Listening to Lady Bird Johnson, in her own words
Lady Bird Johnson embodied contradiction, cloaking her gravitas in Southern charm. Even her name made that clear. From infancy onward, Claudia Alta Taylor (born in 1912) was known to everyone as Lady Bird, a lighthearted, whimsical nickname — invented by her nursemaid — that belied her grit, intellect and ambition. Now, a new documentary on Hulu, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” focuses on her White House years and captures the surprising influence and power that this gentle, smiling woman wielded over her husband.
Based on 123 hours of private audio diaries recorded by Johnson (and embargoed until her death, in 2007, at 94), the film is told from the first lady’s point of view, and largely in her own recorded voice — a honeyed Texas drawl — interspersed with contemporaneous news footage. There are, however, virtually no outside perspectives or critiques offered. The film takes us inside Johnson’s mind and keeps us firmly there.
The documentary, directed by Dawn Porter, opens with the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the ensuing chaotic hours that thrust the stunned vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, and his wife into their new roles. “I felt like I was walking onto a stage for a part I had never rehearsed,” Lady Bird Johnson says.
Although eloquent and highly educated, with degrees in history and journalism, and quite accustomed to being a politician’s wife, the 50-year-old Johnson could not have been more different from her young and glamorous predecessor, Jacqueline Kennedy. Compared with Kennedy, who even in her bloodstained grief looked like a movie star, Johnson seemed staid, even matronly. Her dark hair was set in a permanent helmet, and a triple strand of pearls nestled in the high necklines of her boxy suits and dresses. Her only obvious makeup was a discreet slash of lipstick.
Johnson was a practical, down-home kind of woman who claimed that her greatest indulgences were a glass of wine and an episode of “Gunsmoke.” She disliked fussing over her appearance, and fashion held little interest for her: “I’m just not the type for sketches and swatches,” she said. She was, however, profoundly interested in America’s appearance — a cause that defined her White House years.
“Growing up, nature was my friend and sustenance, and teacher,” Johnson said, and the documentary chronicles her successes in beautifying the nation: improving America’s highways by lining them with trees and flowers (the Highway Beautification Act, which she championed, was signed into law in 1965), creating attractive playgrounds for public schools, adding green and blooming spaces to urban areas. Her husband shared her passion and signed nearly 300 conservation measures into law during his presidency (paving the way for the eventual establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970).
Johnson’s primary political interest, however, remained her husband’s success. She was his most faithful, strategic and honest critic, taking notes on his speeches and offering hard-hitting feedback — with a velvet glove. “Do you want to listen for about one minute to my critique, or would you rather wait until tonight?” she asks him sweetly in one recorded call after a news conference. She proceeds to explain that his performance was “a little breathless,” that his speech lacked conviction and that he needed to stop looking down while he spoke. She punctuates her assessment: “B plus.”
Lyndon Johnson earned A’s in his wife’s eyes. She kept her admiring focus trained firmly on him, and the film suggests she was more concerned with how political events affected him than with how they affected the world.