Peter Lawford

by James Spada

  From the outset, there were nothing but problems. Dean Martin couldn’t wriggle out of a movie commitment and had to leave the show. Shortly after the election, Sammy Davis had wed the blond Swedish actress May Britt, and he was afraid the interracial marriage would cause a repeat of the humiliation he had suffered at the convention. He declined to appear.

  Eager to have as many star names as possible at the gala, Peter prevailed on the Broadway producer Leland Hayward to close Gypsy for one night, on January 19, and release Ethel Merman so that she could appear in the show. He did the same with Beckett to free up Sir Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn. Peter told a reporter that he was “overwhelmed” by the willingness of stars to appear at the gala. “We just call them and they say, ‘What time do you want me?’ Sometimes, when some of us get together, we say it’s going to be kind of hard to concentrate full time on our jobs again.”

  The logistics of it all were extraordinary. Peter reserved the entire tenth floor of the Statler Hilton Hotel for the gala’s personnel and their spouses; security guards were posted at the elevator so that no one without a pass could get off at that floor. “Only Jack himself could walk down that corridor uninvited,” said one burly guard.

  Reservations had to be made for hotel rooms and transportation; everything had to be synchronized to maximize rehearsal time, and Sinatra and Peter did it all. Bill Asher, who directed the taping of the show, said, “Frank was brilliant, really wonderful. He was the producer — it wasn’t just honorary. And Peter was brilliant, too, very helpful in the structuring of the show, in the preparation of the written material people were doing. He made a big creative contribution. His only contribution to the show itself was to introduce Frank. It was a hectic time. The enormity of it kind of blows everything away, because you’re so insignificant — even though you’re important as the director of the gala. But what was going on in the country, the emergence of this man Jack Kennedy — that was awesome.”

  AROUND NOON THE DAY of the gala, it began to snow. By nine P.M., the show’s scheduled starting time, the National Guard was plowing the streets, which were covered by six inches of snow and waist-high drifts. The storm caused chaos. Most of the performers were late, and many of them were forced to appear in their rehearsal clothes because there was no way for them to get back to their hotel rooms and change. By ten-thirty all the performers were present, but the President-elect still wasn’t, and neither was half the audience.

  The tension got to Sinatra. He drank heavily and threw temper tantrums throughout the evening, usually raging against Peter. “I don’t remember what it was about — something to do with nothing,” Bill Asher recalled. “But Frank was really into the juice that night, and he got mad at Peter. We had a lineup of people in the show on a big bulletin board, and Frank kept coming into the room screaming, ‘Fuck Lawford! I’m not gonna do this show. I’m out!’ and then he’d pull his name down off the board. Every time he did it I’d stand behind him and put his name right back up.”

  Finally, at ten-forty-five, with the armory still only half full, Jack and Jackie arrived. After they were escorted to their seats, they stood and acknowledged the cheers of thousands in the enormous building. Bob Neal remembers the moment well. “Jack was up on the second floor, on a kind of balcony. I was standing below with my date, Tippi Hedren, who was the gorgeous blonde from The Birds, and my sister Puddin’, who wasn’t bad at the time either. By God, Jack’s looking directly at us and waving! There were four million people in the place and he’s waving at us. I’m sure he was just trying to figure out who I was with. He had an eye for the girls, I’ll tell you!”

  The show, for all its potential for disaster, went off without a hitch. Joey Bishop opened the proceedings with a question for Jack: “Now that you’ve been elected, Mr. President, how do I get that bumper sticker off my car?” Ethel Merman sang in her street clothes; Juliet Prowse, all legs, wowed the audience with a stunning dance routine. Fredric March gave a dramatic reading of Lincoln’s farewell address, and Laurence Olivier stirringly read an original piece he had written about what John F. Kennedy meant to the United States. While Frank sang the moving ballad “The House I Live In,” Jackie Kennedy bit her lip to keep from crying, and when he finished she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  The three-hour show was a rousing success, and when it was over Jack addressed the audience from the stage. “I know we’re all indebted to a great friend — Frank Sinatra. Long before he could sing, he used to poll a Democratic precinct back in New Jersey. That precinct has grown to cover a country. . . . You cannot imagine the work he has done to make this show a success.

