Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  After Lawford helped her remove her ermine stole, Marilyn sang her little birthday song to the President and then another number, with special lyrics written for the occasion by Richard Adler, to the tune of “Thanks for the Memories,” Bob Hope’s theme song. (“Thanks, Mr. President/For all the things you’ve done/The battles that you’ve won/The way you deal with U.S. Steel/And our problems by the ton/We thank you so much.”) While performing, she seductively ran her hands up her curvaceous body and nearly cupped her breasts. It was an act that might have been more appropriate at a burlesque show than at a political fund-raiser.

  After Marilyn had the audience join her in another rousing round of “Happy Birthday,” she brought Jack onto the stage. “I can now retire from politics after having had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a wholesome way,” he joked from behind a podium emblazoned by the presidential seal.

  A friend of Marilyn’s, Jeanne Martin—whose husband of twelve years, entertainer Dean Martin, was co-starring with Marilyn in Something’s Got to Give at this time—can still vividly recall the strong emotions she felt as she sat in the VIP section of the audience more than three decades ago. Of Monroe’s stage presence, she says, “That performance was beyond the pale. I squirmed in my seat, tried to look away…. It belittled the entire Presidency, as well as Jackie’s position as First Lady.”

  Jeanne, who has remained close to the Kennedys through the years, put the blame on the President himself. “Certainly Marilyn couldn’t have done it without Jack’s approval,” she says. “I never believed it was a complete surprise to the President. Why would he allow her to do that?” (And in fact, Marilyn’s performance was not a surprise: Jack had been forewarned by Bobby.)

  Beverly Brennan, an investment banker who met Pat Kennedy through Peter Lawford in 1954, recalls that Pat found the performance “hysterical and very good.” As for Jackie, Pat said, “She can take a joke. She has such a vicious sense of humor herself.” Pat Kennedy also told Beverly Brennan that she had telephoned Jackie at Glen Ora when she heard that the First Lady wasn’t going to be present at the celebration, to assure her that the performance would be “just a harmless Marilyn Monroe prank.” She assured her that, as Marilyn’s close friend, she would never allow the screen star to do anything that would embarrass the First Lady, and she also advised Jackie that her absence would only focus more attention on the spectacle. Apparently, Jackie was not convinced.

  The day after the President’s birthday party, Jackie, still at Glen Ora, saw a news broadcast of Marilyn’s breathless, sultry rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

  Jackie’s right-hand man, Clint Hill, was with her at Glen Ora, as always. Hill, a former football star at Concordia College in North Dakota, was married to his high-school sweetheart, Gwen Brown. Much more than just a Secret Service agent to Jackie, he was now responsible for many aspects of her busy life. “I also dealt with her maid, I dealt with her nanny for the children, and her day-to-day operations,” he recalls. “On a lot of things she would deal directly with me instead of going to a social secretary or a press secretary.”

  Jackie, appearing bewildered and frustrated, paced the living room. When the phone rang, she jumped for it. It was Ethel, calling to express her anger about Monroe’s act and the way Jack had responded to it. Ethel apparently felt, as had Jeanne Martin and others, that Marilyn’s performance was an insult to Jackie. Ethel said she was calling to make sure Jackie was not too upset, and to discuss with her how she might handle the matter with the President.

  As Jackie spoke to Ethel, her voice rose. “My understanding of it is that Bobby was the one who orchestrated the whole goddamn thing,” she said, blazing out the words in frustration. “The Attorney General is the troublemaker here, Ethel. Not the President. So it’s Bobby I’m angry at, not Jack.”

  “It’s just all so exhausting,” a weary Jackie told Ethel. “And what about that poor woman?” she added, referring apparently to Marilyn. “Look at how they are exploiting her.”

  As the conversation ended, Jackie thanked Ethel for her concern and asked where she could locate Bobby. Told that the Attorney General was in his office, she promptly called him. The two spoke angrily for about five minutes. Jackie’s terse, obscenity-laced end of the conversation was completely uncharacteristic of the warm rapport she ordinarily shared with Bobby. However, she was clearly upset. After accusing Bobby of having sanctioned “a sick game” with a movie star, Jackie hung up on him, her hands visibly shaking.

