Actor Alan Alda exhibits what he calls his “very strange form” in a Central Park touch-football game that won him the Plimpton part in Paper Lion.

In 1963, Sports Illustrated journalist George Plimpton wanted to write a piece on what it was like to be an NFL quarterback. He convinced the Detroit Lions management to let him attend training camp undercover, pretending to try out for a spot as a third-string quarterback.

In 1968, future M*A*S*H star Alan Alda played George Plimpton in the Stuart Millar film Paper Lion chronicling Plimpton’s experience as he learned the sport, bonded with the players, and experienced the roughness of the game firsthand. Alda wrote about his own experience during the filmmaking for the Post‘s November 16, 1968, issue. Read the full story here.

Famous Contributors: Alan Alda The Saturday Evening Post

Click here to download the full article “I Call on Shirley MacLaine” (April 22, 1961) by Pete Martin, or read below. (See also “Shirley MacLaine” in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue.)

I Call on Shirley MacLaine The Saturday Evening Post

Click here to download the full article “Body by MacLaine” (November 30, 1963) by C. Robert Jennings, or read below. (See also “Shirley MacLaine” in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue.)

Body by MacLaine The Saturday Evening Post

This isn’t the first time MacLaine has shared her perspective with Post readers. Below are some articles from the Post archives featuring the quick-witted star in the 1960s.

April 22, 1961

I Call on Shirley MacLaine

In this 1963 article from the Post archives, Pete Martin sat down with MacLaine, who, between numerous mid-interview hot-fudge sundaes, dished on her big break, her unconventional sex appeal, and her involvement in the famed “Rat Pack.”

November 30, 1963

Shirley MacLaine Sounds Off

MacLaine has never been afraid to speak her mind, and in this 1961 article from the archives, she gave readers her opinion on everything from marriage to politics to 1960s Hollywood.

November 30, 1963

Body by MacLaine

In 1963, the Post interviewed Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head, who dressed some of the most famous stars in Hollywood, including MacLaine. In this article from our archives, photos feature the actress in eight of the 73 costumes Head created for MacLaine’s starring role in What a Way to Go!

About: Shirley MacLaine The Saturday Evening Post

Click here to download the full article “Shirley MacLaine Sounds Off” (November 30, 1963) by Muriel Davidson, or read below. (See also “Shirley MacLaine” in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue.)

Shirley MacLaine Sounds Off The Saturday Evening Post

"In Korea in February of 1954 she caught a cold after entertaining troops in below freezing weather."

But many of her sayings were well thought-out before uttered: the Post staff interviewer called them “Monroeisms.” Sometimes they were baffling, but they were usually amusing and often contained a second meaning.

Pete Martin offered Post readers several examples. For instance, her response to the question of whether she appeared in her photos with her mouth open and eyes half closed to look sexy.

“The formation of my lids must make them look heavy, or else I’m thinking of something,” she told me. “Sometimes I’m thinking of men. Other times I’m thinking of some man in particular. It’s easier to look sexy when you’re thinking of some man in particular. As for my mouth falling open all the time, I even sleep with it open. I know, because it’s open when I wake up. I never consciously think of my mouth, but I do consciously think about what I’m thinking about.”

Tucked away in the paragraph like blueberries in a hot muffin were several genuine Monroeisms.

Later, Martin asked her about her visit to Marine recruits at Camp Pendleton “when they whistled at you and made wolf calls.”

“They wanted me to say a few words, so I said, “You fellows down there are always whistling at sweater girls. Well, take away their sweaters and what have you got?’ For some reason they screamed and yelled.”

For some reason.

Was she really so unaware? How could someone who projected sexuality so effectively be so naïve? But in other responses, Martin saw Marilyn’s thinking behind her Monroeisms. He asked her—because this was 1956, and some people spoke this way back then—if anyone had ever suggested that she had padded her figure (“wore ‘falsies’” was his expression).

“Yes,” she told me, here eyes flashing indignantly. “Naturally,” she went on, “it was another actress who accused me. My answer to that is, quote: Those who know me better know better. That’s all. Unquote.”

It sounds like a parody of Marilyn, something Judy Holliday might say in a movie. But its suggestive nature, and its clever repetition of “know” and “better,” indicated she’d worked on the line before delivering it.

In truth, Marilyn was continually thinking up these quotable lines. A senior publicity agent [whom Pete Martin referred to as “Flack Jones”] told Martin that she was a skilled ad-lib artist. “She makes up those cracks herself. Certainly that ‘Chanel Number 5′ was her own.”

The "new Marilyn" (i.e., hopeful, serious actress) and Don Murray, male lead in "Bus Stop."

When I told Marilyn about this, she smiled happily. “He’s right. It was my own,” she said.

“Somebody was always asking me, ‘What do you sleep in, Marilyn?’ ‘Do you sleep in P.J.s?’ ‘Do you sleep in a nightie?’ ‘Do you sleep raw, Marilyn?’… I remembered that the truth is the easiest way out, so I said, ‘I sleep in Chanel Number 5,’ because I do.”

“Another one—the calendar crack—I made when I was up in Canada. A woman came up to me and asked. ‘You mean to say you didn’t have anything on when you had that calendar picture taken?’ I drew myself up and told her, ‘I did, too, have something on. I had the radio on.’

“Or you take the columnist, Earl Wilson, when he asked me if I had a bedroom voice. I said. ‘I don’t talk in the bedroom, Earl.’

“I don’t want to tell everybody who interviews me the same thing. I want them all to have something new, different, exclusive.”

According to Flack Jones:

“She concentrates on trying to give [an interviewer] what he wants—something intriguing, amusing and off-beat. She’s very bright at it. … She tries to say something that’s amusing and quotable, and she usually does.”

Creating a Monroeism wasn’t as easy, it seemed. When a writer at Fox studios produced an article attributed to Marilyn, he gave her the quote that she didn’t tan “because it confuses the coloring of my wardrobe.”

She scratched it out. “I asked her. ‘What’s the matter?’

“‘That’s ridiculous.’ she said. ‘Having a suntan doesn’t have anything to do with my wardrobe.’ She thought for a minute; then wrote, ‘I do not suntan because I like to feel blonde all over.’ I saw her write that with her own hot little pencil.”

“I wish I could say I thought it up. But I didn’t. Feeling blonde all over is a state of mind,” he said musingly. “I should think it would be a wonderful state of mind if you’re a girl.”

As she had observed, the truth was often the easiest way out of a question.