  “A great deal of our praise and applause,” the President-elect went on, “should also go to the coproducer, my brother-in-law Peter Lawford. He has been a citizen of this country less than a year, but already he has learned a citizen’s delight in paying off a political debt. . . . I want Frank and Peter to know that we’re all indebted to them, and we’re proud to have them with us.”

  The next day, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were sworn in as President and Vice-President, Peter wasn’t among the family and dignitaries seated behind them on the dais. Throughout the inaugural week, Peter and Pat had been estranged; she did not stay with him in his hotel suite at the Statler Hilton, as every other spouse had done. Leonard Gershe, who had written special material for the gala, recalled watching the swearing-in with Frank in his suite. “Peter came in, still in his bathrobe. I thought that was strange. Frank didn’t want to go — it was something like twelve degrees below zero, and he could just as well watch it on TV. But Peter was JFK’s brother- in-law. He should have been there. But something had happened and he stayed away.”

  Peter did attend a “Reception for President and Mrs. Kennedy’s Families” immediately after the inaugural parade, the first held by the new President in the White House. Over 150 Kennedys and Fitzgeralds and Bouviers and Lees and Auchinclosses (Jackie’s stepfather’s family) milled about the enormous state dining room. “Jesus Christ,” Joe Kennedy muttered, “I didn’t know Jackie had so many goddamn relatives.” Pat and the President’s other sisters scurried to explore the White House’s myriad rooms, running up and down the stairs like children.

  Jackie’s cousin John H. Davis watched the proceedings with a keen eye. “Peter Lawford,” he later wrote, “was going around shaking hands with everybody as if he had just been elected President.”

  IN BETWEEN THE NUMEROUS inaugural parties held throughout the day and night of January 20, Frank Sinatra sent his valet, Tony Consiglio, to fetch Milt Ebbins and bring him to his suite. Ebbins walked into Sinatra’s bedroom and saw Juliet Prowse, who would be briefly engaged to the singer the following year, sitting on the bed. “What does he want?” Ebbins asked. Prowse shrugged and gestured toward the bathroom, where Sinatra was shaving. Ebbins walked over to the doorway. “Yes, Frank, what is it?”

  Sinatra put down his razor and turned to Ebbins. “You’d better talk to that friend of yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Peter doesn’t watch his ass, he’s gonna lose his old lady. You’d better tell him to wise up and get his act together.”

  “Frank, can’t you help?”

  Sinatra leaned closer to the mirror and pulled the razor up along his jawline. “Shit, I’m not his keeper. You just tell him to watch himself or he’s going to lose everything.”

  PART FOUR

  HOLLYWOOD / WASHINGTON BABYLON

  “Can’t you just see me as First Lady?”

  — Marilyn Monroe to a friend.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Not long after his brother-in-law was inaugurated as president, Peter Lawford was sitting in the Beverly Hills office of the production company he had recently formed. He and several high-level Hollywood moguls were discussing a film deal, and Peter was arguing for the salary and the billing he wanted.

  Peter’s secretary buzzed the telephone line on the conference table. He frowned and pres
sed the intercom button. “I told you to hold all calls.”

  “It’s President Kennedy, sir.”

  Peter glanced across the table as the executives sat up, impressed. “Tell him I’ll call him back,” he said, and released the button.

  Jack Kennedy’s ascension to the highest office in America elevated Peter Lawford’s stature as no achievement of his own had ever done. It wasn’t just youth, vigor, wit, and a call to idealism that Kennedy’s “Camelot” presidency brought to Washington, it was also glamour — thanks not only to its ultrastylish First Lady, but also to the new President’s connections on the West Coast.

  Virtually overnight, Peter’s relationship to the President brought him an aura of importance that few Hollywood performers had ever equaled. As never before, he was in demand for interviews, television guest stints, and film roles. Major magazines and newspapers featured stories on the Lawfords, calling them “the Hollywood branch of the Kennedy family.” McCall’s magazine interviewed Peter in depth about his relationship with the President, and Cosmopolitan featured him and Pat on its cover — the first time Peter had appeared on the cover of a mainstream national magazine.

