Lion of Hollywood by Scott Eyman

Author:Scott Eyman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Chapter ELEVEN

ON JUNE 26, 1942, Louis was lying in bed when the mail was brought in. Addressed to “Lewis” B. Mayer, 625 Oceanfront Avenue in Santa Monica, was a letter that began, “MR. MAYER, IS YOUR LIFEWORTH $250,000 TO YOU BECAUSE IF IT ISN’T—YOU WILL BE A VERY DEAD MAN INSIDE OF TWO SHORT WEEKS!”

The letter went on for three rambling pages to tell of a group of six who wanted Mayer dead but could be bought off for a quarter-million dollars. Enclosed was a clipping from the L.A. Times about a recent unsolved murder, at the top of which had been written “THIS MAN THOUGHT WE WERE KIDDING.”

A week later, Mayer got a postcard that repeated the demand and outlined instructions for payment. The money was to be left at the Ambassador Hotel for one “Robert Sexton.” On July 13, 1942, two men called for the parcel and were promptly arrested by the FBI. They were thirty-nine-year-old Meyer Philip Grace, a former welterweight boxer turned songwriter, and twenty-five-year-old Channing Drexel Lipton, a gas station attendant who was the son of former MGM writer Lew Lipton.

The case went to trial on January 5, 1943. Mayer’s own testimony was brief, and mainly involved a recitation of how he received the extortion letter. The defense attorney asked if Louis B. Mayer was really his name. “As far as I know,” he replied.

“Were you born and christened Louis B. Mayer?”

“As far as I know—I don’t really remember.”

The FBI kept close tabs on the prosecution and background of the case. FBI background documents and the court testimony reveal that Lew Lipton and his son had a “persecution complex” about Mayer. The defense never denied that Channing Lipton committed the crime, but asserted that Lipton’s parents had continual conversations over the years about Mayer blacklisting the elder Lipton, and that Mayer had at least one episode of “becoming familiar” with Mrs. Lipton, offering to put her up in an apartment as his mistress.

This, in essence, was the defense’s version: Until 1931, Lew Lipton had been a happy employee of Louis B. Mayer, earning $1,000 a week, living in a sixteen-room house in Brentwood. After a rift, Lipton couldn’t find work anyplace else, and had to gradually divest himself of his home and possessions in order to stay afloat.

“Am I going to be Monte Katterjohn?” Lipton would ask rhetorically, referring to a screenwriter who had written for Mayer in the Mission Road days, before seeing his career peter out in talkies, supposedly because of a blacklist. Producer Paul Bern hadn’t committed suicide, Lipton told his son, but had been “taken care of” by Mayer. John Monk Saunders had also been blacklisted by Mayer, he told his son, and also committed suicide.

It was alleged that Mrs. Lipton had gone to Mayer’s office in 1939, pleading with him to let her husband go back to work. Mayer had refused, but while taking her downstairs in his private elevator, had patted her in “familiar places” and told her that she was putting on weight, thereby losing the appeal she had always had for him.

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