Into the Big Time

To the seven U.S. Senators' wives who while away the long hours between capital bashes by composing columns for the papers back home, no prospect seems quite so glorious as making the big time --actually getting paid for their stuff.

Last week this alluring dream came true for one of them: pert, dark-haired Marion Javits,* 37. wife of the Republican Senator from New York, Jacob Javits, 57. Mrs. Javits signed on for a twice-a-week stint with the New York Post (circ. 313,349), a paper whose liberalism exceeds even that of Marion Javits' spouse.

Jack Javits' wife has long sought a suitable form of self-expression. She tried painting, ballet dancing, flying, acting (she had a bit part in a 1960 movie, Who Was That Lady?}, before turning to journalism. Last summer she began writing a column for Manhattan East, an uptown uppercrust weekly.

In her Post debut, Mrs. Javits exhibited an interest in gastronomy and fashion that the paper's readers, more accustomed to the naked dialectics of such columnists as Murray Kempton, James Wechsler and Max Lerner. may take some time getting used to. "For hors d'oeuvres," wrote Mrs. Javits, describing the table she laid for some visitors, "I served eggplant caviar on tiny rounds of toasted bread. Lunch began with quiche Lorraine, with special homemade puff-dough cheese sticks, followed by a main course of cold jellied boeuf . . . You can understand why neither the Senator nor I could eat dinner that night."

Mrs. Javits' venture into Manhattan journalism has encouraged both her humility and her boldness. "While I don't have the thing Scotty Reston has," said she, "I've always been interested in newspapering. I suppose I really keep searching for something that will give me complete satisfaction."

*The others: Mrs. John Sherman Cooper (Ky.); Mrs. William Proxmire (Wis.); Mrs. Gale McGee (Wyo.); Mrs. Wallace F. Bennett (Utah); Mrs. Prescott Bush (Conn.): Mrs. John Williams (Del.).

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