Sunday, June 10, 2007
JBK videos on YouTube
Pete sent a link to the Kennedy tour videos on YouTube, so I added them to the appropriate pages on the first floor and second floor. The two videos start with the State Dining Room and the Lincoln Bedroom. If would be nice if the videos were pieced out to separate each room, but I've given the time code for the start where appropriate.
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Just got home from DC. Went to WH Garden Tour Sat. Got some great pics of gardens. Will send a few along and post on my web.
ReplyDeleteBeing old enough to remember the Kennedys and the 1960 election, it was really cool to see Jackie on TV. I think I kind of remember when that was on TV.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to note that the only room truly finished was the Red Room, although all the Dining Room needed was the mantle. I thought she certainly underdiscribed the Truman renovation mantle which was actually green marble.
Her comments about the Monroe pier table contradict what West says in the book about how it was discovered.
Did anyone notice the long mirrors in the Blue Room between the windows? One is visible in the 1960 Eisenhower State Dining Room Christmas family photo. I wonder where they came from and where they went.
Jackie's voice is also very interesting.
I think Derek Jensen does such a great job on his White House site.
ReplyDeleteGood idea providing the JBK YouTube videos.
As I remember, initially Mrs. Kennedy's idea about the restoration was met with quite a few raised eyebrows- as were the Kennedys for that matter. The televised tour was very much a PR tour de force for the White House and Mrs. Kennedy.
Critics at the time did indeed make fun of JBK's voice and manner. I have read that she agreed with some of the comments. She and the President did have a great sense of humor about themselves. A good example was the famous photo of JBK falling off her horse. Mrs. Kennedy was not pleased that the photo appeared- JFK replied that it was indeed news when the first lady falls on her ass.
In addition to the Kennedy program there was also the 1952 Truman tour of the renovated White House. And last but not least, Tricia Nixon's early 70's tour of the second floor. I wonder if those are available as well.
The 1962 Jackie White House tour is - as far as I know - still available on DVD from the John F. Kennedy Library website giftshop.
ReplyDeleteI got a VHS copy of it back in 1994 - right after Jackie died. It's called "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis remembered" (CBS/Fox). It's sometimes still available on Amazon. This VHS includes a commemorative bio of her that also included the entire W.H. Tour and a "Face to Face" interview of Jackie (also conducted by Charles Collingwood, who did the White House tour with Jackie) that was done in 1960, before the election. It had scenes of the inside of their Georgetown house.
I too am (just barely) old enough to remember seeing the Jackie tour when it was broadcast in 1962. I think I was 7 years old then. Even then, I already had a couple of White House books and had thumbed the fold-out cut-away of the house in the January 1961 National Geographic so much that it already had to be scotch taped back together...
Hopeless White House junkie...
Oh, I also really lucked out this weekend at a local consignment store -
ReplyDeleteThey had several of Castleton China's White House China reproduction plates and I wound up gettting the Monroe plate (the one with the burgandy border), the James Madison plate and the George Washington plate - the one with Martha Washington's initials in the middle and the chain of 15 (!) states, each one spelled out in a link in the chain. A piece from this set is shown in the original 1962 White House guidebook and I had ALWAYS wanted a reproduction of one of these plates. $20.00 per plate - such a deal! : )
You just never know what will be out there, so keep your eyes pealed!
I remember watching Jackie
ReplyDeleteand Charles Collingwood's tour
of the White House back in
the early 1960s when I
was a teenager..I was so excited!
Who knew that 41 years later
I would get to see the upstairs
of the White House in person thanks to
President Reagan and Nancy!!