As the Vietnam War ground on, the festivities continued at the White House, although Abell took care not to invite outspoken critics of the administration. A bigger problem, she says, was “the cast of thousands you would hear from who thought they should be invited.” When I ask her if people tried to crash, she replies, “The regular crasher we had—Senator Strom Thurmond—wasn’t really a crasher. He just always brought somebody with him who wasn’t invited. But when he would show up with Miss Pecan Princess or the Queen of the Watermelon Festival, I’d always find a seat for her. I’d roll over and play dead for Strom Thurmond. He could cause the president a lot of problems, so I didn’t want to make him mad.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Richard and Pat Nixon gave more state dinners than any other First Couple. “I believe I produced 76,” says their social secretary, Lucy Winchester Breathitt, who served during all five and a half years of the administration. “I think it’s in The Guinness Book of World Records.” That includes, she adds, “one the week before and one the week after Tricia Nixon’s wedding,” to Edward Cox, in the Rose Garden. The Nixons put the white-tie back in the state dinner but removed the dancing. They also had numerous official dinners, which were as formal as their state dinners, for everyone from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Duke Ellington. “They did white-tie dinners because foreign leaders loved to wear their medals and diplomatic honors across their tummies. And you can’t do that except wearing white-tie,” Breathitt continues. “The president liked German white wine, so we often served a German white wine and an American red wine. The dining room, the way the Nixons liked to have it seated, could seat 130 if you used round tables. If you used the E-shaped table, that was maybe 100. It was always a useful shape, because if there was someone the president didn’t particularly want to see, but who was high-ranking, he could be seated on the inside of one of the long arms of the E, with his back to the president, and the president wouldn’t have to see him.”

At the Duke Ellington dinner, the entertainment included such jazz greats as Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Earl Hines, and turned into a jam session that went on until two a.m. “At one point I heard somebody on the piano in the Grand Hall, playing ‘Satin Doll,’” Breathitt remembers. “It was Vice President Agnew. Nixon played ‘Happy Birthday’ to Duke Ellington on the piano and everybody sang.”

Like most presidential couples, both Nixons reviewed the seating plan for state dinners once the social secretary had made up a preliminary chart. According to Breathitt, “Henry Kissinger was in on the seating, too.” The national-security adviser, who was then a bachelor, was clear about his preferences. “One day I walked upstairs to the second floor of the East Wing,” says Breathitt, “and coming out of the men’s room there was Henry Kissinger with Anatoly Dobrynin, the Russian ambassador during the pits of the Cold War. Henry grabbed me and said, ‘Anatoly, this woman will be the death of me. She seated me next to a 98-year-old crone last night who had no teeth.’ So I said, ‘Phoo on you. That was the foreign minister’s wife, and you need to sit next to someone with dignity and rank.’ He said, ‘I know everything! Bring out the beautiful spies who will torture all these things out of me!’ Dobrynin said, ‘Never seat him next to beautiful women. I cannot do a thing with him the next day when you’ve seated him next to a beautiful woman.’ So that became the challenge: Henry was always seated next to whoever was the prettiest on the guest list. If we didn’t know who was the prettiest or see any likely candidate, the military social aides were told at their briefings that they were to report back on the cleavage factor, and we would then have a massive reshuffling of place cards. It finally came to the point where [White House chief of staff] Bob Haldeman told me that if I ever seated Henry next to a beautiful woman again I’d be fired.”

Ford and Carter

As the shadow of Watergate grew longer, the Nixons gave their last state dinner, for Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, in December 1973. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, and one week later Gerald and Betty Ford not only hosted their first state dinner, for King Hussein, of Jordan, but also reinstated dancing, which was always led off by the president and First Lady and often went on way past midnight. “From the beginning, Jerry and I tried to make the White House a place where people could have fun and enjoy themselves,” says Betty Ford. “Most of all we wanted the state dinners to express the very best about America, particularly during the bicentennial year.”