Thelma Todd

Ryan and Shane chew over the mysterious death of starlet Thelma Todd - murder, suicide, or accident?

BuzzFeed's hit docuseries Unsolved True Crime follows conspiracy theory enthusiast Ryan as he deep-dives into the mysteries surrounding the most notorious unsolved crimes in history, in order to convince his dubious friend Shane that sometimes the evidence isn't always as it seems.

A compilation of early-day silent films that serves as a glimpse back to the formative days of the movie industry as a salute to Hollywood's Golden Year, so proclaimed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce as 1953.

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

Stan and Ollie travel with a band of 18th-century Gypsies holding a nobleman's daughter.

6.7/10

Thelma volunteers Patsy as a subject for her friend who is in dental school and needs somebody to practice on.

6.7/10

A thief on the run dumps some hot money in Thelma and Patsy's lap.

6.3/10

Though he was protecting her when he accidentally killed a man, Mabel Kane (Thelma Todd) refuses to testify on behalf of her dance partner Jerry Davis (George Murphy), and he's sent to jail. In a riot, a hostile convict (Jack La Rue) forces Jerry to help him escape, so Jerry takes to the streets himself. Nightclub entertainer Anne Taylor (Nancy Carroll) meets him, and convinces her boss Louis (Arthur Hohl) to hire him as her partner.

5.2/10

Thelma and Patsy find themselves in a spooky house inhabited by a nut who is a mechanical genius and has made a robot who does everything. The inventor manipulates the robot's control board from a hidden room. The girls are soon in a panic. Patsy gets into an argument with the robot and loses the match of wits. Blackie Burke, an escaped convict, is using the house as a hideout, and this adds to the problems the girls already have.

5.9/10

Thelma and Patsy are reporters who investigate a hospital.

7.1/10

When Patsy criticises Thelma's poetry, she ups and leaves for a better standard of living.

6.8/10

A songwriter has to come up with a full-length theatrical piece within a few days.

6.1/10

Thelma and Patsy follow a map looking for treasure.

6.6/10

Thelma and Patsy get a job working for a magician.

6.3/10

At a residence hotel, Patsy is moving in with Thelma. Thelma has prepared some rules, including singing whenever one feels quarrelsome or angry. Although Thelma tells Patsy that they'll share everything, there's precious little closet or drawer space for Patsy's clothes, little room to maneuver around Thelma in the bathroom, and then a sleepless night for Patsy when Thelma goes sleepwalking. Can they share and share alike, or will Patsy keep on singing?

6.5/10

Thelma and Patsy get jobs at a radio station.

6.3/10

A radio columnist is threatened by gangsters and later murdered during a broadcast. A detective sets out to find the killers.

5.5/10

Thelma and Patsy get jobs demonstrating washing machines in a department store window. However, on their first day on the job, they accidentally get locked in the store overnight.

7/10

The girls find a pair of steamship tickets, not knowing that the cabin the tickets are for is inhabited by a gorilla.

6.4/10

Thelma tries to pass herself off as a famous French painter.

6.2/10

Joe Palooka is a naive young man whose father Pete was a champion boxer, but his lifestyle caused Joe's mother Mayme to leave him and to take young Joe to the country to raise him.

6.1/10

The girls buy a country home that turns out to be a sand trap.

6.9/10

Promoter Smoothe King helps a pair of phonies con their way into a movie company. As Wanda heads toward stardom, she turns more and more from King toward the matinée idol. King must decide between his plans and her happiness.

5.7/10

Hips, Hips, Hooray! is a 1934 slapstick comedy film starring Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Ruth Etting, Thelma Todd, and Dorothy Lee.

6.5/10

Patsy tries to stay with Thelma at the hospital where she works, but Thelma is forced to pretend that Patsy is a patient.

6.6/10

Patsy is coerced into faking a lost leg in order to win an insurance settlement after an automobile accident.

6.8/10

Thelma, who came to Hollywood from Joplin to be a star, is ready to go home. She and her pal Patsy are packing up and packing it in. Then, through Patsy's deviousness, Thelma gets a call to come to the studio immediately to audition for a costume drama.

6.7/10

Albert Stuyvesant Spottiswood (Edward Everett Horton) and his cousin Harriet Winthrop Spottiswood (Edna May Oliver) arrive separately at their long abandoned and very much run down family manor, each unaware that the other is going to be there, and since both have become penniless, they are forced to move into the dilapidated house. When Albert receives a letter from old acquaintances Lord and Lady Fetherstone advising the Spottiswoods of their impending visit to the manor, the cousins are at wit's end as to how to exercise non-existent skills required to make the old house acceptable for guest reception.

