These Few Precious Days by Christopher Andersen

Author:Christopher Andersen [Christopher Andersen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781849546744
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2013-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

BY MID-MAY, JACKIE FELT SHE had earned the right to flee to Virginia—ostensibly to indulge her true passion by competing in the Loudoun Hunt horse show. In truth, she was escaping the possibility of being humiliated on national television.

To celebrate the president’s upcoming forty-fifth birthday, a gala Democratic Party fund-raiser was held at New York’s Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962. More than fifteen thousand party faithful showed up at the televised event to be entertained by the varied likes of Peggy Lee, Jack Benny, Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, Jimmy Durante, and Harry Belafonte.

The president’s wife had planned to be there for the star-studded celebration as well. But when she learned that the evening’s entertainment also included an appearance by Marilyn Monroe, Jackie opted for the Virginia countryside. Taking her mind off the spectacle unfolding in New York by focusing on the competition, Jackie won a third-place ribbon riding Minbreno, a horse she co‑owned with her hunt country neighbor Eve Fout.

Jackie had not retreated to Virginia before taking some precautions. Before departing, she made sure Rose, Ethel, and Jack’s sisters Eunice and Pat were going to encircle JFK on the dais. “I suppose that way,” Gore Vidal observed, “it looked a little less like the presidential stag party it was.”

After Marilyn missed several cues to make her entrance—the star kept people waiting as a way to build tension and anticipation—master of ceremonies Peter Lawford intoned, “Mr. President, the late Marilyn Monroe.”

The throng exploded with cheers when Marilyn, bundled in white ermine, suddenly materialized beneath a spotlight. Foggy from pills (talking to her later that evening was “as if talking to someone under water,” Schlesinger observed), Marilyn shed her furs to reveal a shimmering, flesh-toned gown that she had literally been sewn into moments before. Monroe later said she was dressed in “skin and beads,” but Adlai Stevenson, for one, claimed he “didn’t see the beads!” None of this was a surprise to Jack; the hair-obsessed president had even lent Marilyn his stylist, who blew up her platinum bouffant into an exaggerated flip.

Standing at the microphone, perhaps the greatest screen sex goddess of all time was suddenly seized by stage fright. “By God,” she later confessed thinking to herself, “I’ll sing this song if it’s the last thing I ever do.” Jack smiled broadly as Marilyn finally launched into her seductive, breathy version of the birthday song: “Happy Birthday, Mr. Pres-i-dent” and a giant cake was wheeled out. “I can now retire from politics,” JFK announced as Marilyn stood beside him, “after having ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.”

Even by JFK’s own standards, this moment, played out before a national audience, appeared incomprehensibly reckless. Yet Kennedy knew that, at least in the case of Marilyn, it was best to simply hide in plain sight. “At the time,” Salinger said, “it was just inconceivable. Remember, this is way before Ronald Reagan. Americans put the President of the United States in one box and a big movie star like Marilyn Monroe in another.

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