An Interview with Mike Todd, Jr., 1995

Exclusive interview; conducted from Todd, Jr.'s home in Borris, Ireland 

Film producer and 70mm Newsletter subscriber Mike Todd, Jr. in his beloved Ireland. Private image courtesy Susan M. Todd

"I'm married to a girl who is a few years my junior. As a matter of fact she's a few years my junior's junior."

After his father's accidental death (on March 23, 1957, when his Lockheed Lodestar went down in a storm over New Mexico), Todd, Jr., continued in show business, producing a TV special about his father, as well as the film version of Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar", and the cinematic oddity, "Scent of Mystery", the only film produced in the olfactory process known as Smell-O-Vision. ln 1984, he co-authored, with his wife, a book about his father's life entitled "A Valuable Property". Aside from being highly entertaining, the biography clearly demonstrates why his father's reputation was that of the greatest theatrical entrepreneur in the country - if not the world.

On the 40th anniversary of his father's death, we are presenting this exclusive interview; conducted (via telephone) from Todd, Jr.'s home in Ireland. 

FIR: Your father regarded his Fifties film ventures as a - giant three-horse parlay - Cinerama to Todd-AO to “Around the World in 80 Days”.

Michael Todd, Jr: That's true.


FIR: Well then, starting with “This Is Cinerama”. It was you who directed the roller coaster scene, and you wrote that director of photography, Harry Squires only brought short ends [left over footage from otherwise exposed reels] to Coney Island. Having made some films myself, I would deduce that he wasn't taking the project seriously. 

Todd: He figured it was just supposed to be for demonstration purposes. It meant we had to take the ride three times, and the action had to be picked up at the identical place on the tracks after each strip had run through the camera, but it wasn't a problem otherwise. Between you and me, although no one ever made a point of it, and although it played perfectly well, I think they went back and shot the whole thing again. That was my impression, though you couldn't tell; it was all from the same Eastman stock batch.


FIR: I'm curious, from the point of view of historical accuracy: it's been written that Lowell Thomas was on the European shoot. Was he?

Todd: Never. He was in New York, and when I got back I met with him and the board of Cinerama. But no, I can positively guarantee you that he was not there one single day.


FIR: You were given control of the money for the European shoots. What was it like producing a film with logistics of that kind?

Todd: It was such a small crew that there was nothing to it. My father was doing the legwork; he set up all the shooting except for the canals of Venice. We were just waiting there with nothing to do while he went to Milan to make arrangements for shooting, so we went out and did the gondola shoot. Some doctor and his wife were the passengers. I don’t think we even bought them a drink; we just thanked them.
 

French advert for Spanish large format laboratory Fotofilm

FIR: The Venice scene came out great, but you shot it against your father’s orders.

Todd: As I said, we had nothing to do, and it was so scenic and appropriate to Cinerama - peripheral vision with the tight canals, like a slow-motion roller coaster ride. Seven minutes of it were used in the final film. After the shooting in Europe, my father became aware that there were alignment and lens problems that Fred Waller, the creator of Cinerama, hadn’t adequately warned him about. The thing that dramatized this most vividly was shooting the Vienna Philharmonic on a huge edifice called the Schonbrunn Monument. The image of the monument went up 15° or 20° at the wings [the left and right panels] and was unusable. Also, a huge amount of light was needed to light La Scala. The story is they had to use every light in Europe and three blocks of generator trucks. So he began thinking about another way to achieve the same experience…


FlR: The footage you came back with - which comprised the whole first half of the finished film - was enthusiastically received. Yet the Board of Directors of Cinerama were reluctant to let him finish it.

Todd: It was a whole legal thing. Dad was in bankruptcy for losing a lot of money gambling. And then the thing that really killed him was the financial problems putting his play, “Up In Central Park”, into the Hollywood Bowl, and so he was in a perfect position to be screwed. Dad had as much stock in Cinerama as Lowell Thomas, but it had to be sort of held off in the corner so it couldn't be attached in the bankruptcy. Thomas remained aloof from it, but his business guy, Frank Smith, said,

"Look, you're a pain in the ass. We don't need you."

