Peter Lawford

by James Spada

  In that company, of course, Peter Lawford was outclassed. But the President knew that there were things he could learn from Peter that no one else in his inner circle could teach him. He’d sought his help with the televised debates with Nixon, and his concern for how he looked on television continued after his election. But there were other things he admired Peter for as well: his sophistication, his savoir faire, his sartorial flair. Kennedy appreciated Peter’s sense of style — and he wanted to learn from it.

  Milt Ebbins recalled the President, in the White House, emerging from his bedroom dressed for a reception for West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer. He asked Peter if he looked okay; when Peter replied that a different tie would go better with his suit, Jack went back to his closet and chose another one more to Peter’s liking. On another occasion Jack took Peter’s suggestion for a hairstylist, a young man just out of beauty school named Mickey Song, who had worked for Eva Gabor and Merv Griffin. As Song remembered it, “Merv liked what I did, and he really built me up to Peter.”

  Song’s first encounter with Peter Lawford was memorable. “I came into the house and Peter called out that he’d only be a minute.

  When he came out, he was stark naked. I had the feeling he was testing me, you know, because I was a hairdresser. I guess he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to come on to him or something. I just turned away and started going through my stuff.”

  Later, as he was cutting Peter’s hair, Song sensed that he was being tested again. “Peter kept asking me all these questions about the other celebrities I had worked on. He was really eager for gossip. But my intuition told me that he was trying to see whether I’d talk about him to my next client. So I kept saying that I really didn’t know anything about anybody.”

  Peter was pleased with his haircut, and Song apparently passed the test, because Peter suggested to both Jack and Bobby Kennedy that they use him. “The President had very thick, heavy hair,” Song recalls, “and on television it photographed like a toupee. They needed somebody to cut his hair differently, but they didn’t want to use anybody famous, because they were afraid he’d exploit the association for publicity. Plus they had been having trouble with people who worked for them doing tell-all articles.”

  The next time Song came to the Santa Monica house to cut Peter’s hair, Peter told him, “There’s someone upstairs whose hair I want you to cut next.” Song went upstairs and met Bobby, and he was amazed when the attorney general did exactly the same thing Peter had done: he appeared before him naked at first and then tried to get him to gossip about others.

  “Once again I didn’t react, and I told Bobby that I never speak about any of my clients to anyone. That pleased him, and finally I found myself cutting the President’s hair.” On that occasion, Jack Kennedy greeted him with a towel around his waist and allowed Song to see him naked before putting on a robe. During the haircut, the President tried to pry gossip out of Song. “It astonished me that all three of them did the same thing,” Song recalled, “but later when I thought about it I realized that Bobby and Peter were just emulating Jack. And I also realized that with the President, it wasn’t calculated. He was just real nonchalant about things, and he loved to hear show business gossip.”

  The President continually sought Peter’s advice about his appearance. When Jack made his first major televised address to the nation as President in 1961, Peter was in Las Vegas, appearing with Jimmy Durante in a two-man show at the Desert Inn. During the engagement, Peter was officially registered in a spacious penthouse suite that was essentially his Vegas headquarters and was usually overrun with hangers-on.

  To gain some privacy, Peter had booked another room, across the hall from the suite, to which no one had the phone number. There, he could take a nap or watch television and be left undisturbed. Bob Neal, who was staying in the suite, recalled one evening when he joined Lawford in this “getaway room.” Peter was lying in his bed, nodding off as he watched television. Neal began dial flipping. He decided to bypass a Frank Sinatra movie and then saw that President Kennedy was addressing the nation. “I started watching Jack’s speech, and got absorbed in it. After a few minutes, I looked over, and Peter had fallen sound asleep.”

  A few minutes after the President’s talk was over, the phone in Peter’s room rang. Peter awoke with a start, stared at the phone, and then looked at Bob Neal. According to Neal, “That phone never rang! I said, ‘It must be a wrong number.’ So we let it ring. But it was persistent. Finally Peter said, ‘Well, you answer it, Bob. They don’t know your voice.’”

