ALL HAIL, THOU WESTERN WORLD! BY HEAVEN DESIGN’D
TH’ EXAMPLE BRIGHT, TO RENOVATE MANKIND!
reads the Loew’s State marquee, and down the street the Roxy announces:
A BOUNDLESS VISION GROWS UPON US…
Uncle Sam posts the elephant and donkey at either side of the Sing Sing stage and signals for the Disney Rat Pack. Mickey and Minnie, Goofy, Horace, and the rest take up prearranged aisle positions in support of the Secret Service (still in their papier-mâché heads) and to help direct the VIPs; other pageant figures line up around the periphery of the VIP section; the film crews pan their cameras around to focus on the main entrance, stage left, zooming in, and the band plays Mess Call. Which is the cue for Betty Crocker: she emerges, prim and matronly, wiping her hands on her apron, to introduce, like the ingredients for one of her famous stuffed turkeys, all the Very Important People who have come here tonight to witness the public burning of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
And while Uncle Sam, using his corncob pipe as a baton, conducts the band in playing “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” out they come, not marching, but jogging on like tensed-up ballplayers, everybody who’s anybody in the above-board American Power Structure, each one introduced by Betty in her somewhat tremulous old-lady voice (though if anything, it must be said she’s getting younger every day) and welcomed with a rousing “He’s our man!” cheer led by the Indiana University cheerleaders. The first few to lope out pull up momentarily before that unfortunate mound of elephant dung, but since there’s no way around it and no way back, they flash their vote-getting smiles, square their shoulders, and slog on through, and once a path is laid there are no further hesitations. There’s an old panhandler out there, stuffed into a thick wool overcoat like an antique shopwindow dummy from the Great Depression and seemingly rooted to the spot, who’s something of an obstacle, too, but the VIP’s jogging by merely assume he’s some kind of turnstile (couldn’t be real, after all, not in prosperous postwar America) and stuff quarters in as they pass.
The VIP area has been divided into three sections, one each for the three branches of government who together have made these executions possible, with pride of place tonight given to the judiciary, the legislative branch seated to their left and the executive to their right. A special section of box seats, decorated with flags and bunting and exhibits from the trial, has been set aside just in front of the stage for those directly associated with the Rosenberg case: the FBI director and agents who broke the case, the Judge, jury, prosecution team and witnesses, the Attorney General, and a ringside front-and-center seat for President Eisenhower, who’s never been one to settle for a side-aisle pew. The back rows of the three sections are reserved for state and local officials from around the country — legislators, judges, administrators, mayors, National Guard officers, tax collectors, Lieutenant-Governors, sheriffs, and the like — and these are the first to come out, followed by all the auxiliary personnel who serve the three federal branches, all the agencies, bureaus, departments, commissions, institutes, foundations, boards, councils, societies, administrations, appeal and claims courts, funds, organizations, banks, services, systems, committees, national centers, offices, and authorities, and all their staff, counsel, secretaries, chiefs, directors, clerks, treasurers, personnel officers, confidential assistants, managers, commissioners, auditors, recorders, consultants, editors, superintendents, chairmen, military aides, receptionists, curators, and parliamentarians. Next come all the key personnel from the major executive departments attached to Cabinet officers, the federal district judges and senior circuit judges in the appeals courts, and all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s a colorful lot, and even plain-spoken self-possessed Betty Crocker gets a certain itchy pleasure out of calling out their names: Laurie Battle! Porque Patten! Zeke Gathings! Rubie Scudder! Jimmy Utt! J. Edgar Chenoweth! Prince H. Preston, Jr.! Gracie Pfost! Hamer Budge! Runt Bishop! Shepard Crumpacker! Errett P. Scrivner! Hale Boggs! Tip O’Neill! Richard B. Wigglesworth! Thaddeus M. Machrowicz! Kit Clardy! Elford A. Cederberg! Dewey Short! Morgan M. Moulder! Norris Cotton! T. Millet Hand! Jack Dempsey! Stuyvesant Wainwright! Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.! Jake Javits! Usher Burdick! James G. Polk! Page Belcher! Sam Coon! Homer D. Angelí! Wally Mumma! L. Mendel Rivers and Gerry Ford! Percy Priest! Olin E. Teague! Homer Thorn-berry! Winston Prouty! Thor C. Tollefson! Harley Staggers! Melvin Laird! Clem Zablocki!
“Gubser! Gubser! he’s our man!
If he can’t do it, Hillings can!
Hillings! Hillings! he’s our man!
If he can’t do it, Yorty can!
Yorty! Yorty…”
“Whoopee-ti-yi-yo!” laughs Uncle Sam, herding them in, “the whole dingbusted United States guvvamint is corraled in here tonight, I see, everybody from the guinea pigs at Disease Control to the coffee steward at the Pentagon! It’s a real smorgasbord! Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity, and a appetizin’ lot they are, too!” Then he suddenly starts and glances up at the sky, lost beyond the bright lights and hovering smog of Times Square. “God damn that tarnacious Phantom if he lets one fly tonight!” he mutters, and a collective gasp shakes the Square. Could it happen? “What am I sayin’? Anything he can do I can do better! I yam strong as the breezes w’ich blows down big treeses, so c’mon, get on with it, punkin, dish ’em up! In skatin’ over thin ice our safety is in our speed!”
Nobody knows better than Betty Crocker the importance of proper timing in laying a good table, so she rushes on, bringing out the ninety-six Senators now and all their spouses and children: Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama, Carl Hayden and Barry Goldwater of Arizona, John McClellan and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, William Knowland and Thomas Kuchel of California, Edwin Johnson and Eugene Millikin of Colorado, Prescott Bush and William Purtell of Connecticut, John J. Williams and J. Allen Frear of Delaware, Spessard Holland and George Smathers of Florida, Walter George and Richard B. Russell of Georgia, Henry Dworshak and Herman Welker of Idaho, Paul Douglas and Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Homer Capehart and William Jenner of Indiana, Bourke Hickenlooper and Guy Gillette of Iowa, Andrew Schoeppel and Frank Carlson of Kansas, Earle Clements and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Allen Ellender and Russell B. Long of Louisiana, Margaret Chase Smith and Frederick Payne of Maine, John Butler and J. Glenn Beall of Maryland, Leverett Saltonstall and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Homer Ferguson and Charles Potter of Michigan, Edward J. Thye and Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, James Eastland and John Stennis of Mississippi, Thomas Hennings and Stuart Symington of Missouri, James Murray and Mike Mansfield of Montana, Hugh Butler and Dwight Griswold of Nebraska, Pat McCarran and George Malone of Nevada, Styles Bridges and Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, H. Alexander Smith and Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey, Dennis Chavez and Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, Irving Ives and Herbert Lehman of New York, Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith of North Carolina, William Langer and Milton Young of North Dakota, Robert Taft and John Bricker of Ohio, Robert Kerr and Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, Guy Cordon and Wayne Morse of Oregon, Edward Martin and James Duff of Pennsylvania, Theodore Francis Green and John Pastore of Rhode Island, Burnet Maybank and Olin Johnston of South Carolina, Karl Mundt and Francis Case of South Dakota, Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore of Tennessee, Lyndon B. Johnson and Price Daniel of Texas, Arthur Watkins and Wallace Bennett of Utah, George Aiken and Ralph Flanders of Vermont, Harry Byrd and Willis Robertson of Virginia, Warren Magnuson and Henry (Scoop) Jackson of Washington, Harley Kilgore and Matthew Neely of West Virginia, Alexander Wiley and Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, and Lester Hunt and Frank Barrett of Wyoming.