Mike sat there churning with anger. This was his first picture. We made a sad threesome in the restaurant, with Mike complaining about how hard he’d worked already and us not listening to him. “You’re going on a plane and you’ll get no food there,” Marlene interrupted. “I’ll order dinner for you. Hedda and I will eat later.”
He accepted that idea, then grumbled that he didn’t feel like going to New York anyway and he’d cancel his reservation. “You must go. You’ve got money questions to settle there,” said Marlene, the mother again.
After he’d left, she telephoned the airport: “Mr. Michael Todd will be a few minutes late for his flight, number ten, TWA, for New York. Would you please hold the plane for him? It’s very important.” Then she asked me: “Are you hungry?” We hadn’t eaten a mouthful with him.
He went to New York. On his return he saw Sam Goldwyn, who came through with the right cutter. The first real preview, loaded down with Hollywood and New York big shots, was a sensation. But by then Mike had met and been dazzled by Liz, who arrived late at that screening nursing a highball, and sipped her way through the performance. Marlene saw very little of him after that, and Liz got all the glory.
On the afternoon of March 22, 1958, I was in Havana, Cuba, bowing before Madame Fulgencio Batista, wife of the reigning dictator, who was guest of honor at a fashion show being staged to celebrate the opening of a new Conrad Hilton hotel. In my outstretched hand I held a hat for presentation to her. A newspaperman in the crowd couldn’t wait until I’d finished. He hurried forward and whispered in my ear: “Mike Todd’s dead—his plane crashed.”
I quickly dipped my head to Madame. “Will you excuse me? I’ve had some very sad news.”
When I flew back to New York next day, Marlene telephoned me at the Waldorf Towers, broken up by the news of Mike. We talked for ninety minutes. She wept for him, and so did I.
Over cocktails in Havana I’d met an ex-subject of my movie-making days. Ernest Hemingway had cursed like a troop of cavalry in 1942 when my cameraman trailed him around Sun Valley and ruined a day’s quail hunting for him. I wanted to bag him and the Gary Coopers on film for my series of two-reelers called Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood. In Cuba I got very chummy with Ernest and his lovely wife, Mary. “We should have met twenty-five years ago,” he said gallantly.
“Yes, I think we might have made some sweet music then.”
“It’s not too late now,” the old flirt replied.