Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Ethel also begged off early, as did Joan and Ted. “I was so exhausted by the whole thing,” Joan recalled, “that my knees were weak. I felt every emotion. You were sorry it was over and glad it was over at the same time. I also wondered: What now? What next?”

  Bobby and Jack continued on to two more balls before ending the evening after midnight by stopping at columnist Joseph Alsop’s home for a nightcap and some hastily warmed-over terrapin (turtle) soup.

  Meanwhile, Ethel slept alone at Hickory Hill, perhaps dreaming of bigger and better things for herself and her husband.

  And Jackie slept at the White House. The elegant toast of the nation was now alone with her thoughts, her pounding headache, and her sore lower back, which she treated with a heating pad. Perhaps appropriately enough, while her bedroom was being remodeled, she had taken the Queen’s Room, a guest bedroom on the second floor that was usually reserved for royal visitors—no fewer than five reigning queens had slept there at one time or another—and not ordinarily occupied by First Ladies. She was so physically and emotionally drained that she would stay in bed for the next few days, seeming almost paralyzed by the magnitude of the life change she was about to experience.

  Bobby

  One of the first controversies of the Kennedy administration occurred just after Jack was elected, and it had to do with his decision to name his thirty-five-year-old brother, Bobby, to the post of Attorney General. Jack was adamant that Bobby deserved the position in that he had devoted the last ten years to getting Jack into the White House. However, Bobby wasn’t so sure he wanted the job. “I had been chasing bad men [criminals] for three years,” he once said, “and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing that,” Bobby also knew he was a hothead. As Attorney General under Jack, he might become embroiled in controversies that could reflect poorly on his brother.

  Critics in the media, such as the political analysts at the New York Times, cited nepotism as the major reason Bobby should not be appointed to such an important post. Privately, even Lyndon Johnson joined the group of naysayers, calling Bobby “a little fart.” But Jack announced that he wanted Bobby to take the job—though he did not explain that his father, Joseph, had been so insistent that there was no talking him out of the notion.

  “Poor Ethel wasn’t happy about it at all,” the late Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings, a close friend of the family’s, once said.* “She wanted Bobby to break away from Jack. She had her heart set on him running for governor, that was her plan. She was afraid he would always be connected to his brother’s achievements. She was also afraid she would always be in Jackie’s shadow, a prospect that sent chills down her spine.” Once the offer was officially extended, however, and the critics began to descend upon the Kennedys, Ethel adopted a different stance. “He’s the man for the job,” she said in 1961, “and he should have it. I don’t care what anyone says.”

  Bobby brought out Ethel’s most competitive streak. No one could say a word to her, or in her presence, against Bobby. Bobby was not like Jack, a man who could turn away wrath with wit and a smile. Especially during his early days in politics, Bobby was much more like his father, Joseph: a temperamental person compelled to speak his mind, and often without forethought, when someone had an opposing point of view. As a result, Bobby would make more than a few enemies during his short lifetime. In turn, Ethel would make each of them her enemy; and although at times she may have appeared to have forgotten their transgressions, she rarely, if ever, forgave them.

  “Ethel Kennedy adored Bobby,” recalls Helen Thomas, “and, I would have to say, to the exclusion of everything else. Whereas Jackie made certain that she had a life separate and apart from her husband’s, Ethel had no such desire. From the beginning,” she concludes, “Bobby was the center of her universe. While it’s a cliché to say that ‘he was her life,’ if ever a cliché rang true, it would be this one.”

  When Bobby finally went before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearings on January 13, 1961, with Ethel and his sister Jean watching, only a few Republicans noted his lack of experience as an attorney (he had graduated from law school ten years earlier but had never tried a case), concerns about his finances, and whether any of his holdings would conflict with his job. In the end, after two hours of questioning, all fourteen of the committee members voted to approve Bobby’s nomination as Attorney General. Ethel was so excited that she went out and bought Bobby a six-foot mahogany desk that had belonged to Amos T. Ackerman, U.S. Grant’s second Attorney General and the first to head the newly created Justice Department in 1870.

