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It helps to have the same birthday; you can save, for example, on parties. Take two renowned scholars, both born October 15, who have celebrated many anniversaries together. John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg professor of economics emeritus, might find here a certain economy of scale. Perhaps historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. '38, JF '43, would first note that their birthdates are nine years apart-Galbraith's in 1908 and his own in 1917. The two have known each other for almost 60 years now; theirs is surely one of the longest-running academic friendships of all time. "You can reasonably say this has been a lifelong association," says Galbraith. "I don't recall that I've ever had a serious disagreement with Arthur."

Schlesinger announces his resignation as a White House special adviser, January 1964.

The two men have never been intellectual rivals, much less ideological ones. Their competition has been for worldly success, a game in which both have come out winners: they are two of the most famous intellectuals alive. Over the decades, mutual admiration has grown. Schlesinger describes Galbraith as "a very remarkable man...irrepressibly ironical," then adds, "He's extremely generous, kind, and solicitous of his friends. He has done things for graduate students both monetarily and intellectuallyKen is helpful in all good causes." For his part, Galbraith gave a typically succinct response when Vanity Fair magazine sent its "Proust Questionnaire" to him in 1994. To the question, "Who are your heroes?" Galbraith replied, "Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr."

Stars themselves, they both know many celebrities. Movie buff Schlesinger was once film critic for Show magazine. While in Washington as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy '40, LL.D. '56, he met American Film Institute founder George Stevens Jr., who later met Galbraith as well. "I don't think there's been any duo to compare with them," Stevens says. "There might be a few people of similar intellect, but very few who have their humor and wit." That wit has expressed itself in several ways, including the many jacket blurbs the two men have written for each other's books. One of the best blurbs-Schlesinger wrote it for the dust jacket of Galbraith's The New Industrial State-never appeared: "This book is every bit as good as its author thinks it is." Zinging Galbraith's self-regard is an enterprise undermined by the economist's own preemptive strikes. Needle-pointed on a cushion in his Cambridge home is "Galbraith's First Law," namely, "Modesty is a greatly overrated virtue." Another cushion bears another motto: "Money cannot buy a friend," it says, "but bid anyway."

Galbraith and friend at Logan Airport, March 1965, en route to an Indian art exhibit at the Fogg.

When Galbraith first arrived at Harvard in 1934, Samuel Eliot Morison '08, Ph.D. '12, Litt.D. '36, and Arthur Schlesinger Sr. were the stars of the history department. "Everybody knew Arthur's father," Galbraith says. "At that time he was one of the two or three most famous of Harvard professors." Schlesinger recalls, "My father was very fond of Ken. They knew each other in the late 1930s when Ken was an economics instructor in Winthrop House." In a discussion of that era, Arthur's son Andrew Schlesinger '70 recently asked Galbraith if he had been teaching at Harvard in the late 1930s when Arthur Jr. was an undergraduate. After a pause, the economist grinned broadly, and replied: "Brilliantly."

Although they may have crossed paths then in Cambridge, both men recall first getting acquainted in Washington during World War II. In the spring of 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt '04, LL.D. '29, put the 33-year-old Galbraith in charge of domestic price controls. "The most powerful job I ever had," he muses. "My life has been downhill ever since." In 1942 Schlesinger joined the writers bureau in the domestic branch of the Office of War Information, then moved to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1943 to put out a weekly intelligence magazine. "I remember going to the Galbraiths' home occasionally in 1943. We had a rather casual acquaintance," Schlesinger recalls. "Ken was very embattled as price controller and eventually was forced out by business interests that objected to his success in keeping prices down."

In June 1944, Schlesinger went to London "just in time for the buzz-bombs," then moved along to Paris, joined the army, and went to Germany. "In 1945 Ken came to Europe for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey," Schlesinger says. "George Ball was codirector. They had commandeered a castle in Bad Nauheim. I was with the OSS in Wiesbaden. From time to time I would go to this castle where George and Ken reigned in baronial splendor."

After the war, both men found themselves writing for Fortune magazine. Galbraith was an editor and Schlesinger, again based in Washington, was a freelance contributor, writing on the Supreme Court and the Good Neighbor policy, among other things. In part, the two scholars have become famous because their works appeal to a broad audience. Both have thrived despite the academic prejudice against popularity. "If you write for a large public, that means you're down at that level," Galbraith reflects. "I thought it was lucky that I got tenure [1949] before The Affluent Society was published [1958]."

Lions in winter: Galbraith welcomes Schlesinger back to Francis Avenue.

