Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘PEOPLE’ Category

The American Civil War: Soldiers Without Barracks

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE, The American Civil War, tagged , , , , on March 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Readers: I will be blogging about people who appear in my upcoming book, When People Were Things, but include here different stories than are in the book.

Attack against Fort Sumter, 1861, Currier & Ives

On April 12, 1861, the South Carolina militia fired from shore on the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor. The Battle of Fort Sumter were the first shots fired that sparked the Civil War. Days later, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 militia men into national service for 90 days to put down the Southern insurrection.

The Northern response among the free states was wildly enthusiastic. War fever took hold. Whereas Lincoln has asked the Indiana governor for 6 regiments, the governor offered 12. At the onset of the war, Washingtonians bit their nails, so nakedly exposed to danger, as neighbor Virginia (to the west) joined the Confederacy and Marylanders (to the north and east) in Baltimore viciously attacked Union troops on their way to defend the federal capital.

The influx of the militia corps took the U.S. War Department by surprise. The new Union soldiers needed food, uniforms, mattresses, blankets, stove, cooking utensils, weapons, tents, knapsacks, overcoats, hammocks, bags, and cots on a massive scale.(1) For starters, where were the soldiers flooding into Washington, D.C. to camp? Massachusetts militia men, the first to arrive, found quarters in the Capitol, where the top of the unfinished wooden dome had been left off for ventilation  The men of the First Rhode Island Regiment found quarters inside the U.S. Patent Office, spreading their bunks beside the “cabinets of curiosities.” (2)

The Rhode Islanders sleep alongside models submitted with patent applications, causing much damage, and tremendous broken glass.

(1) Leech, Margaret. Reveille in Washington, 86.

(2) Ibid, 83.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

The American Civil War: General McClellan and the Quaker Gun

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Allan Pinkerton, General George McClellan, PEOPLE, The American Civil War on February 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Readers: I will be blogging about people who appear in my upcoming book, When People Were Things, but include here different stories than are in the book.

The American Civil War (1861-1865)

Following the Union defeat at Manassas (1st Bull Run), Virginia, in July 1861 to the Southern Confederate forces, President Abraham Lincoln understood that the disorder of the newly-formed troops had contributed to the debacle.  Lincoln wanted the Union army to be “constantly drilled, disciplined, and instructed.”(1) He sent a telegram to George McClellan, 34,—a West Point graduate, a distinguished veteran of the Mexican-American War, and fresh from having defeated a guerilla band in West Virginia, the only Union victory to date— to come at once to Washington City and take charge of the Army of the Potomac. As he traveled by special train to the capital, enthusiastic crowds heralded his passage along the way. The capture of Washington by rebel forces seemed imminent. Northern delusions of an easy victory vanished.

Major. Genl. George B. McClellan Lithograph, Currier & Ives, 1862.

Within days of McClellan’s arrival, Washington achieved a “more martial look.” (2) McClellan had managed to instill more confidence in the demoralized troops who had retreated in disarray from Bull Run. The soldiers adored “Little Mac.” Drunken soldiers no longer loitered in bars and streets. McClellan wrote to his wife,

I find myself in a new and strange position here: President, cabinet, Gen. Scott, and all deferring to me….I seem to have become the power of the land. I almost think that were I to win some small success now, I could become Dictator…. (3)

Major General George McClellan and his Wife, Ellen Mary Marcy (Nelly), ca. 1860-65.

McClellan disagreed with General Winfield Scott who wanted to attack the enemy in different theaters of war. McClellan believed that he could put an end to the war by concentrated overwhelming forces on Virginia. Summer gave way to fall. Indeed, McClellan had turned the recruits into soldiers and created a powerful army.

In the early months of the war, women worked as laundresses and cooks while the volunteer soldiers drilled and constructed the Defenses of Washington. TITLE: “Washington, District of Columbia. Tent life of the 31st Penn. Inf. (later, 82d Penn. Inf.) at Queen’s farm, vicinity of Fort Bunker Hill.” Library of Congress

While McClellan conducted magnificent reviews in the capital of more than fifty thousand troops marching in straight and orderly columns, and boasted great military plans, he did not seem willing to lead his army anywhere. He was weighed down by fear while the Confederates were bolstered by optimism from their Manassas victory. Congress and Washingtonians grew restless with McClellan’s delay in avenging Bull Run.

This sketch shows a panoramic view of the Grand Review of the Union Army. The illustration appeared in the 7 December 1861 issue of Harper’s Weekly, which claimed that the artist sketched the review while perched on the roof of a barn.

Accustomed to success and thus fearful of failure, McClellan did not want to move; his constant complaint was that he did not have enough troops. Allan Pinkerton, his secret operative, fed his insecurity. Pinkerton provided “Little Mac” with the faulty intelligence that the enemy had at least 150,000 men within striking distance of the capital. McClellan said he would not move until he had 270,000 men of his own. In truth, in October 1861, McClellan had 120,000 men while rebels in and near Manassas had only 45,000. (4) In September, when Confederate pickets withdrew from their position a few miles southwest of Washington on Munson’s Hill, Federal troops discovered that the great cannon they had believed was trained on the capital was nothing but a giant log shaped and painted to resemble a cannon. This “Quaker gun” embarrassed McClellan. Calls for his dismissal intensified.

Confederate “Quaker Guns,” Manassas, Va., 1862

(1) Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals, 373.

(2) Ibid, 378.

(3) Ward, Geoffrey. The Civil War, An Illustrated History, p. 75

(4) MacPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom, 360-361.

Readers: Please check this space for when my new book, When People Were Things, is available. Please read it.

Read Full Post »

The American Civil War: Julia Ward Howe and the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, Julia Ward Howe, Julia Ward Howe, LITERATURE, EDUCATION, & REFORM, MUSIC & DANCE, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, Samuel Gridley Howe, tagged , , , , , on February 23, 2025| 4 Comments »

Readers: Although Julia Ward Howe is not mentioned in my soon-to-be-published history, When People Were Things, her husband is. Although Julia’s Civil War activism is not included in the book, I want to give you a snippet view here.

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

Portrait of Julia Ward Howe, by John Elliott, ca. 1925. National Portrait Gallery/Wikimedia Commons

In 1843, red-haired New York heiress Julia Ward married Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who had founded the Perkins School for the Blind. She was 24; he was 42. Julia gave birth to their first child while they honeymooned in Europe. She called her husband, “Chev.” They had six children and lived in Boston and Rhode Island. Theirs was not a happy union. Chev disapproved of Julia’s writing and did all he could to thwart it. In 1853, she published her first volume of poetry, Passion-Flowers, anonymously and without her husband’s knowledge. She continued to publish works that often critiqued women’s roles in marriages and society and caused controversy. Her husband was troubled by her writing as it often contained pointed references to her unhappy and stultifying marriage. He did not approve of women having a career outside the home.

In November 1861, the first year of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and while the Civil War was raging, Julia and Chev traveled to Washington and met Abraham Lincoln,  who, Julia wrote, “was laboring…under a terrible pressure of doubt and anxiety.” Dr. Howe was on the board of the U.S. Sanitary Commission that supported wounded and sick soldiers; during his stay, he would meet with the USSC founder Dorothea Dix. The Howes lodged at Willard’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War Years, Library of Congress

From their room, Julia saw a billboard advertisement for “an agency for embalming and forwarding the bodies of those who had fallen in the fight or who had perished by fever.”  This image stayed with her.

On a visit to the huge military camps stationed in the national capital, she heard soldiers singing the song, “John Brown’ Body,” originally about a Scotsman but had taken on new meaning in reference to the insurrectionist at Harper’s Ferry. New verses were often being added:

Old John Brown’s body is a-mouldering in the dust,
Old John Brown’s rifle is red with blood-spots turned to rust,
Old John Brown’s pike has made its last, unflinching thrust,
His soul is marching on!

