These Few Precious Days (43 page)

(15) “With the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” At the famous White House dinner for Nobel laureates in April 1962, JFK chatted with novelist Pearl Buck while Jackie got an earful from poet Robert Frost.

(16) At a later dinner for French culture minister André Malraux, the hosts conferred in the hallway while an orchestra played on.

(17) After her breathless rendition of “Happy Birthday, Mr. Pres-i-dent” at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe met up with JFK and RFK at a private party. Jackie, who made sure she was in Virginia at the time, later confessed she was deeply hurt by JFK’s relationship with Monroe.

(18) On JFK’s actual forty-fifth birthday ten days later, he tore into gifts at a surprise party thrown by White House staffers. That night, another party—this one while cruising aboard the
Sequoia
(next).

(19)

(20) At the 1962 America’s Cup banquet in Newport, Rhode Island, the first lady entertains her husband with the latest gossip from New York.

(21)

(22)

(23) Jackie sat at her husband’s feet aboard the destroyer
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
as they watched the America’s Cup races in Narragansett Bay.

(24) Irving Berlin’s Kennedy-inspired musical
Mr. President
turned out to be a dud when it previewed at Washington’s National Theatre on September 25, 1962. But the crowds waiting outside for a glimpse of the president and his glamorous wife as they exited the theater didn’t care. The opening night party for six hundred at the British Embassy turned out to be one of the year’s social highlights.

(25) “Buttons! John!
John!
” The Kennedy children came running to the Oval Office as soon as they heard Daddy clap his hands. With publicity-wary Jackie riding horses in Virginia, JFK felt free to invite photographers in to snap away.

(26) Along with the Radziwills and their growing menagerie, the president’s family celebrates Christmas 1962 in Palm Beach, Florida.

(27) Four days later, JFK proudly looks on as his wife speaks Spanish to some of the forty thousand Cuban exiles gathered at Miami’s Orange Bowl to welcome returning Bay of Pigs prisoners.