In 1920, during a summer production of Romeo and Juliet, Molnár fell in love with the strikingly pretty, talented, velvet-toned novice actress who was playing Juliet. This was Lili Darvas. Despite the age difference of 24 years, he embarked on a serious affair with the young star, who was attracted to mature, experienced, established men, having earlier been seen often at the side of the editor of a theatre magazine. When Fedák was on a tour of America singing and dancing with a Hungarian Gypsy revue, Lili Darvas was seen walking hand in hand with Molnár along the boulevards of Budapest. The enchanting Lili was quite different from Fedák even though they came from similar backgrounds, Lili also being the child of a Jewish doctor.
How did he make out with Lili given his bullying nature? He tried very hard to be extra pleasant and charming as he was truly smitten by the young woman and wanted to hold on to her. Family legend has it that on one occasion when they squabbled and he made to raise a hand against her, she snatched up a brass candlestick and hissed, "If you touch me, you'll wake up in hospital."
On returning from America, Fedák sent word that she wanted to see Molnár straight away, to which he replied that he didn't have time: he was working flat-out on a new play. "In that case, I'll dish out all the dirt on you to the press." The next day Molnár turned up at her door with roses in hand. A tense exchange, fully worthy of a Molnár play, ensued.

"I've decided that you're going to marry me," Fedák declared.
"Then what?" came the dead-pan response.
"Then you'll get a quick divorce, but not for free," Fedák retorted and got to her feet to signal that the audience was at an end.

The wedding took place on October 11, 1922 with only the registrar and two witnesses present besides the bridal pair. Fedák's was a well-known divorce lawyer. Molnár wore a sports jacket and matching slacks.
"You might at least have put on a dinner-jacket, Feri," remarked his witness, an editor on the Pesti Napló.
"Black ties are only for premières," was Molnár's reply.
After lengthy negotiations, they agreed on a sum of $80,000 for the divorce settlement. That was a huge sum in those days. Fedák went on to find herself a new lover, the very handsome Tibor Mindszenty, whom she resolved to take over to America and-with the aid of Alexander Korda-make the new Rudolf Valentino. That never happened on account of Mindszenty's truly modest acting skills. Instead, he became a studio photographer and paid frequent visits on Korda's wife.
One of the main figures in the 1925 play The Glass Slipper, translated into English the same year, is an ageing but upstanding carpenter with whom a serving-girl falls in love. This is about the time when Molnár and Lili Darvas started corresponding. In 2003, to mark the 125th anniversary of the writer's birth, this correspondence was published in a de luxe limited edition of 500 copies. The first six letters date from before the marriage, while in the rest Molnár was writing to his lawful wife, the wedding having taken place in 1926, the same year as his daughter, Márta, 19 years old at the time, entered her first marriage.
The two of them, Molnár and Darvas, made an odd couple, and not just by reason of the age difference. Molnár wanted to tie the hands of the young woman, who all of a sudden attained fame as an actress. Lili, for her part, with her penchant for seasoned men, was disposed to a marriage that promised an affluent lifestyle, advanced her

stage career and had the sort of cachet that she could count on as Molnár's spouse. Nor did she ever separate from him. What made the connubial bond genuinely special was the understanding on which their union was founded. It is clear, even from the rather mannered letters printed in this volume, that Molnár doted on Darvas. To begin with, he uses endearments like "dearest heart" and "precious", along with such emotionally loaded injunctions as "love me, because you can count on me, once and for all," or "I want to live with a she-leopard just like you." These effusions however are followed by the startling "I am your carnal love for one week in every year."
It was not long before Lili Darvas was discovered by Max Reinhardt, then at his peak as a director-manager. She toured the German-speaking countries as a member of his company. Molnár made an effort to accompany her. They would meet up and stay in the same luxury hotels, touring some of the loveliest areas on the continent ("Are you in the mood of roaming about in a car with your old pal?"). They would work together, Molnár coaching Lili for her roles in his plays, but they never moved in together and they never had a continuous married life. Darvas received a very generous allowance and extravagant gifts from her husband, and no doubt she was able to absolve the one week of carnal relations called for during the year, but she remained an independent woman. It is likely that she was a more faithful bedmate to the debonair, handsome Hans Járay (1906-90), who was four years younger than her and already an acclaimed star of film and stage, than she was to Molnár. Járay was there even after they had all emigrated to America, both in Hollywood and New York. By then Molnár had also found a Hungarian companion for himself in the person of Vanda Bartha. It could be that around 1936 the writer intended to set up a proper home in Budapest, as he bought a pleasant villa on a leafy street in Buda, but in the end they did not move in. The next year, in 1937, Darvas and Molnár came to Hungary for the last time for the premiere of his play Delila. As reconstruction work on the house was still in progress, they stayed at the Hungária Hotel. A monocled Molnár, wearing a boater, would stroll along the promenade by the Danube, revelling in the views of a Buda drenched in late-summer sunlight and in the elegant sweep of the city's bridges. That was the last time he set foot in the country. The villa was transferred to his daughter Márta's name, who was able to move in with her second husband, György Sárközi, myself as their new-born son, and the two children from her first marriage.
As distinct from the "dear heart" or the more typical "darling child" that he used to address Darvas in letters written before their marriage, he switched to more playful endearments, starting with "Pumiszkám" (Poochie Sweet) and later "Minyuszkám", while sometimes referring to himself as "Banyu". (He would always sign himself Feri, the standard diminutive for Ferenc.) One can at best only guess the etymology of some of these nicknames. A distorted form of the Hungarian word "nyuszi" (meaning little rabbit) appears in both Minyuszkám and Banyu. The first may also contain the word "minus"; after all, Lili Darvas was 24 years younger than Molnár. In an essay that accompanies this edition of the letters, Tamás Gajdó points out that in The Glass Slipper, which gingerly touches on the subject of a relationship between an ageing man and a young woman, there is a line: "In 70 years time, when she'll be 90, I'll be 118, people will say we're an old couple." Molnár put it more pungently among friends: "A hundred years from now Lili will be 124 years old and I'll be 148, and the difference in age will be much less noticeable."