But Angie Dickinson had her breaking point. We made her job of keeping herself beautiful extra difficult by periodically losing her cosmetics case. When this first happened she was the sweet young college girl asking her roommate where her blouse was. At the second occurrence she was more like a grande dame of the French court asking where her jewels were. But when we lost her case the third time she shouted like a truck driver, “All right, where in hell is that lousy case?” After that we didn’t lose it any more.
She endeared herself to all of us by insisting upon calling Professor Arthur Meier Schlesinger—not a man who unbends easily—“Artie,” and after an astonished gasp, the brilliant professor acknowledged his nickname and announced to audiences that he formed the lesser end of the Hollywood-Harvard Axis. “It goes to show,” he explained as audiences chuckled, “how wide are the types who support Senator Kennedy.” Whenever I dozed on the plane, I was ultimately awakened by Angie Dickinson’s deep-throated fishwife’s guffaw as she enjoyed the latest preposterous occurrence. When we were so tired that we could not think, we could always hear her tantalizing laugh.
Her male counterpart was the intellectual highlight of the barnstorming tour. I had met him some years before when I was making an appearance in a Chicago television station. I was talking about books on a midnight show, as I recall, and the man to follow me—a personality, they called him—had just released a cowboy-and-Indian picture and was in town to ballyhoo it. The agent who was hauling him around from one station to the next knew the man who was squiring me around and he asked, “Why don’t you wait till he makes his pitch, and the four of us can split a beer?”
My man replied, “Who needs a cowboy star?” So we left.
In doing so I missed making friends with a man who surprised all of us. Jeff Chandler must have appeared initially to his audiences as a typical Hollywood star, tall, lean, hawk-faced, silver-haired, expert in projecting himself. But I feel sure that before each night ended the crowd realized that this fellow Chandler was completely outside the pattern. After only one session Whizzer White said, “From here on out, Jeff, you’re chairman of this outfit. You talk sense.”
Jeff Chandler, the cowboy star, was by all odds the most effective stump speaker we had. He knew the Democratic platform better than I did. He had recently toured Israel with political leaders who had briefed him on what was happening in Europe and the Near East. He had a brilliant grasp of American history and his own theories of how to win an election. Before an audience he had an insinuating logic that won votes, and on the long plane trips he had an inquiring mind that pumped from each of us whatever knowledge we could give him. But what surprised me most was that he had an acid wit, and before each stop he would compose in a relatively few minutes poetic lampoons which he set to music and which he sang before his audiences, stampeding them with his hilarious pinpointing of Republican foibles. Most of the effective speeches were suggested by him, and most of the telling sallies of wit were his.
I had many opportunities to talk with Jeff, and his understanding of what was happening in America was profound. He was generous, helpful and of great force in public argument. He was about as far from the stereotype of a Hollywood star as I could imagine, and he was one of the most solidly liberal men, without a touch of nonsense, that I met during the campaign. It was a privilege to work with him.
His side-kick left us all a little dazed. When the barnstorming tour was being organized I said that I did not want to bother with it unless some major sports figure was along, and Whizzer White came up with a dandy. Stan Musial was a howling success from the moment he joined us. A long, rangy, forty-year-old, handsome Polish boy from the streets of Donora, near Pittsburgh, Stan brought with him a distinguished career on the baseball diamond and a long string of successes in business. He will probably end his life as the richest baseball player in history, but I will always remember him as one of the most hilarious characters I have ever met.
He was also our most important drawing card, outranking even Angie Dickinson and Jeff Chandler, for his name lured men to our meetings, and I was constantly astonished at how the men in the cities we stopped at would crowd the airports to see Stan Musial. He seemed about fifteen years younger than he was, and men who were now quite old remembered him as a beginner in the big leagues. Baseball rather bores me these days, but apparently across the nation it has as great a lure as ever.
Musial loved to recount those outrageous incidents that occur in baseball. He was good at dialect and I formed his most appreciative audience, because I love the homely chatter of American speech. Often at night the plane would echo with my guffaws and Angie Dickinson’s gutter laughs as Musial told some innocuous story about an illiterate catcher trying to order a meal in a fancy café. At other times Musial and I would ride alone in some back seat and he would tell me of his youth in Donora and of how he always regretted not having gone to the University of Pittsburgh on the basketball scholarship that had been offered him. “All that I have I got because older men helped me,” he said. “That’s why I’m for Kennedy. Maybe I could explain it better, but either you get what I’m driving at or you don’t.”
Stan’s political speeches were unforgettable. Jeff Chandler would make some gently disparaging remark about him. He would grin, rise to his feet, bend nearly double over the microphone and wait till the roar of applause stopped. Then he would say, “I played in Denver once about ten years ago. I struck out three times.” The crowd would roar with laughter and he would flash that incredible Polish grin at them and they would roar some more. “Tonight I’m not here to play baseball,” he would say and they would laugh again. “I’m here to ask you to vote for Senator John F. Kennedy.” More shouting and Stan would sit down. I suspect he influenced more votes than any of the rest of us, for he spoke to men who could not otherwise be touched. He was the perpetual youth, the boyhood hero, the clean-cut athlete. The crowds used to surge around Angie and Jeff as popular movie stars. But they stood back a little from Musial. He was the champ, Stan the Man, and if a senator from Massachusetts was good enough for Stan, he was good enough for them.
