Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Best Man,’ on a Candidate’s Missing Wife)

Sue Ellen Gamadge [played by Ann Sothern, far right]: [to William Russell, played by Henry Fonda, center] “We want to see a lot more of your wife—a great deal more. You know, there are still people who don't trust the English.”

Dick Jensen [played by Kevin McCarthy]: “Mrs. Russell was sick during the primaries.”

Sue Ellen: “Yes, yes, yes. I know. But she has to be at your side at all times. She must seem to be advising you. It did Adlai Stevenson great harm not having a wife and trying to be funny all at the same time, too. Great harm.”— The Best Man (1964), screenplay by Gore Vidal, based on his play, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner

Gore Vidal’s political satire has lost little if any of its sting, six decades after he wrote it. The setting—the smoked-fill rooms at a convention that will determine a party’s candidate—may have lost its importance, but his Broadway play and adaptation are at heart about power and its use in smashmouth politics.

And, even though we now—courtesy of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump— have Presidents who’ve been divorced, voters are still awfully curious about candidates’ spouses.

Which brings us to William Russell’s wife Alice in The Best Man.

The actress who played Alice on Broadway, Leora Dana, was American, as were the actresses who took on the role in 21^st century revivals: Michael Learned, Candice Bergen and Cybill Shepherd. So perhaps that line about “the English” above was made to account for the casting of the admittedly marvelous Margaret Leighton (pictured far left) when the play became a movie.

But, as a student of history, Vidal would probably have been struck by the irony of a foreign-born First Lady. For the first two and a quarter centuries after the founding of the republic, there had only been one such spouse: Louisa Johnson Adams, born in—yes, England.

Then came Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s second wife from Eastern Europe. (Perhaps he might want to reconsider his position on imports?)

For the longest time, I thought Louisa Adams underwent some of the worst experiences of any First Lady as the marital and political partner of John Quincy Adams, a notably frosty fellow who suffered bouts of depression.

After being largely ignored in the White House by her husband, Louisa became something of a recluse and worked on an unpublished autobiography whose title signals her misery: Adventures of a Nobody.

But I’m afraid that the Slovenian-born Melania has—well, trumped her. Ms. Trump has been largely AWOL as her husband plotted his return to the White House (her appearance with him at the Al Smith Dinner being a curious and rare exception), and her memoir, Melania, has just been published.

There is one line from The Best Man, flung out by Leighton, that First Ladies Adams and Trump wish they could have said to their husbands, I’m sure: “I’ve had twenty years of nonsense, of being a good sport.”

At least Mrs. Adams, however, never had to read about her husband’s affair with an adult-film actress conducted during her own pregnancy, sexual misconduct accusations by dozens of other women, and even a civil court jury finding that he’d sexually abused and defamed one of them.

What does the Slovenian Sphinx think of all this? Publicly, nothing. Privately, if she’s ever had a chance to watch The Best Man, I bet she snorts at Ann Sothern’s line about “seeming to advise” the candidate—but nods vigorously at Leighton’s “twenty years of nonsense.”

This Day in Presidential History (Jackie Kennedy, Conservator of Culture and Camelot, Dies)

May 19, 1994—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who made the White House a center of style with her fashion sense and interior in decoration, then carefully tended to the memory of John F. Kennedy after his assassination, died in her New York apartment of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at age 64.

Five years after JFK’s murder, his widow remarried, to Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and in her last decade she lived quietly but contentedly with diamond importer Maurice Tempelsman. 

But the public associated her with her first husband, and she would be buried next to him (and their stillborn child and baby son) at Arlington National Cemetery, with the Eternal Flame burning nearby.

The flame is most appropriate as the symbol of her post-White House life, not only because she chose this as her final resting place (as she planned all aspects of JFK’s funeral, patterning it after Abraham Lincoln's), but because she was the keeper of the flame when it came to his reputation, as the most famous and fascinating widow in Presidential history.

The Kennedy administration was celebrated as a font of culture, with events like inviting Nobel Prize winners to the White House. But the First Lady deserved that reputation far more than her husband. 

JFK had earned considerable cachet as a Harvard undergrad with While England Slept and as a U.S. Senator with Profiles in Courage. 