Roy Craft, one of the publicity men at Fox, had told me that he had worked with her for five years, and that in all that time he’d never heard her tell a lie. “That’s a mighty fine record for any community,” he said.

Writer Pete Martin interview Marilyn Monroe for the Post.

“It may be a fine record,” she admitted, “but it has also gotten me into trouble. Telling the truth. I mean. Then, when I get into trouble by being too direct and I try to pull back, people think I’m being coy.

“I’m supposed to have said that I dislike being interviewed by women reporters, but that it’s different with gentlemen of the press because we have a mutual appreciation of being male and female. I didn’t say I disliked women reporters. As dumb as I am, I wouldn’t be that dumb, although that, in itself, is kind of a mysterious remark because people don’t really know how dumb I am. But I really do prefer men reporters. They’re more stimulating.”

The truth, as she noted, was often the easiest way out. And speaking the truth had the added novelty of being unexpected, and sometimes funny. But it often led her to make statements that landed somewhere between the painfully obvious and the profound.

“One of the things about leaving Hollywood and coming to New York and attending the Actors’ Studio was that I feel that I could be more myself,” she said. “After all, if I can’t be myself, who can I be?”

I shook my head.

It had me puzzled too.

Just What Was Marilyn Monroe Saying? The Saturday Evening Post

I looked at his hair. It was thick. It had a tendency to curl. It was exactly the right length — not too long, not too short. It wasn’t a butch through which his scalp showed pinkly. I envied him his hair and his even tan, every inch of which was exactly the same degree of darkness. There were no freckles, no peeling spots, I thought, figures that his hair should look right. He should know about such things. After all, fit’s the most famous barber since Delilah, although he abandoned his tonsorial trade about twenty-five years ago to sing for his living.

“I understand you’re a big man in the icechomping field,” I said to Perry Como. “I’m an ice eater myself, and it drives my wife to distraction. She says she can hear the echo of my molars all over the house. Does your dentist tell you it’s bad for your teeth when you crack a whole cube with one bite?”

Como looked cautiously around his office as if he were afraid it was bugged. “I’ve never told him,” he said in a low, conspiratorial voice.

“You mean he can’t tell by just looking into your mouth?” I asked.

“He’s preoccupied with some other dental problems of mine,” Como explained. “For eighteen years I’ve had a small space between my two front teeth. That was my Number One problem. It was a minor one. I acquired a major one many years ago when they drilled why you should know this, but once your teeth are ground and capped, they’re tender afterward. If you get a little cavity or decay on the uncapped part of the tooth, the dentist has to take the cap off, drill a little higher and put on another cap. Dentically speaking, I’ve been going through hell for eighteen years. In all honesty, I guess if I had laid off my ice-breaker bit, my teeth would be in pretty good shape.”

I said, “I’m curious about how you go about crunching ice with caps on.”

“Obviously my caps are made of concrete,” Como said, “I can polish off a whole bowl of ice in no time at all.” He thought for a moment, then added, “I’ll tell you why I think I’m an ice craver. When I play a lot of golf, as I frequently do, and it’s very hot, I perspire bucketfuls. I get dehydrated and I have to push that lost water back into my body, I’m not very big, but in one round of golf I can ooze between five and seven pounds.”

“On just an ordinary, peaceful, quiet day of golf?” I asked.

“It’s actually water. It’s bloat that vanishes.”

I said, “I understand that you play a very leisurely game of golf, a lazy game. So why all the perspiration?”

He smiled, confessing, “I can sweat like a herd of wild animals. My pores are wide open and ready to go any time. I’ll tell you a secret,” he went on, “I know your spies have told you that my rounds of golf aren’t strenuous, that I keep my eyes and ears open to the crunch of grass underfoot and the sound of birdsong as I journey around eighteen holes. They doubtless tell you also that I seem to relish these things so greatly that I play very slowly. Well, to use a sweet word instead of a crude one, that’s a lot of hooey. I may appear to loiter, but honestly I’m just as fast as anybody else on a golf course.” He thought of something and added, “With the exception of England. I really had a problem there. For some reason, British players hit the ball and run. Their wives may find them something less than volcanic at home, but put them down on a golf course, and it’s Balaklava and The Charge of the Light Brigade all over again. They charge at you like wild boars — polite wild boars, mind you, but if they want to play through you, if you’re smart, you let them play.”

I said, “The only English golf match I’ve ever seen was one played between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby for the Playing Fields of England Fund, They had to call it off on the fourth hole because they were driving their balls right down the spectators’ throats. Twelve or fifteen thousand people crowded onto the fairways until there weren’t any fairways; there were just masses of people.”

“I played in a few of those things myself,” Como said. “They’re fun until they start leaving you no room to play in. After that they’re murder.”

I said, “I helped Bob Hope write his story for The Saturday Evening Post. There are those who say he’s no good without his writers around him, but I can testify that there were many times when he said sidesplitting things to me on his own, without his writers thinking them up for him.”

“He’s a swifty with an ad lib,” Como agreed. “Hope’s played a lot of golf exhibitions for charity, and I’ve played with him on some of them. You gather together three or four characters like Hope, and ten or twenty thousand people are apt to turn out. When the galleries start lining up on the fairways until they leave only a long, narrow slit for you to drive through, it scares the hell out of you. You could kill a spectator if you hit him in the wrong spot.

“Most of the benefits I’ve played,” he went on, “have been for boys’ clubs or for such things as cerebral-palsy funds. I remember one day in Washington, D.C, when there were five of us—Hope and I, Ben Hogan, Ed Sullivan and Jimmy Demaret. Most of the people who’d come out to see us play weren’t golfers and knew no golf etiquette. They didn’t even have enough gumption to know they were in danger and get out of the way when Hope and Sullivan and I were shooting. Hogan and Demaret knew where their shots were going, but you can’t stand in front of Hope or me when we’re shooting without running a good chance of having a slice or a hook slam into you.

“That was the maddest day I can remember. Bob was flying in from somewhere with Jim Demaret. They were supposed to be there at one o’clock, but when they didn’t show up, Hogan gave the crowd a golf clinic.
He showed them how to hit some balls, then he explained his shots over a microphone to kill time. People were milling and trampling around out of hand, and I was hiding in the locker room. I wasn’t about to go out there and get flattened. Finally there was the sound of police-motorcycle sirens, and in came Hope.

