In the months after she discovered Thelma’s body, Mae Whitehead was frequently bothered by newspaper reporters and became worried that they might be trying to blame her for her employer’s death. She was a single mother taking care of her son, and it took her a little while before she was able to find work again. Eventually, however, she found employment as a personal assistant for the likes of ZaSu Pitts, Patsy Kelly, and Helen Ainsworth. To avoid any more publicity, she began using her maiden name and for a time moved in with her parents so she could care for her ailing mother. Described by her granddaughter as “religious, caring and a hard worker,” Mae lived a long life, passing away in 1989 at age eighty-four.
Alice Edwards Todd never spoke publicly about her daughter after the initial statements she released shortly after Thelma’s death. Losing her husband, son, and daughter during the course of twenty-five years weighed hard on her mind, and she never truly recovered. Thelma’s death seemed to trouble her the most, perhaps because it was so full of mystery. Despite her public insistence that it must have been an accident, we will never know if she truly accepted this or actually still believed her initial feeling that her daughter had been murdered.
Alice disposed of most of Thelma’s belongings and on February 10, 1936, left Los Angeles, telling reporters that she was moving out of California because the movie industry held such sad memories for her. Back in Massachusetts, Alice moved into 22 Bowdoin Street, where members of the Todd family had lived for years, and spent her remaining days quietly, both in Lawrence and at the family lake house, where she felt at peace.
Alice passed away December 18, 1969, almost thirty-four years to the day after her famous daughter. In death, her hair was styled by Thelma’s former school friend Edna Hamel, and then Alice was buried with her daughter’s ashes beside her. Up until the moment she passed, the devastated mother had kept Thelma’s remains in her home, along with a beautiful photograph of her daughter.
In his lifetime, Roland West was never officially accused of having a hand in his lover’s death, though over the years rumors to that effect did spring up, and questions were asked about his involvement. In spite of that, he continued to run the Sidewalk Café, which he officially named Thelma Todd’s Inn/Joya’s. In fact, he wasted no time in letting everyone know it was still open for business, placing notices in the press that ran just four days after the discovery of Thelma’s body. In the statement (signed by manager Rudy Schafer), he thanked friends and fans for their support before vowing to carry on “as Miss Todd would have liked it,” by remaining in business. West then saw to it that the establishment was prominently advertised in the Los Angeles Times throughout January 1936. Over the years, rumors abounded that West’s gambling parties in the Tower Room continued—possibly under mob rule—though these stories have never been backed up with hard evidence.
Thelma’s death proved to be good for business, as it turned out, and the building was often visited by curious fans wanting to dine and be photographed in the place where it all had happened. But there was a downside too: Roland began to complain that he received many letters from cranks, some sharing their theories of the death and others threatening harm to him and the business. One such letter was posted from Detroit on Christmas Eve 1935, less than two weeks after Thelma’s death. “Thelma Todd’s death will never be solved,” it said. “And the rest who were at the party had better KEEP THERE [sic] TRAP SHUT or something else will happen.” The letter was passed immediately to the FBI, and it is probably no coincidence that shortly afterward West decided to hire a bodyguard. The man, named Raymond Babus, also acted as a personal chef and traveled around the States with his boss for some years after Thelma’s death.
The café was never far from controversy, and in June 1936 it made headlines again when actress Lila McComas dined there shortly before taking off at high speed and crashing her car into a vegetable truck, killing herself in the process. Then in August of the same year it was mentioned again when seventeen-year-old Katie Turman dined there before promptly disappearing. West himself became involved in more scandal when he was mentioned in an investigation involving the tax payments of his old friend Joseph M. Schenck. He survived everything thrown at him, but the negative limelight was not something he appreciated.
In 1937, Roland decided to hire entertainment for the café and contracted Queenie’s Honky Tonk, a floor show that included actress Queenie Shannon and comedian Michael Slade. West was so impressed with Queenie that he offered her the position of café manager, which she surprisingly accepted even though she had just been offered a screen contract. The woman took over Thelma’s role at the front of the house, trained bartenders, and acted as a mistress of ceremonies during entertainment evenings. She prided herself on finding girls in their teens to become her “personality waitresses,” dressing them up in costumes that left little to the imagination and teaching them how to wait tables. West and Queenie were rumored to be romantically involved, and the two went on trips around the United States to find new and exciting recipes for the café. The relationship did not last, however, and West accused her of squandering and wasting all of the money he had given to her. By the time he passed away, she would be left just one dollar in his will.
