Tonight is the big deal event of the year in Washington, the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents Association. It's now a big deal weekend, but once upon a time it was just another, if glitzier, Washington black-tie dinner.
I know, because I used to go some years back. The first time was when I was with Fairchild Publications. I was the D.C. editor of their energy newspaper. I was seated next to Arthur Burns, who was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board -- the Alan Greenspan of his day. The only thing I recall about that dinner was that he spent the whole evening calling me, "lad." I suppose I was a lad to him, but it struck me as an odd word. Still does.
Some years later, I got to more frequently with Communications Daily, part of the then-TV Digest, now Warren Communications News empire. The secret back then was that all you had to do in order to get a table was to pay nominal dues and then pay for a table. You didn't even have to cover the White House.
The fun part about the dinner was that you never knew who you would run into. One nice evening, the pre-dinner receptions, usually crammed into the meeting rooms on the main floor of the Washington Hilton, where the event takes place, all spilled outside and everyone mingled. I turned around and there was June Lockhart. She was known then as the mom from Lost in Space and way before that, the mom in Lassie. Turns out she was a space junkie. She loved visiting NASA and talking to people about space exploration. Guess the show got to her.
One other notable pre-dinner reception conversation I had was with Portia de Rossi. At the time, she was in a quirky lawyer show called Ally McBeal. I watched the show and so took the opportunity to ask her about a particular scene which had been on a few weeks earlier. She was sitting at the counsel's table in court and her hair just stood up on end. I asked how they filmed that. It was simple and painful. The crew had tied a wire to her hair, looped it over something in the ceiling and yanked it on cue. They had to shoot the scene several times.
Over the years, we had lots of interesting guests. One year when we had an extra ticket, I invited my favorite morning radio personality, Paul Harris. He showed up in tux and sneakers and had a good time, I think.
The tradition at TV Digest was to invite the commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to the White House dinner, and invite the chiefs of the FCC bureaus to a similar dinner, the Radio-TV Correspondents Association dinner. The senior reporter, the legendary Tack Nail (real name Dawson) would do the inviting and they would usually come. Then other publications discovered the FCC, and the usual dinner plans didn't pan out.
One year I was responsible for inviting guests and as the reporter who covered the telecommunications beat, I went to get the biggest stars in that galaxy, and succeeded. As I recall, we had the chairmen of three of the then-new Bell companies, Ray Smith from Bell Atlantic, John Clendinin from BellSouth and Del Staley form Nynex. We also had Andrew C. Barrett, who was about to take his seat on the FCC, and Patricia Worthy, who was the chairman of the D.C. Public Service Commission and chairman of the communications committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). Trust me, for a telecom wonk table, that was a good as it gets.
No one stayed seated at the dinners. It was more fun to wander around and see who was there. You might run into an all-time third baseman (Brooks Robinson), or you might see a movie star (Sylvester Stallone) with his hand on the derriere of a TV personality (Vanna White) guiding her nobly into her chair. Or you might encounter a senator, who had a few drinks too many, who would throw his arm around you and talk about legislation.
When I went, the dinner was just starting to be the celeb fest it is now. Tourists and others would cluster in the lower lobby of the Hilton to take pix of prominent politicians, sports figures and others. That was the same way we normal humans also entered and it was fun to think we might be in the background of a photo of someone famous.
Because Comm Daily was such a little fish, we were usually seated on the outer ring of tables. While that may sound like exile, it had one big advantage. It was closer to the doors and to the coat check at closing time. After a long night, that was a big advantage.
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