Schlesinger returned to Harvard in 1947 as an associate professor of history. The friendship really jelled in 1950 when the Galbraiths bought their house on Francis Avenue, separated only by a backyard wall from the Schlesinger property on Irving Street. The two men had contrasting backgrounds: Schlesinger came from a sophisticated academic family, while Galbraith was a country boy from rural Canada-recall that his doctorate, conferred by the University of California at Berkeley in 1934, is in agricultural economics. But they had much in common. "We were neighbors and political coreligionists," Galbraith says. In a sense, the New Deal formed them both; their shared faith was-and is-in liberal Democratic politics and social programs. They were among the group that founded the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) during the winter of 1946-47. "It was a strong New Deal group at the beginning," says Schlesinger. "We were liberals, but separate from the far left," adds Galbraith. "I was probably more tolerant of the far left than Arthur." (Schlesinger presided over the ADA from 1952 to 1954, and Galbraith in 1967-68.)

They were also family men. In 1937 Galbraith married Catherine (Kitty) Atwater, A.M. '36, and their clan now embraces sons J. Alan '63, Peter '73, and James '73. (A fourth son, Douglas, died of leukemia at age 7.) In 1940 Schlesinger married Marian Cannon '34, a painter, writer, illustrator, and the daughter of Cornelia (James) Cannon, A.B. 1899, and Walter Bradford Cannon, A.B. 1896, A.M. 1897, M.D. 1900, the celebrated physiologist and a mainstay of the Medical School faculty. "I was brought up in an academic family," she says. "Women were there to take care of the horrid details of life and to 'support the genius.'" The Schlesinger family grew with the arrival of twins Katharine and Stephen '64, LL.B. '68, daughter Christina '68, and son Andrew '70.

The brick wall between the two backyards is a high one, but the 6-foot, 8-inch, Galbraith could see over it and converse with Schlesinger while each man stood on his own property. "My father rarely played catch with me when I was a boy," Stephen Schlesinger recalls. "But I could occasionally get him into a game of catch when he was standing near the wall, talking to Ken."

Bizarre events occasionally brought the two families together. "We'd moved into this home and one day I was taking some varnish off furniture with paint remover," says Kitty Galbraith. "The housekeeper came to me and said, 'Mrs. Galbraith, there's a donkey in the Schlesingers' yard.' I thought, Oh, dear, too much paint remover."

But in fact there was a donkey, shipped as a prank to the Democratic Schlesingers by conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr. "I'd come back from shopping at Filene's Basement and there was this donkey on the front lawn," Marian Schlesinger remembers. "It came from this pain in the neck, Bill Buckley. The children were sitting on its back. Arthur was off campaigning. The animal was hungry and there was no food for it-it was eating everything in sight; we went to the neighbors to get some garden clippings to feed it. Five people tried to push it into a station wagon to take it away, but the animal would not budge. Finally I realized that Stephen had signed for it-but he was underage. So I called Railway Express and had them come and retrieve the creature." When Buckley got his ass back, he had a donkey cart built-and named the animal "Arthur."

At the time, Schlesinger and Galbraith were working as speechwriters for Adlai Stevenson's 1952 Democratic presidential campaign-Galbraith specializing in economics, Schlesinger in political history. "In those days people gave different speeches each time they spoke," Schlesinger explains. "Now they have a basic speech that they repeat. Speechwriters used to be called ghostwriters-they were supposed to be invisible. Today the news stories tell who wrote the speech."

Stevenson, in fact, was loath to admit that he even had speechwriters. After Schlesinger met Galbraith at the bus terminal in Springfield, Illinois, to escort him to Stevenson headquarters, the campaign immediately confined the economist to a hotel room. After a day of that, Stevenson admitted to using writers and Galbraith emerged into daylight. Both men would work in Stevenson's 1956 campaign as well.

During the 1950s, Sunday evenings in Cambridge were enlivened by a weekly cocktail party known as "the hour" that was hosted by literary lion Bernard DeVoto '18 and his wife, Avis. About six couples, including the Galbraiths and Schlesingers, convened at the DeVoto residence to "talk about life, history, and politics," Schlesinger recalls. According to Galbraith, "We met every Sunday evening to praise the writing we had done the week before, and drank a fabulous number of martinis." (DeVoto became such a martini expert that he eventually wrote an entire book on the subject, fittingly titled The Hour.) "I long since gave up martinis, but I notice that Arthur still has one," remarks Galbraith. (Schlesinger confirms his daily ritual of a pre-lunch martini.)

Then there were the Saturday night dinners at Locke-Ober restaurant in Boston that Galbraith and Schlesinger periodically shared with then-Senator John Kennedy. Sometimes their wives and others like McGeorge Bundy, JF '48, LL.D. '61, then dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, would attend. "We'd always have the same dinner: lobster stew, with plenty of what Kennedy called 'knuckle meat.' We'd talk about what he was doing in Washington, and his presidential ambitions," says Galbraith. "We would get one of the private rooms," Schlesinger recalls. "It was both a social and political occasion. Kennedy was excellent company, interested in everything."

