Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot
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bottom: Upon Jackie’s return from Ravello, all seemed back to normal when the entire family posed together for this photo at the Hyannis Port compound. Standing, left to right: Sargent Shriver, Steve Smith, Ethel, Jack, Pat, Rose, Bobby, Eunice, Jean, Ted, and Joan. In front, Jackie and Joseph Sr. (JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY LIBRARY)
Joan Kennedy; Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill; Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss; and Jackie watch solemnly as President Kennedy delivers his State of the Union message to Congress in 1963. (UPI/CORBIS-BETIMANN)
top: Jackie and Jack, with their children, John and Caroline, on November 18, 1963, four days before JFK’s murder. At this point Jack and Jackie had gotten closer. As his close friend Senator George Smathers put it, “He was as faithful as he was ever going to be… more than Jackie hoped for, but less than what she deserved.” (PHOTOFEST)
bottom: Jackie and Jack appear at a speech in Fort Worth, Texas. The photo is especially poignant in that Kennedy would be dead, and Jackie’s life forever altered, in just a couple of hours. (PARAGON PHOTO VAULT)
top: A grieving Jackie, escorted by Bobby and Ted, leaves the Capitol for the funeral procession to the church. “Who cares what happens to me now?” she would later ask. (PHOTOFEST)
bottom: This photo of Jackie at her husband’s funeral in November 1963 says it all: the grief, despair, and sense of hopelessness she felt at this terrible time in her life. Her sisters-in-law were concerned about her, so much so that Ethel suggested she move into her home so that she could keep an eye on her. Jackie declined the offer. (PHOTOFEST)
Bobby shares a parting glance with Jackie after he and Ethel leave her temporary Georgetown home on December 6, 1963, just after Jackie moved out of the White House. In a few months, rumors would begin circulating that Jackie and Bobby were having an affair. While most people did not believe the ridiculous stories, Ethel seemed suspicious just the same. (UPI/CORBIS BETTMANN)
Even though they weren’t movie or television stars, Jackie, Ethel, and Joan became staples of fan magazines that were popular in the 1960s and ’70s. Here are just a few of the many publications that featured the women on their covers. Oddly, the three sisters-in-law read the magazines religiously and often believed what they read about each other! (J. RANDY TARABORRELLI COLLECTION)
top: After the President’s death, Jackie sent Joan to Europe to represent the Kennedy family on a touring exhibit of JFK memorabilia, in the hopes of making her finally feel an integral member of the family. Here, Joan poses with the President’s rocking chair. (DEUTCHE PRESSE/ARCHIVE PHOTOS)
bottom: Joan, Jackie, and Secret Service agent Clint Hill at Northampton’s Cooley Dickinson Hospital after Ted’s near-fatal plane crash in June 1964. “Maybe it’s a curse,” Joan told Jackie. “Look at the things that have happened. Can we just chalk it up to coincidence?” (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)
The woman behind the man? Joan campaigned for the injured Ted in 1964, the first Kennedy wife to stump for an incapacitated husband. Joan yearned for his appreciation and respect, but in Ted’s view, she was just doing her duty—nothing more, and nothing less. (PARAGON PHOTO VAULT)
When Ted and Bobby were both senators at the same time (from Massachusetts and New York, respectively), they and their wives, Joan and Ethel, often went out on the town together. Ethel loved a public life, whereas Joan was intimidated by it. (GLOBE PHOTOS)
Bobby and Ethel pose with their brood after attending Easter Mass at St. Luke’s Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia, just two months before Bobby’s murder: Michael, David, Robert Jr., Joseph, Kathleen, Matthew, the senator, Christopher, Ethel, and Mary. (PHOTOFEST)
top: Ethel is escorted by Ted to their pew in St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Bobby’s funeral services on June 8, 1968. The bombastic Ethel would never be the same after Bobby’s death, choosing to live the rest of her life in the shadow of his memory. (PHOTOFEST)
bottom: Ethel, her son Joseph, and Jackie at Bobby’s funeral services. For a time the sisters-in-law were bound by the joint tragedies. (GLOBE PHOTOS)
After Bobby’s death Ethel gave birth to their eleventh child, Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy. Joan and Ted are seen here escorting her home from the hospital. (GLOBE PHOTOS)
“Have you had enough of your Greek tycoon?” Ethel asked Jackie at lunch one day shortly after this photo was taken in 1968. Though Ethel—along with Joan—attempted to convince Jackie not to marry Aristotle Onassis, they were unsuccessful. For the cameras, the two sisters-in-law looked happy and composed, but behind the scenes raged a war over the shipping magnate. (GLOBE PHOTOS)
On July 22, 1969, Joan went with her husband to the funeral of Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned in a car Ted was driving on Chappaquiddick Island. (Ethel accompanied them to the services, while Jackie chose to stay behind rather than associate herself to the scandal.) Joan would later say that the death of Mary Jo was the beginning of the end of her marriage to Ted, even though they wouldn’t officially announce divorce plans for twelve more years. (PHOTOFEST)