A friend urged Julia to write “some good words for that stirring tune.” That evening, she tried, but the words did not come to her. The next morning at the graying first light, she woke up in her bed at Willard’s and the words of the poem began to flow. She jumped up, grabbed paper and an old stump of a pencil, and scrawled down the words without even looking down at the paper, then fell back to sleep. This is how “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was born, which she sold to the Atlantic Monthly for $4 in February. Her version links the Union cause to God’s vengeance at the Day of Judgment.

Here are some verses from the first published version:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

Before long, the song caught on and became the favorite of the Union troops and its unofficial wartime anthem. Julia Ward Howe became somewhat of a celebrity and became a suffragist.

 

Read Full Post »

The American Civil War: Lincoln Scouts a Battlefield

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, MEDICINE, PEOPLE, The American Civil War on February 17, 2025| 3 Comments »

Readers:  For a time, I will be blogging about people who appear in my soon-to-be-published nonfiction history, When People Were Things: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, General McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and two of Lincoln’s cabinet secretaries are featured. I promise not to include book spoilers.

Lincoln told a colleague, “I wish McClellan would go at the enemy with something – I don’t care what. General McClellan is a pleasant and scholarly gentleman. He is an admirable engineer, but he seems to have a special talent for a stationary engine.”

It is spring 1862, the second year of the American Civil War. Although General George McClellan, leader of the Union Army of the Potomac, had finally moved his troops out of his Washington, D.C., camp, he had stalled out on the Virginia Peninsula. Procrastination was his custom and he had endless excuses to offer for his delay tactics. He heaped blame on President Abraham Lincoln for not supplying him with enough troops as McClellan falsely believed he was outnumbered by the rebels. Lincoln was frustrated with McClellan’s chronic inaction, as McClellan delayed moving his troops toward the Confederate capital of Richmond and attacking and bringing the war to a swift end.

At left, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sits with President Abraham Lincoln (Library of Congress)

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton suggested that President Lincoln take a trip to the Virginia Peninsula, to Fort Monroe, to prod General McClellan to act. On the evening of May 5, 1862, Lincoln, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, and Stanton, accompanied by General Egbert Viele, boarded the new Treasury Department cutter, the Miami, and began the twenty-seven-hour journey, sailing down the Potomac, and into the Chesapeake Bay.

The next day, the bay water was so choppy that the noontime meal was fatally disrupted. Lincoln was too miserable to eat, did not stay at the table, and stretched himself out elsewhere. The others in the party tried to enjoy the meal elaborately planned by the host, Chase, and served by his butler, but Chase wrote his daughter, Nettie:

“[T]he plates slipped this way and that, the glasses tumbled over and rolled about, and the whole table seemed as topsy-turvy as if some spiritualist were operating upon it.”

They reached Fort Monroe at about nine o’clock that night. Stanton sent a telegram to McClellan who was only a few miles away and suggested he join them for a conference. McClellan declined. Stanton was not a military man; he like Lincoln, was a lawyer. McClellan had no respect for either of them. McClellan regularly disregarded them.

Lincoln quickly turned his attention to another matter of concern.

Union forces at Fort Monroe occupied the Northern shore of Hampton Roads, a body of water that serves as a wide channel which connects the Chesapeake Bay to three rivers. On the Southern shore, Confederates still held Norfolk and the Navy Yard. The powerful ironclad nine-gun Merrimac (renamed by the Confederates, the Virginia) was docked at the Navy Yard.

CSS Virginia (the Union Merrimac or Merrimack) was the first ironclad warship constructed by the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. It was built from the remains of the former steam frigate the USS Merrimack.

Back in March 1862, in a span of five hours, this former Union ship had sunk, captured, and incapacitated five Union vessels in what was known as the Battle of Hampton Roads or the Battle between the ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac(k).

March 1862. The Battle of Hampton Roads: Print shows a battle scene between the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac just offshore, also shows a Union ship sinking and rescue boats being put to sea from shore, as well as a Union artillery bunker, Union soldiers and officers, and some rescued sailors. The 3-hour battle between the two ironclads was indecisive. (Library of Congress)

Lincoln feared that the Merrimac would one day sail up the Potomac and attack Washington, the capital of the Union. Lincoln and his advisors pored over maps of the area. The men could not understand why McClellan had not ordered an attack on Norfolk and captured it. Norfolk was wide open. Confederates had left both the city and the Navy Yard vulnerable. Lincoln and his mini-war cabinet planned an assault on that key port to be made by General Wool’s forces.

Although this map shows a lot of info, you can pick out Fort Monroe, Washington, D.C., the Potomac River, Richmond, and Norfolk, Va. The Confederate and Union capitals were only about 100 miles apart.

On the afternoon of May 7, at Lincoln’s suggestion, several Union warships began the shelling of the rebel guns at Sewell’s Point near Norfolk. Upon learning that the rebels were abandoning Norfolk, Lincoln decided to plan its capture.

Lincoln, Chase, and Stanton surveyed the shoreline seeking a good place for the troops to land. Lincoln went ashore in a rowboat, walked around on enemy soil under a full moon, putting himself in danger of being fired upon, and then returned to the Miami. Chase was antsy for an immediate attack. He was worried that McClellan might show up and delay it!

When the convoys landed on the sandy beach the next night (at the landing Chase and Wool had selected), they found that the rebels had evacuated the city and scuttled the Merrimac. The city authorities formally surrendered the city to the Union forces and Wool appointed Viele as the city’s military governor.

In a letter to his daughter, Chase praised the President for the capture of the strategic port city and the vanquishing of the Merrimac. The egoistic McClellan, however, wrote falsely to his wife, “Norfolk is in our possession, the result of my movements.”

Readers: Later this spring my new book, WHEN PEOPLE WERE THINGS: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, AND THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, will be published. Please read it.

Read Full Post »

More from the Archives

Posted in PEOPLE on January 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Ice Pick Lobotomist: Dr. Walter Freeman

Read Full Post »

New Book by Lisa

Posted in PEOPLE, tagged , , , , on January 27, 2025| 4 Comments »

COMING SPRING 2025

Readers, if you would like to receive an e-galley of an advanced review copy, reach out to me in the comments section and i will provide you with an email to write me. Lisa

Read Full Post »

WWII Fascists: The Family of Audrey Hepburn

Posted in PEOPLE on November 15, 2024| 2 Comments »

Audrey Hepburn & the Family Skeletons

Read Full Post »

Charles Dickens Writes a Christmas Story

Posted in Charles Dickens, PEOPLE, tagged , , on October 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Charles Dickens (aged 30). This portrait of Charles Dickens was painted by the American artist Francis Alexander (1800-1880) early in 1842, shortly after Dickens arrived in Boston at the start of his first visit to North America.

After returning from his 1842 visit to America, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) read a disturbing government report on child labor in the United Kingdom titled the Report of the Children’s Employment Commission. He read testimonies of little girls working as seamstresses, six hours a day, six days a week, and rooming above the factory floor. Girls told of dragging coal carts through tight underground passages over eleven-hour days.

A child laborer known as a “hurrier” is shown harnessed to a coal corve. Hurriers were required to drag an empty coal cart down from the shaft bottom along passageways between 24 to 30 inches high and return with a full load from the coal face. One child would be harnessed to the front of the corve, while another would follow behind, pushing the load with their hands and their heads. Most hurriers would have large septic calluses on their legs, hands and knees and many were bald as a result of pushing corves up steep inclines with their heads. Their bodies were often ‘old’ and broken before they reached adulthood.

Factory bosses used children to climb into the insides of industrial machinery to clear a jam, sometimes with fatal consequences. These were not isolated incidents but common. Families were poor and hungry and they took what work they could find, even if it meant sending a child as young as five to work.

