Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “Like a lot of women, she felt better about things—and about her marriage, I would venture to say—when she was busy,” concluded her longtime friend Joan Braden. “She stayed busy, a lot,” Braden said with a laugh. “I’d never known anyone so busy.”

  Jackie’s White House labor was definitely a great success as far as the country was concerned, and it was historically relevant as well. Her specific ideas on how to use the presidential home to preserve the history of the country made her a pioneer in the historical preservation movement, which was sorely needed nationally. Jackie’s work would also directly inspire President Lyndon Johnson to promote successful legislation for establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.

  Madcap Ethel during the Kennedy Presidency

  Ethel Kennedy, taking full advantage of the Kennedy craze, was determined to let her own inimitable personality leave an imprint on the Kennedy years, but in a very different way from her sister-in-law the First Lady. While Jackie was usually serious, refined, and dignified, Ethel was madcap, boisterous, and fun-loving.

  Jackie’s soirees at the White House were written up and much discussed for their careful elegance and sophistication. Under the First Lady’s discerning eye, once-stodgy state dinners became more relaxed and enjoyable, although they were as carefully choreographed as ever. One of her innovative changes was to have smaller tables at dinner parties so that the guests at each table could more easily interact with each other. She mixed artists, musicians, writers, and entertainers with heads of state. “Jackie’s style was unique,” says etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige, who was Jackie’s social secretary. “She knew everything about every person on the guest list.”

  During their shortened term in office, the Kennedys would host sixty-six state dinners, not to mention the dozens of private parties for friends, politicians, and other associates. “She wanted everything that was the finest in music, drama, ballet, opera, poetry,” recalls the president’s press secretary Pierre Salinger, “and set a tone that would encourage culture around the country.”

  “Suddenly, this inbred, old-style society that was utterly foreign to the rest of the country was on the stage,” said former White House Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey. “Washington was visible all over the world. They were young people who liked a good time.”

  “The French know this,” Jackie once noted. “Anybody knows this: If you put busy men in an attractive atmosphere where the surroundings are comfortable, the food is good, you relax, you unwind, there’s some stimulating conversation. You know, sometimes quite a lot can happen. Contacts can be made, you might discuss something… you might have different foreigners there and then say…‘Maybe we ought to see each other next week on that,’ or… it can be very valuable that way…. Social life, when it’s used, is part of the art of living in Washington.”

  Jackie did it one way; Ethel did it another way entirely.

  Betty Beale, a society columnist for the Washington Evening Star who covered eight presidents and their wives at glamorous White House functions from Truman through Reagan, observes, “Ethel never pretended to be chic. She was a terribly active frequent mother, who had a busy home life with all of those children, but somehow ended up finding herself the second most prominent hostess in the nation—Jackie being the first—all as a result of her brother-in-law becoming president. But their styles, from dress to entertaining, were entirely different. She had clearly decided that if she had to do it, she would be as different from Jackie Kennedy doing it as was humanly possible.”

  Ethel prided herself on the inelegant, comical touches that set her parties apart and were very much an extension of her own outlandish persona. As a result she became one of the most talked-about party-givers in the country. For example, at a formal St. Patrick’s Day dinner party, Ethel brought the traditional green motif to new extremes. Men in dressy black tie and ladies in formal evening gowns—all with green accessories—were dumbfounded when they discovered, among the green centerpieces, the largest live bullfrogs Ethel could find. Decorative bullfrogs as a living centerpiece were a touch that only Ethel would think of. “At another party, she turned the lights down low,” recalls Betty Beale, “and put a live chicken in the middle of the table, for fun. She really wanted people to be happy. She set a tone for things, and wanted to surround herself and Bobby with a sense of gaiety. She was fun.”

  Guests arriving for a dinner party in honor of General Maxwell Taylor, a family friend for whom her youngest son was named, were surprised to drive up to Hickory Hill only to find a man dangling from a tree by parachute. Ethel had hung a dummy from a limb to pay homage to Taylor, who had parachuted into Normandy on D-Day.

