Laughing all the way

Barbara Howar was, in her words, “the touted fashion advisor to Lady Bird Johnson, the constant lady-in-waiting to [Johnson’s] daughters, dispenser of White House taste and decorum.” This book is sort of a juicy confessional of someone prone to witty egotism who occasionally took a fall from grace, with self-recriminations not far behind. She has no problem taking the blame for the catalyst for her divorce, an affair with a senator, and she pokes great fun at herself for feeling so important while campaigning for various Democrats.

At first, she comes off as someone I would get enchanted with at a cocktail party, someone whose hilarious tales eventually seem a bit practiced and too on-the-nose. But how could I not love her? Her confessions of self-absorbed behavior are actually boasts of her wit and recklessly high spirit! She’s an incorrigible name-dropper, which is fine with me because 1) she needs to sell this book to support herself, and explains that dilemma quite well, and 2) she drops names quite wittily, as in: “Republican seeress [psychic] Jeane Dixon gave me the once-over and predicted I would go on to better things.”

At the outset she professes a need to be interesting for her mother who had briefly been a rebellious youth but had settled into “the lethargic alcoholism peculiar to unfulfilled southern women with the time and money to indulge it: not wild and delirious drunkenness, just a day-to-day use of liquor to keep going until my sisters and I were interesting enough to share our lives with her.” She regales us with stories of being somewhat of a tomboy and troublemaker in her southern town, and also of being racially innocent. She writes of race relations as someone who is now enlightened, but who also cannot pass up a humorous story of her unenlightened youth, which can be sometimes uncomfortable. In this respect, I did not immediately trust her motives or perspective, but by the end she won me over.

Howar came onto the scene during the Kennedy administration, so even post-Camelot she continued to have contact with the Kennedys, especially the women (though there is a nice scene where she’s making eyes at Rudolf Nureyev who’s making eyes at RFK). Written in the early 70s, Howar says that she will leave Jackie to the gossip magazines. She writes very nicely about Ethel, stating that she felt Ethel’s marriage was the happiest and therefore most tragic. Ethel comes into Howar’s orbit at several crucial moments, always giving her a much-needed boost through her natural thoughtfulness. Howar states that she reserves the most compassion, however, for Ted’s wife Joan, who was often caught in the spotlight at terrible times due to Ted’s indiscretions, and whose fun sense of fashion was often derided behind her back. Joan’s insecurity and eagerness to please made her vulnerable, though also more approachable. Howar writes that ultimately, the Kennedy wives “became the perfect examples of the pitiable debris left in the wake of political ambition.” She goes on to discuss other politician’s wives Eleanor McGovern and Barbara Eagleton, who accepted “a fate they had no real hand in shaping.”

Throughout the book, she is quick to point out the limitations for women in Washington (and, by extension, most places in the U.S. in the 1960s). She writes that Washington “is not an easy town for women seeking employment other than typing or stripping.” At this time she also realizes that African American workers in the service industry tend to know everything that is actually going on behind closed doors, though she is not privy to their funds of knowledge. She also gains social access, through her marriage to a prominent Muslim, to visiting dignitaries such as “King Hussein, the Brothers Faisal, and the Saud of Saudi Arabia.”

Howar offers us an insider’s perspective on the social changes that occurred in the transition from the Kennedy to the Johnson administration; she describes paranoia from the Johnson camp that RFK would emerge to reclaim the throne, which caused LBJ’s people to put a great distance between the president’s family and known Kennedy loyalists, which caused a further decline in D.C. glamour, already blunted by the influx of Texans. She also states that LBJ cut himself off from anyone who might give him any criticism, even constructive, and thereby was his own worst enemy. (Howar is pretty nice about Lady Bird, and attributes later negativity to her assistants.) She also notes that the newly oil-rich Texans got cozy fairly quickly with the newly oil-rich Arabs. She reports that no expense would be spared when the king of Morocco came to Washington, and she conjectures that aid Morocco sought from the U.S. was likely spent in Washington, cultivating contacts. She expresses ambivalence toward Hubert Humphrey and his failed bid, saying, “Humphrey brought it all on himself […] He was a willing prisoner. This, of course, made him all the more unadmirable, which was perhaps what Johnson intended all along.”

Howar details the charitable soirees that the Kennedy administration had started; “cocktail philanthropy,” she calls it, where nothing is more valued than a chance to interact with an astronaut. Howar writes of the mind-numbing campaign trail, and stops trying to be polite to local Texans and starts inquiring if her hostess got a Tex-Mex recipe off the back of a Fritos bag. She credits a few brief meetings with Gloria Steinem and some actual palling around with Bobby Darin as the beginning of her social consciousness. Prior to leaving Washington, however, as a final act of spite, she racially integrated a prominent charity event; progress comes from all directions. She nevertheless pokes fun at herself, however, stating that as a local talkshow host, she quickly learned that the only thing more tiring than a holder of the status quo was “a recycled socialite with a newly aroused public conscience.” Still, she takes a few long paragraphs to decry the poverty and segregation in the city of Washington D.C., and explains how its special status undermines the practice of representation. She then goes on to admire, from afar, Katherine Graham and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, two women with very real and long-term influence in Washington.

There is quite a bit of writing on her dating Henry Kissinger, which occurred in less than four years prior to the book’s publication, and which surely she was contractually obligated to discuss. She states in this memoir, and in the 2002 documentary “The Trials of Henry Kissinger”, that he was more into cultivating a dashing image than actually getting down to the nitty gritty (my words, not hers).

Throughout the book, Howar strikes an uncomfortable balance between railing against the limited roles for women (“Widows […] are accorded a respect seldom found in a sexist town. […] Their independence cannot be helped and is therefore excusable.”), and self-loathing for how she ruined her marriage or played too socially messy for a woman. She loves to tell us witty things she said, but just as often expresses chagrin at being so prideful. I think this may be what Nora Ephron took umbrage with when she reviewed the book upon its release. That review, collected in Ephron’s “Crazy Salad: Some Writings About Women”, was what prompted me to seek out this book.

That no one else has written a review on Goodreads has prompted me to make copious highlights in the old paperback and reflect it all back for those who may have a passing interest but not enough to actually buy and read the book. Because of the humor and occasional introspection, I felt like Barbara Howar had become a friend. I’ve looked for clips of her talkshow (co-hosted by Maury Povich) on YouTube but found nothing. I did find an interesting multi-part clip of her appearance on “The Dick Cavett Show” and other clips of her interviewing Elton John and confronting Anita Bryant. And yet there is no Wikipedia page for her! I want to know more about what happened to her since the Seventies, other than a gig with Entertainment Tonight. So Barbara, if you’re out there, write to me. I live in Los Angeles and have a well-stocked bar and mix fantastic cocktails.