Dickens at the Blacking Warehouse, From a drawing by Fred Bernard. Reproduced in “The Dickens Country” by kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall

It is believed that, at the age of twelve,  Charles Dickens had been forced to drop out of school, sell his books, and go to work at the dirty, rat-infested Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, a shoe polish factory, near Charing Cross leading from the Strand to the Thames, where Charles typed up and labeled countless pots of shoe-blacking. Dickens’ father was locked up in a debtors’ prison, taking with him his wife and youngest children, and young Charles was expected to support his family at this grinding toil.  The pay was meager, only a few shillings a week. Young Dickens worked ten-hour days and saw his family only on Sundays. This he endured for three years, a most painful episode in his young life.

Influenced by his youth and a recent visit to the Field Lane Ragged School for street children, Dickens decided to shine a light on uneven workforce wages by writing a novella. The story came to him over six weeks as he took his nighttime strolls through London, walking fifteen or twenty miles a night, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing. The result was a masterpiece called A Christmas Carol, published on December 19, 1843, a morality tale pointing out the benefits of compassion and the terrible cost of miserliness. In one scene, men and women, bosses and workers, young and old, dance and drink merrily, feast, and celebrate the joys of Christmas together. The book was a runaway bestseller.

 

John Leech, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers: For more on Charles Dickens, click here.

Read Full Post »

Mary Todd Lincoln: She Who Must Be Obeyed

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, FASHION, & DESIGN, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2024| 6 Comments »

Mary Todd Lincoln, ca. 1861

When Mary and Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House in 1861, Mary was 42 years old, a time when women her age dressed in somber grays, dull browns, and boring blues. But not Mary Todd Lincoln. For her, expensive clothes were a mark of importance, of breeding. She proceeded to dress like a peacock, draping herself in bold blues, crimson, yellow, and royal purple, attracting a lot of unwanted attention and sparking criticism from the Washington social elite. Brought up among the overdressed ladies of Kentucky, her gowns and bonnets were ornamented with flowers, lace, dots, and bows sewn on yards of velvet, taffeta, and silk at a time of war when soldiers were going without blankets. Mary took her fashion cues from Eugenie, Empress of France, whose parties and clothes appeared in line drawings and detailed descriptions in one of Mary’s favorite magazines, Godey’s Lady’s Book. She was admonished for wearing low-necked dresses that revealed her “milking apparatus,” said one critic, and for the “flower beds which she carries on top of her head,” said another. A petite woman, the bell-shaped dresses overwhelmed her; hoops made her look shorter and squat.

Buoyed by a grandiose sense of self-importance coupled with her new position as the president’s wife, Mary demanded what she wanted. She expected everyone to do her bidding. She was surprised when clothing merchants sent her bills. The line between purchase and donation was fuzzy. Mary looked for donors to buy her gowns and hats, rewarding them with political favors. When she blew her four-year budget for White House renovations in under a year, she contrived several plots to secretly defray her debt. In one instance, she persuaded the White House gardener to sell manure from the stables at ten cents a wagonload. It raised more stink than cash. Her spending eventually came to light and became a national scandal. Lincoln was mortified and had to deal with it, all the while referring to it benignly as his beloved Mary’s silly “flub-a-dub.”

Willian's of Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington's best known milliner at the time, made Mary Todd Lincoln's bonnets. Unfortunately, he also made bonnets for Mrs. Horatio Taft.

Now, back to what we were saying about Mary and her clothing:

It was an April evening in 1861. The Marine Band was playing a concert on the White House lawn. Mary and President Lincoln had invited many guests, among them Mary Cook Taft, wife of Horatio Taft, an examiner at the U.S. Patent Office. Mary Taft was wearing a delicate straw bonnet lavishly trimmed with pretty purple ribbons embroidered with little black figures. The bonnet had long strings which tied beneath her chin in a bow. Mary Taft’s teenage daughter, Julia, accompanied her to the promenade grounds that day and vividly recalled their costumes:

“My mother, of course, wore the bonnet, together with a purple and white silk over a moderate crinoline, and lavender kid gloves. I was dressed in white Swiss, much beruffled, but without hoop skirt or crinoline, which was an abiding grievance with me. But my hat…was very gratifying and almost compensated for the lack of crinoline.”

Women’s Fashions 1860

Mary and Julia walked around mingling with the other guests while the band played on. The national anthem brought those in chairs to their feet, men doffing their hats, and all standing in patriotic attention. At the close of the concert, the Taft women walked over to the south front where the presidential party was sitting, to pay their respects. Mary Lincoln could not take her eyes off Mary Taft’s bonnet. Julia recalled what happened next:

Julia Taft, undated photo

“After a few words of greeting, [Mrs. Lincoln] took my mother aside and talked with her for a moment. While I could not hear their conversation, I knew someway that they were talking about my mother’s bonnet and I was a bit puzzled at the look of amazement on my mother’s face. I did not see why my mother should look so surprised at a passing compliment from Mrs. Lincoln.”

Mary Lincoln wanted the purple strings off Mary Taft’s bonnet and asked for them. Mary Taft was angry—she loved her bonnet with its pretty purple ribbon— but what could she do? Mary Taft’s husband was a government appointee. Mrs. Lincoln could get him fired and then how would they pay for Julia’s private Washington school? So, begrudgingly, Mrs. Taft agreed to give up her ribbons to “Madam President” as Mary Lincoln requested to be called by the White House staff. 

The Washington milliner Willian sent for Mary Taft’s bonnet, removing the purple ribbons for Mary Lincoln, and sending back Mary Taft’s bonnet with new lavender ribbon. Not long after this incident, Julia, who was often in the White House as a babysitter for her little brothers, Bud and Holly, the inseparable playmates of Tad and Willie Lincoln, caught sight of Mary Lincoln wearing a purple dress and a bonnet trimmed with her mother’s purple ribbons. 

Mary Lincoln is shown with two of her four sons. Willie is to our left and Tad is to our right. Tad’s name is Thomas. He was so wiggly that he was nicknamed Tadpole. One of the Lincoln’s sons, Eddie, died when they had lived in Springfield. The eldest Lincoln boy, Robert, was studying at Harvard in 1860, the year this photo was taken.

Source: Bayne, Julia Taft. Tad Lincoln’s Father. Boston, Little, Brown, and Co., 1931.

Readers: For more on Mary Lincoln, click here.

Read Full Post »

Robert Kennedy Goes After the Mafia

Posted in Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Frank Sinatra, Jackie Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Pat and Peter Lawford, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, tagged , , , , , on May 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Robert Francis Kennedy, photo, 1964

Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968)

After winning the 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother, Robert, as U.S. attorney general. “Bobby” was just thirty-five, and, although a graduate of Virginia Law School, had little legal experience. Although the appointment was a bold act of nepotism, it aroused little controversy, and only one senator voted against confirmation. JFK was so confident in this decision, that he joked at the annual Alfalfa Club Dinner, the night after the inauguration:

I just wanted to give [Bobby] some legal experience before he practices.

John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at an inaugural ball, January 20, 1961

Bobby Kennedy was not an unknown in Washington politics. He had made a name for himself in 1957-1959 while serving as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, familiarly known as the “Senate Rackets Committee.” His brother, John, then a Massachusetts senator, sat on that committee. Bobby’s intelligence convinced him that Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa had worked with the Mafia, extorted money from employers, and raided pension funds. During the hearings, both Kennedy men squared off with Hoffa and his mobster connections. In 1860, Bobby Kennedy published The Enemy Within, exposing the corruption within the Teamsters.

Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy during the Senate hearings circa May 1957. Photograph by Howard Jones for Look Magazine in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Although RFK’s tenure in the Kennedy administration would be associated with civil rights gains—the month prior to the 1860 presidential election, Bobby had negotiated to secure the release of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from an Atlanta jail—he was most identified with his relentless crusade against organized crime. Among his many achievements in this dangerous arena, he worked to secure the Federal Wire act, which specifically targeted the use of telephone, Internet, cable tv, and fiber optic communications with the aim to disrupt the Mafia’s gambling operations. Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800 percent during his term. Kennedy worked to shift FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s focus away from communism to organized crime.

