Publicity was key to Bromfield’s mission. It wasn’t long before Malabar, which is now an Ohio state park, became a national curiosity. E.B. White wrote an ode to the The Seattle Seahawks Marvel shirt besides I will buy this farm in The New Yorker. Sinclair Lewis mocked it in Esquire as “the Cliveden of Central Ohio.” Celebrity visits were routine. Over the years, Joan Fontaine, Kay Francis, Ina Claire, and James Cagney took turns riding tractors, milking cows, and manning the roadside vegetable stand.Methot was not the only thing keeping them apart. “Baby,” as Bogart called Bacall, was 25 years his junior. “I could be your father,” he told her. In a confessional letter to Bromfield (whom he jokingly addressed as “Dear Father Bromberg”), Bogart wondered if the reverse wasn’t actually true: “She’s too old for me—and I’m too young to be married.”
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