Shirley MacLaine has recalled an uneasy encounter with Donald Trump in the 1980s.
In an excerpt from her new book, The Wall of Life: Pictures and Stories from This Marvelous Lifetime, the 90-year-old Oscar winner shared that she’s met 13 US presidents, including the 45th and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In the book, she recalled meeting the former president “at some function” in the 1980s, noting that the whole encounter made her feel extremely uncomfortable.
MacLaine told People that she and Trump first crossed paths while she was checking out a space in Manhattan’s 666 Fifth Avenue building, a property Trump owned at the time. Back then, Trump was a real-estate mogul quickly gaining notoriety after appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show and David Letterman.
“There was a vacant apartment in that building,” she told the outlet. “I went up to look at it and walked in because I knew it was available, and he was there. We met in a room where no one else was.”
She noted, “In his head, I could see he was undressing himself and me, and I got out of there very fast. Didn’t take the apartment either – and it was too expensive.”
MacLaine didn’t just look back on her encounters with world leaders; she reflected on how these moments placed her squarely amid history. One such night was JFK’s legendary 1962 birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, where Marilyn Monroe famously serenaded the president with her sultry “Happy Birthday”. MacLaine joined Jimmy Durante on stage that evening, adding her star power to what would go down as one of the most unforgettable nights in presidential history.
But that wasn’t her only bout of involvement with the Kennedys, with the book featuring a photo from the afterparty alongside a juicy story involving John and Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. It also includes a snapshot of MacLaine with the youngest Kennedy sibling, Ted, taken 22 years later. “Here, I’m recounting the story to Teddy in 1984,” she writes. “He’s laughing about how his brothers always managed to pull it off.”
MacLaine has met almost every president since Harry Truman assumed the position in 1945 (after Franklin D Roosevelt died), with one exception to date.
“I never encountered [Richard] Nixon,” she recalled. “I thought he was ridiculous and wouldn’t want to have met him.”
She remembered being “fascinated by [Jimmy Carter’s] intelligence” and genuinely liking “[Ronald] Reagan as a person very much; he was a show business favorite.”