But as Herbert S. Parmet showed in his account of the President’s pre-White House years, Jack, Kennedy received so much editorial assistance (from New York Times columnist Arthur Krock for the first title, and speechwriter Ted Sorensen for the second) that his listing as sole author is questionable. 

As for his reading matter, though Jackie recalled him reading while walking around and he loved to recite verses that reminded him of his military service, much of his taste ran toward the more pedestrian James Bond.

In contrast, Jackie read both more deeply and widely: cutting-edge new fiction (Jack Kerouac), as well as such poets as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Byron, Frost, Langston Hughes, and Constantine Cavafy. 

Nor was English her only language for reading: she was fluent in French and Spanish while also knowing some Italian, German and Polish. 

That was a boon to her husband both as he governed and campaigned, since she was as adept in translating for him research papers on French involvement in Indochina as in speaking to ethnic blocs in their native languages. 

After her husband was inaugurated, Jackie wielded her cultural influence widely, as she:

*invited writers, painters, poets, and musicians to perform at the White House;

*used the Executive Mansion to promote such performing arts organizations as American Ballet Theater, the Metropolitan Opera Studio, Opera Society of Washington, Interlochen Arts Academy, and American Shakespeare Festival.

*created the “Concerts for Young People”; 

*began discussions with Senator Claiborne Pell that led to the formation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts; 

* advocated for a national center for the performing arts (which, after his assassination, ended up being named for her husband).

Yet her advocacy for the arts may have been most visible in her February 1962 TV special, “A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy.” The effect was threefold, in that it:

*mobilized support for preserving the White House as a piece of architecture (“Never before had White House interiors been so affectionately hailed by the public,” wrote historian William Seale in The President’s House);

*helped create a formal mechanism for fostering this appreciation through the White House Historical Association; and

*transformed, through her breathy voice, immaculate coiffure and red suit, a deeply shy woman into a superstar every bit a match for her husband, as she was watched that night by 56 million Americans. (A still from that special accompanies this blog post.)

The effect was equally striking abroad. No matter where she traveled—Europe or Latin America—Mrs. Kennedy was received rapturously. 

In a perceptive blog post on the Web site of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy, Madison Jones observes that Mrs. Kennedy will be remembered “for creating a dominant soft power dynamic in American politics, and proving to foreign audiences everywhere that knowledge, appreciation and understanding of other cultures can forge a lasting bond between nations that improve foreign relations immensely.”

Mrs. Kennedy used her standing as an icon—now infused with Pieta overtones as the woman who cradled the body of the martyred President in Dallas—to mold Americans’ memory of the administration as “Camelot.” 

Her four-hour interview with reporter-historian Theodore H. White for Life Magazine, conducted just a week after the assassination, evoked how Jack loved to listen to the soundtrack to the Broadway musical about the wise, just and gallant English ruler. 

It also spawned among Kennedy devotees a desire for a “future king” who would pick up where Jack left off—first brother Bobby, then youngest brother Ted—with all kinds of twists nobody could have anticipated. 

Moreover, as noted in James Piereson’s 2013 blog post for the Daily Beast, she created an image of Jack as a liberal idealist and peacemaker not only somewhat counter to Kennedy’s daily practice as a politician, but also virtually impossible for his successors to equal.

Other than that, in the years after the assassination, Mrs. Kennedy largely maintained her silence—not entering into partisan political warfare or even writing her memoirs. 

Some of her reluctance to comment publicly involved trying to protect the two young children she now had to raise alone; some of it resulted from coping with what would now be regarded as post-traumatic stress syndrome, as she sought answers to her grief from a priest and a psychotherapist.

But at least some of her reticence derived from aristocratic instincts. Jack and Jackie Kennedy lived among the very rich, which involved the wife refusing to dignify rumors of a husband’s infidelity or other trespasses. 

Time correspondent Hugh Sidey noted that JFK liked Lord David Cecil’s biography of a Regency rake, Young Melbourne, because it described “a society of young, wealthy aristocrats who devoted themselves honorably and tirelessly to service to their queen and empire—and on their weekends to themselves and their pleasures.”