“From the moment we teed off on the first hole, trying to play golf was ridiculous. By the time we got to where a ball had landed, it was gone, and we never saw it again. I didn’t see the same ball twice all day. There were supposed to be marshals to protect us — they were really to protect the crowd —but they didn’t. So the people gathered in the middle of the fairways and grabbed the balls as fast as we hit them. We kept trying anyhow and finally got to the fifth hole, which was a well-trapped par three. I’ll never forget what Bob did then. It showed a softer and kinder side of this man who seems so cocky on the outside. He told the rest of us, ‘I’m going to hit it in the trap,’ and sure enough, that’s where he hit it.

“I wish I had a movie of the action for the next fifteen minutes. Bob deliberately hit that ball from one trap to another, dealing out stale jokes for the crowd every second of the time. He was giving the crowd a show for their money, and it was hilariously funny. He’d hit under the ball so it would go straight up in the air, or he’d top it and bury it in the sand. You know, people consistently underestimate Bob. He’s much more than just a funny man; he’s a very kind man too.

“We played four more holes because we thought we ought to play at least nine, after which we dropped everything and ran for the clubhouse like rabbits. I simply couldn’t have stood another nine holes. We’d be there yet. It had taken us four and a half hours to play the holes we did play. When we saw a ball, we hit it. The rest of the time we were signing autographs and walking. A couple of times I even walked in the wrong direction because I couldn’t see the fairway.”

From Our Archives: I Call On Perry Como The Saturday Evening Post

Those two achievements belong to none other than Betty White, whose 1995 book was appropriately called Here We Go Again. “The original idea,” Betty wrote, “was to visit the earliest days of television while I could still remember them.” White assumed, understandably, that her career was pretty much behind her—she was, after all, in her seventies.

In 2010, in an updated forward to the ’95 book, she wrote, “Who could have dreamed at the time, that, fifteen years later, I would still be hanging in there, busier than ever before?” Now at age 90, her star burns more brightly than ever before, as she appears in the hit TV show “Hot In Cleveland” and has been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series. ( She was nominated for the same award for the first time in 2011, at the young age of 89—and won.)

Indeed, 2010 was a crazy year for Betty, and it began with a sassy Snickers commercial, then morphed into a Facebook campaign to make Betty the oldest guest host on “Saturday Night Live” and “somewhere in here I agree to do a guest stint on a pilot for a new series” with the stipulation that “it would be only a one-shot deal.” It starred Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendy Malick. An instant hit, there was an order for ten episodes. In spite of the agreement that she wouldn’t be involved, Betty ended up doing all ten, and then the series got picked up for twenty more episodes. “I have no business working this much at this age,” she said.

In the madcap year of 2010 she even showed up in the sitcom, “The Middle,” starring Patricia Heaton. She played a spiteful librarian who enjoyed making life hell for second-graders.

The Betty White Show, 1954

Born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1922, Betty was barely out of high school when she received her first big break—singing for an experimental LA television station. By 1953, she was starring in a series called “Life With Elizabeth” and she made regular appearances in the ’60s and ’70s on “Password,” hosted by her husband, Allen Ludden.

Her most famous roles were as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1970–1977) and the hilariously ditzy Rose on “The Golden Girls” (1985-1992). But her list of credits even includes: “Mama’s Family,” “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and “Ugly Betty.”

Nabbing the popular actress isn’t enough; for some reason writers love putting her in unlikely situations—like throwing her in the slammer. They love having her say things you don’t expect to hear from a nice little old lady. The results are delightful.

Betty White and Mary Tyler Moore in a scene from "Hot in Cleveland." Photo Courtesy TV Land.

“I’m in freaking jail here!” she yelled last year on “Hot in Cleveland.” Betty plays the widow of a Mafioso who absconds, faking his death, leaving her to take the heat for sitting on stolen loot. Oh, actually, she doesn’t technically play a widow—although “dead,” he showed up this season—played by Don Rickles, no less. In jail for a couple of hours, she starts singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” until her unseen cellmate tells her to knock it off. When the camera does show the snarling woman sharing the space, it’s none other than Mary Tyler Moore.

Leave it to Ms. White to make being a “senior citizen” fashionable. No doubt partly in deference to her age group, “Hot” has boasted a “Who’s Who” of guest stars, and many of them, like the beloved Moore, are older. What a treat to see Carl Reiner, Tim Conway, Orson Bean, Buck Henry, Hal Linden (“Barney Miller”) and John Mahoney (“Frasier”).

Betty White is not just about comedic timing. She’s just as famous for her passion for animals. She communes with elephants, giraffes and chimps, too, as trustee for the Los Angeles Zoo. She has tirelessly worked to raise funds for improvements to various areas of the Zoo, such as “the Red Ape Rainforest for our orangutans, followed by a great new home for our gorillas,” as she explains in her 2011 book, Betty & Friends—My Life at the Zoo.

It seems appropriate that Betty White, at the age of 90 has landed on the network “TVLand.” In spite of a wonderful film career, from “Time to Kill” in 1945 to “The Proposal” in 2009, the land of TV is where this always-delightful pioneer belongs.

Betty White Turns 90 The Saturday Evening Post

Dancing is also just plain fun. “It’s the most joyful way for me to get my exercise, get my heart rate up, and get the endorphins I crave,” says actress Jennifer Grey, who has done as much for dancing as it has done for her. As costar of the 1987 hit film Dirty Dancing, she motivated millions to head for the ballroom. Last year she had a similar impact when she earned top honors on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) and proved, at age 50, that it’s never too late to strap on 4-inch heels and out-perform competitors 20 years her junior.

“Dancing takes me out of my busy monkey mind and dumps me in a physical space where I can be free from thinking,” says the actress. “It’s the best way for me to feel connected and alive. I take one dance class every week, but it’s not enough. I want to be able to do it every day.”

Although ballroom dancing has never lacked for fans, its soaring popularity has certainly been boosted by shows like DWTS and its FOX counterpart, So You Think You Can Dance. Statistics confirm that Americans are giving ballroom dancing another whirl.

“People are definitely getting off their sofas and starting to dance again,” emphasizes Carrie Ann Inaba, one of DWTS’s three professional judges. “During our first season on television people would come up to me on the street and say, ‘I watch the show every week.’ By the time the second season rolled around they were saying, ‘I’m talking my husband into getting into a dance class.’ Now they’re telling me, ‘We’re taking lessons and having a ball!’”