President John F. Kennedy and singer Frank Sinatra at the 1961 Inaugural Gala

Frank Sinatra

Singer and film star Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) grew up poor and lower class in Hoboken, New Jersey. Once he made it big in showbiz (thanks to help from his Mafia cronies), he obsessed about fitting in with the upper class. He wormed his way into politics, using his Hollywood star power to campaign and fundraise for Democratic heavyweights such as Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. In attaching himself to men of honor, Sinatra hoped to achieve the respectability he craved.

Sinatra had cultivated a relationship with President Kennedy through movie star Peter Lawford, who was married to the president’s sister, Pat.

Host Frank Sinatra (L) wears an eyepatch, laughing with actor Peter Lawford and his wife Patricia Kennedy (1924 – 2006) during a surprise 21st birthday party held for actor Natalie Wood at Romanoff’s, Hollywood, California, July 20, 1959. (Photo by Murray Garrett/Getty Images)

In March 1962, President Kennedy was scheduled to fly to Southern California. Peter Lawford asked Sinatra to be the president’s host at his Palm Springs estate. Sinatra was thrilled. He went straight to work. At his own expense, Sinatra installed a helicopter pad, cottages for the Secret Service, and even a flagpole for the presidential flag.

But the president’s brother Bobby Kennedy wasn’t having it. When he heard about his brother Jack’s proposed stay at Sinatra’s, he went ballistic. Bobby was making the “most single-minded attack on organized crime in American history” and could not abide Jack associating with someone with mob connections. Peter Lawford was chosen to tell Sinatra that the president would not be staying with him.

Sinatra did not take the news well. He had a notoriously explosive temper:

“Sinatra vented his spleen by destroying the concrete landing pad with a sledgehammer. He applied a different kind of sledgehammer to his friendship with Peter and Pat [Lawford], banning them from his company….Jack ended up staying at the home of Bing Crosby. Marilyn Monroe flew down to be with the president, spending the night in his bedroom….”

Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe ca. 1961-62
Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe ca. 1961-62

Bedell Smith, Sally. Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House. New York: Random House, 2004.

Leamer, Laurence. The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family. New York: Fawcett Books, 1994.

Readers: For more on Frank Sinatra on this blog, click here.

Read Full Post »

Amy Winehouse Biopic Release

Posted in Amy Winehouse, tagged , , , , , , on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

A biopic of the life of Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, will be released in the U.S. by Focus Features on May 15. Marisa Abela stars as the troubled British singer-songwriter. Since Winehouse’s death in 2011, many projects on her life and music had been in the works but none had gotten off the ground until now.

The film is a sympathetic portrayal of the life of the struggling artist, who, during her lifetime, the tabloids loved to bash. The film begins with her birth into a Jewish family, her parents’ divorce, the discovery of her amazing and unique talent, rise in the music industry, troubled marriage, ongoing battle with addiction and bulimia with the resulting dysfunction, trauma, and her inevitable decline, which led to her tragic death at 27.

Readers: Read more about Amy Winehouse on this blog by clicking here.

Read Full Post »

The Fugitive Slave Law Convention at Cazenovia

Posted in PEOPLE, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2023| 3 Comments »

Abolitionists, powerless to stop the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, nonetheless, held numerous protest conventions. The law, which would be passed by Congress in September, gave unbridled power to arrest fugitive slaves in the North and return them to slavery in the South.

The most memorable and audacious of these protest conventions was the Fugitive Slave Law Convention, held in Cazenovia, New York, on August 21-22, 1850, and organized by New York abolitionist firebrand Gerrit Smith. On the first day, nearly fifty fugitive slaves and 400 others met inside the Free Congregational Church of Cazenovia. Hundreds of others gathered outside the building as there was no more space in the pews. Because of the overflowing crowd, the meeting was moved outdoors into Grace Wilson’s apple orchard.

The resolutions and position statements passed were radical in nature. Chairing the meeting was former slave Frederick Douglass, editor of the North Star newspaper. Using his trademark powerful oratory, Douglass declared all slaves to be prisoners of war. He called slaveholders “robbers” and warned the nation that an insurrection was inevitable should slaves not be liberated. Slaves still held in bondage were encouraged to run away, steal horses and money, and use violence if necessary. Mary Edmonson, 18, a freed slave, spoke often at abolitionist gatherings, and, at Cazenovia, made an eloquent speech in support of Douglass’ resolutions and proposed measures. Other abolitionist celebrities present included Emily Edmonson who, along with her sister, Mary, had been among the fugitive slaves on the Pearl, Gerrit Smith, and the Rev. Samuel J. May.

Frederick Douglass

In 1994, a daguerrotype of this storied meeting was found in the Madison County Historical Society.

The Cazenovia Fugitive Slave Convention 1850. Daguerrotype by Ezra Greenleaf Weld, brother of Theodore Weld. At the center of the photo stands philanthropist and Liberty Party founder Gerrit Smith, wearing an open dark jacket and a white shirt with an old-fashioned Lord Byron collar. The women standing beside him, clad in white bonnets and plaid shawls, are Mary (at our left) and Emily Edmonson. Frederick Douglass is seated to the right of Theodosia Gilbert who has taken the place of her fiancé, William L. Chaplin, who had been arrested for Underground Railroad activity.

William L. Chaplin, an associate of Gerrit Smith’s who had arranged the ill-fated April 1848 escape of 77 Washington, D. C. slaves aboard the Pearl, had been scheduled to make a dramatic appearance with some fugitive slaves he had rescued from the South, but things did not turn out well for Chaplin. It had been foolhardy for him to attempt to rescue slaves belonging to two Georgia congressmen! His attempt was foiled, a posse was organized, Chaplin and the fugitives were pursued, found, Chaplin was hit with a club, one fugitive was quickly captured, and the other surrendered shortly. Chaplin was held in the Washington City Jail. His supporters raised the $6,000 bail but Chaplin was not freed. He was then handed over to the Maryland authorities who put him in the Rockville, Maryland jail, where he faced additional and more serious charges. Bail was set at a whopping $19,000.

The Edmonson Sisters, Mary (l.) and Emily

Emily and Mary Edmonson spent much of September 1850 making appearances in small towns across New York to raise money for Chaplin’s bail. The teenagers had lovely singing voices. They sang and begged for funds on Chaplin’s behalf, even on Sundays, the Sabbath, but, as they believed that Chaplin was doing the Lord’s work, they did not consider their actions sinful. They did this in gratitude. It had been Chaplin who had secured the money for their freedom following their sale south.

Finally, in January 1851, the entire $19,000 was raised and Chaplin was released. He then fled, refused to appear for trial, forfeiting $25,000. Chaplin made little effort to reimburse those who had donated money to his release. Some people were left penniless after their donations. Chaplin abandoned his abolition activity. He married Theodosia Gilbert and together they operated the Glen Haven Water Cure Spa in New York.

Sources:

Brockell, Gillian. “Desperate for Freedom, 77 enslaved people tried to escape aboard the Pearl. They almost made it.” The Washington Post. April 16, 2021.

Conkling, Winifred. Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight From Slavery

wikipedia: Edmonson sisters


, , , , , , , , ,

Read Full Post »

Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979, Part Five: La Casa de Sue

Posted in PEOPLE, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Readers, be sure to read my preceding posts on Princess Margaret’s October 1979 Trip to America. Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four

Hollywood celebrity powerhouse agent, Sue Mengers, and her client, Ryan O’Neal. After 1972’s hugely successful movie, “What’s Up, Doc?,” Sue became known as the most successful packager in the business: she had put director Peter Bogdanovich together with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. In 1979 when Princess Margaret dined at her Beverly Hills home, Sue Mengers was at the peak of her power. Her phone rang incessantly with calls from actors and directors and screenwriters, all wanting to work with her.

