Well, there’s just no end to it. Every time anyone thinks that Jack and Jackie Kennedy have surpassed themselves in their White House receptions, they manage to super-surpass themselves. Last week they did it again.
To the home of the President and his lady came 49 Nobel laureates, who with their wives and other distinguished guests totaled 173.*Gathering in the East Room, the Nobelmen plucked glasses of Manhattans, martinis and sherry from passing trays. Then the word quietly passed that the President was about to enter—and waiters plucked the drinks away from the guests.
In came Kennedy, accompanied by Jackie in a seafoam green evening gown by Oleg Cassini. In the reception line, Chemist Linus Pauling, who had spent the day in a ban-the-bomb picket line outside, got special attention. “Glad to see you expressing your opinions so strongly,” said Kennedy heartily. And Jackie twitted him with “Why do you do that? Every time Caroline sees people outside with signs, she says, ‘What has Daddy done now?'” In a dinner toast, the President observed: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” Canada’s Liberal Party leader, Lester Pearson, who had been invited to the President’s bedroom for a talk while Kennedy dressed for dinner, had a less graceful and less expansive view.
“This is the President’s Easter egghead roll,” he quipped.
Climax of Civilization. The company turned out to be congenial. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy took into tow a fellow named John Glenn. “Hey, John,” yelled Bobby over the din to the astronaut, “come over here and meet the ambassador.” After dinner, the U.S. Air Force’s 30-piece “Strolling Strings” came into the hallway where guests were mingling. Linus and Ava Pauling promptly swirled into a Viennese waltz. Other couples joined in, and Pauling, flushed with success, ordered a tango. About that time Jack and Jackie entered and—since there’s not supposed to be dancing at the White House unless it has been formally scheduled—appeared startled. “Look, Jack,” said Jackie, “they’re dancing”—and, for a while, the dancing continued.
For the evening’s main feature, the guests were marshaled into the gold-curtained East Room, where Actor Fredric March read excerpts from the works of three dead Nobel laureates. First came the heavily sarcastic foreword to Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street: “Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.”
Next, while the 77-year-old widow of George Catlett Marshall strained to hear from her front-row seat, came a passage from the 1947 Harvard speech in which the soldier-statesman proposed the Marshall Plan of postwar aid: “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” For his third offering, March had planned to read Ernest Hemingway’s short story, The Killers. But as tribute to World War II PT-boat Hero Kennedy, Widow Mary Hemingway had dug through a bank vault of her husband’s unpublished manuscripts, come up with a chapter from a novel about a young American who fought Nazi submarines from a fishing boat. It began: “The wind had blown heavily for more than fifty days but now it had dropped off.” Mary Hemingway had removed some of the profanity beforehand. After March finished, she sighed: “It was typical of the sort of thing that Papa did so well.”
“You’ve Got Lipstick.” Next evening the White House lights glowed again with the President’s annual reception for the diplomatic corps. Jackie brought back the Strolling Strings and also the Marine Band jazz combo for dancing—scheduled. The hit of the evening was new Russian Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, who whisked his attractive brunette wife through a fox trot, insisted the step was “typical Russian.” Among the early evening kibitzers was Caroline Kennedy, who appeared in an organdy dress and bandaged chin, proudly explained that she had cut her chin while capering alongside the White House swimming pool.
A fortnight ago, Caroline had been registered at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., where Jackie went. The day after the diplomatic reception, she got an opportunity to see what other Miss Porter’s girls look like — later. To celebrate a successful building drive, Jackie Kennedy had invited Farmington alumnae to an afternoon tea. The girls were delighted by an unexpected visit from the President, who paused long enough to shake some hands, pose for pictures, and whisper to his wife: “You’ve got lipstick on your teeth.”
“A Wonderful Climax.” The White House-sponsored acknowledgment of culture was spreading all over Washington. Last week Novelist Thornton Wilder came to town to read from his works at a “Cabinet Evening” in the State Department Auditorium; he stayed over for a White House dinner this week honoring French Minister for Culture André Malraux for which the guest list was heavily studded with actors and writers. “Washington,” said Wilder grandiloquently, “is becoming like a lighthouse on the hill for those things for which we spend our lives.”
More spontaneous, and for that reason better said, were the remarks of Mrs. George Marshall, who had paused, upon leaving the Nobel prizewinners’ dinner, to comment, in dialogue that might have come from Our Town: “When they first called me, I said, ‘I’m such an old lady I could never go.’ I’ve been away from here so long I don’t know any of these people today, except from the newspapers. But I bought myself a dress so I could come. This is my last time out, but it’s been a wonderful climax for me. Now I can go back to my briar patch.”
— Of the Western Hemisphere’s Nobelmen who attended, 45 were scientists (nine laureates from the University of California alone represented three more prizes than Russia has won since the Nobel awards were established in 1901). Nonscientists on hand were Peace Prizewinners Ralph Bunche and Canada’s Pearson, Literature Winners Pearl Buck and Saint-John Perse. Novelist William Faulkner declined.
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