Personal History (73 page)

In some ways, John was a victim of my lifelong tendency to fasten on what is wrong or could be better rather than on what is right. I turned this characteristic on myself as well, being overly self-critical much of the time, but I realize that others only became aware of it when they and their work were the target. I was seen as always finding fault or second-guessing. I’m sure it made me difficult to get along with, particularly for someone like John, whom I later came to appreciate and for whom I have great affection.

I once asked him what he thought was the most important quality a
person running the paper should have. “Good judgment,” he replied; “don’t worry about your experience.” I was seen as seeking help or advice from too many people on the outside instead of relying on my own people. That was a justified complaint, but I simply had no idea how differently humans behave in professional situations, and it took me too long to learn. And picking other people’s brains was my way of learning. For John, the contrast between working under Phil and working with me was just too great.

While I toiled away at learning about management, I was also busy in other areas. We made a few acquisitions in these years, which helped me feel we were moving forward on the business side of the company. The first one, in 1966, proved to be a fine one, if not a great profit center over the years. In a complicated and sometimes irritating series of negotiations, we became the one-third owner—with Whitney Communications and the New York Times Company—of the
Paris Herald-Tribune
. The
International Herald Tribune
, as it became known, is a great newspaper, with an impact around the world far exceeding its relatively small circulation—only about two hundred thousand. But it is read by government leaders and decision-makers everywhere, and above all, it was of great use to our reporters in becoming known abroad and gaining entry. It also helped the
Post
and the
Times
become more familiar to readers around the world. Even with the headaches involved, it was a significant, if small, step forward for The Washington Post Company.

W
HILE WORK WAS
constantly demanding, my social life was getting to be more varied. My friendship with Pamela Berry added enormously to this period of my life. She often came to political conventions here, and when I stayed with her in England, we would talk about the political situation for hours. The year that Edward Heath became prime minister, we together followed the campaign for the leadership of Great Britain, attending Labour Party press conferences and spending an afternoon trailing Heath as he campaigned in his constituency, Bexley, a suburb of London. It was exciting to be there when his Conservative Party won the election and, according to the British custom, he moved into 10 Downing Street within twenty-four hours, as Harold Wilson departed.

Ted Heath and I became friends, which later developed into one of those crazy press stories, occasioned by a widely read gossip columnist, “Suzy,” who wrote for the
New York Daily News
. She claimed that I had been seeing Heath every night in London and had extended my stay there in order to continue our candlelit dinners. London’s tabloids, and even the venerable
Manchester Guardian
, as well as
Women’s Wear Daily
here at home, jumped on the story with blazing headlines. Both Ted and I denied
it all politely, but not before Don, who was in London at the time, had been amused to read in one of the London papers of his mother’s alleged romance with the prime minister.

My dearest and most constant friend in these years was Polly Wisner. Tragedy had struck her in 1965, when her husband, Frank, after a long illness, killed himself at their family farm at Galena, Maryland, in the same way Phil had. It was eerie to find our lives following so much the same pattern. Polly retreated for a long time after Frank’s death, finally finding a wonderful companion in her second husband, Clayton Fritchey.

Polly and I—frequently together with Joe Alsop—took many trips together over the years, often in search of some restful cure. Once, on a skiing trip to Switzerland, the two of us were walking across a glacier, talking about aging and making observations about some of our friends—like Alice Longworth and Averell Harriman, who were a couple of decades ahead of us. I told Polly that I had decided how to handle aging gracefully: “We have to read a lot and not drink.” There was a long silence from Polly, while the noise of ice crunching kept up its regular beat. Finally she asked, “When do we have to start?”

One of the first of our trips when we were both alone was in 1966, to my mother’s favorite spa, Saratoga Springs. While we were there, Truman Capote phoned me to say he was going to give a ball to cheer me up—what he said would be “the nicest party, darling, you ever went to.” My initial response was, “I’m fine. It’s really nice of you, but I don’t need cheering up.” But Truman went right on talking of his plans, paying no attention to me. He explained that he’d always loved the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza, and also the Ascot scene in
My Fair Lady
, for which his friend Cecil Beaton dressed everyone in black and white. He had decided to have everyone at his ball dress in black and white, too, and wear masks, which they would remove at midnight. I was to be the guest of honor.