The 1970s era Hollywood super agent Sue Mengers was only interested in representing the top talent in the industry. Her“bulging celebrity contacts book” included Barbra Streisand, Jack Nicholson, Mike Nichols, Ali McGraw, Peter Bogdanovich, Faye Dunaway, Bob Fosse, Cybill Shepard, Sidney Lumet, Cher, Michael Caine, Ryan O’Neal, Candice Bergen, Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, and on and on.

Agent Sue Mengers, left, with clients Ali MacGraw and Candice Bergen.

The first female super agent Sue Mengers, left, with clients Ali MacGraw and Candice Bergen. Early 1970s.

For a time, there was only thing more star-studded than Sue Mengers’ client list: one of her parties at her mansion atop Bel Air. It was said that

“If a bomb went off on Bel Air Road, then half of Hollywood would be obliterated.”

Sue’s dinners were as exclusive as they were intimate. At one of Sue’s legendary parties at her grand home, Johnny Carson, the host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” looked around at the other guests assembled and complained,

“God, there are too many stars here, not enough sycophants!”

Bawdy, brash, and pushy, Sue Mengers had met Princess Margaret in the fall of 1978 at the London home of literary critic, Kenneth Tynan, and said to her that she would love to throw her a party, should the Princess ever find herself in Los Angeles. The following March, Sue received a call from Princess Margaret’s social secretary, saying that the Princess would indeed be in L.A. in October and would like to take Sue up on her party offer.

‘It seemed like we did nothing from March to October but plan the party,’ said Sue’s assistant, Cindy Pearson. (1)

Usually, Sue set out sugar bowls filled with cocaine and rolled joints for party guests—but not on this occasion. For the formal sit-down dinner for fifty, she hired a chef and a staff of 25. She laid out her best china and silver and had to borrow some from Marcia Diamond, Neil’s wife. Although she was a seasoned and celebrated hostess, Sue, a chain smoker, was nervous as a cat. In the days leading up to the event, many of her friends and clients thought Sue was going to have a nervous breakdown. She lost weight and cut her beautiful, blond hair. Everything had to be perfect. For years, she had studied the lives of the British royal family and learned the finer points of protocol. She idolized Princess Margaret and hated her own mother whose name was Ruth. Sue always used to say,

“Sure—instead of being born to Princess Margaret, I got born to Ruth.”

Then, four days before the dinner, on Tuesday, October 16, 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department learned of a credible threat to the Princess’ life. Intelligence sent by the U.S. State Department indicated that an Irish Republican Army terrorist had been dispatched to murder Margaret during her three day stay in Los Angeles. Sue’s assistant Cindy Pearson said,

“The party was on a Saturday night and several days before, Scotland Yard people were sent with bomb dogs to smell the house.”

For some reason, a third-floor bathroom was locked after the dogs had cleared it, and no one could use it until the Princess’ arrival.

On Saturday, October 20, 1979, a few hours before the dinner at the Beverly Hills home of agent Sue Mengers, Princess Margaret made an appearance at a charity function held at Bullock’s Wiltshire Department Store, L.A. Outside she was greeted by an angry mob of 30 people yelling “Filthy Swine!” and holding up placards decrying the British presence in Northern Ireland. Members of “Action for Irish Rights” tried to present the Princess with a pig’s head on a platter. Two live pigs were there. The next day, she would travel to San Francisco where Irish-American activists promised to flood her hotel with 1,000 pigs (but only one would show up) and a crowd, some dressed as pigs or holding stuffed pigs, would chunk rocks at the limousine of her hostess, Mrs. Gordon Getty.

Security that Saturday night was intense. The dinner Sue Mengers gave in honor of Princess Margaret attracted every “twinkly” (star) in Hollywood. Everyone entering Sue’s palatial home was searched. The guest list at the informal affair included Barbra Streisand (and Jon Peters), Jack Nicholson (and Angelica Huston), Candice Bergen, Michael Caine (and Shakira), Robin Williams (and Valerie), Neil Diamond (and Marsha), Ryan O’Neal (and Farrah Fawcett, “fetching in black silk pajamas”), John Travolta, and Gregory Peck. Ali MacGraw, wearing a short black and gold dress came stag. Her boyfriend, Steve McQueen, was absent because he had snorted too much cocaine and had made himself sick. This made Sue furious. Hunks Nick Nolte (1992 People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”) and Sean Connery (1989 People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” and the “Sexiest Man of the Century in 1999”) were there. Princess Margaret had met Sean Connery on her 1965 visit to California. He had given her a gold lighter engraved with “007” which she proudly showed others. Gore Vidal, David Geffen, Barry Manilow, Joni Mitchell, and music agent Peter Asher also attended Sue’s bash.

Jerry Brown, governor of California and presidential hopeful, arrived with his longtime love, rocker, Linda Ronstadt, 33. Linda looked stunning, dressed way down, wearing a simple white cotton mini-dress and some little red boots. At that year’s American Music Awards Linda won two awards: Best female pop/rock vocalist and female country single “Blue Bayou.” She sang everything: rock, country, mariachi, rhythm and blues, big band tunes. Although the room was full of gorgeous women, men always turned to look at Linda. As singer Willie Nelson remarked,

 “There are two kinds of men in this world. Those with a crush on Linda Ronstadt and those who never heard of her.” 

Linda Ronstadt / photos by Annie Leibovitz, Malibu, 1976.

Fans said of her:

“She took your breath away.”

“Linda was electric in performance.”

In the 1970s, Linda Ronstadt was everybody’s sweetheart. She was a class act in concert, barefoot, wearing off the shoulder Mexican blouses, jeans, with a flower tucked behind one ear. She was sexy without twerking and her voice was clear and strong and could make sad songs feel even sadder.

Singer Linda Ronstadt and Governor Jerry Brown of California dated for a decade. Photo 1970s.

Linda Ronstadt and Jerry Brown had been going together since the early 1970s and were the source of much gossip. They were considered wildly different. People speculated on what she might be like as a First Lady should he be elected to the U.S. Presidency following Jimmy Carter.

The comic strip, “Doonesbury” by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, chronicled the hard-to-pin down relationship between Linda Ronstadt and Governor Jerry Brown of California in the 1970s. These were freewheeling times and the country was paying attention to a couple that might occupy the White House.

Linda and Mick Jagger were great friends. At that time, Mick would stay at Linda’s Hancock Park home in L.A. when Linda wasn’t there while he was divorcing Bianca.

Princess Margaret was also friends with Mick and Bianca. Although this could have been a conversation that would have drawn the Princess and Linda into a friendship at the dinner, that was not going to happen. Linda was competition for the Princess.

At 8:30 p.m., the Princess arrived in a police motorcade with her lady-in-waiting, Lady Annabel Whitehead. The guests were seated inside. The Princess made her entrance. The guests would not have stood up in her royal presence. Perhaps they gave her a little clap, which was allowed.

The Princess was wearing a black and silver dress by Dior. She wore jewels handed down to her from her grandmother, Queen Mary: a necklace of blazing round diamonds (at least 3 carats each) and drop diamond earrings.

Sue Mengers had adhered to Emily Post advice for seating protocol when entertaining a dignitary such as Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. To the Princess’ right, she seated the person next-highest-in-rank, Governor Jerry Brown. The rest of the seating assignments were left to the hostess’ discretion. Sue decided to seat Margaret’s fellow Brit, actor Michael Caine, to her left. They fell into an instant rapport.

The same could not be said of her relationship with Governor Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown, as is true with many politicians, was never in doubt as to his prominence in a room. He started off his relationship with Princess Margaret by turning to her and saying,

“Good evening, Your Highness, I just dropped by to say hello. I have another appointment, so I’m only staying for the first course.”

Oh, my goodness. He must have not have gotten the memo. When you first speak to the Princess, you call her, ‘Your Royal Highness.” He had left out the all-important word, “royal.” If he had read his history, he would have known how all important that word was to a royal person. In 1936, King George VI, Margaret’s father, had denied Wallis Simpson the right to be called “HRH” even thought her husband, the Duke of Windsor, was allowed to remain an “HRH” following his exile to France. This slight caused such hurt that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor began to play around with Nazis, perhaps looking for a new kingdom they could rule.