  The Cosmopolitan article, written by Stephen Birmingham, deftly summed up the perceptions most people held of Peter Lawford at this time. It detailed a whirlwind week during which he and Pat “whoop [ed] it up at a Hollywood party with a group of the town’s most notable, and noisiest, luminaries”; were “demure and decorous” at a high-society dinner party in New York; and relaxed “over an informal supper at the White House with the President of the United States and his wife.”

  “To the average man or woman,” Birmingham noted, “an evening in any one of these three worlds, once in a lifetime, might seem so tantalizingly remote as not to be worth wishing for. To Peter and Patricia Lawford, this is their life.”

  Journalists recorded dutifully that Peter usually wore velvet slippers with gold foxheads sewn across the vamp, and liked to play golf in his bare feet — even when he played with the President — until the club passed a resolution forbidding it. “Peter,” said a friend, “is a very loungey kind of guy.”

  Like many reporters before him, Birmingham had no doubts that the Lawfords were as carefree as any couple could get. “Everything they do seems almost irritatingly easy for the Lawfords,” he commented. “They seem to have reached top positions in all sorts of heady areas with no more effort than the sun expends when it rises in the morning. . . . When a friend remarked that leading any of [Peter’s] three lives might seem enviable and out of reach for most Americans, he shrugged — ‘Just an accident.’”

  Peter maintained that nonchalance whenever he was asked his feelings about being the President’s brother-in-law. Even before the inauguration, columnists wondered about Peter’s potential role in the Kennedy administration. Some of the speculation was silly, like the suggestion that he be named ambassador to Great Britain. Others were more plausible. President Eisenhower had appointed the actor Robert Montgomery as his “presidential television adviser,” and rumors were rife that John Kennedy would do the same with Peter. Peter scoffed at all the talk. When Earl Wilson, the columnist, asked him if he planned to move into the White House, he replied, “And do what? Be court jester?”

  Still, Peter took full advantage of the extraordinary perquisites that came with being the President’s brother-in-law. As he had at the inauguration, he sometimes acted as though he were president. He commuted on Air Force One and hopped into helicopters to make the few-mile trip from Santa Monica to Hollywood. He turned the presence of Secret Service men, there to guard the President’s life, to his own benefit; they complained that he was always telling them, “Boy, bring my bags” and “Fetch me a drink.” One agent testily told a reporter, “We don’t mind wet-nursing [the president’s daughter] Caroline, but we have to wet-nurse Lawford, too.”

  Peter didn’t always use his influence with the White House just for his own benefit; sometimes he made generous gestures for his friends. When Gary Cooper lay dying in 1961, he was pleasantly surprised by a call from President Kennedy to wish him well. “I’m sure,” Rocky Cooper recalled, “that Peter’s fine English hand was behind that one.”

  In a lengthy interview with reporter Vernon Scott published in McCall’s magazine, Peter described a typical visit of his to the White House. “Even upstairs, in the President’s private quarters, an overwhelming aura of history overcomes you. As overnight guests, we are assigned to the Queen’s Room, a simple chamber with a four-poster bed so huge I have trouble climbing into it. The furniture in the family rooms I like to refer to as Early Comfortable — modern and traditional pleasantly in accord, lots of chintz, and, of course, brilliant paintings everywhere. Most of the taste is Jacqueline Kennedy’s, and it’s impeccable.”

  Rather than use the gold service reserved for state affairs at their private dinners, Peter said, the Kennedys dined on china emblazoned with the Great Seal of the United States. “Each piece of silver is simply engraved ‘The President’s House.’ And I haven’t pocketed a single fork or spoon as a memento yet, although I won’t say I haven’t been sorely tempted!”

