------------------ [excerpt from Camera Girl] -------------- Eighteen years her senior, John B. White had an armful of tattoos and a passion for history, reading, politics, and journalism. He dubbed himself a "frivolous scholar."
A wartime combat correspondent, he'd written for the Boston Herald Traveler as well as the Times-Herald.
He had recently gone to work at the State Department but remained close to his former Times-Herald colleagues; he first met Jackie when he dropped by to see them.
White and Jackie immediately bonded over their range of interests, and in the winter and spring of 1952, his basement apartment, with walls of books, became her haven.
"I had the distinct impression she felt weary shuttling back and forth to New York," White recalled, noting that she never mentioned Husted [her fiancé]. "After a while she started spending her weekends around Washington, and she and I went out occasionally."
Jackie was ecstatic to learn White was a mythology expert. When he took her with him to the city's mental institution, St. Elizabeth's, to interview its director, the trio engaged in a dialogue dissecting the psychology of Hercules.
White was attracted to her, but found that an "undigested, renegade toughness lay at the very core of Jackie's personality . . . [she] intimidated lots of people." He "certainly never tried anything" with her except to once "hold her hand." ...They talked ideas and work.
"We discussed her Inquiring Photographer column," he recalled. "She was good at dredging up questions. She was curious-minded and gifted at gaining people's confidence--she elicited frank answers from her interview subjects. And she loved to talk with her high-class friends about questions to put to people in her column."
In order to turn out a column that was provocative enough to satisfy a diverse readership, she drew her inspiration from a variety of sources, pulling from her personal interests or breaking wire-service news. She'd take an argument debated in the office and see if it would similarly incite pedestrians....
In one column about southern charm, she interviewed Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Governor John Battle of Virginia, and actress Tallulah Bankhead, whom she met at the home of Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
Daughter of a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, the actress did not disappoint:
"My magnolia-scented southern charm has served me well, both professionally and privately. It has melted many a manager, chilled many a carpetbagger and confused many a swain.
Exercise of it in lavish doses has brought me from Huntsville, Alabama, dash--that's [Senator] Sparkman's hometown--dash, you heard me--dash--to New York, London, Hollywood and other spots it would be indiscreet to mention."
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