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New Drive. Perle Mesta began her final assault on Washington in 1941. She moved into the exclusive Sulgrave Club, got some professional advice on press relations, and started giving parties. She shrewdly gave a yearly alcoholic "tea" for the women's press corps. Either with rare good luck or uncanny generalship, she ingratiated herself early with Harry Truman. She feted him as a Senator, gave the first party in his honor—a $5,000 blowout—when he became Vice President. She gave a huge "coming-out" party for Margaret Truman in 1946. When Margaret sang in Oklahoma City, Perle brought Bess Truman's bridge club all the way down from Independence to hear her, threw a big party at the Skirvin Hotel afterward.
Perle is reaping her reward. She is one of the few people who call Mrs. Truman "Bess," often drops in for lunch at Blair House. At the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, she sat at the President's right hand with her famed diamond clips aglitter, next day proudly stood beside him in a receiving line for deserving Democrats. ("Did you notice us winking at each other? That's because several people called me Mrs. Truman.") She even made her first political speech, and the President told her it was wonderful.
For the Party. Perle does not like to be considered just a hostess nowadays. She insists she is a kind of "across-the-table political worker." Says she solemnly: "The entertaining I do is my way of serving the President and the party." But Perle has made the Democratic Party her party only since 1942, when she walked out on the Republicans because of their treatment of Willkie ("They rushed me in to see Dewey, but they couldn't budge me").
Perle is go-getting and able in her own way. She is a money-raiser extraordinary. At Harry Truman's request, she hustled her checkbook out to Kansas City in 1946, saved the day for his campaign to purge his home-town Congressman, Roger Slaughter. As co-chairman of last year's Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners, she raised $250,000, kept at it doughtily during the campaign. Declared Louis Johnson, chairman of the Democratic Finance Committee: "When our crowd got discouraged, Perle Mesta would raise hell. She called us men of little faith. She was a tonic for us —our little pepper-upper."
"I Just Act Dumb." Perle admits that the duties of "unofficial hostess" to the President are heavy. "I have to know exactly what's on his mind and what he thinks of people all the time," she explains. "I know, too. I don't have to call him and ask." Then, too, people pester her. "They all know I can get to the White House any time I need to. Lots of them try to pump me to find out who's going to be fired and who's going to get hired." She winked. "I just act dumb." At a fashion show last week, she blurted to reporters: "Did you hear the news—that stinker Forrestal's out? My man Johnson is in."