“Mr. Mayer,” cut in Mabel, “we have to work day and night to keep this tax measure from passing. I need your cooperation and Kay’s too. I will tell you right now that unless I can have her help with yours and unless you keep her on the payroll, we can’t possibly win.”
That stopped him in his tracks, and not in front of the mirror. He wriggled like a struck fish trying to get off the hook, but Mabel wouldn’t let him free. Finally, he swallowed her line of argument. “And you can have unlimited money to hire anybody else you think we need,” he said, in a typical complete turnabout.
But Mabel needed nothing extra except Ida’s experience and wisdom in developing her strategy. Ida had been in the habit of making half a dozen trips a year to Washington to lobby for MGM interests. In joint Senate-House committee the tax bill was beaten by just one vote. Mr. Mayer said his thank-you to Mabel, but made it clear that he couldn’t really give her any credit. After all, wasn’t it the magic name of Mayer that had worked the trick in Washington? She didn’t enlighten him, but she made a bargain. To make sure Ida was kept in her job, Mabel Walker Willebrand waived her fee for a period of one year for what she’d achieved.
Ida went on working way into her seventies, her back still straight as a ramrod, her hair iron-gray. “I wouldn’t have to do it,” she used to confide, “if I’d provided for myself when I was younger.” Mayer refused to put her on the studio’s old-age pension scheme. It was discovered later that her entire estate, including furniture, pictures, and insurance policies, amounted to less than $20,000. After twenty-two years of it she suffered a stroke and had to go into the hospital, where it was feared she would never walk again. She was forced to sell her car to pay her medical bills. Mayer didn’t lift a finger to help.
Visiting her in the hospital, I remembered a call I’d made on Louis when he didn’t know a horse’s head from its tail and consequently got himself pitched out of the saddle in the middle of a riding lesson. He landed with such a thump that he broke his coccyx. I found him lying in a hammock strung over the hospital bed, and roared with laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
“You. Everybody in town has longed to see your ass in a sling, and you finally made it.”
The room looked like a gangster’s funeral. There were trees of orchids and roses, forests of gardenias and camellias. Ginny Simms, whom he was squiring at the time, had contributed a full-sized cradle overflowing with roses that played “Bye, Bye, Baby Bunting” when you rocked it.
Louis proudly handed me for admiration a sheaf of get-well telegrams and letters, among them a missive from the then Archbishop Francis Spellman returning a check for $10,000—Louis didn’t miss a trick in trying to win friends and influence people. The archbishop sent his thanks, “but I am sure you must have many charities of your own.” I had to read that letter first, aloud.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” said Mayer, his eyes ready to pour tears down his cheeks.