For me the major surprise of the trip was the Kennedy girls, those slim, beautiful, well-groomed creatures who moved gracefully onstage, made their little speeches, and quite bedazzled everybody. They were potent campaigners and lent our whole operation a class it could not otherwise have attained. People wanted to see them, hoping, I suspect, that they would prove to be harpies whom they could dislike, but when they found them to be normal, good-looking, young American married women, the audiences took them to their hearts. The girls were amazing workers, appearing at three to six meetings each day dispensing charm and warmth at the same time. During the campaign I worked at one time or another with five of the Kennedy girls, three sisters of the senator and two of his sisters-in-law, and I have only respect for the efficient manner in which they corralled the votes.
On our barnstorming tour the senator’s sisters did not travel with us but did drift into our operation as their own schedules permitted. We would walk on stage, and there mysteriously would be one of the Kennedy girls who had flown in from another direction and who as soon as we were finished would fly away. They always found time to shake hands with everyone in the hall, if that was practical, and they invariably said to me and the other members of the tour, “We are grateful for the help you are giving us.” The phrase never varied and never failed to irritate me. I used to think, “Look, sister, I’m not giving you any help. It’s your brother.” They must have sensed my reaction, for often, when they had recited their litany, they laughed. I remember them as gracious ladies who never ate or slept or did anything but hurry from town to town, and I know from my own experience that they helped their brother enormously.
The sisters-in-law operated differently, for they became a formal part of our troupe and traveled with us. Teddy’s wife, Joan, who flew in from her home in California, was one of the most beautiful women it has been my pleasure to kno
w. A young girl, only recently married to Teddy, she had an enviable figure, a divine face, and a shock of lovely hair. Whenever I saw her I was reminded of an imaginary photograph from some Life story about teenagers who had not become delinquents. She was great fun aboard the plane, with a rowdy sense of humor, and when she and Angie got together there was usually a riot. Like Angie, her principal job was to keep herself beautiful under the most trying circumstances, and day after day she stepped forth from the plane in perfect grooming.
Joan Kennedy was by far the best speaker of the Kennedy women. In fact, when she let herself go, she could be quite a rabble-rouser and I got the impression she was a very clever girl. She spoke in a high sweet voice, yet she could impart considerable force into passages that required it. She was a fine campaigner, and one local chairman, who was obviously struck by the quality of her words, asked us, “Does the Kennedy family have a casting bureau where they try out girls before the sons are allowed to marry them?” I suspect America is going to hear a lot more from Joan Kennedy. Certainly, on our trip she was a major asset.
But it was to sister-in-law Ethel, Bobby Kennedy’s pert little wife, that I quite lost my heart. We did not begin well. After one of my better speeches Ethel took me aside and looking up at me from her five-feet-one and her hundred pounds said bluntly, “I thought you made a grave mistake tonight, Mr. Michener.”
I thought, “Who the hell is this dame to lecture me?” and I was about to turn away.
“What I mean is,” she forged ahead, “when you tell the story of Brother Joe’s being shot down and killed during the war …”
“It’s one of the most effective ways to combat charges about Democrats’ being soft on communism,” I snapped rather gruffly.
“I know that,” she interrupted impatiently. “But why is it necessary to say that he was killed while he was bombing Germany? This area has lots of Germans. Why not just say, ‘Joe was killed in the war’?”
I had never thought of this, and the more I traveled with Ethel Kennedy the more perceptive I found her. She was one of the most politically sophisticated women I have ever known. Nothing escaped her attention, apparently, and it was a privilege to work with her. On the stage she was forthright and effective. In the plane, in face-to-face analysis of ideas and next steps, she was brilliant. I always thought of her as the pert little wren that lives outside my window and makes the summers lovely. Like the wren, Ethel’s excited chatter had an extremely winning quality. She had that rare attribute that makes some women so attractive: she could be wholly feminine and at the same time impressively intelligent.
If she started our acquaintance by jarring me, I ended it by forcing her to gasp. On our last hop I asked, “Ethel, what’s your husband’s role to be in the new administration?”
She blushed and for once had no ready comment. Here was a subject that must have been discussed often in secret but which was not allowed to be handled in public. She tried to avoid it, then changed her mind and obviously wanted to talk. “What do you think it should be?” she parried.
“I believe that the American public rather expects Jack to appoint one member of his family to a position of high importance,” I reasoned. “They know the Presidency is a lonely job and that he is entitled to one or two men whose personal loyalty he can rely upon.”
“Do you think the public would tolerate it?” she pressed.
“They did when Eisenhower appointed his brother to various jobs. And when he brought his son to the White House,” I added.
“I wonder,” she mused, and it was painfully apparent that she wished to speak further, but I quite ended the conversation by my next observation.
