The first televised presidential debate is not what you would expect

Plus: New Yorker Staff Writer and historian Jill Lepore really hated the Barbie movie... |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer In light of the Aug. 23 GOP presidential debate, TIME’s Melissa August wrote about the surprising story behind the first televised presidential debate. While most people might think of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate as the first, Senate historian Betty Koed makes the case that it was actually the Nov. 4, 1956, debate on CBS between former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who were acting as surrogates for former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and President Dwight Eisenhower, respectively. It was a fiery exchange, and in Smith’s autobiography, she recounted her careful approach to her style for the evening, with a dig at the First Lady:  “My memory of Mrs. Roosevelt’s clothes led us to think that with her crowded schedule and personal temperament, she probably would not dress especially for the program.” Click here to read the full story. Read the rest of the Washington Bureau’s coverage of this week’s presidential debate at time.com/politics.

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FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1957: Althea Gibson Boris Chaliapin The Aug. 26, 1957, cover of TIME “In Chicago last month, when she turned up for the national Clay Courts championship, hotels in stuffy Oak Park would not rent her a room; the swank Pump Room of the Ambassador East Hotel refused reservations for a luncheon in her honor. Officials and newsmen burned with rage, but Althea hardly noticed it. ‘I tried to feel responsibilities to Negroes, but that was a burden on my shoulders,’ says she. ‘If I did this or that, would they like it? Perhaps it contributed to my troubles in tennis. Now I'm playing tennis to please me, not them.’" Read More » This week in 1987: Steve Martin Ted Thai The Aug. 24, 1987, cover of TIME “You will get neither cruel shoes nor happy feet when visiting Steve Martin. He is polite and distant with strangers. During an interview, he compulsively applies Chap Stick to his lips (‘Do you have chapped lips?’ ‘No, I have a habit’). He is fiercely protective of his privacy. ‘I don't want the way I live to get out to the world,’ he says. ‘Once private things get into print, everybody knows exactly who you are, and it makes you dull.’” Read More » This week in 2010: Jonathan Franzen Dan Winters The Aug. 23, 2010, cover of TIME “His fourth novel, Freedom, will arrive at the end of August…He remains a devotee of the wide shot, the all-embracing, way-we-live-now novel. In that sense he's a throwback, practically a Victorian. His characters aren't jewel thieves or geniuses. They don't have magical powers, they don't solve mysteries, and they don't live in the future. They don't bite one another, or not more than is strictly plausible. Freedom isn't about a subculture; it's about the culture. It's not a microcosm; it's a cosm.” Read More »

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