Nation: The Leader: Everett Dirkson

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Princess & Politics. Dirksen and Ropp produced two other notable theatricals. One was a one-act allegory called The Slave with Two Faces, in which Ev cavorted on stage wearing a ram's-head mask, black socks, short black tights and nothing else. "I remember thinking," recalls one witness, "that the party lines would be buzzing tomorrow." The other was Percy MacKaye's A Thousand, Years Ago, in which Ev played a pulsating lover panting after the charms of the Princess of Pekin. He won her, of course—and he kept he, for the "princess" was played by a girl named Louella Carver, who became Dirksen's real-life bride in 1927.

Fortunately for the Republican Party—not to say Broadway—Dirksen's strict, God-fearing mother did not take kindly to the idea of her son becoming a professional actor. Dirksen therefore hitched his wagon to a political star. He announced for city finance commissioner in 1926 and won. Four years later, he decided to run against Peoria's incumbent Republican Congressman, William E. Hull. One key issue: the importation to the U.S. of blackstrap molasses, a vital question for Pekin's corn-processing and distillery businesses. Ev lost, but on the day after election he began campaigning for the 1932 primaries. He castigated Hull for voting for a bill that would have strengthened the enforcement of the Prohibition Amendment. In whisky-making places like Peoria and Pekin. Hull was finished, and Dirksen won.

In the general campaign of November, he "had no stomach for hurling real or fancied charges against the Democrats," and no particular desire to laud Herbert Hoover either. Instead, he praised the memory of Woodrow Wilson, argued for economic reform, and won by 23,000 votes against a Roosevelt landslide.

In Washington, Dirksen spent his evenings at law school, and after one or two tries passed the bar. In the House, he took Republican Whip Joe Martin's advice, kept his nose clean and worked hard. Though he counted himself a conservative, a protectionist and an isolationist, he hewed to no strict party line, voted "aye" on a number of F.D.R.'s New Deal programs. He voted against both Lend-Lease and extending the draft, but he changed his mind in September 1941, when he exhorted the Congress to show a ''unity of purpose'' behind the President. To disavow or oppose F.D.R.'s policies now, cried Dirksen, "could only weaken the President's position, impair our prestige and imperil the nation." He foresaw even then the need for some kind of postwar rehabilitation program, and years later, when the Marshall Plan and other aid proposals were submitted to the Hill, Dirksen supported them strongly.

Big Doctor. Then one morning in 1947, at the age of 51, Dirksen's booming political career suddenly quieted. He awoke with "cobwebs" before him, and they would not be brushed away. Doctors called it chorioretinitis—inflammation in the retina of his right eye. Medication did little good, and one physician recommended removal of the eye. Dirksen decided to seek further consultations at Johns Hopkins Hospital. On the train, Dirksen recalls, "I got down on my knees and uttered my prayers, whether blindness would be my lot." At Johns Hopkins, the specialist also urged removal.