I was puzzled by the whole idea and not sure if Truman was serious, so I didn’t think about it much, but when Polly and I joined Truman for lunch at “21” soon afterwards, I realized that this party was more about him than about me. I think he was tired from having written
In Cold Blood
and needed to be doing something to re-energize himself. I was a prop.

In any case, the excitement began to build. Truman’s “Black and White Ball,” as it became known, was the height of my social life then—in some ways, ever. The gossip columns quickly went into action about who was and wasn’t asked for the November 28 event. In the weeks before the party, whole pages of magazines and newspapers were devoted to the young beauties from New York and around the world who would be attending—their dresses, their hairdos, their masks. Truman spent hours developing the list of invitees. At one point, he was quoted as saying, “I decided that everyone invited to come stag had to be either very rich, very
talented, or very beautiful, and of course preferably all three.” The list included people from New York, Kansas (scene of
In Cold Blood
), California, Europe, Asia, South America; from stage and screen and the literary and artistic worlds; business executives; and the media world—all friends of Truman’s. The guests included Janet Flanner (The
New Yorker’s
Genêt, correspondent from Paris), Diana Trilling, Claudette Colbert, Frank Sinatra and his new wife, Mia Farrow, Glenway Wescott, Thornton Wilder, Katherine Anne Porter, Virgil Thomson, and Anita Loos. I was allowed to invite twenty couples from Washington.

I had a French dress—a Balmain design—copied at Bergdorf Goodman. It was plain white crêpe with slate-colored beads around the neck and the sleeves. The mask was made to match, also at Bergdorf’s, by Halston, who was then still making hats. The only direction I gave Halston was to remind him that I was five feet nine inches tall and didn’t want something that would stick up too far. I also told him that Truman and I would be receiving the partygoers, so I couldn’t have a mask on a stick that had to be held. I had begun going to the salon of the hairdresser Kenneth when I was in New York, but no one knew me there; I didn’t have anyone special who did my hair, and I had never had makeup put on. I certainly didn’t know how to put it on myself! I was leaving Kenneth’s the night before the ball when a woman I knew who worked there said, “We’re so busy, Mrs. Graham, with the hairdos for the Black and White Ball. Have you heard about it?”

“Yes,” I replied. “It seems funny, but I’m the guest of honor.”

She gasped and asked who would be doing my hair. I wasn’t sure, and I knew I had no appointment for makeup at all. She swung into action and insisted that Kenneth himself do my hair. In fact, she led me to him straightaway, and I was given the last appointment at the very end of the next day. I sat watching while he pinned curls all over the beautiful Marisa Berenson’s head, one by one. Finally, he got to me, and the wait was worth it: I wound up looking my very best. Of course, in that company, compared with the sophisticated beauties who blanketed the ballroom, my very best still looked like an orphan.

Truman had planned everything, down to the last detail. He arranged dozens of dinners before the ball and assigned everyone to one of them, thus maintaining complete control. He and I went to the Paleys’ for a drink and then left for the Plaza. We had to get through a crowd that was already gathering in front, including a bank of almost two hundred television and still cameras set up in the lobby. It was both exciting and terrifying. I had never seen anything like it, let alone been the object of that kind of attention.

Truman had asked me to arrange only one thing—get the two of us a picnic dinner that we could have in a room at the hotel while we were
waiting to go down to the ballroom to receive the guests. Knowing that what he mainly wanted was caviar and champagne, I decided to order “a bird and a bottle” from “21.” Having never lived this kind of life, I’d never bought caviar before and, when told its price, decided on a quarter of a pound, which was barely a couple of spoons for each of us. In addition, the chicken was dry. I was chagrined, but luckily Truman was so excited that he remained good-tempered.

We went downstairs promptly at 10:00 p.m. to greet the guests, a few of whom had already arrived. By 10:30, they were pouring in. I stood next to Truman, who introduced everyone to me. One of the most stunning moments came and went very quickly, so quickly that I barely had time to speak or look. Truman turned to me and said, with great emphasis, “Here’s Jack.” It was his friend Jack Dunphy, who was always behind the scenes and never appeared in public with Truman, but had been persuaded to come to the ball.

