At the end of Sunset Boulevard, where after many twists and turns the road reaches its climactic end at the Pacific Ocean, there is a building that has stood for almost 100 years. It is one of the few structures to have survived the Palisades Fire, which has destroyed approximately 7000 properties in West Los Angeles, including several addresses on the Pacific Palisades Historical Society’s roster of culturally and architecturally significant landmarks. Yet through the sea breeze and silver haze, 17575 Pacific Coast Highway rises like the shadow of a dream, its 1920s Mediterranean arches resembling gateways to a lost world. Millions have driven past its imposing architecture over the decades, but today not everyone knows the story of Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café—or of its namesake, the actor Thelma Todd, who died mysteriously one cold night in 1935 in the foggy streets of Castellammare above. Once one of the most widely covered stories in Los Angeles history, the enigma of Todd’s last night has haunted and confounded for almost a century, as have the staircases and secrets of the building that remain.
On December 16, 1935, 29-year-old Thelma Todd was leaving home for a party with her mother, whom she’d drop off on the way along Sunset. She descended the stairs in a glimmering blue evening gown and blue heels, a mink coat draped around her cold shoulders. Her chocolate brown Lincoln Phaeton convertible was parked in the streets above the restaurant that bore her name, in the garage of her lover and business partner, the filmmaker Roland West. As he put Todd and her mother into the car for the night, West told Todd to be back by 2 a.m. Todd gave him a look, rolled her eyes and demurred, “I’ll be back at 2:05.” The director bristled, and in an attempt at discipline, reminded her that the door would be locked at 2 a.m., whether she was home or not.
The door in question referred to their shared living arrangement, the secret of the true nature of their relationship, which began several years earlier. When Todd and West first worked together on the Catalina set of the pre-Code crime drama Corsair in 1931, the timing could not have been more ideal for two people seeking reinvention. Todd had been a film star since 1925, when she left her previous career path as a schoolteacher in Lowell, Massachusetts, and eventually signed with Paramount Pictures. She was known for her work in comedy, where she played the “straight-woman” with deadpan beauty in a duo with ZaSu Pitts, one of the only female-led comedic acts of the time. She also starred as a foil or love interest with idols Laurel and Hardy at Hal Roach Studios, the Marx Brothers, and Buster Keaton.
The Thelma Todd’s Inn along the Pacific Coast Highway in 1941.Jim Heimann Collection/Getty Images.
Through the 1920s, Todd embodied an emerging kind of modern woman, playing socialites with an elegant knowingness and wit that would later be the hallmark of comedians such as Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow. Her beauty was classical as a statue of Venus, as though she had been carved in marble, then melted down to become America’s “Ice Cream Blonde.” She epitomized new society. But despite her success in rowdy comedies, Todd yearned to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor. Twenty years her senior, West had made a name for himself in vaudeville and now represented a new breed in Hollywood: the would-be aristocrat.
While West was a success across both theater and film, his passion was in real estate development, and he found the early neighborhoods of the Pacific Palisades to be the perfect locale for his fantasies. An oceanfront enclave known as Castellammare, just west of Malibu, possessed the most dramatic (and unspoiled) views of the Pacific, its few winding streets notched into the rugged hillside evoking the splendor of the Italian coast. In 1927, West had built a seaside castle that he named Castillo del Mar. With fairy-tale stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings, the fortress was a chimera of Italian, Spanish, and Moorish styles. Stairs zigzagged up the grounds to austere turrets, giving the place the ominous romance of a Gothic novel. With so few houses yet in Castellammare, the castle was unique in its isolation. Beneath the moon on a starless night, with the immense darkness of the sea roaring from every window that fluttered open, it must have been ecstasy to be so close to such raw beauty. Yet it was lonely. West needed a queen, as an earlier version of the dream had gone awry. He was estranged from his first wife, the retired silent-film star Jewel Carmen, who still lived with him at Castillo del Mar.
The development of Castellammare had gone from great optimism in the 1920s to an all-but-abandoned project by 1930 due to the crushing economic blows of the Great Depression. Just below Castillo del Mar on the PCH, an early Castellammare community center designed by legendary developer Alphonzo Edward Bell Sr. (for whom Bel Air is named) and originally conceived as a beach club, post office, and retail center for the residents of the hillside, sat vacant. But West refused to let his dream die, and when he met Thelma Todd, he saw his vision come back to life with platinum fire.
In the summer of 1934, West and Todd became business partners in a café they opened on the ground floor of the empty community center. Christening it Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café, they hoped the allure of Thelma’s star power would entice Hollywood to make their way down Sunset Blvd., where their restaurant would be the first upscale beach establishment of its kind. Todd herself acted as the hostess of the restaurant, welcoming guests with a warmth they had only glimpsed on the screen. In its 18-month run, the Sidewalk Café became a glowing attraction, a symbol of what was possible following the Depression. Between Castillo del Mar and the café, West hoped to inspire new construction in Castellammare, to form a glamorous and close-knit community in paradise. It was an early vision of everything the Pacific Palisades would eventually represent.
Groucho Marx and his brother Chico with Thelma Todd in a scene from Horse Feathers, 1932.Paramount Pictures/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
While his first wife, Jewel, stayed in her lonely tower above, West moved to the living quarters above the café so he could better keep an eye on business, or so he said. Thelma Todd moved to her own quarters, also on the second floor. It’s hard to imagine that in such a tight shared space Todd and West were doing anything but living together (“in sin,” by the standards of the 1930s) and dreaming of their future.
Until the night of the party in December 1935.
