Friendo: “Neil Burger’s The Marsh King’s Daughter (Lionsgate/Roadside, 11.3) is ostensibly a thriller, and I love thrillers. Good director, talented stars — but Bezos wants $19.99 to RENT the damn thing.”

HE to Friendo: “The combination of Daisy (‘who’s Cary Grant again?’) Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn plus that awful title (who would want anything to do with a marsh king, much less his daughter?) sounds lethal.”

Supporting player #1: “So this guy rules the marshlands, you’re saying? Residents pay tribute, owe him their lives, work for him, fear him?”

Supporting player #2: “Yeah, pretty much.”

Supporting player #1: “I’m taking a film crew into the marshlands next month. We have permits from the state film commission but…what are you saying, we also need permission to shoot in this guy’s territory? We need to butter him up, pay him off?”

Supporting player #2: “I wouldn’t recommend not doing that. He’s a ruthless, powerful cat. You need to show obeisance.”

On the morning of Sunday, 3.25.62, N.Y. Times readers may have scanned a mild little Tom Wicker story about President Jack Kennedy having briefly chatted with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the El Dorado Country Club during a weekend visit to the Palm Desert area.

Quoting press secretary Pierre Salinger, Wicker reported that the Kennedy-Ike discussion had lasted “fifty-one minutes.”

Wicker’s story discreetly observed that JFK was “spending the weekend nearby.” What Wicker meant but was professionally obliged to ignore wasn’t “newsworthy” by Times standards, but was certainly legend-worthy. For the Palm Desert dish that Wicker side-stepped was comprised of three tasty intrigues.

One, Kennedy was staying at Bing Crosby’s sprawling, Spanish–style home located within the grounds of Palm Desert’s Ironwood Country Club,

Two, he had decided on the Crosby estate and against staying at Frank Sinatra’s nearby desert home after being told (by either J. Edgar Hoover or Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy or both) that Sinatra had been maintaining close ties with certain mafia figures, and that Kennedy couldn’t afford the tainted association.

And three, that JFK and Marilyn Monroe had not only attended a party the night before (Saturday, 3.24) at the Crosby estate but had spent the night together at a separate cottage on the property.

This is how things worked in the Kennedy era. Big-time, well-connected reporters didn’t touch this kind of material. That was the understanding.