Ida went back on salary for the last five years left to her. She had to walk with a cane for those years. The cane appeared the day she returned to Culver City in a black limousine, which carried her from set to set. Clutching the cane, she made her entrances to cheers, crowds, and an outpouring of affection from everyone who saw her. On her last Christmas on earth I dropped by on my way home from the office to give her a check. I asked: “What did Louis send you?”
“Go into the living room. You’ll find a shoe box. Take off the lid and you’ll see.” It was filled with homemade cookies.
While I was at her home, a huge silver bowl containing five dozen American Beauty roses arrived from K. T. Keller, president of Chrysler Motors Corporation. When I got back to my house, I called Louis Lurie, a friend of Louis B. Mayer, told him what had happened, and asked him to mail a check to Ida immediately, so she’d have it Christmas Day. He wrote a check on the spot for $250.
She lived to see King Louis deposed from his throne. It couldn’t have given her any joy, because she wasn’t that kind of woman. The mammoth studio, in spite of all its stars and resources, was being driven to the wall by this thing called television, which Hollywood despised. Metro lost millions when Mayer was in charge of production in the late forties. When Schary took over the job, there were some early money-makers, but not enough to offset the other kind, which he couldn’t resist making.
Time and again he crossed swords with Louis. If the dueling threatened to go against him, he was quick to appeal to Nick Schenck for support. In the end Schenck had to choose between Mayer and Schary. He chose Schary, who in turn was ousted years later and, when he left, collected a million dollars. Louis spent the rest of his life burning with hatred, trying in vain to take over MGM in legal battle he could never win. At his funeral Jeanette MacDonald appeared to sing “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.”
The fight against communism waxed and waned; so did the newspaper headlines. It took me off on a two-year lecture tour of twenty-four cities. I found myself the second vice president—the first was Charles Coburn—of an organization called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. John Wayne was president. As the Congressional probing continued, the studio bosses, true to form, shoved their heads into the sands like ostriches and, to protect the millions invested in unshown movies, hoped that trouble would simply go away. People like me, who dared to mention that trouble was still hanging around, discovered that strange things happened to them. Like the subpoena from Washington that didn’t exist.
Variety weighed in to report news of trouble ahead for Hopper:
HEDDA’S RED RAP
STIRS STUDIO TALK
OF FILM REPRISAL
Hedda Hopper’s columnizing that she “knows” the names of many Reds in Hollywood—with a resulting subpoena by the House Un-American Activities Committee—has some publicity-advertising toppers of major companies doing a quiet canvass among themselves of what their studios’ attitude should be toward the syndicated writer.
Their thought is that Miss Hopper has a perfect right to say whatever she pleases. However, she is largely dependent on studio press aid for news, and there’s some question as to whether such cooperation should be continued....