Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “The Blessed Mother is not a saint,” Ted said, correcting him. “She is the Blessed Mother.”

  “That she is,” Onassis said, chuckling.

  It was August 1968, and the men were in Onassis’s office on Skorpios negotiating the terms of Jackie’s impending marriage to the Greek businessman. Jackie had asked Ted to go with her to Skorpios to negotiate the possible union. Though he did not approve of the marriage, Ted decided that he should be the one to make the deal. So, at Jackie’s insistence, they told the other Kennedys what they would also tell the press: that Onassis had extended the invitation as a gesture to take the two away from the strain that followed Bobby’s assassination.

  While on this trip, Jackie hoped to acquaint herself with Ari’s children, eighteen-year-old Christina (whom Jackie had previously met) and twenty-year-old Alexander. At first, Ari insisted that they call her “Mrs. Kennedy,” but Jackie insisted that they call her by her first name. Over the years, as it would happen, they would both call her many names, but seldom “Jackie.”

  “They resented her from the start,” says Onassis’s personal assistant, Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos, “because they were always thinking one day that their mother and father would be together.”

  Despite the fact that Jackie had indicated she wanted to be involved in the negotiations, she decided to go on a two-day shopping trip to Athens and let Ted handle the business at hand. Because Ari thought of Ted as nothing more than a pretender to the throne in the wake of his brothers’ deaths, and because Ted was oblivious to those feelings, the ensuing negotiations bordered on the ludicrous, according to what Ted and Ari both later told friends and associates, which corroborates what has previously been reported about the meeting.

  “Look what she went through in Dallas,” Ted continued. “You must understand that because of that alone she is one of the most revered people in our country. And for Americans to accept her being married to you would take a leap of faith. Her image could be forever tarnished. That has to be worth something.”

  “Of course,” Onassis said, with a patient smile. “Such a thing surely must have value.”

  Ted went on to point out the obvious: that if the marriage occurred, Onassis would be stepfather to Caroline and John Jr. Without wanting to be offensive, he observed that Americans who still felt great affection for Jack Kennedy would be unhappy by the paternal replacement in his children’s lives. “And that, too, has to be worth something,” Ted said.

  Not the least bit offended, Ari smiled. “One would imagine…”

  “And what about security?” Ted pushed on, adding that if Jackie married Onassis she would lose her Secret Service protection.

  Ironically, Jackie so loathed the Secret Service protection that by 1968 she would desperately try to get it reduced from what she felt was a completely unreasonable number of eight agents on duty protecting her and her children, to just three (and, when in Greece, only one, agent John Walsh). In a lengthy letter to Secret Service Director James J. Rowley, she complained, “The children are growing up. They must see new things and travel as their father would have wished them to do. They must be as free as possible, not encumbered by a group of men who will be lost in foreign countries, so that one ends up protecting them rather than vice versa.” She further wrote that while in New Jersey, the agents lost track of the children for two hours because they had followed the wrong car out of the driveway, “and the mother of nine had to leave her children just to bring mine home!” She also complained that an agent had “forcibly dragged” her children home for supper even though she had given them permission to dine at a friend’s. Rowley responded by saying that the FBI was still receiving letters from mentally ill people threatening Caroline and John, and that there was the “ever-present threat of a kidnapper.” Because Jackie persisted, a compromise was eventually reached in security measures reducing the number of agents, at least while in Greece. So she would not have been at all pleased to hear Aristotle Onassis tell Ted Kennedy, “Why, my army of security will dwarf in size whoever is presently guarding Mrs. Kennedy.” Onassis further explained that Jackie would have around-the-clock security by what he viewed as the best trained agents in the world for her, her children, her maids, her butlers, and anyone else she cared about. Not only that, Onassis continued, but Jackie would also have German shepherd police dogs at her disposal.

  “I might also note that if Jackie marries you, she will lose her income of $175,000 from the Kennedy trust,” Ted cautioned, seriously.

  Finally, as Ari would remember it, he had to reveal his true feelings in a laugh so loud and hard he almost lost his breath.

