With a decades-spanning career, we’d expect Shirley MacLaine to have rubbed shoulders with the Hollywood elite, but the actress’ new memoir details how this star power transcends into the world of politics.
In her newly released book of never-before-seen photos, titled The Wall of Life: Pictures and Stories from This Marvelous Lifetime, MacLaine recalls having met 13 of the last 14 presidents of the United States, from Harry Truman onwards. While the Terms of Endearment star had mostly kind words for all these former presidents, her encounter with current Republican nominee Donald Trump proved a little less than flattering.
In the memoir, MacLaine said she met the 45th president at “some function” in the 1980s, and went on to elaborate on the interaction in an interview with People. The actress said she ran into Trump while looking at an apartment space in the 666 Fifth Avenue building in Manhattan, which was owned by Trump at the time.
“There was a vacant apartment in that building,” MacLaine recalled. “I went up to look at it, and walked in because I knew it was available, and he was there.” What followed, according to the actress, was a rather uncomfortable exchange, made all the more uneasy for the fact that “we met in a room where no one else was.” MacLaine said that while in the apartment, she got the feeling that Trump, “in his head… was undressing himself and me.”
Naturally, spine-tingling the moment prompted MacLaine into action, and she recalled “[getting] out of there very fast.” She then dealt an even bigger blow to the former president, revealing that she “didn’t take the apartment either,” not just because of the uncomfortable interaction, but because “it was too expensive.” Back in the ‘80s, Trump was a real estate tycoon (those were much simpler times) who had gained a level of notoriety after appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show and David Letterman.
The White House was but a distant dream for Trump in those days (take us back!), so losing a potential tenant must’ve felt like a gut-punch for the future The Art of the Deal author. In any case, MacLaine thankfully had fonder memories of other former presidents, describing 40th President Ronald Reagan as a “show business favorite” who she “actually liked as a person very much.”
Meanwhile, she said she was “fascinated by [Jimmy Carter’s] intelligence, and was elsewhere a part of presidential history in 1962. At that time, MacLaine was one of the guests at John F. Kennedy’s now-infamous 45th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, where Marilyn Monroe made waves by serenading him with the sultriest “Happy Birthday” ever.
MacLaine attended that event with her date and famous comedian Jimmy Durante, but there was one president’s birthday party she wouldn’t be so eager to attend. The only former president who MacLaine hasn’t met since Truman assumed the position in 1945 was Richard Nixon.
“I never encountered [him]” she wrote in the memoir, adding that she “thought he was ridiculous and wouldn’t want to have met him.” If only MacLaine could go back in time to that first encounter with Trump, and convince him to stick to The Apprentice or follow his McDonald’s dreams. Maybe then we wouldn’t be talking about spankings, Arnold Palmer’s genitals, or Hannibal Lecter.