The day after the item appeared The Enchanted Cottage was returned to her—it was a big success when she produced it—and she got I Remember Mama back, too. Louella had been restored in health and spirit in time to attend the preview, though in a seat removed from mine. “I expect Harriet’s picture will be very good,” she confided to a friend, “but I know one person here who won’t give it a good review.”
Harriet was in New York, where she read my notice in the News. She telephoned her mother. “Have you read Hedda’s column?”
“No, I never read that column,” Louella sniffed.
“She’s done what nobody else would do for me. I want you to call her and thank her for me.” Louella did, and we arranged a peace parley over a luncheon table at Romanoff’s for one o’clock the following day. When she walked in, a bit late as usual, every chin in the place dropped. Hasty telephone calls brought in a mob of patrons who stood six deep at the bar to witness our version of the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Nobody moved until we left arm in arm two hours later.
Harriet, whom I’ll always like, wired: YOU AND MA WOULD MANAGE TO TOP ME STOP YOUR HISTORIC LUNCH HAS NOW CROWDED I REMEMBER MAMA OFF THE FRONT PAGE STOP YOU GALS MIGHT HAVE WAITED FOR BABY. After that, she won a ten-year contract at RKO. But peace between Louella and me wasn’t wonderful enough to last very long.
The flames of our relationship blazed merrily one Christmas when a studio head unwittingly poured fuel oil on. Louella and I are on the same list for good-will offerings from studios, which fill my living room from floor to ceiling every season.
One Christmas just before Ernie Pyle went off on his last visit to the South Pacific, he came to call on me with some friends. After a few drinks in the den, I said: “Ernie, do you want to see what fear can bring a female in this town?”
We went into my living room. He looked in wonder at the loot and said softly: “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”
Not every female star gets carried away with generosity. Doris Day once sent me boxes of gift-wrapped chocolate-covered pretzels, and Rosalind Russell a fist-sized hunk of coral such as you’d find in a fish bowl. Louella’s loot exceeds mine. Once, I’m told, she collected an automobile.
One unlucky studio chief had bought expensive handbags for each of us, but they got switched in delivery. When I telephoned to thank him and included a glowing description of the bag, I could hear his face fall. “But that’s Louella’s,” he moaned. “Will you be a doll and send it on to her and explain?”