Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination (40 page)

I have put my things, my memorabilia, to be archived at Ohio State University, where we have a John Glenn School of Public Affairs. We have about six hundred students who are going to be there this fall—undergrad,
master’s, and doctoral programs. If we can instill in some of these young people a feeling about this country that isn’t just “What’s in it for me, and how can I get better ahead?”—what’s good for the country instead of the individual still applies today, even more than it did in Kennedy’s time, because we have greater separations of our people in political life and public life today than we had back then. Right now we’re at a very bad time here in Washington. We are at a time of opposition just to oppose, not for any sane, good purpose. I’m hoping that we’ll see a change in some of that attitude with the younger generation.

The feeling of Camelot, what this country can be, the future we can have—it doesn’t come automatically. It comes because people work at it, because you have people like President Kennedy and others who work at this thing, have worked at it in the past and given us some of the directions that would be better for the country in the future. The idea of Camelot is still there. You look at a movie and you think of the objectives of a Camelot, a perfect society. Can it develop? Will it have problems?

President Kennedy was holding out this hope that, yes, we can rekindle some of that feeling and some of that responsibility in almost every American to participate and do the things that need to be done. That’s how this country moves ahead. It doesn’t move ahead by everybody taking interest in just what’s good for them alone.

I was fortunate enough to make two flights, the first Earth orbit for this country and then later on. As I age here on Earth, the effects of aging are similar, in many ways, to what happens in space flight after you’re up there four or five days. Not a day goes by that I don’t think something about what happened in space.

When you’re looking at the Earth, you’re going over whole nations. You can look down and see a whole country at a glance. It gives you a different perspective of things. You’ve gone clear round [the Earth] and back again every hour and a half. You’re starting over again and looking at different scenery the next time around because the Earth has turned under you while you were up there. I wish everybody could go up there and look down. Maybe there’d be some different international attitudes if everybody could [go up] into space and look down.

Nancy Olson Livingston

Paramount Pictures signed Milwaukee native Nancy Olson in 1948, and soon thereafter Billy Wilder cast her as Betty Schaefer in
Sunset Boulevard,
for which she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 1950 she married her first husband, lyricist and librettist Alan Jay Lerner. They divorced in 1957, three years before the Broadway debut of
Camelot,
for which he wrote the book and lyrics. A year before the assassination, Olson married music exec Alan Livingston, who had signed Frank Sinatra and the Beatles to Capitol Records. In November 1963 she was living in Los Angeles with him and her two daughters by Lerner. In the decades since, Olson has stayed mostly out of the spotlight, making only a handful of appearances on television and film.

I
had been in a play at UCLA, a Molnar play,
The Play’s the Thing
. I played the lead, and the talent scout from Paramount saw it and said, “We’d like you to come out and do a screen test.” I did it, they signed me, and I kept going to school. I was a client of Famous Artists, and Charlie Feldman was the head of the agency. I was a twenty-year-old student while I was doing some things at Paramount.

I had just finished
Sunset Boulevard,
and it wasn’t going to be released for at least a year and a half, but nevertheless I had worked with Billy Wilder, and I’d gotten a real taste of what the motion picture business was all about. One day I got a call from his secretary, and she said, “Miss Olson, Mr. Feldman would like you to come to dinner on Saturday night at seven o’clock.” I had never met Mr. Feldman, so I thought,
Is that appropriate?
Being a Midwestern doctor’s daughter, I wasn’t quite sure, so I explained this to her, and she said, “Please. Can you please be there at seven o’clock?” So I went.

I walked in, entered a sitting room, and sitting on a sofa at the other side of the room, with two little white poodles, was Joan Crawford. She tried to introduce herself to me, and I said, “I know who you are, Miss Crawford.”

I sat there, and I realized this was going to be a challenging and strange evening. Charlie came in, and behind him was this tall, very thin young man. He kind of shuffled. He had a detached air about him—as if he wasn’t really interested in even being there—but he sat next to me and said his name was Jack. I was kind of uncomfortable, and I said, “Where are you from, Jack?” He said he was from Massachusetts, and I said, “I’ve always wanted to go to Massachusetts.” Then I said, “What do you do?” and he said, “I’m a congressman.” I said, “Are you a Democrat by any chance?” and he said, “Yes.” I said, “Fabulous. So am I.” That’s how things started. To me he was slightly distant. I think he was very amused by me. I don’t think this is what he expected.

The maid said there was a phone call for Mr. Kennedy from England. He said, “Please start your dinner, I’ll be brief. I’ll join you.” So we had dinner, and Miss Crawford went on and on about how terrible men can be. I was trying to reassure her and say, “Please don’t feel that way. They can be really quite wonderful.”

The plan was that we were going to go to the Beverly Wilshire to see Kay Thompson and the William Brothers. I was going to drive Jack in my car and then leave from there and go to the Palisades, where I lived with my aunt and uncle. Joan was going to go in Charlie’s car. I said, “Could I use a powder room, please?” They directed me down this long
bedroom hall, and on my way back I’m putting on my little white kid gloves, and I had my little pearl earrings on, which I still wear. An arm came out of a bedroom door, pulled me in, and pulled me into a very suffocating embrace. I was absolutely dumbfounded, outraged, scared, furious. I thought,
Who is doing this to me?
and then
Good God, it’s Mr. Kennedy
. I reminded him that we had just met. He said nothing. I retrieved my glove from the floor, and I went back to the foyer with my heart racing.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I just go? Should I stay and take him, as planned? I stayed, he got in my car, and we drove to the Beverly Wilshire in total silence. Nothing was said. We saw the show, and now Miss Crawford, who lived in Brentwood, said, “You must come to my house for a drink.” That was on the way for me, it was right off Sunset Boulevard, and so Charlie said, “Nancy, Jack will go with you, and I’ll go with Joan.” So we get back in the car, and we drive to Brentwood in silence.