Instead of crying or moaning about it, or starting a lawsuit, Dad figured well, all right, I'm getting screwed, but I’ll show them. There's a better way to do this. “This Is Cinerama” opened to rave reviews. It was the first film in history to make the frontpage of The New York Times. It only played 17 theaters worldwide, and still became the third largest grossing film in history up till then.

All of Dad's ideas had worked - the name of the film was his, the roadshow concept was his ... the first horse in his parlay had come in. No one had believed his predictions about Cinerama; now everyone was listening.


FlR: So then he started looking for the Einstein of optics.

Todd: Right. Dr. Brian O'Brien, who was head of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, hadn't heard anything about Cinerama, but he had heard of my father. When he finally saw Cinerama he was unimpressed, but he was very impressed by the audience reaction. And he felt that if a new process were to be created, it should be really innovative, not three 35mm lenses locked together. The whole thing about Todd-AO … I don’t mean to disillusion you or anything...
 

Left to right: Eddie Fisher, Michael Todd, Jr. and Elizabeth Taylor at the premiere of "Scent of Mystery"

FlR: Feel free

Todd: O'Brien was a brilliant optical scientist, but while they spent millions on lenses and the optical printer and all that crap, a guy by the name of Ned Mann went out and bought Leica still camera lenses for about $800, adapted them to the camera, and that's what we ended up using for all the Todd-AO demonstration footage. And it cost nothing. Even the original cameras weren’t created by O'Brien; they were the modified Fearless Superfilm cameras. Joe Schenck told us about them, and we found them out in an army studio on Long Island. So it was all bullshit. Some of "Oklahoma!" was shot with Leica lenses, some with Todd-AO lenses, and they had to discard most of the l28mm bug-eye lens footage because O'Brien's optical printer never worked. But almost all of “Around the World in 80 Days” was shot with cheap lenses, and the results were great because of the 70mm film. 


FIR: Did you feel with these films that you were on the verge of a new era? Would you get caught up in your father's enthusiasm?

Todd: Oh, definitely. He could have sold anybody anything, and he did. He had good ideas. He did eight or nine musicals, and every one of them was a hit. He wasn't so successful with the straight plays, though by and large he made money on the straight plays too, but they weren't hits.


But yes, that was the whole thrill of Cinerama, and then Todd-AO. Dad's whole idea goes back to a guy by the name of Gradwell Sears, who was general sales manager of United Artists. He was a sporty but also classy guy who dad hung around with a bit. Grad Sears came to Dad on one occasion, saying,

"I'm really stuck. I got this Shakespeare picture, “Henry V”, with Laurence Olivier, and I don't know what the hell to do with it, but I'm committed to play it in order to keep the distribution rights to another film. And I'm gonna have to cram it down exhibitors' throats."

And my father said,

"You're absolutely right. You'll never make a damn thing showing it regularly. Hire legit theaters and road-show it"

Sears said,

"What do you mean, road-show it"?

"Charge legit theater prices and instead of doing eight performances [every day, run just two or three, with reserved seats, more] like a play, because you got it on film and it's not equity, you can probably do matinees every day. "

And so the picture was road-shown and made a comparative fortune for them. So Dad always had the idea of doing big attractions and road-showing them. Road show was his conception. And the idea of the "big screen" was the way to properly road-show big attractions. What eventually killed "big-screen" was using them to show run-of-the-mill films. That, and the fact that the whole nature of the business changed.
 

Fisher, Todd, Jr. and unknown and Milton Berle (standing)

FIR: Finally, he settled on “Around the World in 80 Days”.

Todd: He had put $40,000 into developing a musical of “80 Days” with Orson Welles, which never got off the ground. Korda had bought the rights to the musical, and eventually got Dad re-interested in it. The film was adapted by James Poe, who was the son-in-law of the accountant of Dad's biggest backer, Lorraine Manville.