  Neal picked up the phone, and heard the unmistakable accent: “I want to speak to Peter Lawford right now.” Neal replied, “Just a minute, sir,” and handed the receiver to Peter. “When I said that,” Neal recalled, “Peter knew exactly who it was. Jack Kennedy was probably the only person in the world who could have gotten through on that line.

  “Peter sat straight up in bed and grabbed the phone. He kept saying, ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.’”

  As he listened, Peter covered the mouthpiece with his hand and whispered frantically to Neal, “What did he talk about? How did he look?” With Neal’s sotto voce coaching, Peter responded to Jack’s questions. “Yes, sir, it went just fine. Your makeup looked good. Your delivery was strong. No, sir, the speech wasn’t too long.”

  “Peter managed to stumble through the call,” Neal recalled. “And afterward he was just drained. It really hit him hard. He didn’t want the President to know he hadn’t watched him. He was fast on his feet, though — he managed to improvise his way through it. After that, he paid more attention whenever Jack was on television.”

  As perceptive as Jack Kennedy was, he surely sensed that Peter had not paid close attention to his address, and he soon came to realize that very little of the Kennedy family’s political intensity was ever likely to rub off on his brother-in-law. Peter was uninterested in world affairs and had a lazy streak. If Jack Kennedy had thought he could change that, he learned otherwise.

  When Warner Brothers set out to make a movie version of Robert J. Donovan’s book PT 109, recounting Jack Kennedy’s World War II heroics when he rescued his men after a Japanese destroyer cut their PT boat in half, Kennedy quite naturally turned to Peter for advice. Visiting the President at a retreat he occupied for a time in Virginia, Peter found the script of PT 109 on his bed with a note from Jack: “Please read and be prepared to discuss at eight-thirty A.M.”

  Peter had had too much to drink that evening, and although he started the script he couldn’t keep his eyes open and fell asleep about a third of the way through it. The next morning, as the President prepared to be whisked back by helicopter to the White House, he asked Peter for his reaction to the script. When Peter explained what happened and said he had liked as much as he had read, Jack just smiled and left. He never asked Peter for any further input on the production of PT 109.

  IF PETER WASN’T MUCH HELP to President Kennedy on some fronts, he was very helpful in another respect. Bill Asher recalled Jack, just after his election, checking out some girls in bikinis on the beach in front of Peter’s house. “I’m gonna have to give all that up when I become President,” he said ruefully. “I hope it’s worth it.”

  Thanks in large measure to Peter Lawford, Jack didn’t have to “give all that up.” He could always count on Peter to have a beautiful girl in tow whenever he visited the White House without Pat (which he often did). Kennedy had always had ample opportunity for sexual escapades while traveling, of course, but what surprised and delighted him was how easy it was to frolic within the White House itself.

  He carried on concurrent dalliances with two of his secretaries, who came to be known to the Secret Service as Fiddle and Faddle. Milt Ebbins recalled sitting in the Oval Office with the President and Peter and expressing amazement that Jack was so nonchalant about having sexual liaisons in the White House. “Aren’t you afraid that Jackie will come back earlier than you expect and catch you with these broads?” Milt a
sked him. Jack smiled. “Jackie can’t get within two hundred yards of this place without my knowing about it,” he replied.

  Jack and Jackie spent a good deal of time apart, which allowed the President breathing room when it came to chasing after what he called “poon,” a crude term popular among Navy men to describe a woman’s sexual anatomy. But Jackie, like Pat, rarely missed much when it came to her husband’s philandering. “Jackie knew the score,” her friend Truman Capote said. But, again like Pat, she closed her eyes to much of it and gave her husband tremendous leeway. As Jackie confided to a friend, “I don’t think that there are any men who are faithful to their wives.”

