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NANCY REAGAN

DISAPPOINTS

ANDY WARHOL

The White House, Washington DC

October 15th 1981

‘The funny thing about movie people,’ says Andy Warhol to the First Lady over tea in the White House, ‘is that they talk behind your back before you even leave the room.’

Nancy Reagan’s eyes, already preternaturally wide, grow still wider. She looks at Warhol as though he were unbalanced.

‘I am a movie person, Andy,’ she replies.

The interview has been stiff throughout. Mrs Reagan never reacts well to criticism, and can spot it from a great distance. It is written in her stars. ‘Cancers tend to be intuitive, vulnerable, sensitive and fearful of ridicule – all of which, like it or not, I am,’ she explains in her autobiography. ‘The Cancer symbol is the crab shell: Cancers often present a hard exterior to the world, which hides their vulnerability. When they’re hurt, Cancers respond by withdrawing into themselves. That’s me all right.’

Warhol himself has been notably crab-like in his advance on the Reagans. Two months before the 1981 presidential election, he befriended the Reagans’ son Ronald Junior, then their daughter Patti. Both sides are happy: the younger Reagans mix with the most famous artist in America, and in turn Warhol mixes with America’s imminent first family. Warhol likes Ronald Junior. ‘He turned out to be a really nice kid. God, he was so sweet … and he’s very smart. Lispy and cute.’ At their first lunch together, Warhol is tongue-tied. ‘I didn’t know what to talk to him about. I was too shy and he was too shy.’ Warhol finds himself asking an awkward question about whether or not his father dyes his hair. Ronald Junior tries to change the subject. His mother, Nancy, is, he tells Warhol, ‘very sweet and very adorable’.

Warhol seizes the moment. ‘So then I got sneaky and brought Ordinary People up, and I told him how much I hated Mary Tyler Moore, that after I saw the movie if I saw her on the street I’d just kick her. And at that point he was almost going to say something about Nancy, but then somehow he got the drift of it and changed the subject. Because I think the mother in Ordinary People is just like Mrs Reagan. Really cold and shrewd.’

They discuss what to order. Warhol tells Ronald Junior that he has never eaten frogs’ legs, ‘and he was so sweet he ordered them just so I could try it. He’s really sweet, a beautiful body and beautiful eyes. But he just doesn’t have a pretty nose. It’s too long.’

Two weeks later, Patti Davis, Ronald Junior’s older sister, drops by the Interview office. ‘She looked sort of pretty to me, but then looking at her later on the video, how could these kids have missed their parents’ good looks? I mean, Dad was so gorgeous.’

Between Ronald Reagan’s election and his inauguration, Andy Warhol goes out with Ronald Reagan Junior and his wife Doria to see the movie Flash Gordon. By the end of the evening, he has given Doria a job on Interview magazine.

Warhol doesn’t encounter Nancy Reagan until March 1981, when, by chance, he spots her eating in the same restaurant. ‘We were leaving and didn’t want to go by the President’s table because it was too groupie-ish – everybody else was stopping at the table – so we went the other way, but then they called us over. Jerry Zipkin was yelling, and I met Mrs Reagan, and she said, “Oh you’re so good to my kids.”’

The possibility of an interview with Nancy Reagan is mooted in September 1981. By now Nancy has taken to ringing Warhol’s sidekick Bob Colacello at the office, fussing about Ron and Doria, ‘causing no end of envy to Andy’. Colacello negotiates with the White House for an interview with Mrs Reagan: they give their approval, thinking it might lighten her imperious image. But, perhaps sensing Colacello has overtaken him on this particular social ladder, Warhol affects to pooh-pooh the idea. ‘I think she is too old and it’s old-fashioned. We should have younger people. What is there to ask her? About her movie career? Oh, it’ll never happen anyway.’

But it does. A month later, Warhol and Colacello leave for Washington. Colacello warns Warhol not to ask her any ‘sex questions’. This upsets Warhol. ‘I just couldn’t believe him. I mean, I just couldn’t believe him. Did he think I was going to sit there and ask her how often do they do it?’

The two of them, plus Doria, arrive early at the White House and are placed in a reception room. There they remain: when the First Lady arrives, she fails to lead them to somewhere more grand or more intimate. Warhol, ever-alert to matters of status, is affronted; a waiter brings them each a glass of water, and Warhol is further affronted.

The interview never really gets going. ‘We talked about drug rehabilitation, and it was boring. I made a couple of mistakes but I didn’t care because I was still so mad at being told by Bob not to ask sex questions.’

Soon, it is all over. Before ushering them out, Nancy Reagan gives Doria a piece of Tupperware (‘not wrapped up or anything’) and socks for Ron Junior. Colacello tells Nancy what a good mother she is, and asks what they are doing for Christmas. Nancy says they will stay at the White House, ‘because nobody ever stays at the White House’.

Warhol leaves feeling he has been snubbed. A glass of water! When he gets home, his phone is ringing. ‘It was Brigid asking me what kind of tea Mrs Reagan served us, and then I started thinking and I got madder. I mean, she could have put on the dog – she could have done it in a good room, she could have used the good china! I mean, this was for her daughter-in-law, she could have done something really great for this interview but she didn’t. I got madder and madder thinking about it.’