Margaret Truman Daniel, 83; actress-writer was only child of President Truman
Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of the late President Harry S. Truman and his wife Bess, who forged serial careers as a concert singer, actress, high-profile wife and mother and prolific biographer and mystery novelist, died today. . She was 83. Daniel, the widow of former New York Times managing editor Clifton Daniel, died in Chicago following a brief illness, according to a statement from the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Mo. She had been residing in New York City but was recently moved to Chicago, where her eldest son Clifton Truman Daniel lives, and placed in an assisted living facility as her health deteriorated.
Arguably the first First Daughter subjected to the intrusive scrutiny of the burgeoning modern communications media, Daniel was a George Washington University coed when her father succeeded to the presidency at the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. There were instant lessons in the perils of her unwanted political celebrity.
First, she set off something of a public relations food fight when she quietly instructed a waiter "No potatoes, please" and later commented that she drank tomato juice while dieting. The Potato Growers Assn. quickly lodged an official complaint and peppered the White House with protest letters. The Tomato Growers Assn. countered with a shower of letters of approval. Both groups waged a marketing war in national newspapers, magazines, radio and television, touting the nutrition value of their products.
Next, she was photographed wearing a scarf, and Women's Wear Daily editorialized that Truman had damaged the millinery industry -- a dispute quieted only after she wore a hat to another publicized event. Her hatted photo, in turn, set off protests from hairdressers.
Suddenly aware that what she said, what she did and how she looked would make her the most spotlighted White House offspring in history, she muted her comments and made sure her appearance in public was politically correct. As a young, single woman, she largely postponed dating to avoid false reports of pending engagements.
For seven years, she said later, her goal was to behave so that she wouldn't "wind up with a bad headline." In the process, she developed a lifelong disdain for Washington and privately came to refer to the White House as "the great white jail."
What Mary Margaret Truman, the girl born and bred in Independence, Mo., would not mute, mollify or abandon was her quest -- somewhat unusual for a well-to-do young woman of the mid-20th century -- for a career.
