THE ICE CREAM BLONDE by Michelle Morgan

 

The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd

 

  AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR AND A BOOK GIVEAWAY

 
Nearly 80 years ago, comedienne Thelma Todd, co-star to the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, and a former Miss Massachusetts (1925), was found dead at age 29 in her car inside the Pacific Palisades garage where she kept it. While there was never any question that Todd died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, there has been, ever since, much speculation on how and why she ended up in her car in a garage with its doors firmly shut.

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES: FRANK CAPRA'S "LOST HORIZON"

Frank Capra's wistful 1937 fantasy, Lost Horizon, begins dramatically with a chaotic mob scene at an airfield in war-torn Baskul, China, highlighted by a spectacular explosion and fire. In the midst of the fray, British diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) is managing the evacuation of 90 Westerners from the melee. But time is running out; he and a disparate party of five barely escape on the last plane to take flight. Struggling to board and flee with Conway are his younger brother, George (John Howard), Lovett (Edward Everett Horton), a paleontologist, Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), a businessman, and Gloria (Isabel Jewell), a floozy. Unbeknownst to the passengers, their European pilot, a crony of Conway's, was forcibly removed from the cockpit just before take-off and replaced by an Asian flyer.