Just Jackie

by Edward Klein

  Other details of the “Camelot” interview are taken from White’s handwritten notes of his interview with Jackie. White donated these notes, known as the “Camelot Documents,” to the Kennedy Library in 1969, but they were not available to researchers until May 1995, one year after Jackie’s death.

  Books that were used in this section include Theodore White’s autobiography, In Search of History (Warner Books, 1978), and Joyce Hoffman’s Theodore H. White and Journalism as Illusion (University of Missouri Press, 1995), which aided the author in his understanding of the Camelot myth and the ways in which Theodore White and Jackie collaborated in creating it.

  The author conducted interviews with Theodore White’s former wife, Nancy Hechtor, and his children, David and Hay den.

  Descriptions of the weather in New York and Hyannis on November 29, 1963, were drawn from The New York Times, November 30, 1963.

  TWO: BEYOND HER WILDEST DREAMS

  The account of Jackie’s Thanksgiving weekend in Hyannis Port, and how she coped with Caroline’s reaction to her father’s death, are drawn from several published sources: Rita Dallas’s The Kennedy Case (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973), a memoir written with Jeanira Ratcliffe by the head nurse to Joseph P. Kennedy during the last eight years of his life; Robert Curran’s The Kennedy Women (Lancer Books, 1964); Lester David’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Birch Lane Press, 1994); C. David Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie (Lyle Stuart, 1989); and Marianne Means’s The Woman in the White House (Random House, 1963).

  Caroline’s first words are quoted in A Life in Pictures: Remembering Jackie {Life, special commemorative edition, July 15, 1994).

  The story about the white shark game that John F. Kennedy made up to amuse his daughter, Caroline, was recounted by Janet Auchincloss in her oral history housed at the John F. Kennedy Library.

  The author first learned of Jackie’s consultation with the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson during an interview with Peter Beard. The description of Jackie’s consultation with Erikson is drawn chiefly from interviews conducted by the author and a research assistant with Erik Erikson’s biographer, Dr. Lawrence Friedman; Erikson’s children, Kai Erikson and Sue Erikson Bloland; Margaret Brenman-Gibson, a close colleague of Erikson’s; and Richard Goodwin.

  Other published sources for the chapter on Erik Erikson include “Configurations in Play,” from Erik Erikson’s A Way of Looking at Things (W. W. Norton, 1987); Current Biography; History & Theory Magazine (May 1, 1995); a New Yorker profile (1970); Newsweek (May 23, 1994); and The New York Times (May 13, 1994).

  Two other excellent sources for details on Erikson’s life and work were Margaret Brenman-Gibson’s film Erik Erikson: A Life’s Work and Dr. Richard Evans’s film Professor Erik Erikson.

  The scene of Jackie refusing to confess to a priest after JFK’s death was recounted in Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie. Descriptions of the birthday parties Jackie gave Caroline and John Jr. in the White House were drawn from Heymann and from Wendy Leigh’s Prince Charming (Dutton, 1993). Bunny Mellon’s calling Jackie “a witch” is recounted in Wayne Koestenbaum’s Jackie under My Skin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995).

  Much of the material about Jackie’s relationship with her father, John Vernou Bouvier III; her mother, Janet Auchincloss; and her Vogue Prix de Paris entry is derived from the author’s previous book, All Too Human (Pocket Books, 1996). See the notes in that book, especially the notes to chapters two and three.

  Additional interviews were conducted with Robin Duke and Charles Whitehouse.

  THREE: NO PLACE TO GO

  The account of Jackie and her children arriving back in Washington from Thanksgiving weekend in Hyannis Port is drawn from the Boston Herald, December 2, 1963.

  Details of the changeover of the Oval Office after JFK’s assassination are drawn from William Manchester’s The Death of a President (Harper & Row, 1967) and Wendy Leigh’s Prince Charming (Dutton, 1993). In interviews with the author, Horace Busby recalled the reactions of Harry Truman and the White House female press corps, and Jack Valenti explained how LBJ took pains not to look like a usurper. Accounts of this transition period are also drawn from the oral histories of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Liz Carpenter, housed in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, and from Mary Barelli Gallagher’s memoir, My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy (David McKay, 1969).

