Unhousebroken

By the intricate rules of New Frontier social life, having dinner at the White House is only a step toward being really In; the next step up is to have dinner at the White House and not mention it to anybody.

In Washington, White House guests who maintain discreet silence afterward are dubbed "housebroken," and being housebroken rates way up on the list of virtues required of those who want a return invitation. Last week, however, a group of guests not only told, but told Richard Coe, drama critic on the Washington Post.

The night after the Democrats' $100-a-ticket wingding (TIME, Jan. 25), Coe walked into the hotel suite of Musical Comedienne Carol Channing and her husband, Producer Charles Lowe, expecting to have dinner with them. But Lowe was on the phone to the White House. The President's secretary was asking whether Charles and Carol and Comedian George Burns could drop by for dinner. George's suit needed pressing and Carol remembered that she was supposed to have dinner guests of her own--but everybody made it.

The entertainers ate in the upstairs dining room with Jack and Jackie Kennedy, Lee Radziwill, British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore and his wife. Then they were joined by a passel of Kennedy relatives and the Kirk Douglases. Cinemactor Douglas, like Carol and Burns, had entertained at the Democratic gala. Carol and George did a few comedy routines, Douglas presented a song that he sang when auditioning for a Broadway show 20 years ago (he failed to get the part), and most of the Irish present joined in for a chorus of The Wearing of the Green.

"That's what made it different," Carol told Coe later. "So often only the entertainers entertain and they feel apart, like freaks. Not with the Kennedys."

When the show business guests broke the don't-tell rule, some New Frontiersmen expected a tremor of presidential wrath. But no: a White House aide put out the word that "the President is not upset about the story." Like many ordinary citizens, John and Jackie Kennedy look at show business personalities through star-struck eyes, judge them by more lenient standards than those applied to lesser folk.

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