  “You mean to tell me that you are giving this saint, as you call her, only $175,000 a year?” Onassis asked. “Why, I could give her more money than she could ever dream of.” He said that he would give her what he felt was her true value, “and it would be much more that $175,000 a year.”

  “Well, don’t forget that she’s going to lose her $10,000 annual widow’s pension plan,” Ted added, perhaps not understanding the weakness of his position.

  Onassis laughed again. He spent that much a week on shoes, he said.

  The negotiation went on like this for an hour, until a rough deal was finally struck for Jackie as if she were an expensive racehorse.

  “One-point-five, that’s fair price,” Ari said. “And we can work out the other details later. But if she marries me, Mrs. Kennedy will get one-point-five million.”

  “I believe that’s a fair deal,” Ted said as he rose to shake the Greek businessman’s hand.

  “I agree,” Ari said.

  Later that day Onassis said he felt strongly that the nuptials should occur in America. He obviously wanted the publicity and credibility that such a service in that country would bring to him. But Ted was against the idea. “That would mean that mother, Joan, Ethel, and all of us would have to attend,” he said, “because if we didn’t, how would that look? And we can’t. It would be completely inappropriate. It would be a nightmare. I won’t be moved on this point.”

  “Then, fine,” Onassis said. “We’ll leave it as it is. One-point-five.”

  “One-point-five,” Ted agreed.

  By the time Jackie returned to Skorpios with a dozen pairs of shoes and matching handbags, the deal—such as it was—seemed to be in order. Everyone was satisfied. One-point-five it would be.

  Or would it?

  A few weeks later, Aristotle Onassis sent the proposed agreement to Ted for signature, who then forwarded it to André Meyer, Jackie’s financial adviser. In the deal draft, Jackie was described only as “the person-in-question.” Because Meyer had “some problems” with it, Onassis ended up having a contentious meeting with him about the “acquisition” on September 25, 1968, at Meyer’s apartment at the Carlyle.

  Meyer felt that Onassis should pay at least $20 million to marry Jackie. Onassis thought that was a preposterous amount of money for a former First Lady, saint or no saint. In fact, the price was so high that it had the potential to hurt the feelings of all concerned, he said, “and might easily lead to the thought of an acquisition instead of a marriage.”

  In the end, after much haggling, Onassis agreed to pay three million dollars for the privilege of marrying the former First Lady, which was twice the amount for which Ted had almost sold her. Jackie could take the three million dollars outright, or the money could be used to buy nontaxable bonds. Also, each of her children would receive a million dollars, and the annual interest on that money would go to Jackie. In the event of Onassis’s death, Jackie would receive $200,000 a year for life.

  While Jackie was satisfied, it was said that Onassis was struck by buyer’s remorse and had agonized over the matter for some time, wondering if he had paid too much for Jackie Kennedy. One day, as the story goes—and it was probably concocted by Onassis—it came to him that he could actually buy a supertanker for that amount. However, he then realized that, considering the cost of such a supertanker’s fuel, maintenance, insur
ance, and other extras, he probably made a good deal in buying Jackie instead.

  Lynn Alpha Smith, who was the executive secretary to Constantine (Costas) Gratsos (director of Ari’s New York operations), remembered, “We used to call Jackie ‘supertanker’ around the office. Onassis didn’t mind. It made him laugh. ‘It’s supertanker on the line,’ I’d announce whenever she called. In my eyes, and in the eyes of many people, Jackie was an acquisition, nothing more or less. The dowry system was acceptable in Greece, only in this case it was Onassis who had to pay the dowry.”

  But Ari had the last laugh.

  Under the laws of Greece, Jackie would have been entitled to at least 1.5 percent of Onassis’s $500-million estate in the event of his death: roughly $62.5 million. It’s difficult to imagine, yet astonishingly true just the same, that with all of their combined business acumen, Ted and the other attorneys who worked out this “deal” somehow neglected to realize that Jackie didn’t need a prenuptial agreement and, moreover, that the existence of one all but guaranteed her less money than she would otherwise receive at Onassis’s death. Moreover, the payment Jackie would receive at the time of her marriage meant that she had legally renounced her right to any future money, other than what was stipulated in the agreement.