The Duchess of Windsor (formerly Wallis Simpson) shakes hands with Adolf Hitler, 1937, in Munich, as her husband, the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII of Great Britain), looks on. AP Photo.

The second faux pas committed by Jerry Brown, the visionary nicknamed “Governor Moonbeam” for his belief that solar power would one day power homes and offices, was his plan to get up and leave before the Princess left. This just was not done! Everyone could begin eating when she lifted her fork. Everyone could leave once she had left.

The Princess said not a word to Governor Brown. She turned her back on him and, turning to her left, struck up a conversation with Michael Caine who was breaking into American films after having made a name for himself in British ones.

As the dinner was informal, the dinner was a buffet style. The guests at the first table (we shall call, “Table One”) lined up in the buffet line, following the Princess. In her column, “Suzy Says,” (Daily News, Oct. 23, 1979), Suzy remarked that, along with the others at Table One, the Princess

 insisted on standing in the buffet line herself and helped themselves to a dinner of sesame chicken, lasagna, ham (obviously, Sue Mengers had not been following the Irish pigs scandal), and homemade ice cream.

Once Table One had returned to their seats with their plates, Linda Ronstadt rose from her chair from across the room—she was not seated with her date—and approached Governor Brown. She had not yet been through the buffet line. Standing by Brown’s chair, she asked, looking down at his plate,

“‘What are we having to start?” She then leaned over with the intention of taking a piece of food off his plate in order to taste it. In doing so, she not only put one hand on the governor’s shoulder, but she also put the other on the Princess’ shoulder.

Michael Caine was watching.

“‘I have seen people shrug many times, but the Princess’ shoulder shrugged like a punch from a boxer and with almost the same effect on Miss Ronstadt. She [Linda] almost overbalanced and fell on the floor.'”

Never once did Her Royal Highness even look up.

When Jerry Brown left the party in the middle of the meal, the Princess still had not spoken a word to him. Once he was gone, she turned to Michael Caine and remarked, “What a dreadful man.” (2)

Sue attached herself to the Princess for most of the evening, recalled Michael Caine.

“They got on like a house on fire.”

Sue could not stop curtseying to her exalted guest. Every time the Princess looked her way, she curtseyed.

Helicopters circled above all night, making the most tremendous racket. Police searchlights filled the garden. Guest Michael Black remembered that “Princess Margaret got a little sauced and was definitely coming on to John Travolta.” Prodded by Gore Vidal, Jack Nicholson offered the Princess some drugs, saying he wanted to get to know her better, but she turned him down.

Sue Mengers and Jack NIcholson. Photo by BEI/Shutterstock

At 12:30 p.m., Princess Margaret departed with the manager of the Rolling Stones, Prince Rupert Loewenstein (full name: Rupert Louis Ferdinand Frederick Constantine Lofredo Leopold Herbert Maximilian Hubert John Henry zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, Count of Loewenstein-Scharffenecka), a Bavarian aristocrat who would turn out to be a financial wizard for the Stones’ fortunes.

Everyone told Sue that the party was perfect but she was sure that Jack Nicholson had ruined everything. Now she would never be invited to Buckingham Palace.

And she never was.

This cursed fund-raising trip was said to have raised a mere half-million dollars for the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and much of that had been pledged before the Princess had even left Britain.

By the end of the month, the Princess had arrived on the island of Mustique to reunite with her younger lover, Roddy Llewellyn. He, too, had suffered from the fallout from the Princess’ less-than-choice remark, “The Irish, they’re pigs.” He had learned that some irate members of his community back in Fulham, England, had smashed up the terracotta pots outside his flat and emptied the plants and dirt into his basement. Roddy loved his plants. This upset him very much.

Sources:

(1) Kellow, Brian. Can I Go Now?: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s First Superagent. 2015.

(2) Caine, Michael. What’s It All About? 1993.

Readers: For more on Princess Margaret, click here. 

Readers: For more on the British royal family, click here. 

Read Full Post »

Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979: Part Four: Irish Stew

Posted in British Royal Family/Nobles, Governor Jerry Brown, LInda Ronstadt, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, Princess Margaret, ROYALTY/NOBILITY, Sue Mengers, tagged , , , , , , on July 20, 2020| 4 Comments »

Readers, be sure to read my preceding posts on Princess Margaret’s October 1979 trip to America. Part One. Part Two. Part Three. 

Princess Margaret Is greeted by Lady (Bubbles) Rothermere at The Evening News British Film Awards In London. The Princess was the guest of honor and presented “The Major Award For The Year’s Best Film” which went To “Star Wars.” November 1978.  Photo by Evening News/Shutterstock (895422a)

Princess Margaret was in America.

On Monday, Oct. 15, 1979, Princess Margaret (1926-2001) departed Chicago and arrived in Houston, the second stop on her 1979 U.S. tour. She was in America to raise £4,000 in funds for the renovation of London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. As far as she could tell, things were going swimmingly.

But then, that Tuesday, just five days into her 16-day tour, the Chicago Sun-Times printed an article by gossip columnist, Irv Kupcinet, in which he accused the Princess of saying “The Irish; they’re pigs,” at a Chicago dinner party the previous Saturday. The Princess had been seated at a table with Mayor Jane Byrne of Chicago. According to the journalist,

Mayor Byrne, of Irish descent, “was very incensed…and left the party as soon as possible.”

The Princess was having lunch with her social secretary, Lord Nigel Napier, in Houston, when they learned of the article in the Chicago newspaper. They were aghast. Princess Margaret was scheduled to appear in public that very day and tour the space center, NASA. Lord Napier issued a statement to the press:

“There is no truth in the allegations whatsoever. I was not sitting at the same table with the Princess but she said she did not make that remark. The mayor said ‘goodbye’ to the princess in the nicest possible way. There were no ill feelings at all. We say again there is no truth to the allegations.”

 

Famed heart surgeon, Dr. Denton Cooley, right, explains the preparation of a patient for surgery to Princess Margaret. The Princess is touring the Cardiovascular Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, Houston. The patient is in the surgical suite one floor below. Fort Worth Star Telegram, Oct. 18, 1979. AP photo.

The next day, Princess Margaret toured the renowned Cardiovascular Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, Houston, in which she viewed an open heart surgery. By then, a spokesperson for Mayor Byrne had released a statement that the Princess was referring to the Irish Republican Army terrorists who killed Lord Mountbatten as “pigs.” The Mayor did say that she felt the word, “pigs,” was an unfortunate choice made by the Princess. Strangely, the Mayor speculated further that guests at the weekend party may have misinterpreted a conversation in which she and the Princess talked about dancing and “Irish jigs.”

The journalist Irv Kupcinet was livid to learn of this disingenuous explanation by the Mayor.

“I got my information from a good source right on the scene. Why the hell would they be talking about Irish jigs when they were talking about Lord Mountbatten’s assassination?”

Neither Mayor Byrne’s nor Lord Napier’s repeated statements to the press could stop the wildfire from spreading. Was Mayor Byrne truly being gracious in her many explanations or was she, in her own political way, fanning the flames while seeming to appear gracious? After all, she was Irish. Certainly Irv Kupcinet was complicit in keeping the controversy alive and painting a target on Margaret’s royal back. And Margaret was no help. She never backed down. Self-effacing was not one of her qualities. She continued to deny that she had ever used the words, “The Irish, they’re pigs.”

The issue would not die down. A certain segment of the Irish American community became infuriated. As the controversy grew, and the newspaper articles spread from sea to shining sea, the threat to the Princess’ safety escalated dramatically. Just 27 hours before the Princess landed in Los Angeles—her next stop following Houston— on Thursday, October 18, the Los Angeles Police Department uncovered a plot by a “high-ranking member of the IRA” to assassinate the Princess at the Friday, Oct. 19 dedication of a new Rolls Royce facility in Beverly Hills.

Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Edser was Princess Margaret’s bodyguard at all times. He was armed with a standard Smith and Wesson .45 revolver and had undergone extensive firearm training.

The intelligence had come from Scotland Yard through the U.S. State Department which was quickly relayed to the LAPD. The LAPD had a photo of the suspect which they did not release but there was talk that he went by the name, “The Jackal” and was suspected in the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten. The hit man had hired a film crew as a cover. He was pretending to be making a documentary on the Princess and wanted photos of her at the caviar and champagne event at the Rolls Royce building. The LAPD conducted a search of a West Los Angeles motel where the suspect had hidden out for two weeks in advance of the Princess’ visit but the room was empty. The security to protect the Princess was heightened. On October 24, 1979, when the Princess was on her way out of the country to the island of Mustique, the Los Angeles Times broke the story in full detail. The article, that ran for several pages, began on Page One, with these headlines:

ASSASSIN SCARE IN L.A.

Protecting the Princess

Report of IRA Death Plot Triggers Massive Security

The Provisional Wing of the IRA responded to the rumor that they were planning to carry out a hit on Princess Margaret, stating coolly that while the Princess was a “legitimate target” for an assassination attempt, such an operation would not be carried out on American soil.

Despite the danger, the Princess went ahead that Friday with the Rolls Royce dedication ceremony, although the police advised her to avoid any of her characteristic side trips on the way, to which she agreed. Linda Gray, famous for portraying the alcoholic “Sue Ellen Ewing” character on the popular Friday night soap opera, “Dallas,” was to join Princess Margaret at the presentation of a plaque. Because there was no bulletproof Rolls Royce limousine in existence, the Princess arrived at the service center in a bulletproof Cadillac limousine, with presidential style security. Along the route to the location, her security detail included an armed motorcycle escort, plain-clothes State Dept. agents, and a helicopter fitted out as air ambulance. Marksmen were situated along the motorcade’s route, according to Capt. Larry Kramer, Chief of LAPD Metropolitan Squad.

For her Los Angeles October 1979 stay, Princess Margaret enjoyed presidential style security, including a motorcade escort of 13 motorcycle police. The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 24, 1979.

Disappointing the assembled crowd at the Rolls Royce plant, Princess Margaret did not linger. She neither chit chatted with the crew nor partook of the tony refreshments. She left after thirty minutes.

Her schedule in Los Angeles was tight. There was a private dinner that same evening, a charity event the next day in the afternoon (Saturday), and, at 8:30 that evening, an intimate dinner party at the Bel Air home of Sue Mengers, the super agent to the A List Hollywood stars.

Hollywood celebrity super agent, Sue Mengers, is shown here with one of her clients, Jack Nicholson. Sue Mengers was besotted with the British royal family. She longed for an invitation to Buckingham Palace.

American celebrity super agent, Sue Mengers, referred to her stars as “My Twinkles.” Shown at center, Sue is joined by actress Faye Dunaway and film producer Robert Evans.

As usual, Margaret had seen Sue’s guest list in advance and had made several changes. She requested that the singer Barry Manilow be invited. Margaret was more at home with show biz types—singers and actors—than with politicians like Mayor Jane Byrne. Plus, she liked men much better than she liked women. She wanted to talk to men, not to women. She was sure that Sue would seat her next to two gorgeous men, whom she could charm. Lord Drogheda (pronounced Droy-da), head of the Royal Opera fundraising committee, who was traveling with her U.S. entourage, thought Princess Margaret was charming. At least he had said just such a thing at the beginning of the tour and to a reporter, no less. His quote had appeared in the newspaper.  Speaking of the Princess and her fundraising tour before it was launched, he was quoted as saying that

“I think it’s rather splendid. She [Princess Margaret] has never done anything like this before in her life. But I think you’ll find that when she goes to these different receptions,the trouble she takes to shake hands with people, and to make an effort with people, is quite remarkable. She is very bright, very perceptive, and has enormous personal charm.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 17, 1979)

Readers: Add your email in the right side bar to receive an email notification when I post Princess Margaret’s Trip to America,1979, Part Five

Readers: For more on Princess Margaret on this blog, click here. 

Readers: For more on the British Royal Family on this blog, click here.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979, Part Three: The Jig is Up

Posted in British Royal Family/Nobles, John F. Kennedy, Kennedys, the, Mayor Jane Byrne, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, Princess Margaret, ROYALTY/NOBILITY, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2020| 4 Comments »

READERS: Before reading this post, please read Parts One and Two of Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979.

This family portrait of Princess Margaret and her children, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, 15, and David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, 17, was released to the press just as the Princess embarked upon her fundraising trip to America to raise money for the renovations to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. The Princess was President of the Royal Ballet. October 1979. Photo by Norman Parkinson.

On October 11, 1979, Princess Margaret (1926-2001) and her entourage landed in Chicago to begin her tour of America to raise funds for the renovation of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, London. As President of the Royal Ballet, she would appear in five cities over a course of sixteen days. She would start off with a stay of five days in Chicago’s Drake Hotel. Upon her arrival, she met with a group of journalists and made her first faux pas. She asked Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Irv Kupcinet, who wrote a syndicated column, “Kup’s Corner” a foolish question.

“Is Richard Daley still mayor of Chicago?”

Kupcinet was aghast. Not only had Daley been dead for three years, two other mayors had been elected since then. Jane Byrne was mayor now. She was the first woman to be elected mayor of a major city in the United States. Byrne was educated (bachelors’ degrees in both biology and chemistry), savvy, and powerful, having begun her political career in the Democratic Party as a volunteer in the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States — the youngest ever elected….But perhaps what most set him apart when he was elected was that he was Irish. And even more unthinkable: he was Catholic. His family was built on its faith. His campaign for president was almost crushed by it.

Jane Byrne, too, was Irish and Catholic. All Chicago mayors since 1933 were Irish. Jane, 46, had just returned from a trip to Ireland. She went there after her September 5, 1979, appearance in London at the funeral of Lord Louis Mountbatten, assassinated August 27 by Irish radicals of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army. Mayor Byrne was part of a ten-member U.S. delegation headed by former New York Governor W. Harriman traveling to England at the request of President Carter. While she was there, Byrne met in Ireland with the Irish Prime Minister Jack Lynch to discuss the current political situation in Ireland and the United Kingdom. She went on to County Mayo to research her family’s Irish roots.

Mayor Jane Byrne of Chicago strums an Irish harp in a Dublin pub. She stopped over in Ireland after representing the U.S. at the September 1979 funeral of “the fallen warrior,” Lord Louis Mountbatten, assassinated by IRA terrorists the previous month. Byrne is in Ireland to research her family genealogy. Chicago Tribune, Sept. 8, 1979.

Sir Nicholas Henderson, newly-appointed as the British ambassador to America by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of England, was traveling with the Princess’ party. He was puzzled as to why Chicago was one of the stops. He wrote in his diary that it was

…not to my mind, an altogether straightforward piece of fund-raising, given that we are in the heart of the Middle West.

Henderson should have been briefed. True, Chicago was in the American Midwest, but the Chicago of 1979 was no longer the cow and pig town of the early Twentieth Century of which, in 1914, American Poet Carl Sandburg immortalized in his poem, “Chicago”:

Chicago 

 

Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders

An even more disparaging portrayal appeared in print in 1952 in the book, Chicago: The Second City, written by A.J. Liebling, “a disgruntled and displaced New Yorker whose few months’ sojourn in Chicago provided him enough ammunition for a malicious attack on the City of Big Shoulders.”