The least likely folks are taking up dance these days. Donna Thomas, 65, was raised in a conservative church and graduated from a college that frowned on anything that resembled what it categorized as “rhythmic activity.” Yet two years after becoming a widow, Donna summoned her courage, walked into a studio near her Springboro, Ohio, home, and announced, “I want to dance.”

It changed her life. “I needed to be with people,” she recalls. “I figured I had a choice: either withdraw and stay in my shell or step out and try something new.” The “something new” included mastering the waltz, samba, cha-cha-cha, and jive. Her timing—on the dance floor and off—was perfect. At home, she was learning to operate solo and make all the decisions that she and her husband used to make jointly. In the studio, she felt the pressure ease and the responsibility shift as she became part of a team again. “I didn’t have to be in charge,” she says. “All I had to do was follow my partner’s cues and react to the music. That lifted my spirits.”

People are also dancing in the least likely places. One of the most colorful offshoots of the trend is the “flash mob,” best described as a spontaneous outbreak of dancing in very public settings such as shopping malls, school cafeterias, hotel lobbies, food courts, and train stations.

J.R. Martinez and Karina Smirnoff were crowned "Dancing with the Stars" champions on November 22, 2011. Photo courtesy of ABC/ADAM TAYLOR)

Participants, alerted to a planned flash mob through social media, congregate and wait for their cue. “People are just milling around when all of a sudden one or two start dancing,” explains Angela Prince, a spokesperson for USA Dance. Others join in and before long—in a flash, you might say—everyone’s toes are tapping, hips are swiveling, and bodies are gyrating. It’s as if one were in the center of a Broadway musical. “I remember being on a Caribbean cruise when a couple of passengers started a flash mob while we were eating dinner,” recalls Prince. “Everyone, including waiters and crew, caught the spirit and formed a conga line of about 300 people that snaked its way around the entire dining room.”

Although Prince agrees that shows such as DWTS have encouraged the ballroom craze, she credits other factors as well. “Dancing seems to experience a bump in popularity after events that change our lives,” she says, using the years following World War I and II, Vietnam, and 9/11 as examples. “Music is great therapy, and dancing gives people the opportunity to come together.”

Technology also may have a hand in the revival. Mary Murphy, a studio owner and frequent choreographer and judge on So You Think You Can Dance, says dancing provides a degree of human contact that is sorely missing since people have come to rely on the Internet as their primary mode of interaction. She works with elementary and middle school students to introduce them to what she calls the language of dance. “Some of the kids come kicking and screaming into the classes, but teachers tell me that they see positive changes within a few weeks.”

The idea of a young couple joining hands as the boy guides his partner and the girl follows his lead, is certainly part of the appeal. Dancing allows young people to communicate without the pressure of finding the right words. “Kids who have behavior problems naturally calm down and find new ways to express themselves,” says Murphy.

When it comes to the therapeutic benefits of dancing, Murphy can speak from first-hand experience. She underwent treatment for thyroid cancer a year ago and faced the possibility of losing her ability to talk. Today she is cancer-free and as exuberant as ever. She used dancing to help prepare for surgery, and she integrated it into her recuperation regimen. “Getting that diagnosis and hearing the word cancer was the one time in my life I just wanted to shut down and have a major pity party, which I did for a couple of days,” she admits. “Then I decided I absolutely had to keep my body moving. So I added a lot of activities to my pre-surgery program to increase my lung capacity. I did yoga, pilates, and dance exercises every day. I wanted to be in the healthiest condition possible.”

Her plan worked. She sailed through the operation and the recovery that followed. The reason? “I absolutely believe it was because of dance.”

Fans of the two hit TV dance shows can attest to similar dramatic effects that dancing has had on several of the competitors. “Kirstie Alley immediately comes to mind,” says Inaba. Dubbed “the incredible shrinking Kirstie” because of the weight she lost during Season 10 of DWTS, Alley decided to wear the same costume on the show’s finale as she wore for the initial competitive round. This proved to be a challenge for the wardrobe staff because the dress had to be downsized by 38 inches. The combination of a healthy diet and rigorous dancing had caused her to lose almost 100 pounds.

“A lot of times our self esteem is determined by the shape we’re in and how good we feel about ourselves,” says Inaba. “Dancing brings you back to a place where you feel physically confident about your body because you’re strong again. Your core muscles are working; you’re in shape; and you’re in tune with your body. I watched Kirstie rediscover her confidence last season.”

Dancing also can replenish a zest for life. Donna Thomas, the conservative-turned-dance-enthusiast, certainly discovered this when she was still newly widowed and stepped out of her comfort zone to sign up for ballroom lessons back in Ohio. Over a period of time, she became so engaged in dancing that she was a regular at Friday night dance parties, and her skill level rose to the point where her instructors encouraged her to enter competitions. Although she no longer competes, she still has the sassy black dress and high heels that she wore when performing, and somewhere there’s a scrapbook of photos, certificates, and ribbons. Her favorite memory, though, doesn’t involve winning prizes or gaining recognition. It’s more personal. “I remember the night I invited my kids to attend a dance with me,” she recalls, with a laugh. “You should have seen their faces! They were just so surprised at how good I was!”

America Goes Dance Crazy! The Saturday Evening Post

To her admirers and her critics, this attention is justified; to them, Jackie has always represented more than herself. She was an ideal, a symbol, or a caricature, but never just another American woman. As far back as 1960, the media put her under the kind of scrutiny from which First Ladies are usually spared (or were, until Hillary Clinton). Even after her husband’s death and her departure from the White House the press continued to report and critique her movements, her clothing, her hairstyle, her work—anything to feed the abiding interest of her supporters and critics.

In 1967, journalist Alan Levy spent a week trying to understand this intense interest and “what it is like for a lively 37-year-old mother to live the life of a tourist attraction.” As he reported in his Post article “Jackie Kennedy: A View From the Crowd,” she was not hard to find. Levy saw her several times without too much effort. He was there when she appeared at an art exhibition:

Jackie Kennedy's Manhattan

There were more than a thousand people … and fully half of them were watching for the one we had come to watch. You could tell by the way they talked in rushed little phrases so that their eyes wouldn’t be diverted from the doorway. Repeated assurances of “She’s expected at nine” gave way to “She was expected at nine” and then, toward 10, to “Well, she didn’t swear she was coming.”

At 10:05 … our bartender declared, “There she is!” So did dozens of others, and the words seemed to hit Jacqueline Kennedy like the wail of an air-raid siren. She didn’t flinch: she froze. For … 30 seconds, she was absolutely rigid.

