Later, at the gala, the performers were:
Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who danced a pas de deux from “La Corsaire,” the Ballet Folklorico, Alfred Hitchcock, Bobby Darin, Carol Channing, Woody Allen, Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews performing a duet, Harry Belafonte, Ann Margret, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Johnny Carson, and Barbra Streisand.Other celebrities present:
Peter, Paul and Mary, The Brothers Four, Mike Nichols, Elliot Gould, Bobby Darrin, Jerry Herman, David Merrick, Sophie Loren and Carlo Ponti, John Reardon, Gregory Peck, and Allen Sherman.Dances danced: the Jerk, the Frug, the Watusi, and the Monkey.
LBJ and Lady Bird aren't dancing the Jerk, Frug, Watusi, or Monkey in that picture, but they are dancing, and "LBJ was the first president since George Washington to dance at his own Inaugural Ball."
A firstier first involving Lady Bird on that inauguration day is: "Mrs. Johnson was the first President’s wife to hold the Bible at the swearing-in ceremony."
A firstier first involving Lady Bird on that inauguration day is: "Mrs. Johnson was the first President’s wife to hold the Bible at the swearing-in ceremony."
Posts
22 comments:
Hey, hey, LBJ, how many stars were your suckers today?
Nobody noticed the thing at the time.
The news divisions were till loss centers and hadn't discovered soap opera for ratings.
I wonder what kind of performing Hitchcock did!
The Democrats are the beautiful people, the in crowd who always know the most famous celebrities and throw the best celebrations. It's just fun and hip to be a Democrat.
I took out Jake's comment, which recommended the Robert Caro series of books about LBJ:
"LBJ is an incredibly interesting person. I highly recommend Robert Caro's series on him."
As I have been blogging a lot recently, I'm reading that series and strongly recommend it.
Jake didn't provide a hot link (or an Amazon Associates link that lets you contribute to this blog), which is why I didn't like his comment coming first on this post.
Here's the link.
(You could get that link by using the search box in the side bar and making the search specific enough to produce a list of the books. You have to use the URL from your first page out of the box for it to have "althouse" in the URL and work as an "Althouse portal" link.
Thanks to Jake for referring to the books and the Althouse portal. No offense intended by the deletion.
"I wonder what kind of performing Hitchcock did!"
I'm picturing that whole cast of characters in one big, nutty comedy sketch.
Remember that Hitchcock did comedy bits at the beginning of his "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (and he always appeared in a cameo in his movie). So he was a performer.
Check him out in this episode interestingly titled "The Cheney Vase."
Those were the days, my dear.
Compare that to what would show up today.
"-but always trying and always gaining."
Sounds like Russ Feingold quoted in an earlier post of yours.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/russ-feingold-games-not-over-until-i.html
"Compare that to what would show up today."
GloZell!
So when did rock-n-rollers start rubbing elbows at these events?
Luci Baines Johnson and Steve McQueen dance the Watusi!
...and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
That means we are two years away...
A firstier first involving Lady Bird on that inauguration day is: "Mrs. Johnson was the first President’s wife to hold the Bible at the swearing-in ceremony."
Which may help explain why Lady Bird was more tolerant of her husband's philandering than most would have expected. I have read that LBJ so respected his wife's judgment that he consulted her on most political issues. She wasn't just wifey baking cookies to her husband.
Sometimes there!'s justice in this world. I don't think LBJ will ever recover from the Caro biography. Even when Johnson was in the right, he was loathsome and unlikable. . The other great Presidential biography was the one McCullough did of Truman. Even when Truman was wrong, he was wrong in a decent and sympathetic way. Both Caro and McCullough wrote persuasive, compelling books, and there's a good chance that their biographies will stand as the judgment of posterity.
Minor point: its Sophia Loren not Sophie.
I wasn't invited to LBJ's inaugural ball, but a couple of years later he invited me to his Vietnam party---it was an invitation I couldn't refuse.
LBJ’s 1948 senate election still resonates in South Texas. The Duke of Duval County, George Parr turned LBJ from a loser to a winner by finding another 200 votes in Alice Texas one week after the election. The voter registration consisted of signatures in alphabetical, in the same ink, in the same hand; which was promptly destroyed. George Parr is one of those Texas legends that will be remembered forever. Seventy years of missing money, missing votes, missing bodies and stories too outrageous to be believed. All the more amazing is that Duval County is a truly retched piece of South Texas scrub land. A long string of republicans prosecuted him in the 30’s and again in the 50’s, only to be pardoned by Truman and later Robert Kennedy. He was finally prosecuted and convicted by William Sessions in the 70’s. He shot himself instead of going to prison. A true American character that people want to forget but cannot.
Yeah, reading through the text of the inaugural, there is a glaring omission, isn't there?
Where's any mention of voting rights??
Razor Sharp Sundries here:
Mike Nichols gets two mentions in the above summary and Eliot Gould was not yet a celebrity, but he was married to one at the time: Barbara Streisand. I guess he slept his way to the top.
Post a Comment