By November 1969 Joan and Ethel had become closer, united by Ted’s bumbling actions at Chappaquiddick after Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning. Here one can only wonder what the two women were whispering while Ted offers yet another explanation to the media during a press conference. (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)
On June 6, 1970—the two-year anniversary of Bobby’s death—Ethel (kneeling), Joan, and Ted visit his grave. (GLOBE PHOTOS)
Despite the fact that his presidential aspirations would be forever ruined by Chappaquiddick, Ted was reelected to the Senate in November 1970. Here he thanks his campaign workers, flanked by Ethel, on the left, and Joan. Behind him is another reminder to the skeptical press of his “ideal” family life—even though the relationship he shared with Joan at this time was anything but. (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)
Joan did have her own fashion taste, controversial though it sometimes was. Here she is seen in London’s Heathrow Airport in 1971, looking smart in leather. (POPPERFOTO/ARCHIVE PHOTOS)
Though no one could ever replace Bobby in Ethel’s life, she and Andy Williams did date. Ethel loved reading stories in the press of their budding romance, which was actually short-lived. When Jackie, feeling that Andy was perfect for Ethel, tried to move the relationship forward, Ethel resisted. (GLOBE PHOTOS)
Ethel convinced Andy Williams to allow Joan to demonstrate her piano-playing skills on his TV show in March 1971. Joan performed a solo, then accompanied Williams as he sang. (PHOTOFEST)
It was sometimes difficult for Ethel to feel compassion for Joan’s alcoholism, because she believed it to be a weakness, not an addiction. Unlike Jackie, Ethel also believed that Joan should be more tolerant of Ted’s unfaithfulness because, as Ethel once put it, “at least Joan has a husband.” (PHOTOFEST)
Jackie joined Joan and Ted on a ski trip to Idaho during the Christmas holidays in 1975. Joan and Ted’s son Patrick is in the foreground. (PHOTOFEST)
Always behind her man? Maybe not. By 1976, when this photo was taken (on the day Ted won re-election to the Senate for his third full term), Joan had other things on her mind. She had been in and out of rehab centers and was at a low ebb in her life. (PHOTOFEST)
In December 1979, Joan held a press conference at her Boston apartment to demonstrate that she was sober and ready to campaign for her husband in his bid for the presidency, even though they were separated. Photos of her family were placed on the piano in hopes of convincing the media that the separation was temporary, and that Joan would be a proud First Lady should Ted get elected. (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)
Despite her drinking problems and troubled marriage, Joan was still able to hold it together and look stunning in her stylish maxi coat as she, Ted, and children Ted Jr. and Kara took a stroll in Boston, followed by the ever-present paparazzi. (PHOTOFEST)
Even though Jackie had ambivalent feelings about Ted, she and Joan remained close. It was Jackie in whom Joan confided about her alcoholism, and about her desire to finally put an end to her marriage. Jackie blamed herself
for not suggesting that Joan end the marriage many years earlier and was concerned that she was somehow at least partly responsible for Joan’s alcoholism. (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)
In May 1981 Joan received her master’s degree in education from Lesley College. By this time she had taken control of her life and had filed for divorce from Ted, using Jackie’s attorney. Joan and Ted pose with their children (l–r): Patrick, Kara, and Edward Jr. (UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)
“There are certain people you love despite everything else, just because you know they’re being so completely true to who they really are,” Jackie Kennedy Onassis once said. “In my life, Ethel Kennedy is one of those people.” Here Jackie and Ethel share a light moment during a Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament at Forest Hills Stadium in New York. (AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS)
A distraught Ethel Kennedy kneels at the coffin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis during funeral services for the former First Lady on May 23, 1994, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Despite their often contentious relationship, Ethel had great admiration and love for her former sister-in-law, whom she visited the day she died. Behind Ethel is her son Joseph, his wife, Beth, and his sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. (AP PHOTO/GREG GIBSON)
* Billings and Jack Kennedy had been roommates during Jack’s sophomore year at Choate and then at Princeton, until Jack transferred to Harvard to be near Boston doctors for health reasons. Although Billings never served the President in an official capacity, he was a frequent guest at the White House and remained a close friend of the family until his death at the age of sixty-five in May 1981.
