Women: Something Blue

Some curbstone quipster uttered the inevitable gag: “It must have been a Republican who complained.” Still, it was awfully apt, as two blue-uniformed New York policemen piled out of a prowl car in front of Philanthropist Mary Lasker’s Beekman Place town house at 1:05 in the morning. The complainant was an unidentified neighbor lady, whatever her politics, and she was finding it kind of hard to sleep, what with Dutch Adler’s rhythms blaring from the open windows and most of the 110 partygoers thunderously doing all those modern dances. “Would you close a couple of those second-floor windows to keep the noise in?” asked one of the cops. “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Lasker. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it earlier, but it was getting terribly hot in there, you know, officer, with everyone frugging and everything.”

The officers left. Lady Bird Johnson decided to call it a night about the same time. But the party swung for another hour or so behind closed windows, and the other honored guest, Lynda Bird Johnson, stayed until it broke up. So did many of the other guests, who included Heart Surgeon Michael De-Bakey, Producer Josh Logan, Financier Laurance Rockefeller, and Ambassador and Mrs. Angier Biddle Duke, who will play host to Lynda when she visits Spain this summer. A Certain Kind. As it happened, that was Lynda Bird’s second brush with the law during a three-day trip to New York with her mother to see some plays, do some shopping (at Peck & Peck, she proved that there’s a certain kind of woman who can look at clothes without buying any) and, most important, help Sister Luci Baines pick out a trousseau for her Aug. 6 wedding. The afternoon before the Lasker bash, Lynda graced a table at Manhattan’s scintillating La Caravelle restaurant, while her Secret Service escort went around the corner for a less Lucullan lunch. Their rented Mercury stayed put in a “no parking-tow away” zone. Along came Patrolman Joseph Polly, and by the time Lynda had finished her meal the windshield wiper wore a green $15 parking ticket.

If the Johnson women had no trouble finding something blue in New York —namely, cops—their efforts at selecting something new for Luci’s trousseau proved more trying. With about as much secrecy as surrounds a National Security Council meeting, the ladies held court in the 34th floor Presidential Suite of the Carlyle Hotel, while dress designers laden with garment bags swished in past lines of cold-eyed Secret Service men. No word of what Luci chose in the way of a gown was permitted to leak out to the expectant reporters in the lobby, and Lady Bird was triumphant at having kept them in the dark. “We did it,” she exulted when it was all over. “Imagine, three days in New York and nobody knows our secrets.”

Red, Again? Luci hurried back to Washington right after the well-guarded gown viewing. Following her back the next day, Lynda and Lady Bird had barely enough time to pick up Lyndon and whisk off to the University of Texas, where Lynda received her bachelor’s degree (cum laude) in history—just 33 years after her mother got hers.

The Johnsons’ departure and the consequent decampment of newsmen from the Carlyle’s lobby made things a lot easier for one particular young man. Before the Johnson women departed, he had sauntered into the hotel barber shop, but he and his nanny had to beat a quick retreat when newsmen recognized him. They went to a shoe store instead. (Couldn’t he please have tan sandals this time? No, dear, they’ve got to be red.) Now, with the crowds gone, John F. Kennedy Jr. sat absorbed in a Donald Duck comic book, all but unnoticed as he waited his turn for a trim.