  It wouldn’t be until after Ari’s death that Ted and Jackie’s other attorneys would scramble to try to figure out a way to pull the submerged supertanker from the drink.

  Jackie Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis on October 20, 1968, in a Greek Orthodox ceremony, witnessed by several other members of the groom’s family, as well as Jackie’s own mother and stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss, her sister, Lee Radziwill, and her late husband’s two sisters, Pat Lawford and Jean Smith, who were there representing the Kennedy family. Probably the most significant two witnesses, however, were Caroline and John Jr., who carried lighted candles as they stood behind their mother.

  Andy Williams

  Ethel Kennedy was not only a Kennedy widow, but also a relatively attractive woman whose wide-set bright blue eyes and broad, winning smile were her greatest attributes. Ethel was a perfect size eight at the time of Bobby’s death, and her consistent waistline—even after all those pregnancies—had always been the envy of Jackie. Whereas Jackie had to diet constantly, Ethel never bothered. Skating, skiing, swimming, sailing, shooting the rapids, and running after eleven children was all she needed. Whereas Jackie and Joan both spent hours on their hair, constantly experimenting with new styles (especially Joan), Ethel kept her light-brown hair in a short, casual style, the better to brush it back into shape after falling off a raft into the river. To the public, she was a woman of inexhaustible energy and ample charm, fascinating in every way. No one outside of her private circle knew of the brooding, and often contentious Ethel, the private Ethel.

  Being young, being a widow, and being a Kennedy made Ethel, in the years after Bobby’s death, prime fodder for tabloid speculation about her private life. Her biggest “romance,” resulting in widespread publicity, seems to have been with popular singer Andy Williams.

  Ethel and Bobby had known Andy and his then-wife Claudine Longet since the mid-sixties. Recalls Andy Williams, “The first time I ever really talked with Bobby Kennedy was in 1964 at a birthday party [Universal Studios president] Lew Wasserman gave for his wife, Edie, at the studio. I had done a TV show earlier that night and came over to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Edie. Bobby and Ethel came over to our table afterward, and my first impression—Claudine’s, too—was how young he looked. And how he looked and talked directly to you. I danced with Ethel, and Claudine danced with Bobby. The next day, I was playing golf when Claudine called and said the senator had invited us to visit with them in Palm Springs. He hadn’t had a vacation in a while.”

  Upon the return of Andy and his wife from their vacation, it was clear that they had fallen under the spell of Camelot. “We stayed up all night, talking and singing. That’s where our friendship really started,” recalled Williams. “It was a gradual thing, and there is no point where I can say that’s where I knew he would be one of the closest friends I’d ever have.”

  Before long the couples were constantly traveling and socializing as a foursome. When Bobby and Ethel entertained at Hickory Hill, Andy and Claudine were always at the top of the guest list. The Williamses spent many hours with the Kennedys, skiing in Sun Valley, rafting on western rivers, playing touch football at the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port. As proof of their special friendship, photos of the Kennedys and the Williamses together were positioned all over their households.

  At the time they met the Kennedys, Andy and Claudine’s marriage seemed headed for certain trouble because of his hectic touring and television schedule. She was lonely, she complained, and longed for more attention from him. Then they met the Kennedys and, she now recalls, “Just being around that family changed our whole lives. Andy watched Bobby with their kids and saw how they all got involved in activities together. He got an entirely new viewpoint of what a family is supposed to be like. Bobby got him involved in doing things he would have never tried otherwise—skiing, tennis. We’d go camping and sit around the campfire and Ethel would ask Andy to start a song, and we’d all join in and sing, even Bobby, who had the worst voice in the world and, of course, sang the loudest. We’d break up laughing until our stomachs hurt. It brought Andy and me together again—at least for a time—I have no doubt about it.”

