"Laughing at myself is what I do best. Lord
knows I have had practice, there being no city like Washington for laughable
situations, but it appears to me that I have outdistanced even politicians in
my race toward the ridiculous. I wanted to make my mistakes at the top and I
have. You may think it simple to play the fool in a town that pursues the activity
with unrestrained zeal, but my success was no lucky accident. I have had to
work making my blunders count against strong contenders through four
administrations." —Barbara Howar, Laughing All the Way
(1973)
Barbara Howar, born 85 years ago today in Nashville,
Tenn., represents a type—heck, make that “types”—increasingly rare in America:
DC cocktail party queen, semi-permanent talk show guest, gossip queen.
Modeling herself as a Scarlett O’Hara-style Southern
belle, she came to Washington as wife of a real-estate leader. Here she found,
however briefly, her mecca—in her words, “If ever there was a place for a
polished courtesan, it was Washington.”
That was certainly the case in the early-to-mid
Sixties, when the lissome blonde drew notice for her parties and for managing (for
a short while) the near-impossible feat of remaining in the good graces of the
Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson.
Then an indiscreet remark led to her banishment
from LBJ’s circle, and an indiscreet affair with one of the President’s aides
led to the end of her marriage.
In a 1986 Spy Magazine takedown of the “Most Embarrassing New Yorkers,” Howar
was derided as a “ludicrous woman, really—each night she primps and postures
before millions, delivering mindless accounts of trivial movements in the lives
of inconsequential stars.” It is true that, like the
fictional mistress of Tara, she did display a talent for floating to the surface
when her latest venture or association with a man didn’t work out.
In the 1970s, that meant an affair with editor-novelist
Willie Morris (who evidently used her as the basis for at least part of the
title character in his The Last of the
Southern Belles), or her own memoir (the bestselling Laughing All the Way) or novel (the far less successful Making Ends Meet).
In the attached 1978 Tonight Show interview with Johnny Carson, Howar inveighs against
how the press had turned Washington into as celebrity-obsessed a town as
Hollywood. Ironically, she was already well on her way toward becoming part of
that celebrity industry as an interviewer. She would go on to stints of several
years at Entertainment Tonight and the
more ill-starred Who’s Who, as an “entertainment
reporter”/gossip columnist. Later, she worked for a while for All in the Family producer Norman Lear, in one capacity or another. By the late 1990s, by design or not, she had fallen off the map.
It is very possible to take umbrage against Howar as
a silly, insubstantial woman who made her way with a modicum of humor, charm
and looks. But there were, even in her heyday, far worse ways of getting ahead.
Right next to her on Spy’s list of Embarrassing New Yorkers was a certain “short-fingered
vulgarian.” (Yes, Mr. Orange Hair.) And a sense of proportion about where one
really ranks, as she had, is hardly to be sneered at., a
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