I discovered an interesting confluence of my interests in
the mail yesterday. I received the
latest catalog from the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, the Civil War-themed mecca in
Chicago. Occasionally there are items
offered which extend into the twentieth century, and that’s what caught my eye.
I found a John F. Kennedy autographed copy of the Broadway
Playbill for “The Best Man.” This play,
written by Gore Vidal, is one of my favorites:
I have seen the movie starring Henry Fonda many times and attended the
revival on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in 2012, with the stage and even the balcony decked out as a political convention.
The story is about an idealistic but flawed presidential
candidate doing battle with a charismatic, media-savvy but essentially unprincipled
rival for the presidential nomination. The former is an Adlai Stevenson-like
character and the latter is an amalgam of JFK, Nixon and even Joe
McCarthy.
The Playbill featured is for the original Broadway drama,
which was performed in 1960.
President-elect Kennedy attended a performance on December 6, one month
after the election. According to this
write-up, he sat with Vidal, a person he disliked. Surely Kennedy saw the unflattering parallel
to himself.
The price of the booklet, $3,850, is a bit high for me, but
I learned two things from the description. First, I pinpointed the date Kennedy saw the
play. And, second, it mentions
that he was originally scheduled to see “Camelot” that night. Of course, we all know the significance of
that play.
Coincidentally, the performance that night was three years
to the day that the issue of Life Magazine was published—shortly after the
president’s death—with a cover story equating Camelot with the Kennedy
years. It was the first public mention
and reflected an interview a week before between Jackie Kennedy and journalist
Teddy White, the author of the article.
The photograph here is of the Playbill for the 2012
performance. It starred James Earl
Jones, Angela Lansbury, John Larroquette, and Candice Bergen. Stage Door Johnnies swarmed Jones, who plays a dying president, after the show.
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