Great Day

The "simple and dignified" inaugural which Dwight Eisenhower had requested turned out, inevitably, to be the biggest, costliest, longest extravaganza in recent Washington history. Jampacked along the curbs of Pennsylvania Avenue, perched in trees or peering through cardboard periscopes, a multitude of 750,000 watched and played their parts in it, while half the population of the U.S. saw it all on television.

By Hollywood standards it was a minor production (the Inaugural Committee reckoned the cost at just under $1,000,000), but it had drama, comedy and pageantry that Hollywood could not touch. Critics might find faults in it--the parade was miles too long, the balls were a crashing bore, and there were a few embarrassing performers--but the faults only underlined the fact that this was a great and wonderful rite.

Grave & Gay. Nature was kind and the day bloomed sunny and unseasonably balmy. The ceremony itself was brief and moving. There were some memorable sights on the neoclassic stand in front of the Capitol: Eisenhower's solemn demeanor as he repeated the 41 words which elevated him to the highest office in the world; Mamie's proud tears as she watched him take the oath; Bob Taft's stony expression as he watched another man assume the job he had sought so long; Harry Truman staring at the floor of the platform and whispering to Mamie; Bess Truman biting her lip.

After a hurried lunch in the Capitol, Ike and Mamie got into a cream-colored Cadillac and drove off at 4 m.p.h. down the avenue. As soon as the President and his lady were settled in the reviewing stand, the parade began. In the ten-mile-long procession, there was something for everyone: cowboys & Indians, barelegged Texas beauties (six landed in the hospital with colds), rank upon fast-stepping rank of soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, WACs, cadets, midshipmen, veterans.

There were thrilling sights: the grey files of West Point cadets and the brave flutter of massed colors. There were grim moments too. When a regiment of marines, dressed in combat fatigues, passed in review, the crowds cheered, and when that ominous-looking colossus, the atomic cannon, rolled past, all voices were hushed. And there were old inaugural standbys: the brother rats from V.M.I., the plumed Richmond Blues, the paunchy Governor's Foot Guards of Connecticut in scarlet coats and shakos.

Ike and Mamie provided a show within a show. Mamie, sharing a lap robe with Herbert Hoover, smiled and applauded the corniest floats, and when the Purdue University Glee Club serenaded her with the love song of the Chicago sound wagons, Mamie, What a Wonderful Name for the First Lady of the Land, she jumped up and blew kisses. The President stood soldierlike through it all (he spurned the easy way, a concealed stool used by Harry Truman four years ago). He stood at solemn attention for every passing flag, and whenever a contingent of marching women came by, he gallantly doffed his celebrated Homburg.

Penguins on an Iceberg. The parade was by no means the end of the ordeal. Later in the evening, Ike and Mamie dutifully made the rounds of the two inaugural balls. Around them swarmed thousands of celebrities high and citizens humble, in their gladdest rags and stiffest shirt fronts, packed like penguins on an iceberg. The ballgoers consumed 8,000 gallons of unspiked punch, 45,000 fingerling sandwiches, put on a mob scene that would have staggered De Mille. Early Wednesday morning, when Ike got back to the White House at last, he turned to his press chief, Jim Hagerty, and observed: "It was a long but very wonderful day."

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