  As the nation’s top law official, Bobby would wield a great deal of power. “And along with that power, came those perks that Kennedy men loved more than life itself,” says Kennedy friend George Smathers (a senator from Florida from 1950 to 1968), “Women, women, women.”

  Some have speculated that Bobby’s womanizing was a way of competing with his older brother. Bobby was smaller and more wiry than Jack. He was also shy and withdrawn, while Jack was bold and gregarious. Bobby often appeared unruly—his hair always looked as though he had just driven a fast sports car with the top down—whereas Jack was meticulously groomed. In the past, Bobby had certainly seemed determined to assume those facets of Jack’s personality he admired, and perhaps he even appreciated Jack’s way with women.

  In 1961, just after Jack moved into the White House, Ethel all but ignored Bobby’s brief affair with blonde actress Lee Remick, ten years his junior and remembered today for her roles in Anatomy of a Murder and Days of Wine and Roses. “Bobby Kennedy gave such eloquent expression to his passion for me,” the late Remick told Marilyn Kind, once a close friend of hers.

  According to Kind, Lee telephoned Ethel Kennedy one evening to inform her of the affair. “You’re on your way out,” Lee coolly informed Ethel.

  As Lee remembered it, Ethel was understandably angry. Before hanging up, she told Lee that Bobby was sleeping right next to her and warned her to never call again.

  Bobby was, indeed, sound asleep. But in Lee’s bed.

  Whenever a friend or even a Kennedy family member informed Ethel of one of Bobby’s indiscretions, she often chose not to believe them. “It’s not true,” she once said, “I have asked Bobby if he ever cheats on me, and he assures me that he does not. And that is the end of that.”

  Though Ethel usually ignored stories about her husband and other women, there were times when her curiosity seemed to get the best of her, especially if people close to her were whispering about certain liaisons or if she kept reading about them in the fan magazines she so enjoyed. On rare occasions, she would go to Jackie and ask if she had personal knowledge of a particular rumor regarding Bobby and another woman. However, Jackie always seemed uncomfortable discussing Bobby’s personal life, perhaps afraid that she would become involved in a dispute between her in-laws that was really none of her business.

  By 1961, the dawn of the Camelot years, Ethel and Bobby already had seven children, with four more to come. Many aspects of their life together were favorable; Ethel’s marriage was not a complete sham, Bobby’s infidelities aside. He was tender and loving to his young wife, though not in an overt, obviously passionate manner. He fascinated her with his intelligence, his drive, his passion and ideals. They had common goals and ambitions, and their life together at 1147 Chain Bridge Road—Hickory Hill—in McLean seemed to be a happy one, at least to outsiders. The Kennedy family photographer, Jacques Lowe, recalled the first time he visited Hickory Hill:

  “Oh, it was a gorgeous experience entering the Robert Kennedy home for the first time. I remember the first night coming to dinner, having spent the day with Robert on Capitol Hill. They had five children then and had recently bought Hickory Hill. I had known Robert for some time in my role as a magazine photographer covering the up-and-coming investigator. He had been sober and serious, revealing sudden flashes of humor and sometimes anger; but I was not prepared for the man I met on coming to the house late that ni
ght. All of his reserve seemed to melt in the glory of his family, and the long, difficult day was forgotten in the warmth of love of a father for his children and vice versa. It was chaos, with all the children talking at once and Bobby answering each of them with humor and sometimes trying to be stern, at which he didn’t fully succeed. Ethel instantly accepted this stranger [Lowe] into the house, and later on I had to go upstairs to say the evening prayers with the children, which took place after a family pillow fight.”

  It seemed the picture-perfect, happily married lifestyle; maybe for Ethel Kennedy it was and perhaps she sensed that it would remain that way as long as she refused to accept that Bobby had a secret life. As long as he was there for her when she needed him and for his children—and he always was—she seemed content.

  The Skakels

  Ethel Skakel was born on April 11, 1928, at Chicago’s Lying-In Hospital, the sixth child to be born in the Skakel home in ten years; three brothers, two sisters, and a younger sister born five years later completed the family. Ethel’s mother, Ann, was a large woman, taller and heavier than her husband, who kept the weight she gained with every child and eventually tipped the scale at close to two hundred pounds. Nicknamed “Big Ann” by friends and family members, she was a formidable woman both in stature and determination.