As [she] advanced into our room, her audience became her entourage. Some preceded her with a harrumphing fanfare of “Make way for Mrs. Kennedy!”

There were small flurries of applause. She acknowledged these with a smile. She could clearly have done without this $35-a-ticket ovation.

A waiter said, “She looks tired. She must have many appointments in a day.”

“She won’t stay long,” said another waiter. “She never stays long.” Both waiters spoke of her with more compassion than I’d heard all evening.

Levy was there at Kennedy airport, along with a crowd of reporters, waiting for Jackie and her children to arrive for a flight. When they appeared outside the terminal—

"By staying behind Jacqueline Kennedy, I was photographed with her numerous times ... and now a long-forgotten boyhood dream of mine came true: In Monday morning's photographic captions I was identified as a Secret Service man." Alan Levy, seen here on Jackie's left.

[John Jr.] waited for his mother, who wore a white coat, black scarf and the same frozen smile I had seen at the Madison Avenue art gallery. Little John, wearing shorts and little-boy bruises, reached for her hand, but one of the photographers barked, “Out of the way, kid!” and he obeyed.

So did his mother when a woman photographer called, “Look this way, Jackie!”

The little boy wandered away from the action [and played] with the treadle that operated the automatic door. Here John F. Kennedy Jr. achieved one moment of triumph. A photographer poised for an arty shot through the doorway, suddenly was hit in the face by the door when little John stepped off the treadle. The man exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, kiddo!”

After two minutes of picture-taking, Mrs. Kennedy switched off her smile and entered the terminal where she assembled the children for the march to the gate.

Little John, however, tarried at a poster advertising a movie. This momentary delay enabled the working press to scurry ahead and board the escalator first.

In case she wanted guidance, however, a loudspeaker on the mezzanine was blaring: “Mrs. K., Mrs. K., arriving Gate Three.” For the airline had more than a dozen employees scattered about the terminal to “protect” Mrs. Kennedy from the press that, in effect, the airline had invited. Thus was my quest coming full circle: I was watching an event become An Event.

But if he was dismayed by the throngs of reporters at the airport, he was reassured by the response of passing New Yorkers when she appeared on the sidewalk outside her apartment.

She was standing … and chatting with her brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy. He was freckled, sparkling and bushier-haired than any man of 41 has a right to be. Alongside Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy sat the blue convertible, motor purring, with the Secret Service man at the wheel.

Levy crossed the street to Central Park where he could study the reaction of other passersby.

The passing parade continued, but the Kennedys did have a silent grandstand of some 25 or 30 benchwarmers. Nothing was said, other than an occasional “That’s her.” A young father hoisted his baby girl onto his shoulders to watch she-knew-not-what. Seeing this, a couple of mothers struggled to afford their children equal opportunity.

More interesting to me were the reactions across the street. In my five minutes of Kennedy-watching, 11 people walked right past Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy. Three didn’t even notice. Two men and two women broke step but didn’t halt. A swarthy maintenance man in uniform came to a dead stop and doffed his cap with a proletarian flourish. Without a pause in his conversation, Senator Kennedy acknowledged him with a nod.

My favorite was a blowzy woman in a nurse’s uniform. She stopped in her tracks. Her face drooped. Her frame sagged. She seemed as limp and lifeless as a badly hung dress. Then her eyes perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was smiling, and her ears perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was cheerful. Slowly, like a sunrise, the woman came back to life. Her mouth unpuckered into a crescent smile. Her face beamed. As she straightened up, her hair seemed to catch the sun. She strode onward, restored and refreshed by what she had witnessed.

No one had mobbed her, or tried to grab her attention. No one sought an autograph or photo.

That much-abused folk ogre, The Typical New York Man-in-the-Street, had acquitted himself handsomely.

This was 1967, however. In June of 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Jackie had to reassess the risks to which her children were exposed. She became more reclusive, and soon married a billionaire who could give the security she wanted.

Which prompted another wave of Kennedy commentary.

Jacqueline and the young senator from Massachusetts.

Watching the Jackie Watchers The Saturday Evening Post

Tom Selleck

Tom Selleck
Lucian Lupinski
March, 1987

We recently came across a cache of Lucian Lupinski paintings. Who was Lucian Lupinski? Lucian was an artist-in-residence who worked at the Post from 1973 through the late 1980’s. In the 1980’s, the Post often featured a current celebrity, politician or other notable on the cover and Lucian was great at painting portraits. It was a kismet-kind of combination. After trying to explain who Larry Hagman and Julio Iglesias were to the intern (with sudden inspiration, I declared: “Enrique’s dad!”), while going through the artwork, I was delighted to find the intern knew knew Tom Selleck. She exclaimed, “he was on Friends!” Yes, he was, but I feel sorry for any woman who doesn’t remember the twinkle in the eye of Magnum, P.I. Yes, ladies, the original painting is to swoon over. We will see that many of our 80′s celebrities are still active, including Selleck, who is currently starring as head of a family with a history of police service, and as police chief on the CBS series Blue Bloods.

Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby
Lucian Lupinski
April 1986

Happily, every generation knows Cos. The April 1986 issue of the Post declared that Bill Cosby arrived just in time to save the television sitcom. That is not an overstatement. “Cosby has rescued TV’s degenerating comedy situation by cleaning p the act and going back to the basics of love and laughter in family life,” the article noted. Who was ever so fun to watch with kids?

Elvis

Elvis
Lucian Lupinski
July/August 1985

Naturally, the young intern knew this one. Although he died in 1977, Elvis was on the cover in 1985 for a story called, “Legends That Will Not Die”. Boy, is that an understatement. Cheesy outfit or not, the legend of Elvis continues, twenty-six years after this cover. The legends in the article? Besides Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth and John Wayne. As legends that won’t die, those are good ones.

Vanna White

Vanna White
Lucian Lupinski
May/June 1987

“Great painting of Vanna White,” my young cohort exclaimed. Okay, totally unfair, Vanna. Anyone would recognize you because you haven’t changed a bit since 1987. Still looking stunning in her gowns, still the great smile, still turning those letters after all these years. How many of us can claim we’ve been in the same job since 1982?

