MIKE TODD: Around the World in 80 Days ONE Sunday afternoon, the phone rang in the Pink House. ‘This is Mike Todd. I’m over at Joe Schenck’s. I wanna see you. Get your ass over here.’ I was halfway through a polite excuse before I realised that he had long since hung up. I had never met Todd but I had heard a hundred stories about the legendary master showman, gambler, promoter or con man — everyone saw him from a different angle. [...] When I arrived, Todd was by the pool. Of medium height and perfect proportions, he was tanned dark mahogany. He wore the briefest of swimming slips. On his head was a white ten-gallon hat, in his mouth was a cigar of grotesque pro- portions. He had no time for preliminaries. ‘Ever heard of Jules Verne?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘Ever read Around the World in 80 Days?’ ‘I was weaned on it.’ ‘I’ve never made a picture before but I’m gonna make this one... How’d you like to play Phileas Fogg?’ My heart bounded. ‘I’d do it for nothing.’ Todd tossed aside his hat and cigar. ‘You gotta deal,’ he said and disappeared beneath the surface of the pool. From that moment till the time, six months later, that the picture was finished, I lived in an atmosphere of pure fantasy. Nobody knows where Todd raised the necessary seven million dollars and he certainly didn’t raise it all at once because sev- eral times production ground to a halt while strange, swarthy gentlemen arrived from Chicago for urgent consultations. For weeks on end we went unpaid. Todd induced S. J. Perelman to write the screen play and employed John Farrow to direct it. The Mexican bullfighter comedian, Cantinflas, arrived to play my valet, Passepartout, and Shirley MacLaine was signed to play Princess Aouda. ‘But who the hell do we get to play Mr. Fix the Detective?’ said Todd, chomping on the inevitable cigar. ‘How about Robert Newton?’ I suggested. Todd was enchanted with the idea and immediately put in a call. ‘But I warn you, Mike,’ I said, feeling every kind of heel, ‘Bobbie is a great friend of mine but he does drink a lot these days and you must protect yourself. Lots of people are scared to employ him — he disappears.’ ‘I want to see Newton,’ said Todd firmly, ‘and when he comes in, I want you here in the office.’ ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t tell him I said anything,’ I begged, ‘he’ll never forgive me.’ A little later, Bobbie Newton shuffled in. I hadn’t seen him for some weeks and it was obvious that he had been on a bender of heroic proportions. Todd went into his routine. ‘Ever heard of Jules Verne?’ ‘Ah, dear fellow,’ said Newton, ‘what a scribe!’ ‘8o Days Around the World?’ ‘A glorious piece, old cock.’ ‘How’d you like to play Mr. Fix?’ ‘A splendid role,’ said Bobbie, rolling his eyes. ‘Do I under- stand you are offering it to me, dear boy?’ ‘I might,’ said Todd and I felt like the slimiest worm when he continued, ‘But your pal, Niven here, says you’re a lush.’ ‘Aah!’ said Newton, ‘my pal, Niven, is a master of the under- statement.’ He was hired immediately and gave his word of honour to Todd that he would go on the wagon for the duration of the picture. He stuck manfully to his promise. [...] If Todd had difficulty in raising money for his epic, he seemed to have none persuading the biggest names in show business to play small ‘cameos’ for fun. We started shooting in Spain with Louis Miguel Dominguin playing himself in the bullring, and there, after a falling out, Todd replaced the direc- tor, John Farrow, by the young Englishman, Michael An- derson. In London, more cameo parts were played by Noël Coward, Beatrice Lilhie, Hermione Gingold, Hermione Baddeley and Glynis Johns, and back finally in California for the major portion of the work, I became inoculated against surprise when I found myself playing scenes almost daily with different dis- tinguished visitors — among them Ronald Colman, Charles Boyer, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, George Raft, Red Skelton, Victor McLaglen, Andy Devine, Joe E. Brown, Cedric Hardwicke and Buster Keaton. Somehow Todd also found time to collect someone specially for himself and, radiant with happiness, Elizabeth Taylor became a permanent fixture. Nothing ‘phased’ Todd ... when a flock of several hundred sheep stopped our car on the way to location in Colorado, he bought the flock. ‘Great idea!’ he said. ‘We put the sheep in front of the train to hold it up.’ The sheep had been on their way to market so now feed had to be provided at great expense to keep them alive till their big moment. When it came, far from stopping the train, they scat- tered before it like chaff. ‘Sell the goddam sheep,’ ordered Todd, we need a herd of buffalo.’ He found them too, in Oklahoma, and the scene was reshot with several hundred gigantic beasts stampeding in every direction. In Paris, shooting with Todd-luck on the only sunny day in five weeks of continual rain, we were joined by Fernandel and Martine Carol. Todd needed all the luck at his disposal when be took over the Place Vendôme and ordered cars towed away in the early morning which might interfere with his day’s shooting. One of the offending vehicles turned out to be the property of a Cabinet Minister who was spending the night away from home. Todd was ordered to stop shooting and the police moved in to enforce the order. Todd promptly paid two taxi drivers to stage a head-on collision in the rue de Rivoli and during the ensuing diversion, he completed his work. In London, he ‘stole’ a shot of a company of Guardsmen marching out of Wellington Barracks and separating on either side of his camera by the simple device of camouflaging the machine on a vegetable barrow and pushing it directly in front of the oncoming soldiers at the last second ... that, not sur- prisingly, proved to be our final day’s shooting in the streets of London. At Balboa, Todd converted an ancient sailing yacht into a paddle steamer of the period by building on deck a large super- structure which housed the ponderous engine of a San Fran- cisco cable car to turn the paddle wheels. Not only was the yacht now dangerously top heavy, but, as we chugged out of the harbour, full laden with actors, crew, lights and cameras, it was made clear to us that a nasty passage was ahead. I pointed to the storm warnings being raised by the coastguards at the end of the breakwater. ‘I can’t see a goddam thing,’ said Todd, ‘I’m Nelson.’ In the event the boat proved too dangerous to turn round in the heavy seas and we had to go all the way to Catalina before we dared try it. With gorgeous Elizabeth by his side, Todd remained unde- feated to the end even when the sheriff of Los Angeles locked up the finished footage of his picture, thereby immobihising his only asset within the State of California till various local credi- tors had been mollified. Todd was allowed to assemble and score the film during the day time under the watchful eye of a sheriff’s deputy but at night, back it went into the vault. Somehow, Todd staved off the enemy and, at last, the picture was ready for presentation. The sheriff was persuaded to allow the film to travel to New York for its big gala opening at the Rivoli Theatre. ‘You gotta get your ass back East,’ Todd told me. ‘You gotta be there at the pay-out window.’ Todd sent air tickets and installed us in the most expensive apartment in the St. Regis Hotel. There was a present for Hjördis when we arrived and the rooms were full of flowers; champagne and caviar were waiting for us. The opening was a Todd bonanza; mounted police held back the screaming crowds as the audience of a thousand famous people in evening dress filed into the theatre. Every member of the audience received a beautifully bound and illustrated pro- gramme embossed in gold on the cover with the name of each recipient. After the showing, Todd gave a champagne supper for fifteen hundred at the Astor Hotel. Where did he get the money for all this? The answer, accord- ing to Bennett Cerf of Random House, who produced the pro- gramme, was that he didn’t. The morning after the opening, his cheque made out to the publishers — bounced. No matter, Gambler Todd had got right to the wire with his last penny and when the audience had finished cheering and the ecstatic reviews were being read, there he was standing happily at the pay-out window. The picture won the Academy Award as the Best Picture of the Year and became one of the biggest money spinners of all time. Todd married Elizabeth and gave her a diamond the size of a skating rink. He bought himself a twin-engined plane. The Moon's a Balloon, David Niven, pp 280-286