6.7/10

At a ritzy beauty salon, while a mud pack is on her face, a wealthy socialite invites Thelma and Patsy, two salon attendants, to a party, mistakenly thinking they are social acquaintances whom she wants to entertain a visiting count. Just before our working-class pair arrives at the party, the hostess is called away to see to an ill dog. Thelma tries to behave in a refined way, but Patsy, with a head full of practical jokes and a bra filled with trick gadgets, turns the party on its head. The butler calls the hostess back to her home. Is Thelma and Patsy's moment in high society coming to a crashing end?

6.6/10

Two yokels try to crash royal society by posing as the King's physicians.

6.4/10

An actress goes up to a dude ranch for relaxation, when she falls in love with a ranch owner recently acquitted of his wife's murder.

5.4/10

Thelma rushes into the apartment she shares with Patsy, excited because she's fallen in love with Archie, a rich man with yachts and a British accent. Patsy isn't impressed and less so when Archie comes calling. She does her best to sink the romance, making noise while the lovers talk and offering Limburger cheese sandwiches. In desperation, Archie calls his brother Benny, who's a sailor, and asks him to keep Patsy company. After a series of mishaps, they end up at a saloon where Patsy orders everything on the menu. Who's going to have to pay?

6.2/10

A rich American businessman in London makes believe he's lost all his money so that his daughter will marry a composer.

6.7/10

Thelma wins a screen test with a Hollywood studio, but trouble ensues on the train trip out there.

7.1/10

The girls win a car in a raffle.

6.6/10

Successful attorney has his Jewish heritage and poverty-stricken background brought home to him when he learns his wife has been unfaithful.

7.5/10
10%

The girls are stewardesses on an experimental flight.

6.9/10

A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.

5.9/10

Instead of delivering some fancy dresses to a customer, the girls wear them to a party.

7/10

A plucky stewardess risks her life marrying a daredevil pilot.

6.1/10

Comedy short with ZaSuPitts and Thelma Todd. After accidentally getting a policeman friend fired, the girls must come up with some way to get him re-hired or be stuck with him as an unwanted roommate.

6.9/10

A woman doctor decides to have a baby without benefit of marriage.

6.5/10

The Devil’s Brother or Bogus Bandits or Fra Diavolo is a 1933 comedy film starring Laurel and Hardy. It is based on Daniel Auber’s operetta Fra Diavolo about the Italian bandit Fra Diavolo.

7.2/10

The girls moonlight as taxi dancers in order to earn some extra money.

7/10

A reporter sets out to prove that his girlfriend was framed and sent to prison.

6.5/10

Jack Oakie and Jack Haley are songwriters are enroute from New York to Hollywood to make their fame and fortune; Ginger Rogers, a lunchwagon proprieter, joins them.

6.2/10

The girls are going on a camping trip.

6.1/10

A professor gets mixed up with chorus girls in a Broadway musical.

5.8/10

When Thelma is stopped by a cop for speeding, she tries to get out of it by telling him that she and Zasu are on their way to the hospital.

6.6/10

When Claire Mathewson's (Thelma Todd) husband Stephen (Cary Grant) comes back unexpectedly from the 1932 Summer Olympics, where he was supposed to compete in the javelin throw, he discovers the train tickets for a romantic Venice getaway she has planned with her lover Gerald (Roland Young). Gerald's friend Bunny (Charles Ruggles) lies and says that the tickets are actually for Gerald and his wife. With Stephen still suspicious, Gerald must find a fake wife to go to Venice with him. He tries to hire the actress Chou-Chou (Claire Dodd), but since her boyfriend is a jealous man, she gives the job to out-of-work Germaine (Lili Damita), who needs the 2000 franc fee to keep from starving. At first, Gerald thinks she is too demure, but she soon convinces him that she can pretend to be a glamorous wife.

6.7/10

Thelma and Zasu go to a Turkish bath to try to get rid of a cold.

6.6/10

Sexy Texas gal storms her way through life, brawling and boozing until her luck runs out, forcing her to learn the errors of her ways.

7/10

Thelma and Zazu are on a leisurely excursion in a borrowed car. Thelma lets Zazu drive. When she brakes to avoid a bull pulled along by three rustics, her foot gets stuck and the car crashes through a barn. The barn's owner won't let them leave without paying damages. The gals hoof it, walking in a large circle to arrive back at the farmer's house after dark. While outside his door, they hear a radio broadcast to beware a lion escaped from a wintering circus. Can Thelma and Zasu reclaim the car while avoiding the angry farmer, his prize bull, and the renegade lion?