Galbraith had known Kennedy since JFK's college days. In the late 1950s the economist acted as a liaison between Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt. She was initially hostile to Kennedy because his father, Joseph Kennedy '12, had been an isolationist strongly at odds with FDR prior to World War II; she also felt that Kennedy had been too timid in opposing Senator Joseph McCarthy. "I persuaded her to have a meeting with Kennedy, which took the form of an appearance on her television program from Brandeis University," says Galbraith. "This was around New Year's Day 1960. There was a great celebration-I had finally brought them together! I was very pleased with myself. And the TV interview went off very well.

"But afterwards, the press asked Mrs. Roosevelt, 'Does this mean that you will support Kennedy for president?' and she said, 'It certainly does not'-collapsing the whole occasion. That made the news, not the interview," Galbraith continues. "Kennedy showed up at Locke-Ober very depressed. He said, 'I always thought there might be a college professor with some talent for politics. You've established that they don't exist.'"

Nevertheless, after the Democratic convention, Kennedy visited Mrs. Roosevelt at Hyde Park. "She was quite taken with him and became very enthusiastic in the campaign," says Schlesinger, who, after the election, became special assistant to the president. Galbraith, meanwhile, served as Kennedy's ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963.

Actress Angie Dickinson, best known as the star of the Police Woman television series, met Schlesinger in 1960, in the midst of the Kennedy campaign; the two became fast friends. She happened to visit Schlesinger at the White House on a day when Galbraith stopped by on his way back to India; since Dickinson was returning home to Los Angeles that day, she and Galbraith sat together on the transcontinental flight and kicked off another lifelong friendship. "I recall Ken pulling his briefcase out from under the seat. It had all those diplomatic decals from different countries on it," says Dickinson. "He told me, 'Don't be impressed-there are 92 ambassadors.'"

Galbraith was without doubt one of the wittiest, most literate diplomats ever to serve the United States. "The president loved Ken's dispatches," Schlesinger says. "They were far more readable than most diplomatic communications." (Harvard University Press is preparing a collection of the Galbraith-Kennedy correspondence.)

In fact, Galbraith's direct communications with JFK irked Secretary of State Dean Rusk, to whom Galbraith, like all ambassadors, was supposed to report. Rusk eventually asked Kennedy to stop Galbraith from bypassing the Department of State. The president told Galbraith that in the future he really ought to go through State. "Mr. President," Galbraith replied, "going through State is like fornicating through a mattress."

During those years, whenever Galbraith was in Washington he spent a good deal of time in Schlesinger's White House office. "When I wanted something especially brought to the attention of the president, Arthur was my channel," Galbraith says. "And he was not above asking me to communicate with the president on matters of shared concern."

One shared concern was Vietnam. Kennedy sent Galbraith there in 1962 to check out the situation. "He gave a very pessimistic report; it holds up very well," says Schlesinger, who later joined Galbraith in opposing the involvement in Vietnam. "We differed not only with the military but with some of our friends, who came to be known as the Cold War liberals," Galbraith recalls. "The person with whom we were most at odds was Dean Rusk."

In 1963 Schlesinger resigned his Harvard professorship in deference to the University's rule restricting leaves of absence to two years. The history department did not fill the vacancy and in 1964 invited him to return, but, as he later wrote, "I had lived nearly 40 years of my life in Cambridge, and, as Thoreau said when he left Walden, I felt that I had several more lives to live and could spare no more time for this one." He spent a semester at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and then accepted a professorship at the City University of New York, where he remains today, as Schweitzer professor of the humanities emeritus, engaged in writing his memoirs. Arthur and Marian Schlesinger divorced in 1970; a year later he married Alexandra Emmet '58, with whom he raised a second family.

Galbraith, in contrast, returned to Harvard after his leave and has spent the rest of his career in Cambridge. He swims in Blodgett Pool, is an active speaker, and continues publishing books-most recently, The Good Society. In 1993 Galbraith's publisher celebrated the economist's eighty-fifth birthday with a gala at the Boston Public Library; naturally, Schlesinger was there, honoring a birthday of his own. The year before, the Century Association in New York City was the venue for Schlesinger's seventy-fifth birthday party, as it had been for Galbraith's eightieth in 1988.

The two friends share credit for another celebration, the famous garden party at the Galbraiths' house held annually on the afternoon of Commencement Day (see Harvard Magazine, September-October 1993, page 64). Arthur and Marian Schlesinger began the tradition in the early 1950s, in part to honor their friends who had received honorary degrees; then-Senator and Mrs. Kennedy used to attend. In 1964, after Schlesinger had permanently decamped, the Galbraiths inherited the party, and have given it ever since. Thirty years ago there were only 50 or 60 on the guest list, "but everybody continues on the list so it has grown until it's out of control," says Kitty Galbraith. Every year, it seems, old friends introduce new ones, gathering each June where Arthur and Ken were back-fence neighbors, so many years ago.

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Craig A. Lambert '69, Ph.D. '78, is an associate editor of this magazine.

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