“What must be guarded against,” I reflected, “is the fact that you Kennedys have such a large family that within a space of four years some one of you is bound to abuse his position and bring infamy on Jack and the party.”
Ethel Kennedy blushed red and tried to reach across the airplane table and slap my face. “How dare you say such a thing?” she cried.
“Because it’s happened in all administrations,” I said. “Look at the Howard Hughes case right now,” I added.
“Damn it all!” she blurted out. “The Kennedys don’t behave like that.”
“I hope not,” I said. “For the sake of the party I hope not.”
We rode in silence to New York and to the last great rally in the Coliseum. Before we parted she offered a generous gesture of friendship and I believe that we parted with real respect. Certainly I think much more highly of Bobby Kennedy as a future political power now that I know the forthright, intelligent girl he had the good sense to marry. As Jeff Chandler said in introducing her, “She’s the most beautiful mother of seven I’ve ever seen.” I would add, “And the sharpest-witted.”
The last permanent member of our troupe was Professor Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., one of the powerful brains of the Kennedy team and the dignified panjandrum that Angie Dickinson called “Artie.” It fell to Schlesinger to give the talks that established the grave theme of our meetings, that America faced a real choice between the Democrats and the Republicans. With precision he identified exactly what that choice consisted of, as between both the parties and their nominees. It was a constant privilege for me to hear Schlesinger, for I had once studied with his father at Harvard, and much of my understanding of the forces of American history derived from the fact that Schlesinger, Sr., had taught me so well. Now to hear the son applying those same hard principles of morality and logic to the current scene inspired in me a kind of intellectual nostalgia. There is a continuum in history, and here I could witness it in operation, passing along from father’s principles to son’s applications. I often wondered what the austere old man would have thought if he could have heard little Angie Dickinson cooing, “Artie, you were a sensation tonight. Nobody could understand a damned word you said, but you said it so impressively!” Schlesinger grinned at the accolade, for he was sure that many of the people did understand.
During our trip Schlesinger had two political works of his on the best-seller list, The Politics of Upheaval, a study of the Franklin D. Roosevelt years, and his savage analysis of the current campaign, Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? Wherever we went university people and newspapermen wanted to talk with Schlesinger about the latter book and all of us on the tour came to realize that in Schlesinger and men like him the Democratic party had powerful supporters. In fact, much of the strength which had carried the party into control of both houses of Congress by such striking majorities stemmed from the intellectual leadership provided by men like Schlesinger.
To see Arthur, Jr., at work was impressive, for he did what all of us intend doing. Whenever he read a newspaper he tore out relevant stories or bits of data and stuffed them into his pockets. Then when he got near a briefcase, he transferred them all to it, so that at the end of a week he had a small file of specific things that had impressed him or about which he might one day like to write. When it came time to write, a careless man like me would be asking himself, “I wonder where I could get a copy of that disgraceful newspaper story about the hecklers?” But Arthur, Jr., would not have to ask that question. Years before he had foreseen that some day he might want to quote that particular story, so he had it neatly filed away.
The precision of his mind was also noticeable to all who worked with him. One night after an especially difficult time with the religious problem Ethel Kennedy asked me what the distinguishing characteristics of the Mormon faith were, and I explained in rather good detail, I thought, how this strong religion had arisen and particularly how it had prospered in two regions I knew well, Utah and the South Pacific, where it has become a leading force. At this point I thought to ask Schlesinger, “When did Joseph Smith receive his revelation of The Book of Mormon?”
Without even an instant’s hesitation Schlesinger looked up from a book he was reading and replied, “Smith was born December 23, 1805, in Vermont, but at the age of eleven moved to Ontario
County, in New York State. On September 21, 1823, when Smith was eighteen years old, the angel Moroni appeared before him three times to tell him that the sacred book of Mormon was hidden on a hillside near Manchester, but it wasn’t until 1827 that Smith dug up the three golden plates on which the book was written in an unknown tongue. Smith also got two magic crystals, Urim and Thummim, which enabled him to translate the writing, but the book itself wasn’t published until about 1830.” Having provided this, Schlesinger ignored us and went on with his reading.
So that was our troupe: Schlesinger the satiric analyst; Hoffberger the surreptitious brewer; White the Rhodes scholar; Chandler and Musial, the big attractions; Angie Dickinson, the little sweetheart; and Joan and Ethel Kennedy, the extraordinary young women. It was an odd collection, but when they faced the microphones at meeting after meeting, they said something.
There was another member of the troupe, but so far as I know he never once appeared in public, yet he was the strong, hard brain of the operation, and since he represents the kind of young men who surround the Kennedys I had better speak fairly fully of him as I came to know him. Chuck Roche is a Boston newspaperman in his late thirties. I believe he went to Harvard, where he made the acquaintance of Bobby Kennedy, whom he has always helped during political campaigns. Roche is the typical Catholic liberal, a good husband with five children to support, and with a sensitive, shrewd, well-organized mind. I would suppose that he had made somewhat above average marks at Harvard.