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She lay on her left side behind the steering wheel of the expensive phaeton, a mink coat snug about her shoulders, her head drooping over the edge of the seat.  The gorgeous face, half covered by a tousle of blonde locks, was sunk into the cushion.  From the way her arms hugged her chest, the hands cupped near her face, Detective Clark understood why at first the maid thought she was sleeping.  The legs told a different story.  Clad in silk stockings, they twisted unnaturally from the center of the seat toward the driver’s side of the floor.  One foot rested next to the automobile’s foot pedals, its pink lacquered toenails glistening through blue sandals.  This was no ordinary slumber.

The context of Thelma Todd’s death is multifold: on one hand, it is the motion picture business in its Golden Age, on the other it is Los Angeles at a time when the city tottered on the verge of its greatness.  The first implies and is characterized by the production of legends and pleasant distortions; the second suggests a gritty reality that lies beneath the myths.  For various reasons, Los Angeles has been seen popularly through Hollywood’s filters.  To understand what happened when Thelma Todd died, it is necessary to remove those filters and to gaze directly on the city itself, as it was in 1935, the year of her death.

Testimony of a Death is a work of decades of research involving many of the participants in the mystery of Thelma Todd’s death.  Authored by Marshall Croddy, whose mother was a personal friend of Thelma, and Patrick Jenning, the book has 332 pages, including 37 pages of endnotes,  with 24 photographs.

please click here to order the paperback or ebook

please click here to order the hardback

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