  The original memo Jackie sent to Lady Bird Johnson from Hyannis Port, dated Sunday, December 12, 1963, is housed in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library.

  The description of Marie Harriman was drawn from an interview with Peter Duchin.

  Jackie’s family background and her life at Merrywood are described in the author’s first Kennedy biography, All Too Human (Pocket Books, 1996). Nina Auchincloss Straight recalls how Jackie’s bedroom in Hyannis Port copied her beloved Merrywood bedroom in J. C. Suares and J. Spencer Beck’s Uncommon Grace (Thomasson-Grant, 1994).

  “I suppose I was in a state of shock” is recounted in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s oral history in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library.

  JFK funeral preparations are described in Angier Biddle Duke’s papers at the Duke University Library Private Collections in Durham, North Carolina.

  The history of Lincoln and the burial of his children in Arlington and elsewhere is in The New York Times, December 5, 1963.

  The account of Janet Auchincloss’s involvement in the interment and reinterment of Jackie’s two children beside their father in Arlington National Cemetery is drawn from the author’s interviews with Janet’s son, James Auchincloss, and with Charles Hayes, the son of John F. Hayes Jr., the funeral director of Hayes-O’Neill funeral home in Newport at that time.

  Descriptions of Ed Zimny and the plane he piloted are drawn from Joe McGuinness’s The Last Brother (Simon & Schuster, 1993). Cardinal dishing talks about the part he played in the interment of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy in John Henry Cutler’s Cardinal Cushing of Boston (Hawthorn Books, 1970).

  Information on the relationship between venereal infections and infertility is drawn from the author’s interview with Dr. Atilla Toth, a specialist in the field.

  Janet Auchincloss’s attitude toward Catholic prelates is derived from the author’s interview with James Auchincloss.

  “What could I have done? How could I have changed it?” comes from a conversation that Jackie had with Kitty Carlisle Hart, who recounted it to the author.

  Other details of the Arlington reinterment are drawn from The New York Times, December 5, 1963.

  FOUR: THE FREAK OF N STREET

  The interior designer Billy Baldwin recounted his conversation with Jacqueline Kennedy in Georgetown in his memoir Billy Baldwin Remembers (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974).

  “The smaller the better” is a quote from a previously unpublished letter from Jackie to Diana Vreeland, which is included in a private collection of letters that was offered for sale by Ursus Rare Books in New York City.

  Benjamin Bradlee quoted the letter from Jackie to him and his then wife Tony in his memoir, A Good Life (Simon & Schuster, 1995).

  In an interview with the author, Robert McNamara described the scene of his giving a portrait of JFK to Jackie after the assassination.

  Details of the evening Jackie spent with Marlon Brando, her sister Lee, and George Englund were provided by a close friend of Brando’s who wishes to remain anonymous.

  The English words to the song “Danke Schoen” were written by Kurt Schwabach and Milt Gabler; the music was written by Bert Kaempfert. The song was recorded by Wayne Newton on the Capitol label.

  Information on Clint Hill as a U.S. Secret Service agent was gleaned from a number of interviews by the author and his research assistants with Ham Brown, executive director of the Association of Former Secret Service Agents, and former U.S.S.S. agents Larry Newman, Paul Landis, Bill Livingood, and Frank Yeager.

  Details on Clint Hill’s years at Concordia College were kindly provided by Sharon Hoverton, Concordia College archivist, and college classmates Rudy Moe, Do
n Ylvisaker, and Hugh Kaste.

  Mike Wallace’s December 7, 1975, Sixty Minutes interview with Clint Hill, “Secret Agent No. 9,” was kindly provided by Don Hewitt, executive producer of Sixty Minutes.

  In 1978 the United States Secret Service commissioned a National Institute of Mental Health study of the effects of stress on S.S. agents. Although Dr. Frank Ochberg, associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health at the time, was not able to divulge any information about this confidential report, he was helpful in describing the type of post-traumatic stress disorder that an agent such as Clint Hill might have suffered after JFK’s assassination.

  Further background information on Clint Hill, stress, and the U.S. Secret Service was gleaned from a number of published sources, including George Rush’s Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent (Donald I. Fine, 1988), Dennis V. McCarthy’s Protecting the President (William Morrow, 1985), and Rufus Youngblood’s 20 Years in the Secret Service (Simon & Schuster, 1973).

