The President's House by Margaret Truman

Part private residence, part goldfish bowl, and part national shrine, the White House is both the most important address in America and the most intensely scrutinized. It was not until a month before their wedding in April 1956 that their romance became public.As Margaret Truman knows from firsthand experience, living in the White House can be exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting-but it is certainly never dull. When she met Clifton Daniel at a dinner party in 1955, he was working in New York after a decade as a foreign correspondent. Throughout her 20s, reporters were constantly asking about marriage prospects, but she said she was pursuing her career for the time being.

She also worked with Fred Allen and Tallulah Bankhead. On radio, she was co-host, with Mike Wallace, of a daily talk show on the NBC network and had her own nationally syndicated interview program for eight years. She soon turned more to radio and television, where she made regular guest appearances with Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle. Years later she was able to laugh about it: 'I thought it was funny. The note made Page One news - but was not the sort of publicity an aspiring artist seeks. 'I have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below,' the president wrote. She is flat a good deal of the time,' her father fired off a note on White House stationery scolding Hume for a 'lousy review.' When Washington Post critic Paul Hume wrote after a 1950 concert that she 'is extremely attractive on the stage. Critics generally praised her poise but were less impressed with her vocal talent. She made her professional singing debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and gave her first Carnegie Hall concert two years later. 'I wanted to establish myself as an individual capable of standing on my merit, to experience the satisfaction of achievement,' she explained. After graduation, she used the political limelight to launch her singing career. She also had taken voice lessons, at the urging of a church choir leader. She later attended George Washington University. She was the only child of Bess and Harry Truman, who was a county judge at the time.įor a few years after her father was elected to the Senate in 1934, she split her school year between Independence and a private girls' school in Washington D.C.

The President's House by Margaret Truman