  Jackie’s father, John “Blackjack” Bouvier, hadn’t been — nor, certainly, had Joe Kennedy. Both Jackie and Pat had been taught, by example, to accept a husband’s extramarital activities if the marriage — and appearances — were to be preserved. Thus both Jack and Peter were given wide latitude by their wives when it came to “getting tail,” as Jack also liked to put it, and their pleasure in the chase was what they most strongly had in common. Whenever he was in Washington, Peter would keep an eye out for pretty young women to bring to the White House. One of these was Susan Perry, a “stunning blond” twenty- one-year-old receptionist in the office of Senator Jacob K. Javits, a New York Republican. She caught Peter’s eye early in October 1961, and he, seeking to impress her, invited her to dine with him and the President. Expecting a large gathering, Perry accepted.

  When she arrived with Peter at the White House family quarters, she was puzzled to find only the President, one of his longtime aides, and another attractive woman who was introduced as a Soviet translator. As the evening progressed, Susan mentioned to the woman that her dress had ridden suggestively up her thigh. “So what?” she replied. After dinner, Peter left with Susan and the aide, leaving the beautiful Russian with the President.

  The next day, worried, Peter telephoned Senator Javits’s office and pleaded with Richard Aurelio, Javits’s press secretary, not to alert the press to the intimate evening their receptionist had witnessed at the White House. Aurelio assured Peter that he had no such intention.

  The story began to circulate around Washington nonetheless, and a few weeks later, The New York Times carried an account of the evening, complete with Peter’s photograph. No mention was made of the Russian translator or of the fact that no wives were present, and the gist of the article was Susan Perry’s “Cinderella story” of dining with the President “at the invitation of a handsome movie star.”

  It was easy to read between the lines of the Times article; Miss Perry was a “pretty young receptionist” who had “attracted the attention” of Peter Lawford; she had “blushingly accepted” his invitation to the White House. When Jack Kennedy saw the Times that morning, he got on the phone to Peter in a flash. “Damn it, Peter, how did that happen? Is that girl crazy?”

  Peter attempted to stammer an explanation, but Kennedy cut him off. “Look, Peter, the word is out in this town that I’m doing it to every girl who walks. I’m going to get blamed again — and you’re the one who was with her. What is Jackie going to say? Tell me that! It was damn bad judgment. We won’t let that happen again.” He hung up.

  Peter did let it happen again. The situation was similar: a pretty young girl, a Lawford invitation, a private dinner sans wives. Early in the evening, the President asked the young lady what she did for a living. “I work for Senator Goldwater,” she replied ingenuously.

  The tone of the evening changed in a snap, and after the woman was sent on her way in a cab, the President dressed Peter down once again. “For God’s sake, Peter! She works for Barry Goldwater! He’s probably gonna be my opponent in 1964! Do you know what he could do with information like that? Don’t you find out who people work for before you bring them up here? Jesus!”

  AS HE COULD IN SO MANY other areas, the President was able to steal Peter Lawford’s thunder with women as no one else ever had. If Peter’s friends had discovered that no girl of theirs was safe around him, Peter quickly learned the same thing about Jack.

  Bob Neal, widely renowned as a playboy, was happy to be third Musketeer when he was with Jack and Peter. He recalled a cocktail party at the Manhattan apartment of Earl E. T. Smith, who had been President Eisenhower’s ambassador to Cuba.

  Peter brought Neal and Milt Ebbins to the party, which included many of the President’s closest associates, among them his aide Dave Powers and his brother-in-law Steve Smith. Neal saw the President sitting on a couch flanked by two young women. Peter greeted Jack and shook his hand; Ebbins and Neal followed suit. As he pumped Bob’s hand Kennedy said to him, “My God, Bob Neal. That’s the man we’d all like to be.”

  A few minutes later Peter pulled Neal aside and they went out on a balcony overlooking Central Park. “What was he talking about, you’re the man everybody wants to be?”

  “I don’t know,” Neal replied. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Ebbins overheard the question and answered it for Peter. “Jack’s heard about all the great-looking girls Bob’s been dating lately.” “Oh,” Peter said. “I get it.”

  A few minutes later, Peter walked up to Neal and whispered, “You see that guy over there? He’s with a beautiful girl from South America.” Neal had indeed seen her.

