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Unspoken Speech. Khrushchev's big jet swept into Los Angeles International Airport 5 hr. 27 min. later, sat down with a bounce. He padded down the bright aluminum ramp, his light-colored suit flapping, looked detached and almost dubious about leaving the plane. Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson stepped forward, handed out what was perhaps the briefest official greeting a U.S. city has ever given a visiting chief of state. Said Poulson: "We welcome you to Los Angeles, City of the Angels, the city where the impossible always happens." Khrushchev, who had the text of an arrival speech in his hand, gave it back to an aide, said little more than "Thank you." There were no crowds: the welcome was set in a remote corner of the airport in front of a yawning North American Aviation Co. hangar. Nor were there crowds along Khrushchev's route through the city: the route had not been published.
Just before 1 p.m. Khrushchev's motorcade rolled up to the 20th Century-Fox studio commissary ("Cafe de Paris") in Beverly Hills. Khrushchev was welcomed by President Eric Johnston of the Motion Pictures Association, who had visited Khrushchev in Russia, and by 20th Century-Fox President Spyros Skouras. The Premier sat down for lunch between them. Mrs. Khrushchev, carrying a bouquet of bird-of-paradise flowers, sat beside Frank Sinatra, opposite Bob Hope and David Niven. Before them stretched a glittering panorama of jewels, dyed hair and suntans of a Hollywood movie colony so complete that even Eddie. Liz and Debbie were in the same room. Greek-born Spyros Skouras and Khrushchev got into a bumbling, emotional, unscheduled debate about how each had risen from their poorboy origins under their respective capitalist and Communist systems. Skouras scored the best line—"Your country is the greatest monopoly the world has ever known, colossal, colossal"—but Skouras' needling of Khrushchev brought audience cries of "Sit down," "Shut up" and "Let him alone!"
"I Cannot Find Words." In mid-meal Mrs. Khrushchev passed up a note to her husband informing him that there had been a change in schedule for that afternoon: the Khrushchevs were not going to be driven to Disneyland, as they had requested, because the city police could not guarantee their safety. Disneyland is in another county. The city police had added that nobody agreed with them more than Khrushchev's own security detail.
Nikita Khrushchev, ruler of 200 million people, addressed himself to the Disneyland issue, his voice beginning to shake, but only slightly. "We have come to this town where lives the cream of American art," said he. "And just imagine, I, a Premier, a Soviet representative, when I came here to this city, I was given a plan, a program of what I was to be shown and whom I was to meet here."
Khrushchev's face turned darker; he began to shake his head, clench his fists, pound the table, as the audience looked on in amazement. "But just now," he said, "I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked: 'Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there? I do not know.' And just listen, just listen to what I was told, to what reason I was told. We, which means the American authorities, cannot guarantee your security if you go there.