  When Claudine became pregnant, Ethel sent her a box of maternity clothes that she had worn during some of her own pregnancies. While Bobby was alive, Ethel had gotten into the habit of buying maternity clothes even when she wasn’t expecting, knowing that sooner or later she’d be needing them. After his death, she decided that she’d never have that need again. Claudine said later that she sobbed as she thought of what it must have meant to Ethel to pack all of those dresses for the last time and send them off to a pregnant friend. To one especially pretty cocktail dress, she had pinned a note: “This was Bobby’s favorite. Wear it in good health!”

  But it was Bobby and Claudine who seemed to have made the most intense bond. Years after Bobby’s death, Claudine hinted that her relationship with him had developed into something deeper than the friendship the two couples shared. “We could talk in the way a girl and a man could talk,” she said, “the way women are almost never able to talk, the way I was never able to talk with Ethel… not chitchat. When Bobby died, I lost interest in the Kennedys. There was no one for me to talk to. I drifted away.”

  Because she was a Kennedy widow, the press was naturally interested in Ethel’s private life, always linking her with everyone from New York Governor Hugh Carey to Cary Grant. Andy Williams’s marriage to Claudine Longet began to sour shortly after Bobby died, so Ethel began recruiting the entertainer to be her escort. Of course, this innocent coupling started a flood of rumors and speculation about an impending marriage, a story that would continue to be a headline-grabber in fan magazines all the way into the late seventies.

  For Ethel the flurry of headlines her “affair” with Andy (whom she had nicknamed “Andy Baby”) generated was just another madcap adventure which she took in stride. “She thought it was all a riot,” George Terrien once said. “She loved the attention she was getting; she loved the fact that she was suddenly considered a femme fatale.”

  “Every week she had me cutting articles out of Photoplay, Modern Screen, Movieland, and all of the rest of the silly fan magazines she used to read religiously,” said Leah Mason. “Once they started writing about her and Andy, well, she loved that more than anything. ‘We’d make a good couple, don’t you think?’ she’d ask me. She would stare at the pictures longingly, as if she wished that they actually meant something romantic was going on in her life. I sensed she needed someone, some human contact. They went to a lot of concerts together, spent time in Hyannis Port, played sports. Andy was a lot like Bobby, small and wiry, a great smile. He was a gentler man, though, than Bobby. Not as argumentative. A soft
y, maybe too soft for Ethel, who was used to fire-works.”

  It would seem that it was actually Jackie who tried to foster a more serious relationship between Andy Williams and Ethel Kennedy. “Jackie liked Andy very much,” said Joan Braden. “She wanted to see Ethel move forward with her life, not only because she, from her own experience, realized that this was best, but also because she knew that this was what Bob would have wanted. And Bob liked Andy so much. But Ethel was not the same kind of woman as Jackie. Ethel was satisfied to stay home, to live an almost cloistered life. Jackie would never have been able to deal with that. They were very different women.”

  “Jackie thought Andy was perfect for Ethel,” said Leah Mason, who stopped working for Ethel in 1968 but resumed on a temporary basis in the seventies, “and she worked behind the scenes to orchestrate something romantic between them.”

  Trying to play matchmaker, Jackie telephoned Andy to tell him that Ethel was romantically interested in him, without having obtained her permission to do so. Then, as if she were a tenth-grader, the forty-three-year-old former First Lady called Ethel and told her that Andy wanted to move the relationship forward. “It was so juvenile of her, I was completely amazed that she would be involved in such nonsense, but I know she was,” says an associate of Ethel’s, “because she later admitted it. It showed a side of her that people might not expect to find, one that certainly surprised me because I thought she was too self-involved to have ever done such a thing. I think it worked, too… for a while.”

  According to people close to Ethel Kennedy, Ethel and Andy stepped up their relationship in 1972 into a romantic realm. Leah Mason diplomatically concedes that there was a period of time that year when Ethel and Andy were sleeping in the same room, in the same bed. However, she adds that “it’s entirely possible that they were platonic, even in the same bed.”