White House Tour With Mrs Kennedy

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29749, 16 February 1962, Page 2

White House Tour With Mrs Kennedy

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, February 15. The President’s wife (Mrs John Kennedy) took a nation-wide television audience on tour of the White House last ni<rht, and told of her efforts to make the mansion more representative

of its history. President Kennedy said he felt his wife’s “great effort” in collecting historic antiques and paintings would help bring about more intimate contact “with all the men who lived here.” He said he was “glad Jackie is making the effort she’s making.” The President made a brief appearance at the end of the hour-long programme, which was recorded a few weeks ago.

Mrs Kennedy, wearing a plum-coloured wool dress, walked through the White House with Charles Collingwood. of the Columbia Broadcasting System. She said she was ait present in the process of refurbishing a second-floor room that once served as President Lincoln's office and was used later as a Cabinet room “I think this house will always grow and should,” she said “It just seemed to me such a rfiame. when we came here to .find hardly anything of the past in the house, hardly anything before 1902.” She said she had found a bust of Washington “in the men’s room downstairs," and was trying to find something that belonged to every President.

Speaking of her efforts to gather paintings for Jhe

White House walls, Mrs Kennedy’ said: “I feel so strongly that the White House should have as fine a collection of American paintings as possible. It’s so important the setting in which the Presidency is presented to the world, to foreign visitors.

“And American people should be proud of it. We had a great civilisation, yet so many foreigners don’t realise it . . . all the things we did so well, pictures, furniture—l think this house should be the place where you can see them the best.” The programme was broadcast simultaneoulsy by two of the national networks, the CBS. and the National Broadcasting Company, which shared the cost.

Mrs Kennedy’s charm and vi’-acity impressed the “New York Times” television critic Jack Gould. who described her as “a virtuoso among guides ” “Mrs Kennedy was a historian savouring the small facts and human story behind the evolution of White House decor. She was an art critic of subtlety and standard. She was an antiquarian relishing pursuit of the elusive treasure. She was a poised narrator,” he said in his review.