"Back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the latest dance craze was the Frug, Washington high society was transfixed by..."

"... Barbara Howar, a sparkling socialite from North Carolina who helped the first lady do her hair, mingled with a visiting Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and turned her Georgetown home into a center of Swinging Sixties entertainment.... Defiantly unorthodox, she wore pajamas to an embassy gala, drove an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park and had a barbed wit that brought her a reputation as the enfant terrible of the capital’s social scene. Reflecting on the private life of Henry Kissinger, one of many diplomats and politicians who frequented her parties over the years, she quipped, 'Henry’s idea of sex is to slow the car down to 30 miles an hour when he drops you off at the door.'..."

From "Barbara Howar, whose hit memoir dished on D.C. society, dies at 89/Initially known as a Georgetown hostess, she became a best-selling author with her candid 1973 memoir, 'Laughing All the Way.' She later interviewed celebrities for 'Entertainment Tonight'" (WaPo)(free access link).

Howar launched her writing career with a 1968 Ladies’ Home Journal story called "Why LBJ Dropped Me." Looking (unsuccessfully) for a copy of "Why LBJ Dropped Me," I stumbled into this cool photograph, "Singer Bobby Darin sits with his girlfriend, Barbara Howar." I love her shoe. Grommets — so 60s! Ah, well, the 60s are long gone, and here I am, a creature of the 60s, entertained by obituaries, saying goodbye to everyone who was tormented by LBJ and danced the frug.

You don't see the phrase "enfant terrible" so much anymore. The OED says it's "A child who embarrasses his or her elders by untimely remarks; transferred a person who compromises his or her associates or his or her party by unorthodox or ill-considered speech or behaviour; loosely, one who acts unconventionally." We used to celebrate the enfants terribles. Didn't we? Do we still? Answer without saying "Trump" or you are too boring to wear pajamas to an embassy gala and drive an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park.

Why I read something this blurry.

I'd just watched "What a Way to Go" — the Criterion Channel is featuring Shirley MacLaine movies — and checking Rotten Tomatoes, I saw that Joan Didion wrote a review in the May 1964 issue of Vogue. I could subscribe to Vogue just to read that paragraph, but I found that by calming down and believing in myself, I could read it. It's not much different from reading without one's reading glasses. It's an apt and pithy review. "What a Way to Go" was a big movie in its day, so it deserves the bad reviews it got, but 60 years later, it's fun to look at the stars and the costumes and the sets. The Hollywood that produced it no longer exists. Nothing to get mad at now. Here's a sentence from the contemporaneous NYT review by Bosley Crowther:

Inspired by a Gwen Davis story, which has not swum into my ken, so I cannot tell you how fairly or fouly it has been used, the team of musical-comedy writers is making kookie jokes about a girl whose sad fate it is to marry a succession of burgeoning millionaires.

The "girl" hates money, loves Henry David Thoreau, and only wants to live the simple life, but the movie seems to have been made on the theory that the way to make good art is by spending as much money as possible.

"This is when I knew he’s a true Republican."

Said Shirley MacLaine about Clint Eastwood:

"Quite brilliant, and funny… because he’s so laconic and doesn’t know it. I adore him… I remember when we were doing Two Mules for Sister Sara, his horse was acting up. This is when I knew he’s a true Republican: He got off the horse, looked at the horse, and socked him."

I ran into that today because — as noted earlier — we just watched "Being There." I was looking for more material about the character MacLaine played in that movie. Did "Eve" really love Chance the gardener? Not only is the answer yes, but Chance loved her, I think, because MacLaine says: 

"Two years [after I made 'Being There'], I’m at a restaurant and [producer] Dick Zanuck walks up to me and says, ‘What’s it like to have a love affair with Peter Sellers?’ I said, ‘He’s not my type, and I didn’t. What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘I would go into Peter’s dressing room, and he would be on the phone with you doing sex talk.’ I tried to put all this together… It was Dick who figured out, ‘Listen, he became Chauncey Gardner, he was in love with the character you played, and if he had interrupted it with a lunch or dinner, the whole illusion had been shattered.’”

"I had many love affairs — and a lot of awful lovers. I wasn't into 'sexscapades' but I did try it once. I had three people in one day."

Says Shirley MacLaine. Who were these "people" — as she calls them? Not Jack Lemmon:

'I wasn't attracted to Jack Lemmon. He was a sweetheart. He didn't have that dangerous, complicated sexual thing that I liked helping the man I was attracted to figure out.

"Jack Nicholson had too much of it. He is authentically dangerous."

Authentically dangerous... is too much. Presumably, Lemmon wasn't even inauthentically dangerous.  It's so hard for a fellow to get into exactly the right zone.

I had quite a relationship with Robert Mitchum. And Yves Montand...

So there you have it. That's the zone. Robert Mitchum. (And Yves Montand...)

Song lyric evoked:

Can I have your autograph?
He said to the fat blonde actress
You know, I've seen every movie you've been in
From "Paths of Pain" to "Jewels of Glory"
And when you kissed Robert Mitchum
Gee, but I thought you'd never catch him
You're over the hill right now, and you're looking for love...

E! Online rumormongers about Laura Bush.

Ted Casablanca, "Gossip Guru and Writer of the Awful Truth," writes:

And as long as we’re on gals we all live for, let’s check in on that adorable Laura Bush, shall we? Now, I just gotta say I have a soft spot for the First Gal because she:

1. Has had to put up with Chief Schmuck for, like, eons now, and

2. Had the good sense—so my White House sources tell me (and, yes, I do have moles at 1600 Pennsylvania)—to remove herself from Bush’s company, as of late. Background: As I’ve said for months now, L.B. has been spending more and more time away from the White House, due to Bush’s resurrected drinking habits. The Hay-Adams is just one place Ms. B likes to hang away from official home.

But now, I'm hearing from down Tejas way that Laura-love is also avoiding their beloved Crawford ranch, as long as Dubya’s there.

“[The president] has been in residence three times over the past several months, and surprise, surprise, Mrs. Prez has not been with him on any of the visits,” sniffs Desk Horsey. This is most unusual, too, as, according to Desk H, Ms. Bush “adores the quiet life at the compound and usually the kiddos make an appearance as well.” But apparently not with the guy who’s anything but soft-spoken these days. L.B., you just biding your time till that party of yours gets another Republican in the Oval Office?

Girlfriend, I say cut your damn losses now. It’s your life. You don’t get another one, unless you’re Shirley MacLaine, or, apparently, Lindsay Lohan.

Eh. I have nothing to say about that. Just wanted you to know that's being said.

ADDED: Just yesterday, a NYT guest columnist referred to "Laura Bush’s increasingly beleaguered late-term demeanor." What does that even refer to?