6                                      Don Congdon

back price ever paid at that time. Later, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
and Twentieth Century-Fox made identical offers of $300,000.
Matson had arranged the terms of the negotiation so that Ruark
had the absolute right to choose between them, a side-door condi¬
tion often overlooked when a big property is on the market. MGM
produced the picture.

One of our younger clients in the 1950s was AVilliam Manchester.
He had already published a biography of H. L. Mencken, several
novels and a number of brilliant magazine pieces. A three part
magazine series about John Kennedy was published in book form
under the title Portrait of a President. Because of the book, he was
nominated by Robert Kennedy and the then Jacqueline Kennedy
to write a complete report of the assassination while the sources
were still available. The ensuing brouhaha is well known.

While Manchester was aware that he was a subject of media at¬
tention, he had no idea of the extent of his notoriety until one
weekday morning in November 1965. Since midsummer he had
been badgered by the Kennedys to make further changes in his
manuscript; there would seem to be agreement that the manu¬
script was in acceptable order and then another set of changes
would be pressed upon him by either the Kennedys or his pub¬
lisher. Harper & Row. To avoid further pressures he decided to
go to London by boat, and he hoped the dust would settle by the
time he returned. The morning he was to leave he had one last
consulation in his hotel room with Evan Thomas, his editor. Sur¬
prisingly, Robert Kennedy also turned up to bang on his hotel
room door demanding entry, presumably with further requests.
Manchester managed to get out of his hotel room into the hall via
another bedroom door, arriving at our office just an hour before
his departure by ship. He was thoroughly shaken, having believed
his plans for the trip were secret. He downed a glass of whiskey
and requested that I accompany him via cab to the ship, to run in¬
terference, so to speak. As he waved goodbye at the top of the
gangplank, he appeared to have eluded all pursuers. A few hours