5.4/10

The girls and their pet monkey create havoc on board a train carrying a traveling Broadway troupe.

6.4/10

Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new president of Huxley U, hires bumblers Baravelli and Pinky to help his school win the big football game against rival Darwin U.

7.6/10
9.6%

Zasu and Thelma are working their way through college by selling magazine subscriptions. Finding little success going door-to-door, the pair decide to use their charms to sell to men at their places of work.

6.2/10

Juror Zasu accidentally swallows a piece of evidence which just happens to be a time bomb.

6.1/10

Charley is an efficiency expert trying to teach a millionaire's daughter the value of money.

6.6/10

Dr. Robert Cromwell performs a delicate operation, that has never been done before, and the patient dies. Charged with malpractice and manslaughter, his trial is national news but the jury acquits him. But the court of public opinion is still against him, and the medical board is meeting to decide whether or not to take his medical license away from him. Before they do, Cromwell, an amateur pilot, decides to join his friend, WWI Ace Donald Evans, on a flight to Alaska looking for a shorter route to Japan by following the Aleutian Islands. They crash in Alaska and Evans is killed, but Cromwell is rescued by a fur trapper named Tom Ross. He takes Cromwell to Armstrong's Trading Post, where is is nursed back to health by Klondike, a girl who works for Armstrong, and was engaged to marry Armstrong's son Jim. The latter is suffering from the same disease that Cromwell's last patient had...

5.9/10

Loud-mouth hamburger flipper, Cooky, thinks he can box. His big chance comes when everyone else quits the gym when it is inherited by a dame.

5.6/10

In their first comedy two-reeler of 1932, vivacious Thelma Todd and fluttery ZaSu Pitts learn that the royal seal of a foreign country has been stolen and promptly set out to catch it -- a sea lion.

6.3/10

Zasu inadvertently turns Thelma's vaudeville act into a shambles.

5.7/10

Modest programmer denotes a young man's rise to fame in wrestling matches he doesn't realize have been "fixed", and ensuing romantic turbulence.

6.4/10

A lovely dame with dangerous lies employs the services of a private detective, who is quickly caught up in the mystery and intrigue of a statuette known as the Maltese Falcon.

6.9/10
7.1%

Zasu falls for a wrestler, drags Thelma to his next fight.

6.5/10

Charley agrees to go on a blind date to help out his roommate. But because his last such date turned out badly, he goes all out trying to make himself look bad. He refuses to shave, wears his friend's old suit and even eats garlic. Unfortunately for him, however, his date turns out to be the lovely Thelma Todd.

6.7/10

Zasu & Thelma go out with two idiots to a nightclub.

6.9/10

A stock market broker plans to liven up his boring life by taking up piracy on the high seas.

5.8/10

Ollie is running for mayor when an old flame (Mae Busch) tries to blackmail him with a old photo.

7.5/10

During WW1, the girls become spies when they spend the evening with two German officers.

6.2/10

Classes clash when a poor riveter and wealthy society woman fall in love with each other, much to the shock of her friends and family.

5.8/10

Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner.

7.5/10
9.4%

In the South Seas, a half-caste island girl refuses to follow tradition and marry a fellow islander, instead falling in love with a white man and heir to an American fortune.

5.6/10

Prince Alexis of Kordovia refuses to do his duty under threat of war. Recently arrested actor Peter Fedor conveniently bears a striking resemblance to the prince. The King and Queen hatch a plan to force the prince to do his duty.

5.4/10

Two young women, Zasu and Thelma, complain that all of their dates take them to Coney Island. The next day a car goes by and they are splashed with mud. The driver stops and offers to buy them some new clothes. They accept the offer and later agree to go on a date -- to Coney Island again. Laurel and Hardy make cameo appearances.

6.2/10

Theater usherette Bunny O'Day (Clara Bow) inadvertently becomes hostess of a private gambling den, and gets involved in a romance with a ne'er-do-well gambler.

5.8/10

Jack's father lowers the boom when his irresponsible rich-kid ends up in jail after a night of debauchery. The father appoints Ossie, Jack's cousin, as guardian, not realizing that Ossie is just as bad. They set off on a transcontinental trip with mischief on their minds.