We were shoved up the stairs and woke all the children—but this is interesting, this was when Jack and I kind of bonded, because we were both very, very concerned about the children. We both pleaded with Joan please to let them go back to sleep. That was interesting, that somewhere we did identify and had the same emotion about what was going on.

We went down the stairs, and I said goodnight. I got in my car and went home. About a month later, I answered the phone. There were nickels clinking down in a pay phone machine, a phone from somewhere—it turned out to be the airport, and it was Jack. He asked would I like to go to the movies, and I said, “No.” Now, I was dying to get out of my aunt and uncle’s house. I would’ve loved to have gone to the movies with almost anyone. But virgins have amazing strength, and he was a formidable opponent. He called again; he tried one more time, and I had to say no again, I was busy.

The next time I saw him was at another party at Charlie Feldman’s. I had the feeling that he barely tolerated me, and I was eager to have a conversation. He was a congressman; he was a Democrat. I was interested in the world; I was interested in politics. He put up with it. I realized there was something about him, with his relationship with women, that was very strange, something I had never actually encountered. It was like a craving for chocolate—and just as emotionless. Once he had that first delicious taste of rich fudge, then he could go on and take care of his real cravings. It was an incredible ambition mixed with a real and very visceral intelligence—that, combined with a sense of this country, where we should be in the world, what I always thought was his core understanding, that it was part of his destiny. I knew he wanted to be president of the United States. I accused him of it by the way, and he was annoyed. I said, “Don’t fool me; I know what you’re after.” He didn’t like that, but because he had been so rather aggressive with me, I felt I could have that kind of a conversation.

As time went on, I learned about his reputation with women. People in Hollywood were involved. He was seeing a lot of people out here. I think he and Charlie, the first night they invited me, they went through the book and said, “Who’s new at Paramount?” And they said, “There’s this little girl, Nancy Olson. Why don’t we have her?” They had no idea what they were getting into.

By 1961 Alan Lerner and I were divorced. I spent time with Oleg Cassini, friendly time, so I spent a little time with Jack and Jackie when they were
married and when she was having Caroline—it was before he became president.

After the second convention of Adlai Stevenson, Jack made a real play to get the vice presidency spot. He lost to Kefauver. There was a brief time, right after the convention, when suddenly people thought perhaps Stevenson had a chance. Alan Lerner and I had dinner with Jack, with a very small group one night, and Jack—I’d never seen him like this before. He was wounded. He felt he had strived for something, he’d lost out on it, and it was an opportunity that was lost. That was really devastating, that he had lost. I reminded him, I said, “Hey, 1960, you’ve got a great shot at it then.” And of course that’s what happened.

May I stop for one minute? That was for me a revealing moment, that I’d never seen Jack be actually affected. He was always so smooth. He was the quintessence of cool. To me that’s what he was all about.

But anyway, he won the presidency. I wrote checks, Alan Lerner and I wanted him to win very much. He won, which I thought was absolutely fantastic, and I found myself in Washington for the inauguration. I was with a small group going from ballroom to ballroom, and Teddy Kennedy joined us at one gala. Afdera Fonda, Henry Fonda’s wife, was there. Joe Alsop had given somebody in my group a key to his house and said, “I’m with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. We’re going off to our parties, but here’s the key. Whoever gets to the house first, you know, light a fire, open a bottle of brandy; we’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

We got there first. We lit the fire, opened the brandy, and I’m passing through the front hall when all of a sudden there’s a terrible rapping, thumping on the front door. Nobody’s paying attention, so I said, “There’s somebody at the front door.” They said, “Nancy, open it.” It was stuck, so I yanked it open—and there was Jack, the president of the United States. He said, “Good evening, Nancy.” I said, trembling, “Congratulations, Mr. President.” He came in, and I thought,
How did he get here?
He didn’t have a hat or a coat, and there was swirling snow.

He went into the living room. Afdera Fonda was standing there, not looking the least bit surprised. It turns out that she went to one of the balls, got into the box where the first lady and president were seated, whispered into Jack’s ear, “We’re going to Joe’s,” and that’s how he got
there. But Jackie’s back with the children at the White House. She had just had baby John, so she was tired, and he wanted to keep going. Maybe he had a date, I don’t know, but he showed up. He knew everybody in that room. There was a small group from Palm Beach, his family friends. There were people I really didn’t know. There was Emmett and myself. Peter Duchin; Peter and I see each other every four or five years, and we say, “Will you ever forget that night?”

Jack sat by the fire in an armchair. Somebody gave him a glass of brandy. He lit a cigar, and he sat there and started to reminisce. He was very touched by Frost, the poet, and he had laughed about going to the White House in the morning and seeing Eisenhower in a top hat. He said he looked like an Irish Mick from Boston. But what he was most interested in was what Nixon was going to do. He’d heard that he might run for governor. Did anybody know if that was true? Imagine, the first night of his presidency being interested in four years down the road.

He turned to me at one point, which so surprised me. He said he had gone to the play
Critic’s Choice
in New York to see Henry Fonda, and he said, “Nancy, I thought of you. You should’ve played the role of the wife, opposite Henry.” I said, “Thank you.” That was very generous, and very dear.

There was one moment that was, to me, possibly the most dramatic. It was toward the end of everybody’s talking. He was looking in the fire, and he was drifting in his own thoughts; he was thinking, kind of to himself, and he said, “You know, I had a briefing with the State Department this morning. They left a mess in Vietnam.” Vietnam? I sat there and thought,
Who cares? Where is Vietnam?
“It’s in Southeast Asia, the French—” Can you imagine the night that he is president not one day, and he’s already worried about Vietnam? It’s on nobody’s radar. None.