  Periodical sources included the London Mail on Sunday, September 26, 1993; U.S. News & World Report, December 2 and December 23, 1963; Newsweek, December 9, 1963; and Time, October 6, 1975.

  Information about Secret Service agents drinking the night before the assassination was gleaned from U.S.S.S. Chief Rowley’s testimony before the Warren Commission; Clint Hill’s testimony was also available in The Warren Report (Associated Press, 1964).

  The Associated Press also supplied photos of Clint Hill and other Secret Service agents.

  Details on Jackie and Clint Hill’s visit to the Jockey Club came from the author’s interview with an eyewitness who wishes to remain anonymous. Further details on the Jockey Club itself came from interviews with Jack Scarella, former maitre d’, and Louise Gore, former owner of the Jockey Club. Background description of the Jockey Club was also gleaned from the Washington Times, January 8, 1991, and November 11, 1993, and from the January 1989 issue of Cosmopolitan.

  FIVE: “A GATHERING OF THE WRECKAGE”

  The narrative of Jackie’s trip to Antigua is based on interviews with two eyewitnesses: Charles “Chuck” Spalding, an intimate of the Kennedys, and Paul Leonard, who has long served as Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon’s primary interior decorator.

  Background on Bunny Mellon and her relationship with Jackie was gleaned from interviews by the author and his research assistants with Hélène Arpels, Robin Duke, Peter Duchin, Mark Hampton, Kitty Carlisle Hart, John Loring, and I. M. Pei, and with others, who wish to remain anonymous.

  Bunny Mellon is quoted as saying, “I remember kneeling …” in William Manchester’s The Death of a President (Harper & Row, 1967).

  In an interview with the author, Paul Leonard recalled that “Mrs. Smith” was the Secret Service code name used for Jackie in Antigua.

  General background on Antigua and the Mellon property was gleaned from interviews with Barrie Pickering, an island resident; Victor Carmichael of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourist Board; and Jack Johnson of Johnson Construction in Antigua.

  Principal published sources on Bunny Mellon and the Mellon family include a memoir by Bunny’s father, Gerard Barnes Lambert, All Out of Step (Doubleday, 1956), Katharine Graham’s Personal History (Random House, 1997), David E. Koskoff ‘s The Mellons (T. Y. Crowell, 1978), Billy Baldwin and Michael Gardine’s Billy Baldwin (Little, Brown, 1985), and Paul Mellon’s Reflections in a Silver Spoon, written with John Baskett (William Morrow, 1992).

  Several articles on Paul and Bunny Mellon were particularly helpful: “Paul Mellon” in Town & Country, May 1978; “A Cool Mellon” in Vanity Fair, April 1992; and “A Most Generous Gentleman” in Town & Country, December 1994. Other articles appeared in the Chicago Tribune, December 14, 1990; The Washington Post, April 7, 1992; the Washington Times, January 2, 1997; The Washington Post, February 23, 1983; and Paula Dietz’s “The Private World of a Great Gardener,” The New York Times, June 3, 1982.

  Principal published sources on the Mellons and Antigua include Antigua and Barbuda: A Little Bit of Paradise and articles in Vogue, May 1963; Holiday, March 1962; and House Beautiful, December 1959.

  The Drew Pearson article about the possible marriage of Lee Radziwill and Aristotle Onassis was referred to in several published sources including Diana DuBois’s In Her Sisters Shadow (Little, Brown, 1995), and Arianna Stassinopoulos’s Maria Callas (Simon & Schuster, 1981).

  The story recounted in “As Close as You Can Get,” detailing events that occurred in Antigua and the relationship between Jackie and Robert F. Kennedy, came from interviews with Robert Kennedy’s biographer James Hilty, and with Chuck Spalding, Charles Bartlett, William Manchester, Richard Goodwin, Joan Braden, Helen Thomas, and Lee Radziwill’s biographer Diana DuBois.

  “I’d read it quite a lot before” was from a June 2, 1976, tape-recorded interview with Jackie by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., which was quoted in his book Robert Kennedy and His Times (Houghton Mifflin, 1978). The Schlesinger book is also the source for the quote from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, which was a favorite of RFK’s. Bobby’s reliance on the wisdom of ancient Greek literature to deal with his grief is recounted in James Hilty’s Robert Kennedy (Temple University Press, 1997). It was also recounted in Charles Spalding’s oral history housed at the John F. Kennedy Library.