  Jackie’s Ultimatum to Jack

  Angry about the ongoing scandal regarding her husband’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe, it now seems—based on the best evidence available—that Jackie Kennedy finally gave the President an ultimatum immediately following the Madison Square Garden celebration: Stop seeing Marilyn, or lose his First Lady.

  A Secret Service agent who spent much of his time on White House detail protecting the First Lady and her children—who asked not to be named in connection with the ultimatum since he still maintains a close relationship to the family—explains how Jackie went about it. The agent says that when Jack joined his wife at Glen Ora two days after the Marilyn Monroe performance, she told him that if he didn’t end his association with Marilyn “once and for all,” she would leave him. It would be done quietly at first, Jackie told him. However, just prior to the 1964 presidential campaign, she threatened, she would officially file for divorce. The agent says, “After that threat, I never heard another word about him and Marilyn Monroe.”

  Beverly Brennan, Pat Lawford’s friend from Los Angeles, further corroborates the story, saying that after the Madison Square Garden show, Pat Lawford told her, “Do you know that Jackie actually threatened to divorce Jack unless he stopped being friends with Marilyn? And he agreed to such a thing?” Brennan says that Pat was “dumbfounded by the whole thing.”

  Nunziata Lisi, Lee Radziwill’s friend from Italy, says, “Lee told me that with the threat of his crumbling marriage interfering with Jack’s possible reelection in 1964, Jackie had finally found her strongest bargaining chip: divorce.” Lee told Nunziata that she doubted Jackie would ever have actually given up her position as First Lady, but she applauded her sister’s decision to finally force an end to the affair.

  “Jackie’s sick to death of this whole thing,” Jack told his friend George Smathers. “She’s all over me about it. So let’s end it with her [Monroe] before it’s too late.”

  The President then made swift moves to distance himself from the star. At his request, Smathers contacted a mutual friend of his and the Kennedys, Bill Thompson, and asked him to speak to Marilyn about, as Smathers puts it, “putting a bridle on her mouth and not talking too much because it was getting to be a story around the country.”

  Meanwhile, Jack simply stopped returning Marilyn’s telephone calls. As far as he was concerned, the affair was over.

  Bobby’s Rumored Affair with Marilyn

  By the summer of 1962, the resumption of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was causing great alarm among Americans, while heightened tensions with the Soviet Union continued to threaten world peace. Obviously, these matters were of great concern to the Kennedys, as they were to the rest of the country; in Ethel Kennedy’s household, however, another troublesome situation seemed to monopolize a great deal of her time: Bobby and, yet again, Marilyn.

  Ethel had been infuriated by Bobby’s flirtatious behavior with Marilyn at the Madison Square Garden after-party.* The next day she called her sister, Georgeann, and, according to Georgeann’s husband, George Terrien, said that she would have liked to have scratched Monroe’s eyes out. “But Ethel was a good Kennedy wife,” notes Terrien, and “she kept her mouth shut and looked the other way.”

  The true nature of the relationship between Bobby and Marilyn still stirs controversy among Monroe and Kennedy confidantes and family members.

  “Let me just set this straight once and for all,” said Chuck Spalding, who was close enough to the Kennedys that he could at le
ast have an opinion about it. “The answer is a flat-out ‘no.’ Marilyn liked Jack, maybe loved him. She flirted with Bobby, and he flirted back, but that was it. These stories about Bobby and Marilyn are all junk. Maybe Ethel thought they were having an affair, but I am certain that it was nothing more than a flirtation.”

  “If Marilyn and Bobby were involved, it was very gently orchestrated,” said Milt Ebbins. “I was Peter’s [Lawford] closest friend. He told me everything—things that will never be revealed. He never told me about Bobby and Marilyn, and he told me things that would have been considered much more confidential than that.”

  Even though there are dozens of peripheral people in and around the lives of both principals who claim that the two did have a sexual affair, those closest to the two are adamant that the relationship never grew past the flirtation stage. Unfortunately, one important person in Bobby’s life believed that he was indeed intimate with Marilyn Monroe, and that person was Ethel Kennedy.

