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Vintage White House Santa Tray

This piece was originally purchased by Lady Bird Johnson in 1966, no doubt to serve hors d’ oeuvres to dignitaries at lavish White House Christmas parties. It remained at the White House after the Johnson administration. It is rumored that a drunken Lee Marvin used this very tray to render Shirley Temple Black unconscious at a wild White House party in December of 1969. The blow, however, was intended to strike an inebriated John Wayne, who had just boisterously bragged to President Nixon that “The War Wagon was an Oscar-contender compared to that crap-heap-sissy-fest Paint Your Wagon”.

Shirley Temple’s fall was broken by the treasured collection of Mary Todd Lincoln’s tree ornaments, originally hand-crafted by Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. Although Temple was relatively uninjured during the ruckus, the collection was unfortunately destroyed. Nixon was furious and would never again invite Wayne or Marvin back to the White House. He later said of the incident, “Those two buffoons made me look liked a damned jackass in front of the Soviet Premier and the Chancellor of Lesotho.” Marvin and Wayne were cited by the Secret Service for disorderly conduct but later laughed about the incident over a bottle of Cognac.
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