Elizabeth Taylor

Liz Taylor
Lucian Lupinski
September 1987

Some “celebrities” even I had forgotten, but some will always be recognized by young and old (or, uh, middle-aged) alike. Artist Lupinski’s gorgeous, brown-eyed Clint Eastwood didn’t make the cover. There was a story on this mayor of Carmel, California in September 1987, but the cover was another Lupinski portrait: Elizabeth Taylor. Medically oriented in those years, the Post was big on the fight against AIDS, and Ms. Taylor was a dazzling spokesperson for that cause. Well, fine, I’ll just keep Clint all to myself.

Diane Sawyer

Diane Sawyer
Lucian Lupinski
April 1987

I was also pleased the intern instantly recognized Diane Sawyer. I think the Selleck and Sawyer paintings were Lupinski’s best. “Look how beautiful she is here!” I said, hoisting the original painting. “She’s still beautiful,” the intern replied simply. You know, I think there may be hope for this younger generation yet.

Classic Covers: 1980s Celebrities The Saturday Evening Post

The above was an anecdote from a 2004 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, written when Linkletter was a mere kid of 91. But the famous host wasn’t new to the Post by any means. The May 17, 1952, issue featured a story on Stalin’s First Lieutenant, Part 8 of a series on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and an article about the almost forty-year-old host of radio and TV shows People Are Funny and House Party, one Arthur Gordon Linkletter, a gentle humorist we lost this week at age 97.

A graduate of San Diego State College with an A-minus average and every intention of becoming an English teacher, Linkletter “has been known to dumbfound whole boothfuls of hard-boiled Hollywood Brown Derby lunchers … by bursting into fourteenth-century verse in Chaucerian English,” the 1952 article reported. The same article reminds us that this man “has made a fortune out of slapstick.”

The most popular, and most remembered, segment of House Party were his interviews of school kids. In a three-part Post series in 1957 entitled “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” he discussed how his interrogation methods evolved.

“In the weeks before the curtain goes up, Junior is indoctrinated, coaxed, threatened and rehearsed by his family. Once we’re on the air, I attack this defensive position by asking, ‘What did your mommy tell you not to say?’” The answers, Linkletter wrote, “are wonderful.” Such as: “My mother told me not to tell any of the family secrets, like the time she dyed her hair blond and it came out purple.” Another replied “My daddy told me … no matter where it itches, don’t scratch anywhere.”

Perhaps even more intriguing was a five-part series entitled “Confessions of a Happy Man” that began in the August 27, 1960, issue. It is surprisingly revealing, since it begins by discussing the parents who gave him up when he was a few weeks old. It was a painful subject, but Linkletter forged ahead “because my experience may be of some comfort to an adopted child …”

He was equally frank about being indicted by a Federal grand jury during World War II for “falsely claiming to be a United States citizen – I was actually a Canadian,” and about his slow-to-rise but undeniable temper. When a young director blew up at children who accidentally wandered onto his set, Linkletter let him have it on the air, calling him “an arrogant young pup who is throwing his weight around.”

With friends like Clark Gable and Groucho Marx, he could, perhaps, be forgiven for lapsing into show biz “jargon and shoptalk.” He once passed his son Jack’s room and paused to listen to his bedtime prayers. “Thank you, God. Amen. Listen in again tomorrow night, same time, same station, for another in this series.”

Art Linkletter is survived by his lovely wife of seventy-five years (!), Lois, of whom he writes in “My Zany Rise to the Top.”

Read “Art Linkletter Says the Darndest Things!” by Patrick Perry, March/April 2004 [PDF]
Read “My Zany Rise to the Top,” by Art Linkletter. September 17, 1960 [PDF]

Art Linkletter Writes for the Post The Saturday Evening Post

Like most Americans born early in the century, he was born on a farm.

Like thousands of farm boys, he was fascinated with technology. He longed to leave the farm and pursue his interest in motorcycles, automobiles, and airplanes.

In the 1920s, he was a young pilot and entrepreneur, barnstorming and flying airmail to scrape up the money to buy his own airplane.

On May 20, 1927, he was the unknown, inexperienced flyer, a brash American challenger who proposed to fly the Atlantic — a feat that had already killed six experienced aviators.

In the 1930s, he was the brightest star in a celebrity culture. He was also the victim of this decades exceptional lawlessness.

When war arrived in the 1940s, he served in combat. And when peace returned, he continued his work in building up America’s air industry.

In 1953, he won the Pulitzer Price for his book, “The Spirit of St. Louis,” which was serialized in the Post as “33 Hours to Paris.” In this excerpt, he uses his characteristic, stream-of-consciousness style to describe the moment of his triumph.

“It begins as a scarcely perceptible glow… Paris is rising over the edge of the earth. It’s almost thirty-three hours from my take-off on Long Island. As minutes pass, myriad pin-points of light emerge, a patch of starlit earth under a starlit sky —the lamps of Paris — straight lines of lights, curving lines of lights, squares of lights. Avenues, parks and buildings take outline form; and there, far below, is a column of lights pointing upward —the Eiffel Tower. I circle once above it and turn northeastward toward Le Bourget.

“I’ll overshoot if I keep on — stick back — trim the stabilizer —close the throttle. I can hardly hear the engine idling. Is it too slow? It mustn’t stop now — the silence is like a vacuum —

“It’s better to come in fast, even if I roll into that black area. And it’s better to come in high — there may be poles or chimneys at the field’s edge — never depend on obstruction lights — especially when you don’t see any. It’s only a hundred yards to the hangars now. I’m too high —too fast.  Left rudder —side slip— careful — sod coming up to meet me — still too fast — tail too high —hold off —

“The wheels touch gently—off again —ease the stick forward —back on the ground —not a bad landing, but I can’t see anything ahead —jolting into blackness —slower now — The Spirit of St. Louis swings around and stops rolling, resting on the solidness of earth in the center of Le Bourget. I start to taxi back toward the floodlights and hangars—but the entire field ahead is covered with running figures!”

He was completely unprepared for the welcome awaiting him. He was also unprepared for the juggernaut of publicity. Post writer Donald E. Keyhoe interviewed him four years after his triumph and observed that newspapers and the celebrity addicts were still pursuing Lindbergh, besieging him with—

“One hundred letters a day—more than thirty-five thousand a year…  from all over the country, from foreign countries—sometimes the most out-of-the-way places in the world. Many are begging letters—requests couched in every style from an illiterate scrawl to phrases of educated men and women. They ask for anything from a million dollars to a five-dollar bill; though most of them do not get that low.  Then there are freak letters; though there has always been an almost complete absence of threats in the colonel’s mail.”

Reporters and gawkers had become particularly intrusive since Lindbergh’s son had been born.