  Stories about Ethel’s party antics are often recounted with good humor by family members at Hyannis Port gatherings. When she threw a party for the veteran diplomat and statesman Averell Harriman on his seventy-fifth birthday, Ethel decorated Hickory Hill with hundreds of photos of Harriman taken with world-famous figures through the years, adding an outlandish caption to each photo. And when the much respected poet Robert Frost came to dinner, madcap Ethel handed each guest a pad and pencil and announced a poetry-writing contest. Then there was the time Ethel playfully sprayed the shirt of a young member of a visiting European family with shaving cream.

  C. Wyatt Dickerson, married to the late newscaster Nancy Dickerson, attended many parties at Ethel’s home and recalls her as “a spectacular hostess, with all of the Kennedy polish and charm but a dash of madness. At one party, Arthur Schlesinger was pushed into the pool. Peter Lawford and I were hiding in the bushes hoping that we wouldn’t be next.”

  Guests in full dress being tossed into the Kennedy swimming pool—or “dunking,” as it came to be called in political circles—became another of Ethel Kennedy’s trademarks. In fact, taking an unexpected dip at a formal party at Hickory Hill became a sort of initiation into the Kennedy family’s good favor. One knew he was a beloved friend of Mr. and Mrs. Bobby Kennedy when he was dunked by Ethel during one of her gatherings. Senator Kenneth Keating of New York once sent Ethel a letter saying, “I hope the mad rumor isn’t true—that you’re changing the name of Hickory Hill to Drip-Dry Manor.” Even some of the most respected newspapers of the day, like the New York Times, reported on who was dunked at the latest Kennedy bash.

  Sometimes Ethel’s eccentric behavior affected the seating arrangements. When she threw herself a birthday party, for instance, she seated the twenty-four women guests at one table, while their male companions found themselves seated at another.

  Much of what Ethel did with her life, though, was not considered traditional behavior, especially by the family’s matriarch, Rose.

  “Rose Kennedy thought Ethel’s parties were outrageously overdone,” says Barbara Gibson, who was Rose’s secretary. “After attending one, she made a comment to me about it that was typical of the way she felt about Ethel: ‘Oh my, now aren’t we rich.’

  “Rose disapproved of Ethel, mostly. She didn’t approve of the way she kept Hickory Hill, the way she raised her children. There were always plates of food lying around all over the place. Whenever anybody finished a meal or a snack, that’s where the dish was left. The kids ran wild. The place was a wreck.

  “Ethel used to go through cooks like water. The cooking school would send her chefs just for the experience, but they wouldn’t last long. She could be completely unreasonable. She must have had twenty-five secretaries in a five-year period, she was that difficult. Her spending habits also annoyed Mrs. Kennedy,” continues Barbara Gibson. “For instance, she would go shopping and see something she liked, then buy it in every color. If she saw a belt she liked at Saks Fifth Avenue, she would order six of them. Mrs. Kennedy thoroughly disapproved of this kind of spending. Ethel would buy expensive perfumes in decorator bottles, and when Rose would go into the bedroom and see those big bottles on the dresser, she would become absolutely distraught.”

  Joan’s
Social Impasse

  While Jackie and Ethel were considered exemplary hostesses by their friends and by others in Washington and Georgetown political circles, Joan Kennedy didn’t fare as well in that regard in the beginning of the Camelot years. In time she would be regarded as one of the city’s most successful hostesses—but it wasn’t always that way.

  Kennedy intimates still recall what happened when twenty-nine-year-old Joan hosted a fifteenth-anniversary party for Ethel and Bobby at her and Ted’s Georgetown home on June 25, 1965. For Joan, who rarely entertained, this was an important evening. “We’ve never given a big party in Washington,” she said excitedly, “and we want it be the best ever.” Always insecure in her role as a Kennedy wife, Joan set out to make her sister- and brother-in-law’s party the social event of the season.