  “She most certainly did believe it,” says Leah Mason, who worked for Ethel as an assistant off and on for many years at Hickory Hill. “She was sure that an affair was going on. And she was extremely unhappy about it.”

  Ethel apparently attempted to recruit Frank Sinatra to talk to Monroe about her relationship with Bobby. According to Sinatra’s friend Jim Whiting, “Frank didn’t really believe that anything serious was going on between them, and he figured if anything was happening, it was probably just Marilyn flirting, pretty much the way she used to flirt with everyone.” And yet whenever Frank Sinatra did ask Marilyn Monroe about her relationship with the Kennedys, she was evasive. In the end, neither Sinatra nor anyone else would be much help to Ethel Kennedy.

  Joseph’s Stroke

  By this time the life of Kennedy patriarch Joseph had taken a dramatic and tragic turn. On December 19, 1961, he had suffered a stroke while playing golf at the Palm Beach Country Club that left him severely debilitated. Jack and Jackie had been in Palm Beach at the time. Jack had left for Washington early in the day while Jackie and Caroline stayed behind in Palm Beach. (John Jr. was in Washington with the children’s nanny, Maud Shaw.) Apparently, Joe didn’t notice any symptoms until he returned to the estate for a swim with Jackie. After going to his room to rest and change, he emerged unable to speak or move his right side. Joe’s niece Ann Gargan took him to St. Mary’s Hospital in West Palm Beach while Jackie telephoned Jack and Bobby to tell them what had happened.

  The prognosis for Joseph was not good. After he’d been on the critical list a few days, he was given Last Rites. If he did live, he would be paralyzed, would probably never walk again, and would not speak. The family was devastated by this tragic turn of events.

  “Well, I’m sorry but I just can’t believe he won’t walk,” Jackie told Bobby one afternoon shortly after the stroke. In fact, she refused to shed a tear for Grandpa.

  “Why should I cry?” she asked. “I know he will be fine.”

  Immediately after receiving word of the stroke, all of the Kennedys went to Palm Beach to visit the ailing Joseph and to lend emotional support to Rose. To his children, Joseph was still the family’s respected patriarch, the indomitable figure whose vision had been responsible for the historical dynasty that was not only their own proud legacy, but also the birthright of their children. His daughters- and sons-in-law, as well as his own offspring, felt unequivocal respect, love, and admiration for Joseph. Though Joseph was ruthless, “… he’s the reason we exist at all,” Jackie had said. “Without him, without his vision, his dream, his desires for his children, none of us would be who we are. We’d all have done something with our lives, obviously, but not this.” For his part, Jack had critical differences with his father on certain political issues, but he loved him deeply. This sudden illness was a terrible blow.

  While Jackie seemed sure from the outset that Joseph would recover, the rest of the family seemed resigned to their patriarch’s paralysis. Even the ever-religious Ethel had little faith in a miracle, saying that it was “God’s will” that Joseph not walk again.

  The day she first visited Joseph in the hospital in Florida, Jackie went to a department store in Palm Beach and bought a walking cane. She and Ethel were standing in Rose’s kitchen in Palm Beach when Jackie pulled the cane from a box. Ethel looked at it with incredulity. “It’s useless, you know,” she said. “Grandpa will never walk again. Didn’t you hear?”

  “I just need to get it engraved,” Jackie said, ignoring her sister-in-law’s words. “Now, let’s see where I can have that done.” Jackie turned to Dora, the cook. “Where’s Frank?” she asked. “He’ll know.”

  Before leaving the kitchen to find Frank Saunders, the Kennedy chauffeur, Jackie turned to Ethel and added, “Oh, and by the way, Ethel, Grandpa will walk again. I can promise you that.” Jackie intended to keep the walking cane until she felt that it was time for Joe to use it, then she would give it to him as a gift.

