Word: gwen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nowadays are the ladies who held social sway during the Truman and Eisenhower years. "I started out having little attachés," Gwendolyn Detre de Sunny Cafritz, Hungarian-born wife of a wealthy Washington builder, once said, "and I worked my way up to the Supreme Court." But while Gwen could once corral several Supreme Court justices for her annual October cocktail party lately she has been getting none. Her chief rival, Perle Mesta, used to make up guest lists "like Noah, who invited something of everything into his ark " But Perle has sold her ark, a mansion called...
...contrast between the Bobby Kennedy function and the glittering Coventry into which Gwen and Perle found themselves was perfect evidence of the fact that the old order of Washington society has changed, giving way to the New Frontier's New Society...
Presidents' wives and presidential families can always dominate Washington society. But they often haven't wanted to bother. Perle Mesta nailed down the top hostess title in Harry Truman's day because Bess Truman abdicated; in the Eisenhower years. Gwen Cafritz reigned because Mamie Eisenhower didn't care to. But Jacqueline Kennedy does care. Not since the time of Frances Cleveland, 65 years ago, has a First Lady cared nearly so much. And what she and Jack Kennedy care about is not the money and power that mattered in the Mesta-Cafritz days, but brains...
...Pecking Order. Gwen and Perle are not surrendering without a struggle. To housewarm her new apartment, Perle threw convention-sized receptions three evenings in a row. But alas, about the biggest names she bagged were Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. Among the few White House officials who came was Jack Kennedy's physician, Dr. Janet Travell. Gwen Cafritz has not done much better. Last fall, at her annual Supreme Court party, not a single justice snowed up. More recently, she did manage to snare Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges for an evening "just in the middle of that steel crisis...
After Reid, the President took the stage and deftly stole the show from the professionals - Reid, Peter Sellers, Benny Goodman, Gwen Verdon, Sally Ann Howes. Referring to an increase in the price of tickets to the dinner, Kennedy proved to be his own best mimic: "The sudden and arbitrary action to raise the price by $2.50 over last year is wholly unjustified," he began, pointing his stern, recruiting-poster finger. "The American people will find it difficult to accept this decision . . ." and so on, in perfect parallel to his famous scolding of the steel industry...