* Estes Kefauver, a Democrat from Tennessee, chaired the committee’s hearings into organized crime, which set the stage for his selection, over Jack Kennedy, as Adlai Stevenson’s presidential running mate in 1956.
* Mesta, appointed Ambassador to Luxembourg by Harry Truman, was immortalized by composer Irving Berlin in the hit Broadway musical Call Me Madam, starring Ethel Merman.
* McCormack is the nephew of the late John W. McCormack, Speaker of the House from 1962 to 1971.
* The party was hosted by the late Arthur Krim and his wife, Dr. Mathilde Krim, who recently revealed that the Secret Service confiscated all of the photographers’ film of Marilyn with the Kennedy brothers. Only one photo of the three has somehow managed to survive.
* See the source notes at the back of this volume for detailed correspondence between the Kennedy brothers relating to the Redbook story.
* Raised on the Pennsylvania estate of Grey Towers, Mary Meyer, like Jackie, was a Vassar graduate and New York debutante. Jack had known Mary—whose father was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union—since 1935; they met at a dance when Jack was a senior at Choate. They became reacquainted when Jack was a senator, and she soon became one of his lovers. An attractive, shapely blonde with short, windswept hair, she was a frequent guest at the White House.
* Many years later, in an interview with Jack’s adult niece Maria Shriver, Fidel Castro said, “With the information I have now—the experience of the Soviets’ hesitation—no, I would not have accepted the missiles. I think that according to the steps taken by each side, we were quite close, quite near to nuclear war.”
* Mary Meyer would meet an unfortunate demise on October 12, 1964, when she was murdered while walking along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath in Georgetown. A twenty-three-year-old laborer was arrested, tried, and acquitted. The case has never been solved.
* In a 1970 interview with Sylvia Wright of Life magazine, Rose Kennedy said, “Joan used to play the piano while we sang in the evenings in Hyannis Port. Once, after we had lost Jack, we tried to sing some of the songs that he had liked. But one of us got depressed and that was, well… we all collapsed. So we closed the piano quickly, and everybody went home. We discontinued our singing after that.”
* After accidentally addressing him as Lyndon on the plane after he was sworn in, Jackie vowed that in the future she would only refer to him as Mr. President, even though he insisted that she do no such thing.
* At this time, in his continuing effort to involve Jackie in his administration, Johnson was considering making Jackie the Ambassador to Mexico. “She doesn’t want to do anything, but God almighty, all she would have to do would be to just walk out on her balcony about once a week,” he told Pierre Salinger. “I talked to her a while ago and she just oohed and aahed over the phone,” he said of Jackie. “She was just the sweetest thing. She was always nicer to me than anybody in the Kennedy family. She always made me feel like I was a human being. God, it would electrify the Western Hemisphere. It would do more than any Alliance for Progress,” Johnson continued, excited by the thought of it. “And she could go and do as she damn pleases. She can just walk out on that balcony and look down at them and they’ll just pee all over themselves every day.” A skeptical Salinger said he needed time to consider the idea. It is not known if LBJ offered her that post, though Pierre Salinger says he did offer her the position of Ambassador to France, and she turned it down.
* In fact, it would be eight years before Jackie would return to her former home, in 1971 when President Nixon and his wife, Pat, invited her and her children for dinner to view her and Jack’s official portraits.
* Many years later, Jean Kennedy Smith would be named ambassador to Ireland by President Bill Clinton. She would be instrumental in easing tensions in Northern Ireland, her first two years marking abrupt changes in U.S. foreign policy.
* Jackie and Joan were once discussing Truman Capote when Joan asked, “Is it true, Jackie, that he’s queer?” Jackie, who was always amused by Joan’s naïveté, acted as if she didn’t know what her sister-in-law meant by “queer.” Joan persisted, “You know, Jackie, gay. