Friday, Apr. 20, 1962
"A Much Jazzier Town"
There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men . . . --Lord Byron
The Duchess of Richmond's celebrated ball for Wellington's officers, on the eve of Waterloo, was a mere fish fry in comparison with the goings-on nowadays at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Jack and Jackie Kennedy's talent for serving up a dazzling concoction of beauty and brains, politics and culture, shamrocks and chandeliers is enough to boggle the most jaded eyes. Last week, at a couple of brilliant levees, the President and his First Lady did it again--and again.
High Octane. The week's entertainments got under way with the annual Congressional Reception--a duty date that is ordinarily the dullest of the six official receptions that protocol requires the President to give each year.* Reporting the party for the New York Post, svelte Marion Javits, wife of New York's Republican Senator Jack Javits, wrote that "the First Lady was stunning in a white satin sleeveless dress embossed with brightly colored flowers into which tiny pearls were sewn. She wore long diamond and emerald earrings and a diamond hairclip." Another fashionplate was Harlem's own Representative Adam Clayton Powell, strolling around in "a green Austrian evening jacket with a black velvet collar and, for buttons, Franz Josef coins."
As for the dancing, reported Marion Javits. ''no one did the twist, and, although no one let his hair down, the dance floor was far from grim. The cha cha and the waltz were the favorite dances." The repast in the state dining room was dominated by two huge, brimming silver punch bowls topped with floating strawberries. "I asked Senator Hubert H. Humphrey if he thought it was spiked. He said, 'And how--with high-octane gas!' But attendants said one contained rum and pineapple juice, the other bourbon and apple juice."
The First Lady was escorted to her private quarters by the President just before 11 p.m., but he returned to mingle with his guests and talk politics until the witching hours. "Before departing." wrote Reporter Javits, who lives in Manhattan while her husband commutes to Washington during the legislative season, "the President graciously asked my husband to bring me to Washington more often. With all respects to New York, he jocularly observed that Washington was a much jazzier town these days."
It was even jazzier the next night, when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi of Iran and his 23-year-old Empress Farah arrived at the White House for a magnificent dinner at the beginning of a state visit to the U.S. As their motorcade drove through the White House's main gates. 100 uniformed, white-gloved Marines snapped to attention, their bayonets gleaming in the rainy night. And when the royal Iranians stepped out on the North Portico to greet the President and First Lady, the society reporters murmured audibly. The Shah was resplendent in a swirling cloak and a looping crescent of medals and decorations across his formal dress, but his sloe-eyed wife stunned the onlookers. "It was a matter of groping frantically for adjectives superlative enough to describe her gown and her jewels--the most blindingly impressive ever beheld in Washington." reported Maxine Cheshire in the Washington Post.
"Hot Pink." What blinded was a dark gold silk ball gown, encrusted to the knees with sparkling jewels and gold sequins. Farah's sleek black hair was piled high in a bun and held in place with a tiara blazing with diamonds and six lime-sized emeralds from the Iranian crown jewels. Other multi-carat emeralds and diamonds adorned a collar at her throat--and Jeweler Harry Winston, who had recently restyled her jewels especially for the party, described them as priceless. Jackie Kennedy, never one to be overshadowed, wore a chic Chez Ninon ball gown with a sleek white silk top and a "hot pink" silk skirt. Diamonds glistened in her ears and her hair, which had been whipped into a new coiffure known as "Brioche" and resembling a classical Japanese hairdo more than a French pastry. Before dinner, the two heads of state and their ladies visited young Caroline Kennedy and her baby brother in the White House nursery, and John Jr., 17 months old and apparently an admirer of beauty, burst into tears when they left.
After the state dinner (guinea hen), the royal guests repaired to the East Room where a troupe of 15 dancers in sneakers, sweatshirts and black tights performed five Jerome Robbins modern jazz ballets and a modern version of Afternoon of a Faun, in the first full-scale ballet perform ance in White House history.-- (The dancers had been hastily rehearsing all day, under the direction of choreographer Robbins and the approving eye of the First Lady, who graciously allowed them to use the Green Room as a temporary dressing room.) Glancing at one of the muscular male dancers. Vice President Lyndon Johnson whispered to Jackie that "they make me feel flabby."
Something in Common. Later in the week, the President and the Shah got down to serious business, and when the Shah addressed a joint session of Congress, in an appeal for continued U.S. aid for his country, he won a prolonged ovation with a quiet remark: "However you decide, the people of Iran have not maintained their freedom for 2,500 years in order to now surrender.'' Most thoughts of the cold war were dispelled, though, by the parties, and especially by Jackie Kennedy and Empress Farah.
The following night, the Shah entertained the Kennedys at a brilliant banquet that would have pleased Scheherazade. The setting was the brand-new Iranian chan cellery, a tasteful combination of modern architecture and ancient Persian mosaics, rugs and objets d'art. As they dined on caviar -- freshly flown from the Caspian Sea -- and pheasant `a la perigourdme, the Kennedys and their hosts looked out on a rain-washed courtyard where Persian fountains played. And once more, the ladies were the radiant center of attraction -- Jackie, in a strapless pink satin Dior gown, looked more like a Persian princess than the Empress Farah, in an orange chiffon sheath and her fabulous tiara and jeweled accessories.
After his own sumptuous state dinner. President Kennedy put his finger adroitly on the mood of the city. Rising to make the traditional toast, he addressed himself to the Shah but opened his remarks with his eyes on the young Empress. "His Highness and I have a 'burden' that we carry in common," he said with a smile. "We both paid state visits to Paris last year, and from all accounts, we might as well have both stayed at home."
* The others: official receptions for the Supreme Court, the Vice President and the Speaker, the Diplomatic Corps, the Cabinet, and the Military. *Walter Terry, the New York Herald Tribune's dance critic, invited to cover the performance, recalled that a toe dancer named Mile. Celeste had danced en pointe for an enchanted Andrew Jackson in the Cabinet Room in 1836 and had become a political cause celebre (an anti-Jackson cartoon implying frivolity in high places was titled "The Celeste-al Cabinet''). Four years later, the sensational Fanny Elssler, the great European ballerina, was so popular in Washington that Congress, unable to reach a quorum when she performed, was forced to adjourn so that the members could watch her dance.
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