The news was broken to him by Max Schumacher who was president of the News Division at UBS.The two old friends got properly pissed -In the middle of a drinking marathon on a nighttime street in Manhattan, Beale""s boss and old friend and admirer Max Schumacher (William Holden), the head of the network news, speak ogether about their maverick days in the early 50s in the radio news business when television was just beginning.Harold: Me?Mildred: You don""t care how much you take me away from people I like.Amelia: Harold, are you listening to me?Harold: Oh yes, yes, dear, go on, go on...Amelia: What did I say last?Harold: Yes, yes, every word of it, yes..Mildred: I never knew such an ungrateful father.Harold: (to Mildred) Listen, you""ve all got to realize one thing hat I (he tentatively glances in the direction of his wife, and henwhispers so his wife won""t hear) am the master of this household.When he arrived at the hospital, she had already been abducted in the hallway, and he didn""t know that he had passed her, being wheeled out on a rolling stretcher, covered by a sheet and unconscious, and placed in an AMR vehicle.In one of the film""s best, most artful, sexually-lustful scenes, she invites him to sit next to her on the divan - he falls o the floor - as she reclines on the chaise and hangs onto him for comfort and for recovery after allegedly being frightened by the snake.