Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991 TAG: 9104130237
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Many book stores expect to sell out their supply of Kelley's "Nancy Reagan, The Unauthorized Biography." In 1927, there was a similar run on copies of "The President's Daughter" by Nan Britton, who claimed to have borne Warren Harding's illegitimate child. The 29th president had been dead four years, but within a month the book sold 100,000 copies.
President Truman revealed in his 1973 book, "Plain Speaking," that President Eisenhower wanted to divorce his wife, Mamie, at the end of World War II and marry his Jeep driver, Kay Summersby. But Ike's superior officer threatened to ruin him if he went through with it, and Eisenhower broke off with Summersby, Truman wrote.
In 1976, Summersby had her say in "Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower." She had been Ike's personal assistant during the war and they fell in love. Eisenhower died in 1969, before either book came out.
Judith Exner made waves in 1977 with "My Story," her description of her affair with President Kennedy. Exner also claimed that she carried letters between JFK and Sam Giancana, reputed head of organized crime in Chicago.
Marilyn Monroe's liaisons with JFK have been written about in a number of books, most recently in Michael John Sullivan's "Presidential Passions: The Love Affairs of America's Presidents - From Washington and Jefferson To Kennedy and Johnson." The book's chapters include "The Baby Bird That Wasn't Lady Bird's," about Madeleine Brown's claim that she bore LBJ's illegitimate son.
Robert Caro's tomes on Johnson describe his affair with Alice Glass and argue that LBJ won a U.S. Senate primary in Texas by stealing the election.
But unlike Kelley's revelations, most of these books were published long after the presidents' deaths.
"It becomes a part of history at that point," said Henry Graff, a Columbia University history professor who specializes in the presidency. "It's like discovering that Napoleon had hemorrhoids. So what?"
Graff said Kelley's book is also more newsworthy because it paints a picture that is very different from the Reagans' anti-drug, pro-family, morally conservative image. Kelley claims the couple once tried pot and had extramarital affairs, among other things.
"There's this disparity between the way the Reagans presented themselves and what is in this book," Graff said. "People knew Kennedy was a womanizer, so when it began to leak out in a variety of biographies, it wasn't a surprise. He hadn't been posing as something else."
Myra Gutin, a professor at Rider College in Lawrenceville, N.J., who specializes in presidential wives, says few books have created such a buzz about White House women. One that did, also by Kelley, is "Jackie Oh!" Another is Doris Faber's "Lorena Hickok." Faber suggests that Hickok - who lived in the FDR White House for four years - and Eleanor Roosevelt were lovers.
But Gutin says nothing beats the rumors about Florence Harding.
"There was a fair amount of scandalous information floating around about her," Gutin said. Mrs. Harding's servants whispered that she'd been seen talking to her husband's corpse as it lay in a coffin, Gutin said.
And though there was no gossipy best seller about it, "When her husband died, it was rumored she had murdered him because the Teapot Dome scandal was breaking," Gutin said.
The scandal concerned the interior secretary's secret leasing of oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyo., to a man who had given him an interest-free loan.
Harding died of a cerebral hemorrhage, but the murder rumor gained currency because Mrs. Harding refused to permit an autopsy, Gutin said.
by CNB