POLITICAL NOTES: Meanwhile, in Hollywood

In the line-up on the speaker’s stand as Jack Kennedy marched out to take his big bow last week was his sister Pat Lawford. And a proper distance behind her was her husband, Hollywood Star Peter Lawford (Never So Few, TV’s Thin Man). For British-born “Pee-tah,” as his friend, Mimic Sammy Davis Jr., calls him, such small-type billing on any other occasion might well be cause for foot-stomping temperament, but it must have comforted him to know that he was only the advance man for a new phalanx of Hollywood stars to whom Jack Kennedy’s victory was more satisfying than smash box office. For in Hollywood terms, last week’s political news signaled the hope for the biggest little revolution since Marilyn Monroe walked out on 20th Century-Fox.

For years—ever since the decline of the big cinemoguls—a major portion of Hollywood starland was dominated by Stevenson liberals, whose political commitment was more than makeup-deep.

Last week, rallied by Producer-Author (Sunrise at Campobello) Dore Senary, they were out in force. Henry Fonda, Vincent Price, Phyllis Kirk and a cast of dozens roamed the convention floor freely (while many delegates had trouble getting into the hall at all) to sell Adlai with glamour. Outside, Actress Mercedes Mc-Cambridge, dressed in the costume of a Golden Girl hostess, helped light fires un der ragtag groups of everyday Steven-sonites (“We’ll storm that place!”). Over the years, the proper Stevensonians had saved their loftiest political scorn not for those bedrock Republicans, Adolphe Menjou and John Wayne, but for Peter Lawford’s Kooky Klucks Klan.

The Clan, as every starlet knows (TIME, June 22, 1959), is led by Frank Sinatra and includes, among others, such neon lights as the Tony Curtises, the Milton Berles, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis and the Judy Garlands. Before it climbed to political eminence through marriage (Pee-tah’s to Jack’s sister Pat), The Clan was known principally as a close-knit group of rigid nonconformists, with trib al rites characterized by copycat habits (members tend to use the same agents, the same make of car, etc.). Their clannishness, in fact, is strangely similar to that of the Kennedy family itself. Mem bers of both groups are young (in spirit if not in age), skillful, articulate, gregarious and highly talented.

For the sake of appearances. The Clan last week behaved with admirable propriety. Frankie wore his hairpiece, snarled at not more than one photographer, and offered to sing a solo at the convention (offer declined). Pee-tah wore conservative grey suits and tried not to be conspicuous (Den Mother Shirley MacLaine, a kook in her own right, was for Adlai, so she did not count). Naturally, there were gala parties. Frankie sang new words to All the Way: May I be emphatic? I’m Italian Democratic-All the way. I know it sounds cutting, But we’ve had enough of putting—Night and day . . .

Berle kidded Jack Kennedy’s youth (“He’s drinking Pablum on the rocks”), and the trade columnists ate it up.

By week’s end the ascendant Clan was understandably busting its Kennedy buttons with pride. Gag talk predicted that Jewish Convert Sammy Davis would be appointed Ambassador to Israel, Frankie to Italy, and Clotheshorse Pee-tah to the men’s-wear London Shop. Proposed key plank in The Clan’s platform: abolition of the duty on Dual-Ghias. And all the while, the defeated Stevenson wing in Hollywood pretended not to notice. Obviously, they were just jealous: none of their group had a prospective President for a brother-in-law. But that’s show biz.