“After the colonel’s son was born there was an insistent demand for photographs of the child. After some time the colonel took the desired pictures himself, had a number of prints made, and at an appointed hour met representatives of the conservative papers and press services, giving each one a set of the prints. The other journals were all but insane, for this was one of the great picture scoops of the year.

“A man called an editor with an offer. If the editor would just send a reporter out into the street with one of the precious photos in his pocket, the caller would pay him five thousand dollars.

“‘You mean you’ll hijack him?’ demanded the editor.

“Call it what you want. You’ll get your five thousand dollars.”

“‘Nothing doing,’ rapped the editor, and banged down the receiver of his phone.

“But these [excluded] papers did not stop at that. They trailed press-service messengers to trains, and worked clever schemes that gained for some of them the coveted pictures. But their disappointment at not being included with the other papers created enmity for Lindbergh that is still exceedingly active.”

Lindbergh had hoped to escape the rabid fans and photographers by moving far out in the New Jersey countryside. There, Keyhoe reports, for the first time since he had achieved international fame, Lindbergh could say, “We have been happier in the last few months than you can realize, perhaps. It has been so quiet and peaceful down here—even better than we dared hope.”

“In spite of the furor of publicity that has surrounded him, Lindbergh leads a normal and quiet life—so quiet that a visitor might forget for a while that there was a child in the house. When I first saw him he was in his play yard, an attractive, healthy child just then engaged in watching the antics of the Scotch-terrier puppy which frisked around the room.”

Keyhoe’s article is filled with observations that take on a sinister nature in the light of later events.

“‘Have you taken up your boy yet?’ I asked Lindbergh.

“‘No,’ he replied, ‘there wouldn’t be any point to it, except to say that he had flown. It would be safe enough, but he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it so soon.’

“‘I suppose you will be the one to teach him to fly,’ I remarked.

“‘Maybe he will want someone who’s more up-to-date at that time,’ said Lindbergh, laughing.

“But I thought there was a little light in his face that meant otherwise. And when Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., reaches for the throttle to take off on his first solo flight, I am sure it will be his renowned father who will give him that last bit of advice and that last encouraging pat on the shoulder before he spreads his wings.”

On May 12, 1932, the remains of his son, killed in a kidnapping plot, would be found in a muddy field close to the house.

Lindbergh’s challenges weren’t over. As the Second World War grew closer to the American shores, Lindbergh spoke out often, and perhaps injudiciously, about the need to avoid war and the possibility of negotiating with the Nazis. He had been a pacifist all his life, but he was still a patriot. However his comments were gleefully used by reactionaries, Roosevelt-haters, Nazi-supporters, and the Nazis themselves.

He put aside his pacifism when Japan and Germany declared war on the United States, but many Americans never forgot, or forgave, his pre-war stance.

On May 21, 1942, he flew the first of over 50 combat missions in the Pacific theater. The Post, in 1954, published an excerpt from a book Lindbergh hoped to write about his combat experiences. In this passage, he is still using the stream-of-consciousness style of before, but he’s a long way from peacetime flight across empty skies.

“Guns charged and ring sights glowing, our four Corsairs float like hawks over enemy held land… We are cruising at 8000 feet, on a marine patrol, to cover the morning’s strike, and make sure that Japanese Zeros don’t interfere with American bombing crew. Our planes are from VMF 223, based on a rolled-coral strip in the Green Island—200 miles east of New Guinea —four degrees south of the equator.

“Sixteen hundred rounds I carry, of .50-caliber ammunition, and I can spew them out at the rate of 5000 rounds a minute. Suddenly the grace of flight in gone. I see with war-conditioned eyes — these are wicked-looking planes we fly, manned by ruthless pilots, built to kill, trained to kill, hoping to kill, as we approach the heavily defended fortress of Rabaul.

“Seven thousand feet . . . 5000 feet . . . 4000 feet . . . I wonder how many guns are shooting at us . . . 3000 feet . . . 2000 feet . . . buildings and palms rush up at me . . . 1600 feet… I squeeze the trigger. Six guns clatter in my plane as tracers streak from wings to roof, and walk the building’s length. I level out twenty feet above the treetops at 400 miles an hour.

“[Flying over Duke of York island] I climb to locate my position . . . dive to evade enemy machine guns . . . center a building m my sight . . . squeeze the trigger . . . no . . . a steeple! . . . a church! . . . hold fire . . . ease back on the stick . . . pick out another target… dive . . . fire . . . ammunition almost gone . . . only one machine gun answers . . . Corsairs are rendezvousing out at sea. I join them.”

Lindbergh couldn’t shirk his duty any more than he could discard his life-long pacifism. He still embodied the American ideals of courage, strength, and the willingness to face death in the line of duty. But he also displayed the American spirit that never places complete trust in war, and never delights in killing.

” ‘I almost shot up a church today,’ I told a young marine captain after we landed. ‘I just recognized what it was in time.’

“‘Oh, you mean that little church on the Duke of York?’ He laughed. ‘We strafe it on every mission. The Nips used to use it for their troops.’

“I suppose our enemies say the same about churches they destroy.

“An engine coughs and roars through night. Some crew chief is readying his fighter for tomorrow’s strike. I get up from the grenade box and begin walking toward my tent. Where, in life and space and matter, is the place for war? How can one justify a church in a gun sight? How can one merge concepts of religion and of slaughter? Is strife an essential part of the universal plan or will man, evolving, find a path which leads to world-wide peace?”

Read “Lindbergh, Four Years Later,” by Donald E. Keyhoe. 1927 [PDF]

Read “Thoughts of a Combat Pilot,” by Charles Lindburgh. 1954 [PDF]

The Troubles of an American Ideal The Saturday Evening Post

The former American actress and late Princess of Monaco has been dead for almost 28 years — a long time for a celebrity to hold the media’s interest.

What has brought her back to America’s magazine covers is an exhibit of her royal wardrobe at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The couture will be interesting, but the real attraction is the style of Grace Kelly, which becomes increasingly rare in a Madonna and Lady Gaga world.

Kelly didn’t just dress well and expensively. She was also an innovator and a successful proponent of high style. Her tastes were exceptional but, more important, she had the face, figure, and carriage that made good clothing look extraordinary.

Behind her style and her looks, though, was Kelly’s iconic power: her ability to exude elegance, charm, and poise, like those other classic archetypes: Jacqueline Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn.