The upshot of it was that if the rumors weren’t publicly acknowledged, they would fade out of consciousness—for all intents and purposes, disappearing. 

In a nation without royalty—fought, explicitly, against royalty—Mrs. Kennedy’s decades-long taciturnity about her husband’s dalliances enabled her to maintain her own queenly mystique. 

Whether reserve, class, desire for privacy, or some combination of these, that attitude led many to remain stoutly loyal to her, perhaps none more so than the Secret Service personnel who guarded her and her husband.  

It wasn’t until after her death, three decades after Dallas, that several on this detail opened up about Jack’s constant, reckless White House trysts for Seymour Hersh in The Dark Side of Camelot—or how some, like Clint Hill, thought the President had made it far more difficult to protect him against snipers in Dallas by riding in an open motorcade.

This Day in Presidential History (‘Princeton’ Explosion Brings Tragedy, Romance to Tyler)

Feb. 28, 1844—An explosion on the inaugural cruise of the USS Princeton on the Potomac River killed six people (including two Cabinet members) and injured 20; unsettled American attempts at acquiring Texas at a critical juncture; threw a monkey wrench into the use of innovative military weaponry; and landed widowed President John Tyler (pictured) a new, young wife.

The accident came at a critical juncture for the administration. Tyler, having become the first Vice-President to gain the Presidency because of the death of the incumbent (William Henry Harrison), was watching his slim hopes for winning his own term slip away. 

Like Andrew Johnson two decades later, he was a disaffected Democrat rather than a full-fledged member of the winning party (in this case, the Whigs) to which his predecessor belonged. He was, in effect, a man without a party, abandoned by all but one of the original Whig Cabinet members.

That one, Daniel Webster, was now leaving after having negotiated a treaty with Great Britain. But tensions with the British Empire remained in place because of a dispute over ownership of the Pacific Northwest, as well as lingering bad memories of the War of 1812.

The Princeton was designed to be a confidence-boosting measure aimed at the greatest navy in the world: a fast, steam-driven warship sporting the biggest gun ever mounted on a vessel to that point.

Commander Robert Field Stockton, having deafened the ears of those aboard by demonstrating the new weapon, decided to fire the ironically named "Peacemaker" gun again for a salute to George Washington as the ship passed the late President’s home, Mount Vernon. 

Nobody knows if Stockton poured a bit more into the charge or if the crew did so on its own. But as the charge ignited, flames, heat and shrapnel burst in unexpected directions.

Secretary of State Abel Parker Upshur and his just-installed successor at the Naval Department, Thomas Gilmer, died in the accident (with Gilmer gruesomely decapitated), while Tyler himself—climbing up a ladder to witness the charge—avoided following his predecessor into eternity before his full term in office was finished.

Among the other dead was former New York state Sen. David Gardiner, whose 24-year-old daughter, Julia, had previously been wooed in vain by Tyler. But Tyler’s swift action in the crisis—carrying Julia off in his arms when she fainted, away from the death and destruction—so impressed her that she finally yielded to his blandishments and agreed to marry him.

The nickname applied to George Washington—“Father of His Country”—is true only in a metaphorical sense. The nation’s first President produced no offspring. In a more literal sense, the nickname applied more directly to Tyler, who fathered 15 children, seven with Julia after the couple returned to his Virginia home once his term was over. 

Other results of the accident were not so happy. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina ended up with the State Department portfolio upon Upshur’s death. 

But, as H.W. Brands recounts in Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants, the appointment came not at the wish of Tyler but through the manipulation of the President’s friend, Sen. Henry Wise of Virginia, who misleadingly told Calhoun that if he went to the White House, Tyler would be ready to name him to the post.

The appointment vastly complicated Tyler’s attempt to annex Texas before leaving office. Once in office, Calhoun’s scolding of Great Britain for advocating abolitionism abroad enraged Thomas Hart Benton. The influential Missouri Senator, who had been carefully wooed to the cause by Upshur, now saw the land transaction as a stalking horse for introducing slavery into American territories, a movement that he (correctly) feared could splinter the Union.