  Unfortunately, once Joan’s planning was well under way, she discovered that Washington socialite Mrs. Perle Mesta*—well known for her ultraglamorous, ultraextravagant parties—was hosting a bash honoring Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfield of Montana on the same night. Perle had invited to her splendid Northwest Washington penthouse many of the same guests Joan had invited to her event. After some quick checking, Joan was horrified to learn that most guests had accepted invitations to both parties.

  Calling it “a ghastly social impasse,” the New York Times facetiously reported the story in a four-column headline: “Crisis in Capital; Two Parties on the Same Night.”

  Since Perle was having a dinner party and Joan’s was an “after-dinner dance,” there was some hope that it might work out, with guests having dinner at the Mestas’ and then driving over to the Kennedys’ for dancing and entertainment. Joan was doubtful, but she had no choice but to forge ahead with her big night.

  “She’s having filet of sole and guinea hen,” Joan wailed. “How can I compete with that?” Doing her best to try, Joan booked Lester Lanin’s orchestra, as well as a group of flamenco dancers from the Spanish Pavilion of the New York World’s Fair.

  Perle retaliated by announcing that she had decided to host drinks and dancing after her party, hoping that would hold the guests at her place. Now there was an out-and-out social war between the two Washington hostesses.

  As it turned out, however, there were no winners in this particular battle. Kennedy historian Lester David, who attended Joan’s party, painted the scene: “Joan ordered a huge tent set up in her garden, a dance floor placed over the grass, pretty little pink-covered tables with gilt chairs, and chairs of wrought iron painted white for the shrubbed patio. A fountain, with lights playing upon the spraying water, would splash prettily atop a stepped-up terrace in the rear.”

  Yet in spite of Joan’s extravagance, of the one hundred senators invited, only sixteen showed up. She also got a couple of cabinet members and the wife of the French ambassador. It was a disappointing turnout.

  “With parties like this one, who needs wakes?” Ethel deadpanned, looking around at the sparse crowd. “There are more flamenco dancers here than there are guests!”

  For all her planning, Perle didn’t fare much better, with fifty guests in all—a few more than Joan, but nothing near the number that had been expected. Not wanting to snub either hostess, people had decided to play it safe by staying home.

  “I think it was so mean of Perle to do that,” Joan lamented later to her friend Joan Braden. “How many parties do I give? Why couldn’t she let me shine, just once!”

  Trying to Understand Each Other

  “It’s not always easy,” Joan Kennedy once said when discussing the Kennedy women, “because we are so different. We really have had to work to try to understand each other. None of it has ever come easily. We have our own personalities, even though the public thinks we’re all the same, just one big Kennedy wife.”

  Yet the three wives had very different personalities: Jackie was strong and independent, Ethel was difficult and ambitious, and Joan was insecure, sensitive, and long-suffering.

  Like Jackie, Joan could not compete with the Kennedy sisters or Ethel in sports such as sailing, waterskiing, and football. However, whereas Jackie adopted the attitude that she was above those silly sports and wanted nothing to do with them anyway, Joan felt she was inferior.

  “I’m just a flop,” she told family nurse Luella Hennessey after an unsuccessful day on water skis. “They all do it so well.”

  Luella Hennessey, who had known the family since the 1930s, recalled, “She admired the Kennedys so—their self-confidence, their poise, their physical strength. She knew she didn’t have their stamina, that she hadn’t been brought up for this kind of competition, but to please her family, especially her husband, she wanted with all her heart to be as good as the others. When she found again and again that she wasn’t, she was terribly disheartened.”

  “I always said that Ted should have married my younger sister, Candy,” Joan recalls. “She was always the female athlete. She plays tennis and golf and rides beautifully, where I’m allergic to horses.”

  At Hyannis Port, the nonathletic Kennedy wives, Joan and Jackie, would take long walks and discuss books, music, and cooking recipes, while Ethel and the Kennedy brood, including Eunice, Jean, and Pat—whom Jackie called “The Rah Rah Girls”—engaged in sports.

  “You know, when they have nothing better to do, they run in place, or they jump all over each other like wild gorillas,” Jackie once told Joan.

