People: Dec. 7, 1981

In the latest episode of what might be called Barbara Walters Talks with a Celebrity and Actually Dresses Just Like the Interviewee specials, Walters headed west to Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s 688-acre ranch high in the chaparral country of California’s Santa Ynez mountains. Walters decked herself out in a western-style suede outfit to match Reagan’s outdoorsy duds. In the one-hour ABC special, Reagan allowed that he never got more than a C grade in high school or college and that when he was Governor of California, he would leave the office at 5 p.m., but with a briefcase full of work. Reagan took Barbara and his dogs Victory and Millie out for a spin in his battered 1963 Jeep. Inadvertently, he hauled up close to the edge of roadside embankment. Said Walters off camera: “You know, if we roll down one more inch, we’ll be off this precipice.” Replied Reagan cheerfully: “I’ll just have to remember reverse from forward.”

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Seven years after he resigned as President, Richard M. Nixon’s official portrait has finally joined the White House presidential gallery. A flattering likeness, it was painted by Dallas Artist Alexander Clayton. The unveiling was done with a minimum of fanfare, and although an announcement was made, it was released well after the deadlines for evening news broadcasts and most morning dailies. Workmen also put up an oil of former First Lady Patricia Nixon painted by Henriette Wyeth Hurd, wife of Artist Peter Hurd. Mrs. Nixon’s portrait had been in storage since it was finished in 1978 because, said a curator, “she requested that it not be hung until her husband’s was.”

Though his journey took him a mere 75 miles north of the Vatican, Pope John Paul II, 61, was delighted to be back doing what he does best. The Pontiffs trip to the Italian village of Todi was his first visit outside Rome since he was felled by a would-be assassin’s bullet in St. Peter’s Square. Security forces, the largest ever in Italy for a papal visit, tried to keep a distance between the Pontiff and a crowd of 10,000, but John Paul would have none of it. Disregarding his ring of security guards, the Pope suddenly slipped through to touch the hands of those who had come to see him. His bodyguards, walking off without him, had to do a quick about face, regroup, then surround him again.

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Queen Elizabeth II, a veteran of inspection tours, reviewed troupe from the cancan line of Paris’ Moulin Rouge backstage after the annual Royal Variety Performance at London’s Theater Royal, Drury Lane. One of the sketches must have sounded like dinner-table talk to Her Majesty. The skit featured Actor Mike Yarwood and Actress Suzanne Danielle as Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, fretting over the arrival of their future heir. While Danielle knitted, Yarwood brooded over a list of possible princely names, then said wistfully: “I want my children to have the little things that I never had—like India.”

—By E. Graydon Carter

On the Record

David Stockman, White House Budget Director, in the wake of his candid comments to The Atlantic Monthly, as he opened a meeting: “Is this on the record or off the record?”

Terry Bradshaw, 6-ft. 3-in., 215-Ib. Steelers quarterback, on why he runs so little: “Basically, I’m a cross between a fullback and a sissy.”

Louis Malle, French director, on the difference between U.S. and European film making: “If anything, the American industry is more honest. They make it clear right away that it’s all about money. In Europe, they pretend it’s about art.”