Michael Todd (born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen; June 22, 1907 – March 22, 1958) was an American theater and film producer, celebrated for his 1956 Around the World in 80 Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Todd was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Chaim Goldbogen (an Orthodox rabbi), and Sophia Hellerman, both Polish Jewish immigrants.

When the drugstore went out of business, Todd had acquired enough medical knowledge from his work there to be hired at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital as a type of "security guard" to stop visitors from bringing in food that was not on the patient's diet.

[5] His first flirtation with the film industry was when he served as a contractor to Hollywood studios, soundproofing production stages during the transition from silent pictures to sound.

[7] The company he owned with his brother went bankrupt when its financial backing failed in the early days of the Great Depression.

The act attracted enough attention to bring an offer from the Casino de Paree nightclub in New York City.

[18] His greatest successes were in musical comedy revues, typically featuring actresses in déshabillé, such as As the Girls Go (which also starred Clark) and Michael Todd's Peepshow.

Todd floated the idea of holding the 1945 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in newly liberated Berlin.

In 1952, Todd made a production of the Johann Strauss II operetta A Night in Venice, complete with floating gondolas at the then-newly constructed Jones Beach Theatre in Long Island, New York.

[19] In 1950, Mike Todd formed Cinerama with the broadcaster Lowell Thomas (who founded Capital Cities Communications) and the inventor Fred Waller.

A William Woolfolk novel from the early 1960s, entitled My Name Is Morgan, was considered to be loosely based on Todd's life and career.

[5] Bertha died of a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) on August 12, 1946, in Santa Monica, California, while undergoing surgery at St. John's Hospital for a damaged tendon in her finger.

[37] On March 22, 1958, Todd's private plane the Liz crashed near Grants, New Mexico, during a flight from Burbank, California, to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

[39] Verner was a veteran military pilot who had flown heavily loaded Curtiss C-46 Commando cargo planes over The Hump between India and China.

Verner had flown the plane overloaded like this before without incident, including piloting Todd on trips over the Atlantic and around Europe.

[41][42] Just hours before the crash, Todd described the plane as safe as he phoned friends, including Joseph Mankiewicz and Kirk Douglas, in an attempt to recruit a gin rummy player for the flight: "Ah, c'mon," he said.

[44] Todd's mother, aged 89 and a sanitarium patient at the time of her son's death, was not told of the accident as it was felt that the shock would be detrimental to her fragile health.

[47][48] In his autobiography, Eddie Fisher, who considered himself Todd's best friend, wrote: There was a closed coffin, but I knew it was more for show than anything else.

[50] The thieves broke into his casket looking for a $100,000 diamond ring, which, according to rumor, Taylor had placed on Todd's finger before his burial.