5.9/10

An actress is rehearsing a death scene in her apartment, but her neighbors all think it's the real thing.

5.8/10

On his way home following World War I, Charley smuggles his French sweetheart aboard ship and gets into all kinds of trouble.

6.2/10

After running their car off the road, a society matron insists that the girls spend the evening at her mansion.

6.8/10

Two homeless vagabonds hide out in a vacant mansion and pose as the residents when prospective lessees arrive and try to rent it.

7.4/10

Harry is made the temporary stationmaster in a small town.

5.4/10

Harry is mistaken for "The Fighting Parson" in a tough western town.

6/10

A timid man undergoes a personality change, and turns the tables on the people who've bullied him.

5.4/10

A sex worker yearns to leave the grimy underground community she was born into, and sees her way out through a sympathetic sailor.

6.5/10

Lora Moore, the club champion, loses a golf match to a woman from another golf club. Then Jerry Downs, a handsome golf pro, and his goofy friend, Jack Martin, show up. Lora takes him on as her golf teacher to work on her putt. She falls for him, but so do several other women. Meanwhile Angie Howard, Lora's friend, chases after Jack. A lot of silliness ensues.

6.5/10

The king is a juvenile dolt who tries the patience of the shrewish queen. While she's in the throne room awaiting him, he's outside playing with guns, drilling his soldiers, and dallying with the wife of a new minister. The queen catches him kissing her, her husband figures out that something fishy is going on, and the king tries his best to proceed with his plans for a night out. The queen contrives to keep him cuffed in the bedroom: king, queen, minister, and coquette end up in a game of musical beds. Will his royal highness get his night out?

5.2/10

The comic and musical adventures of Charley Chase as he fights in the great war.

6.5/10

Charley poses as a hillbilly in his pursuit of a country girl.

5.9/10

Thelma invites Charley to play golf at her father's exclusive country club.

6.4/10

Charley and Thelma are millionaires, each trying to elude suitors who are trying to marry them for their money. Charlie gets word that a rich uncle has died, leaving him millions. Attorneys advise him to repair to a resort and avoid gold diggers. Once there, word spreads among the single women, and several try to ensnare him. At first he's gullible, then he cottons on, so when Thelma, a wealthy young woman, mistakes him for a fortune hunter, he dismisses her as well. A manager's error puts Charlie and Thelma in the same suite, and both think the other is prospecting. A dressing gown, radio, bare feet, pistol, keyhole, fountain pen, bedcovers, and a suspicious hotel detective join the mix-up. But wait, was the inheritance a mistake?

6.5/10

Charley is about to get engaged to Thelma when his boss foists some clients upon him to entertain.

6.8/10

Charlie hires three "party girls" to help him land a business deal.

6.2/10

Harry lands on an iceberg with his rival.

A young man of society wants to make an expedition to Africa, but his fiancée asks him for help about one of her fathers guests shortly before his planed departure. Her suspects about that guest were serious, this man tries to steal one of her fathers rubin, and she and her fiance are kidnapped and brought to a house, where strange things happen. The whole thing becomes a nightmare under the direction of a mysterious Mr. Satan.

6.6/10

Harry is trapped with a blonde in a burning building.

House of Horror is a 1929 American comedy-horror mystery film directed by Benjamin Christensen. The film stars Louise Fazenda and Chester Conklin and was released in both a silent and sound version which featured a Vitaphone soundtrack with talking sequences, music and sound effects. Both the silent and sound versions of House of Horror are now presumed lost.

5.8/10

In French Indochina, a magistrate is assigned to investigate the murder of his boss. Unknown to him, the boss had a policy of requiring the wives of his subordinates to sleep with him if they wanted their husbands to get promoted. What he also didn't know was that his wife was in the boss' office when he was killed. Complications ensue.

Constance Bannister enters into a trial marriage contract with Dr. Thorvald Ware and finds happiness with him. She defies his wishes by dancing at a charity ball in a revealing costume, however, and he dissolves the contract, not knowing that she is with child. A year passes. Constance marries Oliver Mowbray, and Thorvald marries Constance's sister, Grace. Both couples are quite unhappy and later obtain divorces. Oliver and Grace go to Europe, and Constance and Thorvald are married in a civil ceremony, united by their love both for each other and for their child.

6/10

A English aristocrat causes a scandal when she divorces her husband and runs off with a young American.

A Educational short where Robert Graves plays Thelma Todd's jealous husband.

5.5/10

Hal Roach produced this short to introduce Harry Langdon to his comic line-up.