  His most memorable visits to the White House, Peter averred, were those at which he and Pat were the First Couple’s only dinner guests. “I recall one such evening,” he said, “a warm night. JFK returned from his dip wearing slacks, an open sports shirt, and a jacket. Jacqueline and Pat were in blouses and Capri pants. . . . The President kissed his wife, asked about the children, and wanted to know how Jacqueline had occupied her day. He noticed, and complimented, her hairdo and Pat’s new pants. This led to a discussion of fashions, and JFK seemed completely informed on the subject.

  “The hi-fi softly played classical music as we sat down. Jacqueline, who is somewhat reserved even in small groups, is a fascinating conversationalist when drawn out, and her husband knows how to do this. The President, grinning mischievously, switched the conversation to [me]. He loves to kid me, and I enjoy it as much as he does. I got a good going-over, with Jacqueline and Pat joining the fun.”

  Jack did enjoy ribbing Peter, and he did it as often as possible.

  On a visit to the Santa Monica house, the President noticed a photograph on a wall of himself with Peter aboard the Kennedy yacht. Peter was in the bathroom, but when Jack yelled, “Peter, come here immediately!” he was next to him in a flash. “When he wanted to make his voice sound authoritative, it did,” Peter said.

  “Peter,” Kennedy said, pointing to the framed eight-by-ten of the two of them immersed in conversation, “there’s something wrong with this picture.” Puzzled, Peter looked closely at the image and said it seemed perfectly fine to him.

  “Nobody’s going to believe that picture,” Jack finally said, savoring his punchline, “because it looks like I’m listening to your advice.”

  Peter enjoyed stringing Milt Ebbins along in much the same way. On a flight to Washington aboard Air Force One, a Secret Service man asked Ebbins for his business card. When he took out his card case, Milt realized there was a stick of marijuana in it. A few months earlier, he and Peter had been in Birdland in New York to hear Count Basie. “Some guy came up to Peter and said, ‘Man, I love you, you’re great,’ and slapped something into his hand,” Ebbins recalled. “Peter held on to it and came back to the table and said, ‘Jesus, that guy just gave me a stick of shit.’”

  Penalties for possession of marijuana were harsh in 1961, and Ebbins said to Peter, “Jesus Christ, give that to me.” He slipped the joint into his card case, planning to drop it into the toilet. “I didn’t want anybody arrested for marijuana possession,” Ebbins recalled. “There were undercover cops everywhere.” But he never got the chance that evening to dispose of the cigarette, and because he wasn’t a pot smoker he forgot he had it until that moment aboard Air Force One. After he handed his card to the Secret Service man, he whispered to Peter, “Jesus, I’ve got marijuana in here. If they find me on Air Force One with a stick of shit there’s
gonna be hell to pay!”

  Peter knew that there was probably no safer spot on earth at that moment, but he fed his manager’s fears. “You’re right, Milt,” he said. “You’d better get rid of it quick! Jesus, that’s all we’d need.”

  Ebbins was frantic. “I know, I’ll throw it in the can!”

  “Don’t do that!” Peter exclaimed in mock alarm. “They examine everything on this plane when it lands. They’ll find it!”

  Realizing at this point that Peter was putting him on, Ebbins threw the stick of marijuana into the toilet. When he returned to his seat, Peter said, “If they find it, they damn well better not blame me, that’s all I can say.”

  Jack Kennedy’s joshings of Peter, like Peter’s of Ebbins, were rooted in deep affection, even regard. The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., one of the President’s most trusted aides and speech writers, came to him one day and asked for Kennedy’s permission to write film criticism for the publication Show. Kennedy said it was okay with him, “as long as you treat Peter Lawford with respect.”

  Jack Kennedy liked Milt Ebbins for precisely that reason: he treated Peter Lawford with respect. The Kennedys had come to expect Ebbins to be with Peter most of the time; they laughingly referred to the two of them as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Most of them liked Milt and appreciated his gentlemanly, caring manner and his wonderful way with a story.

  ONE OF JACK KENNEDY’S great talents was his ability to draw on the talents and expertise of others. He surrounded himself with “the best and the brightest,” intellectuals like Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson who complemented his own mental acuity and made his administration one of the brainiest in history.