Quote of the Day (S.J. Perelman, on a Macho Husband of Liz Taylor’s)

“[Film and stage producer Mike] Todd’s machismo was that common form that afflicts all undersized men—megalomania. He freely identified himself with Napoleon, P.T. Barnum, and Carl Laemmle, Junior, not to mention the Roman emperors of the decline. Whereas the latter, however, believed in giving the populace bread and circuses, Todd gave them circuses and kept the bread. Rarely if ever has there been anyone more unwilling to fork over what he owed to those actors, writers, and technicians who aided him in his grandiloquent projects of stage and screen. The little corpuscle, in short, believed in flaunting money where it made the most impression—at Deauville, Monaco, and the gambling tables of Las Vegas. In this respect, he was a true macho. My sole souvenir of our frenetic association [the film Around the World in 8o Days] is a replica of the carpetbag Phileas Fogg carried on his celebrated journey, a thousand of which Todd distributed to Broadway companions, investors, accountants, dentists, and other sycophants. But surely, his admirers have since queried me, I must have been awed by his tremendous vitality. Only in part, I respond; Moi meme, I prefer the anthropoid apes.”—American humorist and screenwriter S.J. Perelman (1904-1979), “The Machismo Mystique,” from Vinegar Puss (1975)

There were two exemplars of machismo among his acquaintances, S.J. Perelman noted in the essay from which I’ve just quoted. One, Ernest Hemingway, remains so famous that there seems little point in my belaboring the obvious. But the other, Mike Todd, is surely less familiar to my readers, and his antics—along with Perelman’s hilarious description of him—are worth recalling. 

Perelman was used to show-business lunatics--he did, after all, help write some of the best screenplays (Monkey Business, Horse Feathers) for the Marx Brothers. But I think you can see here that, nearly 20 years after working with Todd, just the memory of Todd was enough to bring him to heights of wonderful invective.

“Flamboyant,” used most by journalists to summarize this showman’s life, is a pallid word for this would-be entertainment Napoleon. Undaunted by losing his shirt in the Depression when his construction business crashed, Todd was bitten by the show-business bug.

Notice that I didn’t say he was particularly wise—or good—at his work. By 1950, the profligate spending that Perelman hinted at engulfed Todd in a second bankruptcy. It didn’t help that four years before, a musical version of Around the World in 8o Days, starring Orson Welles, cratered after he had pulled out, losing virtually all of its investors’ (including Todd's) money.

Then, something astonishing happened. Shrugging off his horrifying involvement in staging the 19^th-century Jules Verne novel, Todd rolled the dice on the property a second time, except now as an all-star Hollywood vehicle. He not only made his investment back over and over again, but won the Best Picture Oscar for 1956. (Perelman shared a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar with John Farrow and  James Poe). 

Oh, yes, another sign of Todd’s machismo, perhaps the major reason why he is remembered at all today: the last of his wives, Elizabeth Taylor: the equivalent of today’s trophy wife, a woman at the height of her glamor—and less than half his age, as you might be able to tell in the picture accompanying this post. (He would be the third of her eight husbands.)

When he died at age 50, in a crash of his private plane, Todd nearly took down with him the one man in Hollywood who could credibly exceed him in machismo: Kirk Douglas, who, with great initial reluctance—at the behest of his wife—turned down the producer's invitation to join him on the fatal flight.

So, let’s see: A builder thirsting for the bright lights of the entertainment world, glorying in the eye-candy on his arm, spending like there’s no tomorrow, and stiffing creditors and employees—Todd was nearly 60 years ahead of his time as Oval Office material.