The first film version of Around the World in Eighty Days was a German silent movie released in 1919; the most recent starred Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan; the most spectacular was Mike Todd’s 1956 Oscar winning extravaganza starring David Niven as Phileas Fogg and the Mexican actor Cantinflas as Passepartout.

Mike Todd, the flamboyant producer of big-budget Broadway shows who was often featured in the gossip columns with a cigar in one hand and a beautiful woman holding the other, had been a partner in the pioneering wide-screen film process Cinerama. He sold his stock in the company to develop his own improved and cheaper version of the technique, which he called Todd-AO. After three years of development, Todd-OA was unveiled to the public in 1955 in the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma, directed by Fred Zinneman and produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr . Around the World in 80 Days, premiered in 1956, was the second Todd-OA feature film and the first film that Todd produced himself. It was directed by Michael Andersen.

Todd had had to sell his interest in the Todd-OA system to help finance the film and continued to struggle financially throughout its production (he had a reputation for making and losing fortunes, and, like Fogg, was prepared to gamble everything on an idea). He had to hoodwink local officials in order to get some of his round-the-world location shots and also became adept at wheeling and dealing with celebrities, convincing them to take cameo roles (a term coined by Todd) for gifts instead of fees. Among over 40 guest stars were Ronald Colman, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Peter Lorre, John Gieguld, Noel Coward, Buster Keaton and George Raft. In a quirky bit of casting, the Indian princess, Aouda, was played by Shirley Maclaine. An opening prologue showed clips from the first film made of a Verne novel: George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902) based on From the Earth to the Moon.

In typical Todd-style, a lavish international buffet was held at the world premiere in December and for the London premiere he rented buses and boats so the entire audience could party on the Thames (the Daily Mirror declared he should be knighted). Nearly all the publicity material featured the hot-air balloon used for one leg of the journey, a form of transport not used by Verne in the novel (the film also includes a bull-fighting sequence in Spain not in the book and generally plays pretty fast and loose with the original plot). Although today the film can be difficult to watch as it seems so overblown, on its initial release it received rave reviews and garnered eight Oscar nominations, winning five, including Best Picture. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote:

Michael Todd, who had already shaken the foundations of the legitimate theater with an onslaught of highly heterogeneous and untraditional musical shows, is apparently out to shatter the fundamental formation of the screen... This mammoth and mad pictorial rendering is a conglomeration of refined English comedy, giant screen travel panoramic and slam-bang Keystone burlesque. Mike Todd outdoes the movies with Around the World in 80 Days.

Mike Todd died on 22 March 1958 when his private plane crashed in a storm over Mexico.