Friday, Jul. 04, 1969
The Kennedy books go on and on. Now comes a volume that seems sure to drive one former member of the clan "up the wall," as the lady involved is wont to say. "My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy" was written by Mary Barelli Gallagher, a former J.F.K. secretary, and from 1957 to 1964 one of Jackie's girls-of-all-work. As Mrs. Gallagher tells it in the first of two Ladies' Home Journal exce'rpts, Jackie 1) spent more on "family expenses" ($105,-446.14, including $40,000 for clothes) in 1961 than Jack made as President;
2) redecorated so often that J.F.K. once plaintively asked, "Jackie, why is it that the rooms in this house are never completely livable at the same time?";
3) spent her mornings breakfasting in bed without bothering to see her husband off; 4) was fascinated by visions of all the gifts she could get with trading stamps from the food bought for White House kitchens; 5) went on periodic economy drives during which she sent her used clothes to New York for resale under an assumed name; 6) decreed that all White House gifts be sorted for possible family use instead of automatically going to charity; and 7) suggested that at parties, unfinished drinks be refilled and passed off as fresh if they "didn't have lipstick marks on the edge." Mrs. Gallagher also reports that Jackie once sold an aquamarine from the Brazilian government and a diamond-clip wedding present from her father-in-law in order to buy a $6,160 antique sunburst pin she had seen in London. On another occasion, says Mrs. Gallagher, it took powerful persuasion to prevent Jackie from removing the diamonds in a sword given by Saudi Arabia's King Saud. The installment ends at Christmastime 1962, with Jackie embracing Mrs. Gallagher and telling her, "You know, you're my only friend in this impersonal White House. What would I ever do without you?" What indeed?
It wasn't that he disliked Monte Carlo. Far from it. But he had been there before and knew the pitfalls. "When I was 18," Choreographer George Balanchine. 65, told his charges, "I came here and got sick. Now please don't eat awful stuff like octopus. And don't charge into the water. In fact, don't do anything." Anything, that is, except dance. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace had invited Balanchine's New York City Ballet to Monaco for a week-long festival commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of Sergei Diaghilev, whose famed Ballets Russes Balanchine choreographed in the 1920s. And for "Mr. B.," whose embroidered cowboy shirts were as outstanding as his interpretations of Stravinsky, returning to Monte Carlo's wildly baroque, red and gold opera theater was a special pleasure. "My whole life was there," he said. "It's not that I return. I am here always."
"Integrity! Freedom!" trumpeted the resolution passed by the Italian Association of Cinema Authors. "Any pornography or morbidity is preferable to repression." Strong words, and stronger still was the action taken by the association in angrily expelling famed Director Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew). His colleagues were enraged because Zeffirelli had been campaigning against the current flood of sex films in the Italian cinema, saying that they show sex as vulgar and ugly and suggesting that some moviemakers on the edge of bankruptcy had been saved by pornography. Countered Zeffirelli: "I committed no antidemocratic act. The association is a Mafia in which dissenting voices and opinions are not allowed. I am happy and honored to have been expelled."
The great American hot dog found a champion last month in Mrs. Virginia Knauer, President Nixon's adviser on consumer affairs. Now that other national staple, the hamburger, has picked up an ally in Bess Myerson Grant, New York City's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs. The onetime (1945) Miss America has discovered that burger beef, like hot-dog meat, is being adulterated with all sorts of things: soy proteins, starchy flour, cereal and chemical additives. As a matter of fact, 156 out of 421 New York restaurants checked by her 46 inspectors were suspected of serving "shamburgers." So she has revived a long-neglected section of the city administrative code, which stipulates that "hamburger shall consist of beef, all beef and nothing but beef"--and decrees a maximum $250 fine and/or ten days in jail for any malefactor. Said Bess: "This is something I've wanted to do for a long time."
With launch minus-23 days, what better place was there to read the omens for the forthcoming Apollo 11 moon shot than the 3,000-year-old temple of the original Apollo? So off went Wernher von Broun, the man who directed the design of the rocket that will hurl American astronauts toward the moon this month, to visit the temple at Delphi. "Whatever Apollo's oracle said," reported Von Braun after the consultation, "I am convinced that we will succeed because no other space operation was ever so well prepared in advance." But what did the oracle predict? "The oracle," he said cosmically, "was ambiguous, as usual."
With an exuberance that she has seldom had reason to feel in the past nine years, Susan B. Anthony, 52, grandniece and namesake of one of the nation's earliest suffragettes, welcomed the news that she could remain an American. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that Dr. Anthony, who teaches theology at Marymount College in Boca Raton, Fla., should not be deported. It was true enough, she said, that in 1954 she had sworn allegiance to the British Crown rather than testify before the McCarthy hearings. But she had feared that the emotional strain would force a return to the alcoholism she had suffered in the 1940s, and she had acted in a moment of confusion and panic after Government agents had threatened to separate her from her husband, a British subject. "I have no emotion except joy and a wave of feeling that this is my country," said Dr. Anthony. "I feel now like getting an American flag and hanging it outside my door."
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.