  Big Ann was married to the ambitious and distant George Skakel, owner of Great Lakes Coal and Coke Corporation, which was well on its way to becoming one of the largest privately held corporations in America. The family was prosperous and never wanted for anything material, even when the Great Depression of 1929 hit. Though Great Lakes Coal and Coke foundered at that time, the Skakels curtailed some of their extravagances, though not many. In fact, against all odds, now sole owner George Skakel became a millionaire during that economic hardship. When the aluminum industry recovered, the fortunes of the Skakels soared.

  Because George conducted so much of his business on the East Coast, the family moved to a rented mansion set on twelve acres in Larchmont, New York, in 1933. Whenever George utilized the house for business entertaining, Ann assisted in grand style. The parties were always impressive, with a hired staff to serve the finest foods and liquors—especially liquor. George had apparently inherited a tendency toward alcoholism from his father and soon became afflicted with the disease. (With such an abundance of liquor always available, some of the Skakel offspring would experiment by drinking whatever was left in the guests’ glasses after parties. Unfortunately, Georgeann, the oldest, was an alcoholic at fifteen.)

  A year later, the family moved from Larchmont to a furnished thirty-room mansion on Lake Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut, complete with parklike grounds, a guest house, servants’ quarters, stables, and six-car garage. George was proud that he had purchased it at a bargain price in the midst of the Depression.

  Ethel’s relationship with both parents was strained and distant. She was closer to her brothers and sisters, always in trouble with them and joining them in antagonism against Ann and George. As a youngster, Ethel was enrolled in Greenwich Academy, one of the leading Northeast day schools, where the girls wore uniforms and discipline was strict. She had no respect for authority, however, which may have enhanced her status with her classmates but completely dismayed her instructors. She was in trouble so often it was a wonder that she was not expelled.

  The behavior of the other Skakel children was also troubling. Because George was a hunting enthusiast, there were always guns lying around in the Lake Avenue home. The Skakel boys would shoot the firearms from the windows of their cars, using the .45 caliber weapons to destroy mailboxes and streetlights.

  Once old enough to drive, every Skakel child had his or her own automobile, which he or she drove at high speed; the Skakel boys, particularly Jim and George Jr., were such notorious drivers that most Greenwich mothers forbade their daughters to ride with them. Skakel cars were wrecked on a regular basis, and brand-new automobiles would be abandoned in ditches, ponds, and swimming pools. Ethel had a red convertible, which she often drove as recklessly as her brothers.

  When Ethel was fifteen, she enrolled in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Maplehurst, in the Bronx, New York. There, as at Greenwich Academy, Ethel excelled at sports but was a mediocre student. Despite her rowdy, trouble-making nature, she had always felt a strong emotional connection to God, and at Maplehurst she showed the greatest interest in religion classes. She embraced those studies with a zeal that made her mother proud. After graduating from the convent in the spring of 1945, she followed her older sister by enrolling in Manhattanville College in New York City in the fall.

  At Manhattanville, Ethel’s best friend and roommate was the shy Jean Kennedy, next-to-last child in the large and wealthy Kennedy family. The first time Jean took Ethel home to Hyannis Port to visit her family, Ethel was immediately struck by how different the Kennedy lifestyle was from her own. She saw discipline; she saw order; she saw caring.

  Early in their friendship, Jean introduced Ethel to her brother Bobby on a ski weekend, certain they would hit it off. However, Ethel was interested in the much more debonair Jack, who was also present during that particular vacation break. If Jack noticed her at all, though, he would probably have seen her as a skinny tomboy—the way most young men viewed her, which did not bother her in the least. She was always completely comfortable with who she was, or at least she appeared that way. With Ethel clearly interested in Jack, Bobby became attracted to Ethel’s sister Pat. Still, for the next two years, Bobby and Ethel dated occasionally.

