The White House

The White House enters the diary through two visits by Andy Warhol, a year apart, and in sharply different roles. In October 1981 he went there to interview Nancy Reagan for a magazine cover; in September 1982 he attended a state dinner for the Marcoses. The first visit became a test of editorial expectations and personal irritation, while the second began in apprehension and gradually became more manageable. The diary offers no broad account of the institution or architectural description of its rooms. Instead, it preserves particular encounters, practical details, and Warhol’s changing reactions to being there.

A cover interview in 1981

The first recorded visit followed a disagreement with Bob Colacello about the interview. Before they travelled to Washington, Bob warned Warhol not to ask Nancy Reagan sex questions. Warhol was incredulous at the suggestion that he might ask how often the Reagans had sex. He was also angry that Bob had criticized his appearance during modeling work, saying it made Bob’s job harder. The preceding argument shaped Warhol’s mood as he entered the White House the next day.

The interview itself was conducted in a room where Warhol and Bob waited for Nancy Reagan to arrive. Doria was with them, and a waiter brought four glasses of water. The discussion concerned drug rehabilitation, which Warhol found boring. Nancy Reagan’s assistant sat taking notes; the interviewers each had a tape recorder, although they were told that the Reagans were not making their own recording. Warhol took four photographs. The account makes the visit concrete through these small arrangements rather than through descriptions of the building: the water, the recorders, the assistant’s notes, and the camera all belong to a working interview.

At 4:30 the interview ended. Nancy Reagan and Doria continued talking for about fifteen minutes while Warhol and Bob waited to one side, after which the group took a cab to the airport. Back in New York, Warhol’s irritation resurfaced during a call from Brigid Berlin, who asked what tea Nancy Reagan had served. Thinking again about the visit, he felt that the interview had not been given a suitably impressive setting or hospitality. His response shows how he judged the occasion not only as a conversation but also as a production whose surroundings and presentation mattered.

The state dinner in 1982

The second visit was an official social occasion rather than a magazine assignment. On September 16, 1982, Warhol travelled from New York to Washington for the state dinner honoring the Marcoses. He recorded being nervous throughout the day and said that he disliked going to Washington and its television lights. He took Valium, arrived at 4:00, and went to the Watergate Hotel before the dinner, where he made calls, ordered lunch, took more Valium, and arranged a limousine. The sequence of preparations makes clear that the White House invitation was not an uncomplicated pleasure for him: he anticipated the event with anxiety and tried to manage the hours before it.

At the White House, Warhol and Bob attended with dates. Warhol’s companion was Frances Bergen, who, he observed, showed little interest in him and left as soon as she could. A Marine introduced him on the receiving line as Mr. World. When asked why he had been invited, Warhol answered that Mrs. Marcos lived on his street. These details bring the formal gathering down to introductions, companions, and conversation, while showing Warhol’s characteristic way of meeting an official question with a personal, lightly comic explanation.

The dinner took place outdoors in the garden. Warhol found the setting beautiful, and the darkness helped him feel at ease; there was no tent and no television coverage. The guests were moved and pushed from place to place, and he noted that about eighty people attended. Later, he described the lights as overwhelming. His comfort was therefore conditional: the outdoor darkness and lack of cameras relieved his initial nervousness, while the brightness and movement of the event remained conspicuous features of the evening.

The company and entertainment gave the visit its other particulars. The president’s table was behind Warhol’s, and the president of U.S. Steel sat at his table. Warhol told the executive an elaborate story about a brother out of work at a Pittsburgh steel mill and proposed turning an unused building into a tourist attraction. The account explicitly presents the story as a lie, making the exchange an instance of improvised social performance rather than reliable family history. After speeches by the president and Marcos, the Fifth Dimension performed. Warhol asked a Marine whether there was a pay phone, prompting laughter. Bob wanted to remain and dance, but Warhol took the limousine back to the hotel, called Jon Gould, and went to sleep at midnight.

The White House as a recorded setting

Across the two visits, the White House is associated with distinct forms of public access: a cover interview and a state dinner. In the first, Warhol arrived as an interviewer whose questions and presentation had already become a source of conflict with Bob. In the second, he was a guest navigating an official reception, dinner, speeches, and entertainment. The diary does not turn these occasions into a continuous institutional portrait. It records instead the points at which the setting affected Warhol: his anger about the interview’s presentation, his nerves about Washington and television lights, and his relief at an outdoor dinner without cameras.

The record also reflects the diary’s method of production. From the fall of 1976, Pat Hackett and Warhol used weekday morning phone calls to recount his activities and expenses from the previous day. The calls were conversations, and Warhol’s daily accounts could take one or two hours, though the project had begun as a brief expense log as well as a personal record. The White House scenes consequently reach the reader as selected diary accounts of what Warhol remembered and chose to report, not as an independent transcript of either occasion.

Selection and narrative perspective

The published diary is an edited selection from an original manuscript of about 20,000 pages. Hackett explained that she cut whole days and sometimes weeks, as well as names and parts of individual days, to shape a readable volume. The two White House visits are therefore discrete glimpses, not evidence that every detail of either event has been preserved. Their difference in tone nevertheless remains legible: the 1981 entry turns on a working interview and Warhol’s after-the-fact dissatisfaction, while the 1982 account follows anxiety into a dinner whose setting temporarily made him more comfortable.

Hackett also described removing much of the interpersonal dimension of her own conversations with Warhol and changing the few retained personal references so that she appeared in the third person. This editorial choice helped present the diary as an intimate account addressed to its reader, while keeping the focus on Warhol’s daily narrative. For the White House episodes, that means the reader encounters the venue through his reported attention to people, objects, schedules, and mood. Its significance in these entries lies less in a general description of power than in the way one place accommodates two different performances: a celebrity interviewer at work and a nervous guest among official company.