Charley goes out for an evening on the town without his wife.

7.4/10

Charley intervenes in a fight between Eddie and Thelma inside her small car. Cop Kennedy misinterprets things, and Charley hides in the theatre Thelma is rehearsing in. Charley replaces Eddie as Thelma's partner in an artistic dance act, and makes a fiasco of it.

8/10

A heat wave sends the residents of a New York City tenement to their fire escapes for whatever breeze is stirring. The tenants are a cross section of melting-pot culture: Irish, Jewish, German, and Italian dialetcs create a rich aural mix on the sound track. As small talk is exchanged among the residents of different floors, an off-camera hurdy-gurdy supplies an often ironic counter-point to the action

6/10

Notable for being Laurel and Hardy's first sound film (hence the title, drawn from the popular cliché "Unaccustomed as we are to public speaking ..."). The soundtrack was lost for fifty years until it was traced on disc in the late 1970s. This is the first film in which Hardy says to Laurel, "Why don't you do something to help me!" which immediately became a catch-phrase, repeated in numerous subsequent films. Also heard for the first time is Stan's distinctive, high-pitched whimper of distress. The plot of "Unaccustomed As We Are" was expanded into a full-length feature, Block-Heads, in 1938.

7.1/10

Charley falls in love with Mary, but his attack of hay fever alienates her father.

7/10

Four heirs to a family fortune are summoned to appear at the family estate for the reading of the will, where they meet the estate's staff, which includes a nurse, a crazed doctor, and a sinister handyman.

A present-day stereotypically-Irish American politician ('Charlie Murray') is vaulted into ancient Greece after receiving a bump on the head.

Can Neil Hamilton, the first flying policeman on the force, save his dad from stop-at-nothing jewel thieves?

8/10

In this suspenseful silent crime drama, a hijacker proves his loyalty to his mother by killing his biological father, a blackmailing gangster who has been threatening to destroy the mother's happy marriage to the governor.

7.1/10

Hollywood actresses including Jeanette Loff and Raquel Torres modeling Spring fashions in color.

5.3/10

A cloak room girl (Alice White) falls for a rich boy who may not actually be rich.

7.7/10

Princess Delatorre, young and beautiful widow of an Italian scion of royalty, returns with her fortune to the small American town where she grew up as Ellen Gutherie. Arriving by train a few days earlier than she planned, Ellen is mistaken for Mrs. Arden, a seamstress of doubtful repute from a neighboring town. She carries on the deception for fun when her nearsighted Aunt Katie and others believe she is Mrs. Arden. Phil, her old sweetheart, recognizes her, however, and shows her his new invention, a corkscrew that turns itself--a failure because of prohibition. Ellen leaves, having heard how much store is set on her coming; she returns on the proper train, elaborately made up as Princess Delatorre, and the big reception takes place as planned. Then she and Phil return to Italy, where they expect the corkscrew to be a success.

5.4/10

The Crash (1928)

Plot unknown.

7.1/10

A European royal couple come to New York to sell some of the royal family's crown jewels. A gang of international jewel thieves is planning to steal the gems, so a private detective is assigned to guard them. Unfortunately the private eye turns out to be a bumbling, inept fool--or so everyone thinks.

2/10

Two firemen must put up with a variety of travails in their job, especially their chief's spoiled and bratty daughter, who keeps turning in false alarms whenever she needs some heavy lifting done so that she can get the responding firemen to do it.

Nevada is a 1927 movie based upon a Zane Grey novel and starring Gary Cooper, Thelma Todd, and William Powell. This lavish Western film was remade in 1944 as an early Robert Mitchum B-picture, the only time Cooper and Mitchum played the same role. This movie still survives in a complete copy, but the films appearance is not the best, do probably to poor preservation, it's possible to make out scenes, but not as well as other highly restored silent films. This was a very early western role for Gary Cooper, but his fame in western would be more noticeable in talking pictures.

6.3/10

Playboy Teddy Ward wants to marry Jeannie King, an artist, but his father wants him to marry Loris Lane, but tells Teddy he can marry whom he pleases if he will make the Mountain Inn a profitable operation. Teddy agrees, and with the support of his friends arranges an ice-boat race with a $10,000 prize to the winner. A problem arises when his father refuses to pay such an amount. Teddy thinks one of his friends will win the race and refuse the prize, but champion racer "Duke" Slade shows up and Teddy knows he will take the money. Some movie stars show up and, while using their own names, are definitely not playing "Self" in this fictional film.

7.1/10