Even 60 years on, Lady Bird Johnson’s secret recordings show we’ve learned nothing

First Lady Claudia Alta Johnson was America’s accidental and most reluctant occupier of the East Wing and even more hesitant than Melania Trump.

Lyndon B. Johnson (c) with wife Lady Bird Johnson (3rd l) and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy during his swearing in ceremony in the cabin of the presidential plane on 22 Nov 1963.

They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Apply at will, but especially to First Ladies – the real power behind the throne.

A lot of us “modern day feminists” seem to have a Mad Men view of anything prior to, and during, the second wave. A time of war, when racial tensions were flaring and gender relations were simmering. Sounds familiar, eh?

Now this was something I realised about myself while watching a new documentary called The Lady Bird Diaries, a new feature film about former First Lady Claudia Alta Johnson, better known by her nickname, Lady Bird. She was America’s accidental and most reluctant occupier of the East Wing and even more hesitant than Melania Trump.

Lady Bird rose to the occasion rather than just approve a renovation of the Rose Garden. She rolled up her sleeves and got to work as the shadow politician and vowed to be her husband’s social antenna.

Her “beautification bill” spawned a generation of urban planners, gave rise to early concepts of sustainability back in the mid-1960s and inspired the eventual Environmental Protection Act of the 1970s. We learn all this – again – in this latest Lady Bird production that was released, either intentionally or not, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of JFK’s assassination on Wednesday. 

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson were a formidable team according to the new documentary.

The Lady Bird Diaries is narrated by the subject. She recorded about 123 hours of audiotape diaries, which she agreed could be released after her death. She died a long time widower back in 2007 at 94.

Since then her musings have been a trove for journalists, such as Julia E. Sweig who wrote her biography, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight. Even in paperback form we could see that the First Lady was her husband’s – Lyndon Baines Johnson – most trusted adviser.

The book spawned a podcast and now the material has been made for the small screen with this new documentary that paints a portrait of a political Elizabeth Taylor. Her voice overlays hours of archival footage during her husband’s time as vice-president and then president.

He called the shots, but Lady Bird had the guts, guile, smarts and sass to subedit his speeches, even marking them. Each time she told him to do better. “Do it with more conviction,” she told him. “It was a solid B minus,” she said of another address.

They were a formidable team. The show gives us an insight into marriages of the time which us modern women have been conditioned to believe were hot beds of patriarchy and inequality. Not so in the White House during the 1960s and judging from the personal phone calls between the LBJs Squared that feature prominently in the film.

Her recordings also inspired her successors. As Barack Obama points out: “Michelle took a particular interest in a recording where Lady Bird is critiquing president Johnson’s performance. Some things do not change.”

Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt and his wife Zara with US President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird before a state dinner at the White House in Washington in 1967.

Johnson’s narration, her cadence and choice of words in these recordings are like poetry. And they are made all the more poignant with the opening scenes of chaos surrounding that fateful day in Dallas in 1963.

“A bundle of pink, like a drift blossom, lying in the back seat. It was Mrs Kennedy lying over the president’s body,” she says as we see Jackie – still in her blood stained Chanel suit – accompany her husband’s coffin on board Air Force One and stand stoically beside Lady Bird and LBJ as he is sworn in on the president’s plane. What follows is a gripping 90-minute history lesson on one of the most turbulent times in America’s – if not the world’s – modern history.

Leaders are being knocked off left, right and centre, the civil rights movement is charging ahead and the Vietnam War is dragging on. During the time we get a peek into the Oval Office, courtesy of Lady Bird, where the President at times struggled with depression while also trying to legislate and oversee major events such as the fight for civil rights and the ongoing war.

This Southern Belle was a force of nature. Despite bomb threats and warnings of violence she decided to take a train journey through the south in order to help the Democrats hold on to the states that were being consumed by rampant poverty and social unrest due to frustration that Capitol Hill was dragging its feet on the Civil Rights Act. Her words about the happenings of America in that period eerily echo today.

There’s Bobby Kennedy talking about equality; mirror that today with his son Robert Jr. still polling well in his independent bid for the presidency next year.

“What is our country coming to? What is happening to us? Are we a sick society?” she asks.

There’s also riots and protests in the streets about war and conflict – both civil and abroad.

“The frantic effort of some of today’s young define a tangible method of revolt. That revolt happens to be almost negative. It is a sterile thing against the velvet present of affluence, conformity and isolation,” Lady Bird says as footage of protests against the Vietnam War plays.

“Managing to be bizarre in strategic spots, gives people a lot of exposure in this day of saturation coverage of a major event by television. They think they’re doing something when they are noticed by the TV cameras. Many of the young confuse it with action.”

The audio recordings are brilliant, captivating and leave you wanting more. However the project almost never happened as director (and lawyer) Dawn Porter, whose previous work includes Prince Harry and Oprah’s AppleTV venture The Me You Can’t See, struggled to find any vision of the former First Lady. Scant material was catalogued under her name.

“When we started and put in the words ‘Lady Bird Johnson’, very little came back.” Porter told The Guardian recently that she had better luck when searching for dates and names of other people who had been on and in the scenes of Johnson’s recounting.

President Bill Clinton leans in to listen to former President George H.W. Bush over Lady Bird Johnson during a dinner in honour of the 200th anniversary of the White House in 2000.

“She’s not noted in the description of the footage. Yet she’s right there in the middle of all of these events … And I think that’s the story for a lot of women,” Porter said.

The Lady Bird Diaries is streaming now on Disney+.