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Michael Todd (real name '''Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen''') ( June 22 , 1907 or 1909 1 - March 22 , 1958 ) was an American Film Producer who is best known for his production of '' Around The World In Eighty Days '' 1956 , which won an Academy Award For Best Picture . LIFE He was born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen in Minneapolis , to an Orthodox rabbi, Chaim Goldbogen , and Sophia Hellerman , both Polish Jew ish immigrants. Todd was one of nine children in a poor family. His siblings gave him a surname, '''Toat''', for his difficulty to pronounce the word ''coat''. Mike Todd didn't like school except for the play (''The Mikado'', by W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan ) that he produced in his class and which turned out to be a hit. Not long after moving to Chicago , still in elementary school, he was expelled from sixth grade class for running a game of Craps inside the school. He later dropped out of high school, and worked as a pharmacist, shoe salesman and store window decorator. On Valentine's Day 1927 , at the age of 17, Todd married Bertha Freshman . She bore him a son named Mike Todd Jr. in 1935 . Later he married actress Joan Blondell in Las Vegas on July 5 , 1947 ; they divorced in Las Vegas on June 8 , 1950 , when she alleged that he abused and extorted her. He married again to actress Elizabeth Taylor on February 2 , 1957 , and they had a daughter, Elizabeth Frances (Liza) Todd , on August 5 , 1957 . Liza would become a a sculptress. Todd died in an airplane crash with his private plane, ''Lucky Liz'', in Grants, New Mexico in 1958. He is buried in Chicago at Beth Aaron Cemetery #66. WORK His early career started in the construction business where he made a fortune and almost lost everything. He traveled to Hollywood where he was a contractor to the studios. The 1933-4 Century Of Progress World Fair in Chicago found him performing an act, "the Flame Dance" in which he burned part of the costume of a fairy dancer with gas jets, that left her looking naked. Next he formed a company and toured with a production of the Mikado, his high school favorite. When this closed he revamped the show as the jazzy The Hot Mikado in 1939 and performed it at the New York World's Fair . He would produce 30 Broadway shows in his career. Todd's business career was volatile; failed ventures left him bankrupt many times. In the 50s, Mike Todd founded a film company called Cinerama which intended to make films for projection on screens as wide as the human's Field Of Vision . This initiative was brought to the public on September 1952 . The company soon made a deal with American Optical Company which led to the creation of the Todd-AO technology, which was introduced to the public with the film version of the Broadway musical '' Oklahoma! '' in 1955 , which was an instant success. Todd then made the film for which he is most famous, '' Around The World In Eighty Days '' which debuted in cinemas on October 17 1956 . It cost $6 million to make and earned him $16 million at the box office, raising him to the top of the movie business. Todd succeeded with another Todd-AO camera filmed movie '' South Pacific '' in 1957 . The same year, his newly created technology earned him an Academy Award for ''South Pacific''. REFERENCES
FOOTNOTE 1. Sources give it 1907 or 1909. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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