Curiously, once people managed to get through the press gauntlet outside, they seemed to forget the cameras and the self-consciousness, and the ball became a genuinely intimate, easy, even cozy party. Peter Duchin’s magic music and the very good, simple food helped enormously. There were memorable scenes, such as Lynda Johnson, Margaret Truman Daniel, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth meeting—all the daughters of presidents—and Lauren Bacall and Jerome Robbins dancing up a storm.

Truman had invited quite a few young people, including Marietta Tree’s youngest daughter, Penelope, then just sixteen; knowing that Penelope was going to be extraordinary, he had defied Marietta by inviting her. Susan Mary Alsop remembers sitting that night with Marietta and Ronnie Tree in the Trees’ library before leaving for the ball when in walked this schoolgirl wearing a black leotard, which in those days was staggering in itself, and some sort of a little top, and carrying a black-and-white mask. Susan Mary recalls her looking absolutely gorgeous, and with a beautiful figure. Her governess followed her into the library, in tears, not knowing what to do. Penelope was allowed to go to the ball, and Diana Vreeland, ever the sharp, observant editor, hired her that night, and she became one of the highest-paid models in New York.

Why was I the guest of honor? Who knows? Truman and I were good friends, but we were on a less intimate basis than he was with Babe or Marella, probably the two most famous beauties in the world. In discussing who was more beautiful, Truman once said, “If they were both in Tiffany’s window, Marella would be more expensive.” He was also great friends with Slim Keith and Pamela Hayward and Lee Radziwill. In the end, however, when he had fallen out with so many of his friends, he never turned on me as he did on most of them. I think he felt protective of me. Truman knew I didn’t lead the glamorous kind of life that many of his
friends did; he may have given the party for me primarily so that I could see it all up close, just once. I also think I was appropriate for the occasion because I really was a sort of middle-aged debutante—even a Cinderella, as far as that kind of life was concerned. I didn’t know most of these people or their world, and they didn’t know me. He felt he needed a reason for the party, a guest of honor, and I was from a different world, and not in competition with his more glamorous friends. One of Truman’s biographers, Gerald Clarke, conjectured: “She was arguably the most powerful woman in the country, but still largely unknown outside Washington. Putting her in the spotlight was also his ultimate act as Pygmalion. It would symbolize her emergence from her dead husband’s shadow; she would become her own woman before the entire world.”

The coverage of the party—here at home and internationally—went on for weeks after the event, giving Truman enormous pleasure. Mrs. Longworth said that the party was “the most exquisite of spectator sports,” which
The New York Times
used as the headline for its extensive story on the event. The
Post
, in an ambiguous position, ran the story on the front page of the women’s section. The day after the ball, I got a call from Diana Vreeland asking me to have everything put back on—the hair, the face, the dress—and to pose for photographs by Cecil Beaton again (he had done some photos of me before the ball), since she thought I looked so much better fixed up by Kenneth. Arthur Schlesinger wrote a flattering piece to go with those photos, and it ran in
Vogue
the following January.

My own reaction to all this attention was mixed. The publicity and higher profile frightened me a little, and might actually have hurt me—and probably should have, given the serious, professional person I was trying to be. Oddly, however, the party itself for the most part escaped being described as Marie-Antoinette’s last fling. Perhaps this was because the women’s movement had not yet come to the fore, and it was before the most serious racial urban problems surfaced and before Vietnam became the burning issue that so dominated our society. This was the last possible moment such a party could take place and not be widely excoriated. To a certain extent, of course, it was. Pete Hamill reviewed it in the
New York Post
and juxtaposed wisps of conversations from the party with horror stories from Vietnam. My Quaker friend Drew Pearson, who had come to the ball as my guest because I loved his wife, Luvie, wrote a highly critical column—this after promising Luvie that if he came he wouldn’t comment negatively—saying that Truman’s party “overshadowed the tragedy in Kansas, which won him fame,” and that Marella Agnelli should have donated the price of her dress to flood relief in Italy.