1.21.10: Fame and the Famous as Well

Fame and the Famous as Well

Looking west across the Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir. 2:15 PM. Photo: JH.

January 21, 2010. Yesterday was a very mild in New York with temperatures rising enough that some people went without overcoats.

Fame and the Famous as Well. Tuesday night, I went down to the Bowery Hotel, as reported here yesterday. I’d been told beforehand that Lynda Johnson Robb would be there, and I was curious just to “see” her since she is someone who never shows up on my radar these days.

It wasn’t until the end of the evening when we were waiting in line at the coat-check that someone said something to “Linda,” a woman with glasses being given her coat, that I realized that it was she.


	Lynda Johnson Robb, Tuesday night at the Bowery Hotel.

Not unlike a fan following the celebrity/star, (or a reporter following his story), I turned and followed after her as she passed by me. I apologized for the intrusion while asking if I could take her picture. She was very polite in a ladylike way, stopping by the bar. She matter-of-factly turned and put her coat down on the counter (instead of putting it on), removed her glasses, and was ready for me to take her picture.

I got the feeling, and it was just intuition, that the process was tiresome for her, maybe even a little annoying, but she remained pleasantly quiet and cooperative. Afterwards I asked her where she was living these days (Virginia), and where her sister Luci was (Texas). I told her that I had great admiration for her mother (true). She thanked me, and we both went on our way.

Afterwards I mentioned to one of the young women on the Vital Voices committee that I had just taken a picture of Lynda Johnson Robb. I could tell she had no idea whom I was talking about. So I explained.

When John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, Lyndon Johnson, his Vice President, was sworn in on the Presidential 707, and moved into the White House a day or two later with his wife Lady Bird and his two daughters, Lynda Bird, who was 19, and Luci Baines, who was 16.

The nation was in a state of shock, and the arrival of the “new” First Family only added to it. Jack and Jackie Kennedy, the first movie star-like couple to ever occupy the White House. Their charisma had captivated the nation with their two small beautiful children, their good looks, their glamour and their well publicized intellectual and artistic associates. Mrs. Kennedy’s fashion presence had revolutionized the garment industry in the short span of less than three years.

Jack and Jackie Kennedy with baby Caroline on the beach in Hyannisport.

The Johnson family, in notable contrast, were plain folk to the American eye, as American as apple pie but with none of the star quality of Jack and Jackie.

Until the death of the President, at that moment the country’s collective unconscious had, in retrospect, surprisingly little sense of the turbulence and upheaval that lay ahead for the rest of the decade. Lyndon Johnson was a solid successor. He had been on Capitol Hill since 1937 – first as a Congressman, then as a Senator from Texas. It was well publicized, whether it was true or false, that Jack Kennedy had chosen him as a running mate in 1960 only because he could deliver his home state of Texas in the election and was a major power in Congress. Otherwise the two men had little, if anything in common. If nothing else, it was a matter of differences in style. Those differences were surface and obvious to the public’s assessment.

Clockwise from top left: Lynda Bird with her father at a Bill signing; the teenage Lynda Bird presenting a bouquet to a contest winner; Luci Baines and Lynda Bird in the White House.

However, Lyndon Johnson, we soon learned (for those of us who didn’t know), was a brilliant politician and far more experienced and shrewder than his martyred predecessor. If the Kennedys were a hard act to follow, LBJ, as he was soon known far and wide, was not one to follow any act but his own. Soon the man dominated the political scene of the world, and the Johnson women who also made no effort to compete with the Kennedy glamour image, gained favor with their down-home respectability supporting that image.

Then in 1966, almost three years into LBJ’s Presidency (having won election on his own in 1964), Lynda Bird, as she was known then, suddenly started dating the suave and debonair movie star George Hamilton. It was Hamilton who was credited (along with designer Luis Estevez) for glamorizing the President’s 22-year-old daughter, with the fashion press playing up the transformation of the country girl having met her (movie) prince. Soon the President’s 707 was delivering the young lady to New York, and Los Angeles and Acapulco (then the go-to sunny spot for the international jet-set).

Clockwise from above: George Hamilton with Lynda Bird and Lady Bird and the President, 1966; Hamilton and Lynda Bird in Los Angeles; and at the Oscars.

Hamilton and Lynda Bird in Acapulco with Merle Oberon and her husband Bruno Paglai.

The Hamilton-Johnson “romance” made the movie magazines (predecessors of People, US and the supermarket tabs). George Hamilton was quoted as saying that even if she weren’t the President’s daughter he could love her. However, in little more than a year’s time, the now “worldly and sophisticated” Lynda Bird had broken up with her movie star and was dating a US Marine Corps Captain assigned to the White House as a Social Aide, Charles (Chuck) Robb.

On December 9th, the couple were married in the White House with the eyes of the world upon them. The following year, their first of their three daughters, Lucinda Desha Robb was born in time to celebrate Christmas with the First Family in the White House – one of only two Christmases that President Johnson did not spend at the family ranch in Texas.

The official wedding pictures of the newlyweds in the White House, December 9, 1967.

Lyndon Johnson, caught in the maelstrom of the Vietnam War, which was by then his war and tearing apart the nation politically and deeply affecting it economically, announced that he would not seek a second term for the Presidency.

After the White House years, the young couple settled in Chuck Robb’s home state of Virginia. In 1978, Lynda Johnson Robb (the Bird had disappeared from her name) became the Second First Lady of the State of Virginia when her husband was elected Lieutenant Governor. Four years later he was elected Governor, and after that U.S. Senator.

Lynda Bird Johnson Robb (as she was known then) with her first child, Lucinda, by the White House Christmas tree.

The President’s eldest daughter, despite her Texas “background” had basically lived in Washington and Virginia her entire life, serving all her life in various public capacities in the corridors of power for her father and then her husband, in the footsteps of her much admired mother.

I was thinking this past Tuesday night, after our brief conversation, that it is no small irony that in our celebrity and fame conscious society, that this woman, who had tasted all of that, and in a big way, probably could have cared less that she was practically anonymous in this group of young people. She was dutiful in acquiescing to this reporter’s photo quest, but in fact, she was probably relieved to be far outside the spotlight.

The President and the First Lady with the new couple.

Thompson LES, the hip hotel named for its location on 190 Allen Street (on the Lower East Side), hosted a benefit for Haiti last night, with proceeds supporting the American Red Cross relief efforts on the beleaguered island.

As DJ Mark Ronson provided musical entertainment, a fashionable crowd sipped cocktails and socialized. The party hit its peak around midnight, and most of the action was on the boutique hotel's second floor, although Above Allen, the small seventh floor lounge with panoramic views of the city, was also open.

Among the crowd: Derek Blasberg, Whitney Port, Topper Mortimer, and Russell Simmons. The fundraiser was hosted by Ari Ackerman, Jason Beckman, Stacey Bendet, Fabiola Beracasa, Derek Blasberg, Valerie Boster, Peter Davis, Eric Eisner, Steve Garbarino, Lauren Goodman, Soshanna Gruss, Zani Gugelmann, Sabine Heller, Rachelle Hruska, Susan Joy, Maggie Katz, Jared Kushner, Cobi Levy, Lyle Maltz, Bonnie Morrison, Carlos Mota, Chrissie Miller, Serene Nikkhah, Daphne Oz, Annelise Peterson, Jason Pomeranc, Whitney Port, Charlotte Ronson, Maddy Simpson, Antonia Thompson, Poppy de Villeneuve, Ali Wise, and Arden Wohl. -- SD for NYSD