The annexation treaty with Texas made it through the House but, through Benton’s fulminations, stalled in the Senate. It would take the support of incoming President James Knox Polk, and a joint resolution of Congress to bring the vast territory into the Union.

As for Stockton: Though anxious to hog credit for the Princeton when it looked like it would bring about his dream of a steam-driven navy, he couldn’t divert blame for it fast enough after the accident. John Ericsson, the inventor he had persuaded to emigrate from Sweden to work on the project, was exonerated in the post-accident inquiry, but Stockton ensured that he would not be paid by the government for his patents and his supervision of the shipbuilding. It would take his design of the Civil War ironclad Monitor before Ericsson’s genius was adequately celebrated.

 

Quote of the Day (Mary Todd Lincoln, Bolstering Her Husband’s Confidence)

“You've no equal in the United States."—Mary Todd Lincoln, to her husband Abraham, quoted in Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln (1928)

Mary Todd Lincoln—born 200 years ago today in Lexington, Kentucky—is easily the most tragic of America’s First Ladies, and among the most complicated and controversial. Her extravagant spending, frequent bouts of temper, and consuming grief over the deaths of two of her sons represented another cross to bear for a President already struggling with a war of unparalleled challenges and carnage. 

After her husband’s assassination and a third son’s death, her last surviving child, Robert, sought to confine her to an insane asylum. Ever since, historians have debated the nature and extent of her afflictions.

Much of this has seeped, in a general way, into the public consciousness. But, for all the heartache she might have added to Abraham Lincoln’s incredible burden in the Civil War, she contributed enormously to his rise in American politics. Lincoln’s gifts were such that he still might well have gained the Presidency without her, but, as his law partner John Stuart noted afterward, it was her “fire, will and ambition” which made it a certainty.

Of all the actresses who have played Mrs. Lincoln—including Sally Field, Penelope Ann Miller, Mary Tyler Moore, and Julie Harris—the one who best captured this often-forgotten drive on behalf of her husband, I think, was Ruth Gordon in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. 

In fact, Gordon’s performance ( a far cry from his Oscar-winning role as a dotty old witch in Rosemary's Baby) may be the best element in the 1940 Presidential biopic starring Raymond Massey in the title role. That adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play may have exaggerated Abraham’s diffidence, but Mrs. Lincoln might have recognized much of herself in Ms. Gordon onscreen: flirtatious, talkative, vivacious, sarcastic, driven, shrewd, outspoken, politically astute, and well-educated.

The last quality is especially important. Her father, Robert Smith Todd, a merchant, lawyer, and Kentucky politician, recognizing his daughter’s aptitude for learning, sent her to the best schools that a young woman of the time could attend. 

All of this meant that she could talk to any male on any subject, which she proceeded to do. As the “belle of the town” in Springfield (where she was visiting her sister), she could have had her pick of any of the numerous men drawn to her flame (including a rising politician and her husband’s future rival for the U.S. Senate and Presidency, Stephen A Douglas). 

The unlikely winner of her hand was an ungainly attorney who shared with her a passion for Whig politics, a hero in Henry Clay, a flashing wit, and a love of poetry: Abraham Lincoln.

In the nearly two decades between their marriage in 1842 and the start of Lincoln’s Presidency in 1861, Mary:

*handwrote his letters to Whig leaders soliciting appointive positions, after his single term in Congress ended in the late 1840s;

*advised him to turn down an appointment as territorial governor of Oregon, correctly noting that it would remove him from the epicenter of American politics;

*kept her husband’s faith alive that his political career would revive in the decade that followed;

*attended sessions of the Illinois legislature, where she noted members’ party affiliation and stances on the Kansas-Nebraska Act—key metrics as her husband sought election to the U.S. Senate through that body; 

*bolstered Abraham’s anti-slavery feelings with her own abolitionist sentiment (doubly unusual in that she was raised in a family of slaveholders);

*spoke to reporters in the 1860 Presidential election, at a time when candidates’ wives were expected to keep quiet.

On the bicentennial of her birth, we should not only try to better understand this beleaguered First Lady, but also pay tribute to her for recognizing, before America and the world caught on, the immeasurable value of her husband.