Viewpoints: Morning Star

By Gina Mallet

Toward the end of her last appearance on Not for Women Only, TV's syndicated morning kaffeeklatsch, Guest Moderator Julie Nixon Eisenhower invited the audience to question her panel on the problems public figures have in pursuing their private lives.

"Julie, this is for you," gushed a middle-aged woman. "I'm sure the population of this great and wonderful country of ours considers you a bright and shining star. Please give us today some of your experience and know-how." The ex-President's younger daughter blushed, then finessed the question: "I could spend ten hours after the show telling you about my experiences. But for now, thank you for the compliment."

With a combination of charm, poise and agility that must have made her father proud--if not downright envious --Julie Eisenhower filled in for vacationing Moderator Barbara Walters on a whole week of Not for Women Only shows.* Julie, an assistant managing editor (at 26) on the Saturday Evening Post, was Barbara's personal choice for the stand-in job, and she clearly enjoyed it.

Oh No. Julie did not care for Barbara's suggestion for a theme, "The First Years of Marriage," so she came up with her own idea: a series of shows on "Public People, Private Lives," with suitably public-private panelists. Among the nine guests who helped tape the five half-hour programs one day in mid-September: Dollie Cole, a colleague of Julie's from the Post and the wife of GM's former president, Edward Cole; Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr.; Publicist Letitia Baldrige; Journalist Nick Thimmesch; and Ruth Stafford Peale, wife of Pastor Norman Vincent Peale.

Seated behind Walters' mike on the Women set in Manhattan, Julie kept her shows alive with humor--much of it unintended. Her disarming introduction of Dollie Cole ("You're a corporate wife, and you also have to clean your own bathroom") began discussion of the perils of publicity. Dollie bemoaned the fact that her husband's $270,000-a-year GM salary led everyone to believe "that you live very high off the hog--of course, the income tax removes a lot of that hog." When Julie turned the subject to fame and insecurity, Ruth Peale confessed that the Peale children felt so overwhelmed by their father's celebrity that one day they announced that "they didn't want to go to church any more." That brought a gasp from Julie ("Oh no, I can't believe it") and from Dollie Cole. Said she: "It's like [my children] saying they'd like to drive a Ford."

A Riot. Julie was her own best interviewee on the psychological struggles of living in a fishbowl. She spoke acidly of never being able to slip out of the White House with a tennis racket without bumping into aides, Congressmen, reporters or gawking tourists. Said Julie: "It's really a riot when you've got to try to put on a clean shirt to go out and take a walk because 10,000 people are at the White House gate."

Although the show's guest list and audience were stacked with Julie fans, her TV debut was impressive. She was bright and direct; her ingenue manner mellowed with each show into a more unassuming candor and increasing aplomb. Walters' verdict: "A very professional job on a difficult show."

But Walters herself once again proved inimitable. One morning last week on the live Today show, which preceded Not for Women Only in Washington and New York, Barbara led a discussion on breast cancer. At the end, she allowed a surgeon to take her hands and show her on camera how to examine her breasts--fully clothed, of course. Barbara was giving Julie a tough act to follow.

* The pretaped shows were telecast only in New York and Washington last week; they will appear in other areas in the future.

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