After showing the industry a Todd-AO “Oklahoma!” reel, the stock had jumped from $7 to $22.50. Dad wanted to sell his shares at that point to finance “80 Days”, but his friend and mentor, Joe Schenck, who he'd gotten involved in the company both as an investor and member of the board of directors, wouldn't let him do it. Dad could have, but he bowed to Schenck's wishes. I was heartbroken that he couldn’t bail out I really think he could have sold the stock for seven million dollars, which would have been the equivalent of 10 times that much today. I had sold a hundred of my several thousand shares to buy a new car. When I suggested that the stock might go up even higher after “Oklahoma!” opened, he said,

"Your hundred shares wiIl be the top price the stock is ever going to see. Enjoy your new car".

He was right. The “Oklahoma!” premiere print was botched. I can't remember if it had scratches on it or spots - but nobody had checked it out. They showed a flawed print; it was just incredible. Nobody said anything, but it really took the edge off the opening. His stock was finally sold .. at four and a half. And instead of financing “80 Days” with his own money, he had to borrow it,


FIR: You refer to your father's similarity to Phileas Fogg ... gambling everything on an idea.

Todd: No question about it; that was an aspect of the project that appealed to him.

I forget who advanced that theory, but they were right. In interviews about the film he even substituted the word "I" for "Phileas Fogg" on several occasions.


FIR: William Carmeron Menzies was involved with “80 Days”. Your father certainly went to the best people in their fields.

Todd: I met him, but I didn't know him at all. All I can tell you about him is that Dad felt he was a great guy to work with and that he made a great contribution. Dad wasn't overwhelming in his praise of collaborators, and often didn't get along with them. On the surface he got along, just to get things done, but he was often scornful of people he worked with. Menzies was one of the people that he had great admiration for.
 

Michael Todd demonstrating 70mm to Cantiflas and David Niven on a Paris street during filming of "Around the World in 80 Days"

FIR: ls it true that your father ended up owning 78% of “Around the' World in 80 Days”?

Todd: Yes. He spent two years producing the film and he wanted to own it completely. He paid Korda $100,000 for rights, and if he hadn't given CBS 10% for three quarters of a million, he would have owned 88%. He got the film started on his money from the Todd-AO sale, and borrowed money from Lorraine Manville. As a part of a distribution deal, negotiated near post-production, UA gave him four million for 10%, and a friend of his, Al Strelsin, got 1.8% for a $250,000 emergency loan during the Western shoot. 

Dad was fanatical about making the film as good as possible. He reshot a quarter of a million dollar scene where Phileas Fogg chops up a ship to use for fuel, because he thought the use of a miniature so close to the end would ruin the reality of the film. And after the film opened in 1956 to unanimous raves, he trimmed another six minutes based on watching audience reactions from the back of the theater - including part of the Western sequence he had directed - for an additional $250,000. When the new cut opened in December in Los Angeles, the reviews were as good or better than those in New York, and the film received the New York Film Critics Award in January [1957] as Best Film of the Year. And in April of 1957, despite my father's arrogance and anti-Hollywood attitude; “80 Days” won the Best Picture Oscar. He leapt out of his seat, started to run up the aisle, then turned back and kissed Elizabeth [Taylor, to whom he was married] before finally going up onto the stage.

"Michael Todd, who had already shaken the foundations of the legitimate theater with an onslaught of highly heterogeneous and untraditional musical shows, is apparently out to shatter the fundamental formation of the screen...This mammoth and mad pictorial rendering is a conglomeration of refined English comedy, giant screen travel panoramic and slam-bang Keystone burlesque. Mike Todd outdoes the movies with “Around the World in 80 Days”". Bosley Crowther, New York Times

When the film opened in London, he threw a party for the entire audience. He rented 10 boats, buses brought everybody down to the embankment, and there were bands playing and bars serving champagne on every boat. The Daily Mirror suggested on their front page that he be knighted.