He had one hour of analysis a day, six days a week. “For three weeks I spoke to nobody but this doctor, keeping myself shut up in my room, eating scarcely anything, sleeping very little, drinking cup after cup of coffee. When I started to get some inside on the cure, I began to work constantly at it. Pouring out your thoughts and mind is an emotionally exhausting experience. But you could never know the thrill it was when I realized that hate was leaving my heart.”
In September 1949 an announcement from the clinic said that he had completely recovered from a “nervous breakdown.” “I came back here scared as hell,” Bob said, “and I don’t think I’ve got the world by the tail. I haven’t worked for over a year, and I’d like to do two or three pictures in a hurry now and go back to the clinic for two months next spring.”
He was in a proselytizing mood when he talked to me. “The $64 question is where the average man can go for mental help. They can’t afford high-priced clinics, and they can’t afford to take the time off for what I did. People are waiting to get into clinics, but there’s not enough public demand for real work in this field because so many are unaware of its importance. If you have a decayed tooth, you can go to a dentist and have it removed. But if you have a mental stumbling block, you’re provided with no such opportunity.”
He spoke of trying to shield his sons from the truth about himself. They wanted to read the first newspaper interview he’d given. “Since it mentioned several unpleasant subjects like drinking, I hesitated. Then I decided to keep nothing back from them. The boys read it, and I explained the things they couldn’t understand. At night I read to them. Right now, we’re going through Swiss Family Robinson. About once a week we take in a show, usually a drive-in. They work two hours a day, scraping paint off a fence and a shed, and get fifty cents a day for it.”
I had written up his interview with me when, two days later, he telephoned. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t run that story. I poured my heart out, but I wasn’t thinking enough of my sons. I’d rather not have them read it all yet. When they’re older they’ll understand.”
* * * * *
At six o’clock on the evening of August 29, 1951, Mrs. Emily Buck, who was Bob’s housekeeper and nurse, called a psychiatrist who had been treating Bob for the previous eighteen months. Mr. Walker, she said, needed help in a hurry. He had been drinking, and he was losing control of himself. The doctor answered the call, and two hours later telephoned his associate to join him at the Walker house because he thought an injection would be necessary.
Two men among the group of friends who had gathered at the house held Bob down while the doctor prepared the needle. Bob was pleading: “Don’t give it to me. I’ve been drinking. It will kill me. Please don’t give me that shot.”
The following day the doctors reported that as many as thirty times before they had injected sodium amytal to calm him. Seven and a half grains “is not an abnormal dose if the patient is extremely emotional,” said the coroner’s autopsy surgeon. Bob’s breathing had begun to fail a matter of minutes after the shot entered his veins. The fire department rescue squad was called at eight-thirty. Not until ninety minutes later did they give up hope. Bob was thirty-two years old.
Jennifer Jones is still a very beautiful woman, her face unlined by age. She is an excellent actress on her own account—not since A Farewell to Arms, in which she starred with Rock Hudson, has David Selznick made a picture with or without her. She is very nervous while acting, hating to be watched at work by anybody but the minimum necessary crew, flinching at even routine questions when she’s interviewed.