  Six months later, Joseph was a patient in Horizon House, a rehabilitation center in New York. Joseph had endured a difficult half-year of recovery at Hyannis Port. Before he was taken to the center, his convalescence was slow and arduous. For Rose, her husband’s challenges took on nightmarish proportions. It was as if she could do nothing right for him. “Ya! Ya! Ya!” he would scream at her, swinging his fists in frustration. Rose would run from the room in tears, asking Rita Dallas, “What did I do? What did I do?” Every day a new drama unfolded, whether it had to do with Joseph’s refusal to eat or his insistence on getting out of his wheelchair. Once he struck Rita, giving her a black eye. So by the time Joseph was whisked off to Horizon House, it was a welcome relief for Rose and the household staff (a total of ninety-three nurses would work for the Kennedys during the years after the stroke).

  Unlike Rose, who could do nothing right for Joseph, it seemed Jackie could do no wrong. Many people wondered how Jackie could feel so much warm emotion towards a man who so blatantly flaunted his infidelities, who so thoroughly manipulated his family’s lives, who used his wealth to try to control and contain everyone around him. But Joseph, like his son Jack, reminded Jackie of her own father, the flamboyant, woman-loving Black Jack.

  From the first time she met the Kennedys, Jackie had found a staunch ally in Jack’s father. She set out to charm Joseph, and she succeeded. Jackie did not have to be guarded the way she acted with him; she wasn’t afraid of Joseph. She genuinely loved him. He felt the same, and he also enjoyed her sense of humor. One of his prized possessions was an original watercolor painting by Jackie of dozens of Kennedys romping on a beach. Overhead, a plane trails a banner: “You can’t take it with you. Dad’s got it all.” Joseph hung the painting in the living room of his Palm Beach mansion.

  Another favorite painting of his by Jackie was a watercolor in which protesters march holding picket signs reading: “Put Jackie and Joan back in American clothes”—a spoof of a silly 1960 campaign controversy having to do with Jackie, Ethel, and Joan wearing only French-designed clothing.

  Often defensive because his Irish Catholic background kept him from being accepted in society, Joseph appreciated that Jackie could move easily in social circles closed to him, and he recognized that her beauty and her knowledge of art and music had always been valuable assets to Jack’s political career. He also admired her independence. While his own children deferred to his wishes, Jackie used to tease him. It was as if Joseph had taken her father’s place in her life, especially when Jackie and Joseph would sit poring through photo albums of her wedding. Jackie, with her slender frame and delicate femininity, was just the type of woman that Joseph responded to. They adored each other.

  The day after his arrival at Horizon House, as Rita Dallas tried to convince Joseph to take a nap, there was a knock on the door. It opened slowly, and Jackie peeked in. Joseph’s face brightened at the sight of her.

  Jackie walked into Joseph’s room and sat on a footstool at the side of his bed. As Rita Dallas looked on, Jackie took Joseph’s deformed hand into
her own. She told him that she was praying for him and that she had great faith in a “speedy recovery.”

  Joseph nodded his head and placed his hand on her cheek. Jackie rested her head on his lap and kissed his hand. Then she stood up to kiss the side of his face that had been paralyzed.

  At Horizon House

  Joseph worked tirelessly at Horizon House to regain his faculties, with periodic visits from all of his family members lending their support and encouragement—except for Ethel, who said that she could not bear to see her father-in-law in such a weakened state.

  Joan would sometimes visit her father-in-law with Ted, and she would often show up at the hospital alone. Nurses remember her sitting and talking to the old man for hours, leaving his side only to break down in tears in the hallway. She so loved Joseph, perhaps because he praised her at every opportunity, even at Jackie’s expense.

  One story about Joseph that Joan has often told has to do with the time she, Jackie, Ethel, their husbands, and the rest of the Kennedys were at the Big House for Thanksgiving dinner. They were all gathered around Rose’s polished fruitwood table in her ivory-and-gold dining room. As it did every year, a centerpiece of gourds, small pumpkins, bananas, apples, and autumn leaves with four silver candlesticks decorated the table, with platters of food placed all about it: hot clam broth; a butter-browned twenty-six-pound turkey on a silver serving dish; homemade cranberry sauce; buttered string beans; creamed onions; mashed orange sweet potatoes with a melted marshmallow topping; corn muffins; and for dessert, apple or pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream. “Eh, now this is living,” Ted would say.