  After dating Pat—and a few others—Bobby finally turned to Ethel in a more serious manner. Friends would observe that the relationship seemed to lack romance, noting that Bobby and Ethel were more like close siblings than boyfriend and girlfriend, but after two years he proposed marriage.

  At the time that Bobby proposed, Ethel was seriously considering becoming a nun. Her family’s spiritual zeal had always been clearly in evidence in the Skakel home when Ethel was growing up. Crucifixes and other religious objects hung on the walls; shelves in the large library were filled with Catholic books, some of them rare manuscripts. Her mother often played host to the most pious of nuns and priests. So zealously did mother and daughter proselytize that some of Ethel’s friends were actually forbidden by their parents to play at the Skakel home.

  “How can I fight God?” Bobby asked his sister Jean when he learned that he was competing with the Lord for Ethel’s devotion. Ethel was unsure whether she wished to marry any man. She didn’t feel the passion for Bobby she had read about in the fan magazines and seen on the screen in movie theaters. Her friends from school shared with her stories about their romances, and even though they were Catholic girls, well aware of certain limitations in a relationship, their experiences may have seemed more intense, more romantic, more loving than Ethel had known in her time with Bobby—or with any man, for that matter. “She thought, ‘Maybe I’m just nor cut out to be married, to be anyone’s wife,’ ” recalled a friend of hers from Manhattanville. “She was confused, but back then we didn’t address such confusion as we would today. In our circle, you either got married, or you became a nun. Those were your choices.” In the end, Ethel opted for marriage to Bobby.

  Once Bobby and Ethel became engaged, Ethel couldn’t wait to get out of Manhattanville. With her major in English and her minor in history, she was only an average student when she graduated in June 1949.

  Soon afterward, a tray holding a wide variety of diamonds from which Ethel would choose arrived at the Skakel home, sent by Bobby (an unusually generous gesture for a member of the thrifty Kennedy clan). Ethel chose an exquisite, large-sized, marquis diamond. Unlike most grooms-to-be, Bobby was not with Ethel when she made her selection. (At least Ethel had the opportunity to select her own ring. Future father-in-law Joseph would select Jackie’s engagement ring, as well as Joan’s!)

  Big Ann was delighted with her daughter’s decision to marry Bobby. She realized that Ethel’s marriage into the rich and fam
ous Kennedy clan could raise the Skakels to the top of Catholic society. From the time the engagement was announced, Ann took charge of planning the various pre-wedding parties and other family gatherings. Ann sent out twelve hundred invitations, forcing employees at the small Greenwich post office into overtime work.

  The day of the wedding started in typical madcap Skakel fashion. Years before, Big Ann had equipped her home with a beauty salon, believing that it would be cost-effective and convenient to have one in a household inhabited by so many females. The room was fully appointed with chairs, hair dryers, sinks, and an array of beauty products. On the day of the wedding, the bridesmaids had their hair and makeup done in the home salon by hairdressers brought in especially for the occasion. After their hair was perfectly coiffed, the young ladies went out on the grounds to mix with the male members of the bridal party, many of them Bobby’s hulking football-playing chums from Harvard. As unexpected high jinx got into full swing, several maidens ended up in the pool, their hairstyles ruined. “So typical of a Big Ann wedding,” one guest remarked to the press later.

  On June 17, 1950, twenty-two-year-old Ethel Skakel stood in the rear of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich on the arm of her father, George Skakel, about to marry Bobby Kennedy and forever join the ranks of the elite Kennedy family. In this well-planned and tastefully executed affair, she would be the first woman since Rose to take a Kennedy husband. All of Ethel’s attendants wore white lace over taffeta dresses with wide-brimmed, eggshell-white hats delicately trimmed with pink and white flowers. Ethel looked lovely in a white satin wide-neck gown with pearl-embroidered lace overskirt. The same lace held her fingertip-length tulle veil. Around her neck she wore a tasteful single-strand pearl necklace. In her arms she held a bouquet of lilies, stephanotis, and lilies of the valley, matching the white peonies and lilies that decorated the church. Also waiting to make its entrance was the Skakel-Kennedy bridal party, filled with young and promising relatives and friends, including Ethel’s and Bobby’s siblings.