Grace Kelly (left and right). "She's a lady and she expects to be treated like a lady," says Jimmy Stewart.Photograph by Gene Lester

It was also her fantastically successful life. In less than ten years, she became a well-paid model, an Oscar-winning actress, and a princess. For girls of a romantic nature, this is the Trifecta of daydreams. Grace had accomplished it all, and took her amazed fans along for the ride.

In 1954, the Post editors were intrigued by the meteoric rise of this young (well, 25-year-old) model and actress who, two years after playing a minor role in a minor movie, was starring in romantic roles with Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, William Holden, and Jimmy Stewart.

The Post’s celebrity interviewer, Peter Martin, was aware of Kelly’s reputation before they met. She was, according to Hollywood sources, extremely cool, reserved, even haughty — a woman with “stainless steel guts.”

“When we sat down to talk, her face was expressionless. I saw only the surface of her eyes, not into them. She was poised, cool, collected, and wary. She said nothing — unless I asked her a question first. Once or twice, even when I put a direct query to her, she smiled and didn’t answer. However, little by little, she began to come out from behind her private Iron Curtain.”

She eventually relaxed just enough to joke about a story that had circulated in the tabloids.

“It had to do with her knitting a pair of sock for Clark Gable and hanging them on his tent, on Christmas morning, while they were on location for Mogambo. The way it had actually happened was different from the printed version — as such things have a way of being. She had tried to knit a pair of socks for Gable, but, like many another knitter with good intentions, she hadn’t finished them in time. ‘When I realized that I wasn’t going to make it, we were out in Tanganyika, in the middle of nowhere,” she told me, “and I couldn’t buy anything for him. So I stole a pair of his own socks. Each day I stole something else from him. On Christmas Eve I filled one of his sock with his own things and hung it up. It was a silly gesture, but he liked it. I am very fond of Clark.”

Gable received a telegraph asking him if there was any romance between himself and Kelly. Pete Martin followed up on the story that Gable told her, “This is the greatest complement I’ve ever had. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I’m not too good at the sly remark and the personal probe, but I tried anyhow. ‘I should think he would have been able to overcome that feeling,’ I said.

“Once more she smiled and didn’t say anything.”

Five years later, they met again, only this time Martin was interviewing Princess Grace of Monaco, wife of Prince Rainier III. It was a role for which she seemed ideally suited. Few actresses were better at portraying reserve and gracious nobility. She graciously answered his questions, at one point making an off-handed estimate about the size of her housekeeping staff.

“How many servants do you have in the palace?” I asked.

“‘I don’t know exactly,’ she replied. ‘There are so many different categories. We have servants attached directly to our household, and there are other servants in the place who take care of other people. But to answer your question, approximately two hundred fifty people work here in the palace. That includes carpenters, electricians and the like.’

“‘Does that include the [palace guards]?’

“‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘There are sixty to sixty-five of them.’”

“‘I’m curious why anyone would expect you to drop all you have here, which is so lovely and so idyllic,”‘ I said, ‘and go back to the rigors of movie making. It must be wishful thinking.’

"I do miss acting in a way," says Princess Grace, " but it is no real loss, because being married and having children is far important to me." Here she is with Princess Caroline, aged three, and Prince Albert, twenty-two months.Photograph by Philippe Halsman

“She did it again. She looked at me, smiled sweetly, and said nothing. I found myself hurrying along to my next questions.”

No one could ever accuse Grace Kelly of changing after she became a member of the nobility.

She was a woman of large ambition, willing to work hard to get ahead. She believed she had earned her success in Hollywood. But even she must have thought that becoming a princess was almost laughably implausible. But then, as Mark Twain once noted, “Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

Post script:

The story of European nobles marrying rich American women is an old one. An item in the Post of 1874 noted:

“How the foreigners seem to admire our American girls, or is it their fortunes that prove so attractive?  They come here and make their selections and are only too gladly accepted as a general thing.

“Mrs. Gen. Griffin has become the Countess Esterhazy; little blue-eyed Camille Webb is now the Baroness Von Havre; Miss Williams, of Georgetown, became the bride of Count Bodisco, and another Georgetown girl has given her affection to an Italian count, who has left her here, expecting his tardy return, which looks too prolonged to promise any realization… I wonder if the Turkish and new French ministers will secure American wives and fortunes?”

Marriages into nobility often raise the question of whether Americans can hold foreign titles. Federal laws permit dual citizenship, and even allow American citizens to retain titles from foreign countries. However, such titles have no legal significance; royal privileges in a foreign land only get a nod of diplomatic recognition in this country.

The stern republicans that founded the United States were always suspicious of nobility. They warned of the aristocratic habit of grabbing up privileges and precedent, and they wanted no such inequalities in the new country.

Yet Americans yearn for its own aristocracy: people who are distinguished by their learning, virtue, and public spirit — equal but superior. These would be “natural aristocrats,” as Jefferson described them in a letter to John Adams.

“I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society… May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”

When Grace Kelly returned to the United States, Americans were happy to call her “Princess” and “Your Grace” — partly for the novelty of speaking these words, but also because she had, in their eyes, earned the deference by her “virtue and talents.”

Read “The Luckiest Girl in Hollywood” [PDF].

Read “I Call on Princess Grace” [PDF].

[The Post sends out a special thanks for background information from fashion-and-culture writer P.J. Holmes.]

The Royal Role of Grace Kelly The Saturday Evening Post

The March 2, 1963, cover was of comedian Jack Benny at the ripe old age of (what else?) 39. Rockwell later noted that he was tempted to ask the famous “miser” if he really kept his money in a basement vault.

Rockwell illustrated for other publications as well, such as Country Gentleman magazine, owned by the same publisher as the Post. This magazine’s Summer 1976 issue boasted a Rockwell portrait of John Wayne, whose “rocklike visage challenges the great faces on Mt. Rushmore,” according to the editors, who added, “but he gets around more.”

The May 24, 1930, cover is not exactly a portrait, but the cowboy the makeup artist is working on is none other than Gary Cooper. “He posed for me in Hollywood for three days and worked as conscientiously as any model I ever had,” Rockwell said, “everybody at the lot was crazy about him, and I could see why.”

The fun and mischievous personality of Bob Hope shines through in the February 13, 1954 cover. Hard to believe Hope agreed to pose the very day he returned from a trip to Europe. Most of us would look drained and dull-eyed after an exhausting journey. Can’t you just hear him quipping, “I just flew in from Europe and boy, are my arms tired!”

Rockwell in Hollywood The Saturday Evening Post