Bradlee: Prince of Camelot was social royalty in D.C.
The setting was Rose Park in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, where a clutch of little kids were playing. Watching them from a sunny park bench was Ben Bradlee, looking wan and frail, his male nurse/attendant nearby.
Once he was the newsman prince of Camelot, close friend of one president, the man who brought down another president, a newsroom star played by a Hollywood star in the movie, and the social lion of Washington society as it once existed. Accompanied, of course, by his lioness, the socially savvy Sally Quinn, whom he married after a scandalous office romance.
Now he was in his 90s, declining from Alzheimer's, no longer able to shout orders, crack profane jokes or roar with laughter. He'd often be seen lunching at a venerable pub in Georgetown, sometimes wearing the Presidential Medal of Freedom that President Obama had bestowed at a White House ceremony in 2013. He smiled but didn't say much anymore.
Bradlee, former editor of The Washington Post, died Tuesday after weeks in hospice care and years after dementia had dimmed his vigorous spirit.
It really is the end of an era. If Bradlee was no longer recognizable, neither are the newspaper, city and society he dominated for so long.
"He was a legendary editor at a time when newspapers mattered and as the executive editor of the paper read by presidents, he was at the top of the food chain of Washington society," says best-selling biographer and Georgetown resident Kitty Kelley, who once worked as an assistant for Bradlee.
Once upon a time, people in Washington — politicians, presidents, government bureaucrats, journalists, lobbyists, military officers, congressional staffers — actually got together regularly to socialize; it was harder in those days to address a political opponent with a four-letter word on the Senate floor if you had spent the evening before in convivial conversation across a Georgetown dinner table.
"The '70s the '80s, even the '90s, when Republicans and Democrats were not at each other's throats, you could differ politically during the day but at night you could sit around the table, break bread, have a few drinks and there was a camaraderie — and a lot of that happened at Ben and Sally's table," says Harry Jaffe, senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
Nowadays people across the political spectrum who hate Washington sneer at "Georgetown dinner party" as something to be avoided, like a bordello or a meeting of socialists. It was never this way when Bradlee was a Washington social monument.
Born to a Boston-Brahmin family familiar with the precincts of the Social Register, Bradlee took to Washington's milieu — lubricated by quantities of gossip and liquor— like a natural.
Who was in, who was out? Which politicos were up, which were down? Who got the invitations to the best parties, who heard the best gossip, who sat the closest to power at the banquets?
Bradlee made those calls, starting even before the administration of Jack Kennedy, to whom he was friend, chronicler and confidant, and continuing for five decades, first with second wife, Antoinette Pinchot, and later with the capable help of Quinn.
"He not only carried the right Ivy League credentials but he was blessedly connected to JFK as a Georgetown neighbor and friend, and he wore that connection proudly," Kelley says.
Long before couples like "Brangelina'' they were known as just Ben-and-Sally around town. And they were a scandalous pair back in the day. Quinn, now 73, was young, blond and beautiful when she arrived at the paper in 1969 to report on the Washington social scene for the Style section. Soon, thanks to her rapier style in everything, she was noticed by the boss. Soon, they had embarked on an affair, even though he was still married.
By 1978, after his second divorce, they were married and launched a new life as the power couple of Washington.
"She brought in a whole new set of interesting friends from all over the world and they entertained small groups at their Dupont Circle house. If something delicious was happening in town, it was happening there — like (late) writer Nora Ephron pouring a bottle of red wine over (husband) Carl Bernstein's head after discovering he was having an affair with the British ambassador's wife," explained Vanity Fair in a 2010 profile of the couple.
For years, Bradlee's New Year's Eve party at his mansion (once owned by Robert Todd Lincoln) on the "Power Row" block of N Street (Jackie Kennedy lived across the street after the assassination, Pamela Harriman, the Democratic hostess turned U.S. ambassador to France, lived down the street) was a coveted invitation for power couples interested in mingling with other power couples.
"If you were invited to Ben and Sally's you were annointed," wrote Washington Life magazine in a 2005 profile. "They never entertained all that much but when they did, it was perfect. Their New Year's Eve parties were legendary for the eclectic mix of media, celebrity and political types."
That's all gone away now.
"We've lost the social graces, of taking the time to set a table and buy decent wine and invite people over to enjoy time together," say Jaffe. "Georgetown does not have the same cachét it had, the city has changed. A lot of people who have power and influence live in up-and-coming neighborhoods and they never go to Georgetown."
There was a method to Ben and Sally's social life, far beyond just yakking, drinking and munching at parties, as they explained to Washington Life during the George W. Bush administration, when the president, with well-known disdain for parties, rarely socialized with anyone in Washington.
"It always helps if you have some social capital… with more people on your side less willing to take you down," Sally said. "They say it is unseemly (for a president) to be partying when we're at war and I'm not saying the president should be out partying, but it is important for him to get other perspectives and for people to get to know his."