  Whereas Jackie had wit and sarcasm, Joan was just nice. She rarely said anything unkind or critical about anyone, even in jest. “If someone opened the door for me, I would send them a thank-you note,” she once recalled.

  As sisters will often do, Jackie, Ethel, and Joan sometimes crossed the fine line between teasing and hurtfulness. Once the Kennedy women were sitting on Joseph and Rose’s porch telling one another about their secret fantasies.

  “Oh, my,” Jackie said dreamily, “I so wanted to be a ballerina. That was always my dream, my most secret fantasy of all.”

  “What?” Ethel screamed out. “You must be joking! With those clodhoppers?” She pointed at Jackie’s size elevens. “You’d be a lot better off going out for soccer!”

  Everyone laughed heartily, including Jackie. She could dish it out, as well as take it. Jackie would snipe at Ethel and rib her about “bucked teeth” or the disorganized way she kept house: “like a war zone,” Jackie would say of Ethel’s household, “a complete war zone!” She also did a mean impression of Ethel. She’d buck out her front teeth, pop her eyes, extend her hand, and say, “Hiya, Keed.” Ethel would be annoyed every time Jackie did it for friends.

  Joan could not be teased about any of her shortcomings by anyone, let alone her sisters-in-law, who so intimidated her. Jackie liked Joan immediately and instinctively knew that she was too sensitive to rib. However, Ethel couldn’t resist mocking Joan from time to time.

  “As a sister [-in-law], she’s an easy mark,” Ethel would say with a grin. “How can you not enjoy watching Joan Kennedy squirm.”

  One well-known story among Kennedy intimates shows Ethel in a poor light, criticizing Joan’s fashion taste. For a Hyannis Port boating excursion, Joan showed up wearing a stylish, leopard-print swimsuit with matching hat and scarf. She looked stunning, even if her choice of clothing may have been inappropriate for a rugged day of boating. As soon as Ethel saw Joan, she began to mock her. “What did you think, that there would be photographers here?” she asked. “Is that what you thought? That this was a Look magazine cover story? Maybe I should have dressed up like a model, too.”

  Realizing that Joan was at a loss for words, Ethel smiled cheerily and said, “Oh, forget it, Joan. Why don’t you go on over there and get yourself some fried chicken. Eunice really made a good batch this time.”

  For the rest of the day, Joan said little. It was as if she couldn’t wait for the day—which had started out on such a promising note—to just end.

  “Why did Ethel have to do that?” Eunice asked. “I just don’t understand that woman. We’re all s
isters, after all.”

  True to Ethel Kennedy’s contradictory nature, though, there were also times when she would come to Joan’s rescue. Kennedy intimates remember one of those moments well because it was under such unusual circumstances.

  It happened on January 29, 1961, the evening Jackie and Jack opened the White House for its first public party. The invitees included Cabinet officers, congressional leaders, new Cabinet appointees, as well as campaign workers and family members. Also, certain members of the press were invited. A bar had been set up in the family dining room, and another in the East Wing, which was unusual. The previous administration had not served hard liquor at large parties. Rather, the Eisenhowers just spiked the fruit punch and hoped for the best. The Kennedys, however, believed that in order to entertain well a full bar was mandatory.

  “Ted seemed to have spent an awful lot of time at the East Wing bar,” recalled one reporter present at the festivities. “So much so that his wife was becoming annoyed.”

  Joan looked elegant in a streamlined pink, asymmetrical evening gown, her blonde hair pulled back in a simple chignon. When Jackie saw her, she rushed over and complimented her. “Oh my God, Joan! Just look at you,” she exclaimed, her brown eyes wide with enthusiasm. “You look fantastic in that color. That’s your color, Joan. Pink. Always wear pink.”

  Joan smiled graciously, letting the First Lady’s compliment sink in.

  “Oh yeah? Well you shoulda seen her when she woke up this morning,” cracked a male voice behind her.

  “It was Ted,” remembered the reporter, “just a little drunk, and a lot mean. He was holding his dessert in one hand [Frambois a la crème Chantilly: raspberries topped with whipped cream], and spooning it out with the other. He had a smug look on his face.”