His estranged marriage to Jewel Carmen continued to stumble on, because of her reluctance to grant him a divorce without a payoff. This led West to make a surprising claim—that they had never been legally married anyway—so a furious Carmen enlisted heavyweight lawyer Jerry Giesler, who then fought for her financial interests. The matter was eventually settled in November 1940, when West agreed to pay Carmen $50,000 cash and made a promise that he would not contest the divorce suit. In later years she fell out of the spotlight, and she passed away in 1984.
In the mid-1940s West married actress Lola Lane, and around this time he renamed the café Chez Roland. However, West was not in the best of health, and he moved to Florida in the late 1940s, dividing his time between there and the apartment above the café. During one trip back to Los Angeles in the summer of 1949, West went to a party at Joseph M. Schenck’s house, only to find himself in the company of Pat De Cicco. What they spoke about during their time together was never disclosed.
In 1951, West’s health had deteriorated so much that he made the decision to put the café up for sale, and ads appeared in the Los Angeles Times between September and December of that year. The café was described as fabulous, a 12,500-square-foot space, fully equipped and complete with four penthouse apartments. “Owner too ill to operate,” read the ad, explaining that West had slashed the price from $250,000 to the bargain price of just $100,000. However, the former director never got to see a sale being made, as on March 31, 1952, just months after the advertisements ran, he passed away during a visit to Santa Monica. His funeral was just fifteen minutes long and included his wife and a handful of friends from his silent film days.
Life for residents of Castellammare continued, though in time the glamour of a home at the beach was overshadowed by mudslides. By 1958, various streets had dropped as much as ten feet since 1941 and two feet in just the past year. Three residencies were vacated on orders of the L.A. Department of Building and Safety, and recommendations were brought forward for at least four roads to be closed.
In April 1965, residents started to complain that land in the vicinity of Revello Drive was slowly but surely moving. Some gathered as many possessions as they could and left their homes as quickly as possible. Others did not, and in the early hours of Saturday, June 5, they awoke to the devastating realization that they’d waited too long. During the next day, houses literally traveled down the hillside, gardens collapsed into the streets below, and at least three homes and eight apartments were destroyed. Various roads and cliff-side staircases remain buried to this day, though the threat of slides seems to have eased somewhat in recent years.
For decades after Roland West’s death, the building that once housed the Sidewalk Café was used by a film production company. It remained virtually untouched by time, still housing the refrigerator once used by restaurant staff, as well as the sliding doors in Thelma’s room and the front doors with the Joya’s name attached. Even the actress’s own dining table stayed inside until an estate sale in 2015. The building has now been sold and its future is uncertain, though Thelma’s fans and historians hope that it will be preserved for many years to come.
Pat De Cicco was never far from controversy in the years after his ex-wife’s death. After the discovery of the body and the subsequent questioning, girlfriend Margaret Lindsay developed health problems. She had been due to act in a murder mystery film but pulled out and did comedy instead. Her relationship with De Cicco cooled.
The following summer, still describing himself as a theatrical agent, De Cicco ran into trouble with the Riviera Country Club, which claimed he owed them $61.59. He refused to pay, and after the club made fifteen attempts to obtain the money, he was finally arrested almost a year later and taken to court in July 1937. Another arrest came because of a traffic violation in November 1936, and then in February 1937, De Cicco punched an investment broker on the chin during a night out at the Clover Club in Hollywood. The broker claimed that the attack was unprovoked—that he had been minding his own business—and announced his intention to sue De Cicco to the tune of $25,000.
By July 1938, Thelma’s ex claimed to be broke, and he was called into court after refusing to pay $148.50 worth of health and beauty treatments for his dog. Saying he had just four dollars to his name and no job, property, or bank account, De Cicco made the fatal mistake of arriving at the building in a car worth $3,750. It was promptly confiscated.
Several years later he joined the US Army and then married heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. However, this was not the end of his bad-boy image—in fact, in many ways it was just the beginning. In March 1942, the couple were living at the Drake Hotel in New York when De Cicco was accused of punching a hotel employee who refused to give him a pot to make spaghetti. He was arrested but later acquitted after claiming he merely pushed the clerk after being called a rude name.