For the cosmopolitan Mr. Liebling, Chicago consisted of an “exiguous skyscraper core and the vast, anonymous pulp of the city, plopped down by the lakeside like a piece of waterlogged fruit.” Liebling saw no cultural life in Chicago to speak of, no worthwhile theatre, no decent dining spots or nightclubs. To Liebling, the city was a conglomeration of dullards and conventioneers whose idea of a night on the town was a meal of “pig’s ribs” followed by a trip to the nearest strip joint. (1)

In 1954, with the building of its Lyric Opera House, Chicago hoped to distance itself from its former déclassé image as The Hog Butcher of the World where haute cuisine was considered a meal of pig’s ribs. The Lyric Opera House of Chicago is North America’s second-largest opera auditorium, after the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. On Sunday, October 14, Princess Margaret would attend a matinee performance of the Lyric Opera of Chicago where Leontyne Price and Luciano Pavarotti would perform. The night before she would attend a private dinner at the private home of millionaire Abra Prentice Anderson.

Chicago was cosmopolitan now, with a vibrant social life with lots of rich, well-coiffed women raising money for good causes. Rockefeller heiress and Chicago’s No. 1 debutante in 1961, Abra Prentice Anderson (b. 1944), was one of these social tigresses, a philanthropic treasure, who lent her energy to supporting the Lincoln Zoo, Prentice Women’s Hospital, and Ethel Walker’s Boarding School.

Actress Barbara Rush and journalist Abra Prentice Anderson appear at a 1969 Prentice Women’s Hospital Board tea. The hospital is named for Abra’s parents, the Rockefeller Prentices.

Abra, tall at 5’10, with thick, dark hair, began her career in journalism in 1966 as a fledgling reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, purportedly being one of the first to cover the story of the murder of eight Chicago nurses by Richard Speck. From 1969-1972, she and her husband the impossibly-handsome Jon Anderson had a gossip column of their own in the Chicago Daily News called “Jon & Abra.” At the time, the Andersons were Chicago’s No. 1 “young couple about town.” In 1972, Abra came into her fortune of $35 million and, with Jon, launched the short-lived monthly magazine, The Chicagoan. The two divorced in 1976. Abra was still employed by the Sun-Times. In a 1979 Tribune “Lifestyle” article, Abra was listed as one of Chicago’s ten most eligible women. She wasn’t in a hurry to remarry, she said in the interview for the piece:

“Basically, I’m financially independent, I’ve had my children, so there’s no reason for me to get married again unless I meet someone I can’t live without….I’m a better person than I was before I got married the first time. I’m more secure, I’m willing to take more risks, and I don’t have zits anymore.”

When Abra’s daughter, Ashley Prentice Norton, was eight or nine years old, ca. 1978-79, Abra sent out a Christmas card with a photograph of her and her three children posing stark naked. Ashley was mercilessly teased at school and Abra was raked over the coals in the Chicago gossip columns. Abra did not regret sending out the controversial snap, saying that the nudity was tastefully done. (2)

Saturday, October 13, Princess Margaret was the guest of honor at Abra’s Drake Tower penthouse with its posh address on North Lake Shore Drive, then called “the richest block in Chicago.” Abra and her little children lived on the 29th and 30th floors in the Drake Tower penthouse. Ashley Prentice Norton, in her novel, The Chocolate Money, described the penthouse:

I venture into the living room….[I]t’s the best room in the aparthouse…[I]t is two stories high and takes up one whole half of the aparthouse. Standing in it is like being in a Lucite box that’s suspended in the sky. Instead of a solid wall, there is a huge pane of glass that goes floor to ceiling and allows for an amazing view of Lake Michigan. Besides being really big, it has cool things, like the spiral staircase that winds up to her [Abra’s] bedroom. The steps are big chunks of creamy veined marble, and the railing is a long silver tube that curves like a Krazy Straw. Straight silver bars connect the railing to the steps….

What Abra Anderson really liked to do was throw a party. Everyone wanted an invitation. As was the custom, Abra’s fifty dinner guests arrived ahead of Margaret, allowing her to make her royal entrance. She was usually late, sometimes hours, but that was to be expected.  Princess Margaret was seated at the table with Mayor Jane Byrne (1933-2014) who had arrived on the arm of her husband, former reporter, Jay McMullen, also a colorful Chicago fixture. He was known for his bawdy tales of sexual conquest and weird ties made of yarn. McMullen had appointed himself the mayor’s “tough guy,” protecting her against the press and anyone else he deemed harmful to his new bride.

Mayor Byrne remarked to Princess Margaret that she had just returned from England where she had attended the funeral of the Princess’ second cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Out of Margaret’s loose mouth rolled these words,

“The Irish; they’re pigs.”

Too late, she realized her mistake. Turning to the Mayor, she gasped.

“Uh-oh. You’re Irish.”

Irv Kupcinet, known as “Kup,” who was the first journalist to report the story in his Tuesday, October 16, 1979, column says that the Mayor was outraged and left the dinner as soon as possible. It was not revealed for three weeks who had leaked the story. Later it was determined that it was Jay McMullen, the Mayor’s husband. This revelation ran in the Chicago Sun-Times at the end of the month, now outraging the hostess, Abra Anderson, who resigned her “Click” column at the Sun-Times.

Word of Margaret’s remarks traveled fast. Newspapers hounded her social secretary, Lord Napier. He denied that Margaret had used derogatory words. At first, Mayor Byrne denied Margaret had said those words. Then her press office said that the Mayor and Princess Margaret had discussed Irish jigs. This comment was so ridiculous that a Guardian journalist in London pondered sarcastically whether or not Princess Margaret does not eat Irish figs.

Later, Mayor Byrne confirmed that Margaret had made the remark but that she was referring to Irish terrorists as pigs, not the Irish people. Then Abra Anderson confirmed that Mayor Byrne had told her of the conversation. The proverbial poopoo hit the fan. Newspapers from New Zealand to Scotland to Tyler, Texas carried the story.

On the 1980 Census, forty million Americans would declare Irish ancestry. Many people in America and globally considered Margaret’s words to be an Irish slur. They became infuriated. They planned anti-British protests at each of the next of Margaret’s planned tour events. In Irish pubs across America, patrons passed tin cups at “Irish brunches” to gather dollars for NORAID, the IRA’s money source. NORAID claimed the money was used to support widows and orphans. Prime Minister John Lynch of Ireland called that “hogwash.” The money is used to create widows and orphans. Nevertheless, Margaret had given their cause of kicking the British out of Northern Ireland through guerrilla warfare a rallying cry.

Headlines excoriated the Princess:

‘Irish are Pigs’ causes work stoppage

Meg in Irish Stew

Margaret in hot water over ‘Irish pigs’ remark

Irish ‘pig’ puts her majesty in a poke

In England, however, where the British people and the Royal Family were still in shock and mourning for Lord Louis Mountbatten, feeling ran in a different direction. From the Newcastle Journal, October 23, 1979, a letter was published from a reader to the Editor:

Had no one a kind word for Princess Margaret? She’s not on the list of my next dinner party, but if she were, I would expect her to choose a rather stronger epithet than ‘pigs’ for the terrorists who assassinated her favourite uncle.

Then there was the British writer, Auberon Waugh, writing in his Private Eye diary from England, that “all over the country people are raising their glasses to toast the Bonnie princess.” This annoyed him, writing that for Princess Margaret’s entire life,

“this woman has been flouncing around embarrassing everybody with her rudeness, self-importance, and general air of peevish boredom. Now it looks as if everything will be forgiven for the sake of one bon mot.”

Then there were the pig lovers.

Margaret had traveled to America with 27 trunks full of jewels and designer clothing, the American ambassador, a lady-in-waiting, a social secretary, a Scotland Yard bodyguard, and three others but neglected what she needed most: a press secretary to quell the furor that erupted into a major international incident of dangerous proportion. Why had Buckingham Palace and the Foreign Office given Margaret’s trip the green light when anti-British feeling was at such fever pitch? Flames kept being fanned as more and more papers picked up the story and comments continued, both in favor of and against the Princess.

Readers: For more on Princess Margaret on this blog, click here. 

Sign up for email notification when I post Part Four: Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »