashed, killing all four on board.

In addition to Todd, those who died in the crash were screenwriter and author Art Cohn, who was writing Todd's biography The Nine Lives of Mike Todd, pilot Bill Verner, and co-pilot Tom Barclay. Elizabeth Taylor had wanted to fly to New York with her husband, but stayed home with a cold after her pleas to come along were overruled by Todd. Just hours before the crash, Todd described the plane as safe as he phoned friends, including Joseph Mankiewicz and Kirk Douglas, in an attempt to recruit a gin rummy player for the flight: "Ah, c'mon," he said. "It's a good, safe plane. I wouldn't let it crash. I'm taking along a picture of Elizabeth, and I wouldn't let anything happen to her."

Sources

• "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 10 October 2017, 17:48), entry for Michael Todd Sr(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:M1FR-5J3); contributed by various users.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Taylor
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Todd
• http://www.findadeath.com/forum/showthread.php?23186-Mike-Todd