Author Ernest Hemingway and De Cicco both frequented the same New York gym at the time, and when Hemingway heard about the altercation, he immediately challenged him to an amateur boxing match. De Cicco declined. Gloria Vanderbilt tried to laugh off the incident at the hotel, but cracks appeared in the marriage. The two separated and eventually divorced. She went on to write a book, Black Knight, White Knight, which is partly about her volatile ex-husband.
By the late 1940s, De Cicco was manager of United Artists Theaters. He busied himself with arranging the redecoration of establishments such as the Hollywood Egyptian Theatre and the California Theatre, where he associated himself with producer Samuel Goldwyn. This went some way toward cleaning up his reputation, and he even managed to get his photograph in the Los Angeles Times, holding a small girl and pointing toward a decorated Christmas tree.
De Cicco’s wild-boy image was never far from the surface, however. He was frequently seen squiring young women around Hollywood, including tobacco heiress Doris Duke and tennis player Gertrude “Gorgeous Gussy” Moran. He eventually married actress Mary Jo Tarola—nearly twenty years his junior—in December 1952, though the two divorced eight years later.
In recent years, a rumor has been put forward that Pat De Cicco may have had a hand in the death of actor Ted Healy, who died in 1937 after three men beat him up. This has never been substantiated and is probably not true, but in light of his past endeavors, the stories linking Healy and De Cicco are unlikely to fade. In his later years, the former agent, producer, theater manager, and mafia wannabe lived fairly quietly, spending much of his time in Spain and garnering little mention in the press. He eventually passed away in October 1978.
Mobster Tony Cornero decided to take his gambling plans offshore, and in the years after Thelma’s death, he set about buying and renovating a ship. This was the Rex, and on May 1, 1938, he had it towed from Long Beach and anchored several miles from Santa Monica Pier. Every day taxi boats would take gamblers out to the ship, and Tony earned a tidy fortune from the operation. Tom Cavett—the same investigator who told the public of gambling interests at the Sidewalk Café—was later thought to have been kidnapped by Frank Cornero when he asked to be taken out to the Rex to investigate the ship. Instead Cavett was given an extended guided tour of Santa Monica bay by the Cornero brother and eventually returned, absolutely furious.
Cornero was involved on and off in the gaming ship business for a number of years, and in 1948 he became the victim of a murder attempt, when someone knocked on his door, announcing he had a package. He survived the attack but was evasive with police about who could have been responsible, acting as if he were in deep pain every time he was asked a question.
Finally Cornero decided that gambling in California was more trouble than it was worth and headed back to Nevada. There he maneuvered through various loopholes to begin work on the famed Stardust Hotel and Casino. Several weeks later he made a trip to the Desert Inn, where he became involved in an altercation with a member of staff. Minutes later he collapsed and died, apparently of a massive heart attack, though strangely no autopsy was ever performed. Rumors quickly circulated that he could have been murdered, the victim of yet another mob hit.
Stories related to Thelma’s death have grown since 1935, with rumors of hushed-up involvements being particularly rife. A popular theory is that Roland West admitted to locking his lover in the garage to teach her a lesson when she returned to the café after 2 AM. The next day he was apparently horror-stricken on discovering she had died after turning on the engine, and therefore pretended he had not seen her since she left for the Trocadero party.
In the pages of this book, I have tried very hard to break down each piece of evidence and every shred of information and to pose questions on how the death could (or could not) have happened. It is my hope that my theory of how Thelma passed away will provoke more discussions and theories in the years to come. In the same way, I hope my account of what happened in her life will encourage a renewed interest in the career of a remarkably talented woman.
Thelma never wanted to be a star; she wanted to be an actress who excelled at her craft. Sadly, she never reached the heights of Hollywood superstardom, and as she edged her way toward age thirty, she knew her time was limited. The creation of the Sidewalk Café was her sanctuary, her ticket out of the business as soon as she was deemed too old to be a vamp or a slapstick comedienne. She stood in that building and welcomed friends old and new to her domain. She retreated to the café and to West when the pressures of the world outside became too much. Above all, she hoped that despite everything going on in her life, she could remain safe within its thick walls.
In the end, neither the café nor her lover West did anything to save Thelma from her fate, and in many ways, these two things and the people attracted to them were the very unmaking of her. “I’m too thoroughly New England to get away from the fundamentals of life,” she once said. “Things are so extreme here. I can’t quite get Hollywood. People here have no sense of values. They don’t know how to live. Everything is done for effect. There’s no sincerity—no balance.”