  Pierre Salinger’s recollection of Robert Kennedy’s manic football game was drawn from Lester and Irene David’s Bobby Kennedy (Dodd, Mead, 1986) and Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s The Kennedys (Summit Books, 1984).

  Robert Kennedy’s statement “I thought it would be me” is recounted in Hilty’s RFK biography.

  Other published sources for this section include Lester David’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Birch Lane Press, 1994), C. David Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie (Lyle Stuart, 1989), Frieda Kramer’s Jackie (Grosset & Dunlap, 1979), and Edward DeBlasio’s “The Friendship That Saved Two Lives,” Pageant, July 1964.

  Principal published sources for the relationship between RFK and LBJ include Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie, Michael R. Beschloss’s Taking Charge (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Jerry Oppenheimer’s The Other Mrs. Kennedy (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), William vanden Heuvel and Milton Gwirtzman’s On His Own (Doubleday, 1970), and Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Little, Brown, 1980).

  Jackie talks about the RFK-LBJ relationship in her oral history housed in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Texas.

  Further details on the relationship between Jackie and Bobby were drawn from interviews with Charles Bartlett, Joan Braden, Paul “Red” Fay, James Hilty, and William Manchester.

  The description of RFK as “in a trance” after the assassination is drawn from William Manchester’s Controversy and Other Essays in Journalism (Little, Brown, 1976).

  Murray Kempton’s verdict on the relationship between RFK and JFK is drawn from Laurence Learner’s The Kennedy Women (Villard Books, 1994).

  SIX: AN UNERRING SENSE OF STARDOM

  The narrative in the “Mister Manchester” section is derived primarily from the author’s interview with Don Congdon, William Manchester’s literary agent, and from William Manchester’s Controversy and Other Essays in Journalism (Little, Brown, 1976).

  In “Disguises and Smiles,” the description of Jackie’s apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue is drawn from the author’s eyewitness notes based on his personal visits there on two separate occasions, and from articles that appeared in The Washington Post, May 26, 1994, and in House Beautiful, September 1994. Other published sources include Lester David’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Birch Lane Press, 1994) and Frieda Kramer’s Jackie (Award Books, 1975).

  Nancy Tuckerman’s stories about going apartment-hunting with Jackie disguised as a nanny, and of the day Jackie moved into 1040 Fifth Avenue, are contained in “A Personal Reminiscence” from Sotheby’s 1996 auction catalog, The Estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

  Jackie’s letter to Jim Bishop dated September 17, 1964, appears in Manchester’s Controversy and Other Essays in Jo
urnalism.

  Details about Jackie’s contributions to Robert Kennedy’s Senate campaign are recounted in Jerry Oppenheimer’s biography of Ethel Kennedy, The Other Mrs. Kennedy (St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

  The background information on Jackie and Oliver Smith that forms the basis for “Lessons in Self-Improvement” was derived from numerous interviews by the author and a research assistant with Richard D’Arcy, Smith’s friend and companion; Lloyd Burlingame, former chair of the New York University Tisch School Department of Design, who co-taught an advanced stage design class with Smith for twenty-two years; Aileen Mehle, the columnist “Suzy”; and Kitty Carlisle Hart.

  Principal published sources include Lloyd Burlingame’s “The Design Department of the Tisch School of Arts: A Chronology from the Perspective of the Chair 1971–1996”; “Remembering Oliver,” a tribute to Oliver Smith compiled by American Ballet Theatre; Gerald Clarke’s Capote (Simon & Schuster, 1988); Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers (Random House, 1987); Charles Payne’s American Ballet Theatre (Knopf, 1978); Bob Cola-cello’s Holy Terror (HarperCollins, 1990); Charles Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis (Houghton Mifflin, 1997); George Plimpton’s Truinan Capote (Doubleday, 1997); Oliver Smith’s obituary, The New York Times, January 25, 1994; and a series of five articles by Liz Smith titled “Jackie Comes Off Her Pedestal,” which appeared first in the New York World Journal Tribune (December 1966-January 1967) and later in Cosmopolitan.