  Peter’s voice turned conspiratorial. “He’s had about twelve drinks too many. Why don’t we separate them?”

  “Good idea,” Neal replied. “How do we do that?”

  “Let’s get them into the elevator first, and we’ll figure it out once we get down on the ground.”

  Within minutes, Peter and Bob were in Ambassador Smith’s private elevator with the hapless man and the girl from South America. Just as the elevator operator started to close the doors, they heard a commanding voice — “Hold the elevator!”

  “The operator stuck his head out of the door and here came the President,” Neal recalled. “He strolled into the elevator and looked at Peter, then at me. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘where do you two fellows think you’re going?’ Peter looked at me and then said, ‘Well, sir, it’s past our bedtime and we thought we would go back to our hotel.’ “Jack replied, ‘You’re exactly correct.’ Then he turned to the gorgeous girl and said, ‘Young lady, would you join me for a drink at the bar?’ She said, ‘I’d be delighted to, Mr. President,’ and off they went. We two jerks wound up on Fifth Avenue with a guy who couldn’t find the floor with his hat. The President knew what we were doing.”

  And the President always made sure that nothing similar happened to him. During a visit to the Lawfords’ in Santa Monica, Kennedy discovered that a certain friend of Peter’s was in the house. “Either he goes or I go,” he told Peter.

  “But Jack,” Peter pleaded, “he’s one of my best friends! What am I going to say to him?”

  “I don’t care, just get rid of him.” The President started to change out of his bathing suit and back into street clothes, prepared to leave. Peter grabbed Milt Ebbins, who’d been watching all this, and pulled him into an adjoining room. “What am I going to do, Milt?”

  “You’ve got to tell the guy to leave. Make up some excuse. You can’t let the President of the United States leave here because you don’t want to insult your friend.”

  Peter made an excuse about security considerations, and his friend left. What had the man done to so offend the leader of the free world? During Kennedy’s last visit to California, the hapless fellow had made a pass at one of Jack’s girls.

  FOR THE FIRST TWO YEARS of the Kennedy administration, Pat and Peter’s beach house was essentially the Western White House. Officially, the President stayed at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, but he spent his days relaxing by his sister and brother-in-law’s pool. The presidential flag flew over the property, and Jack’s helicopter would land on the sand in front of the house — much to the Lawfords’ neighbors’ dismay, because their pools filled with blown sand after each landing and takeoff.

  A week before one of the ch
ief executive’s visits, Secret Service men would invade Peter’s garage and turn it into a communications center — a huge bank of dials and knobs and flashing lights that kept Kennedy in contact with the world. His guards shadowed Kennedy wherever he went, and he enjoyed giving them the slip whenever possible. In Palm Beach, he had skulked out the back of a drugstore with the help of a clerk. On one visit to Peter’s house, Jack casually asked Milt Ebbins, “Would you go inside and tell one of the guys in the garage that I’m going for a swim?”

  Ebbins said yes, and added, “Will you wait until I get back?” “Sure,” Jack replied. “I’ll wait.”

  “I went inside,” Ebbins recalled, “and of course Jack went into the water by himself. The guys in the garage were standing there — real serious. I said, ‘Listen, guys, you’d better get out there — your boss is going in the ocean.”

  The Secret Service men cried, “What!” and jumped up, grabbed their guns, and ran outside. Two of them waded into the water, fully clothed. By now the President was surrounded by people, amazed that it was him. “My God! It’s Jack Kennedy!” one woman screamed. The following day, a photograph was wire-serviced around the world showing Jack on the sand in his wet bathing trunks surrounded by dozens of beaming beachgoers.

  The next time the President came to Peter’s house, Ebbins saw a change: “I drove up to Peter’s garage and all the Secret Service guys were there, and two of them were completely dressed in frogmen outfits — goggles, flippers, tanks! It was very funny. But it was dangerous what Jack did. How the hell do you know who’s looking for him around that house? He wasn’t even supposed to swim in the pool without the Secret Service checking it out first — they were afraid someone might wire it up to electrocute him.”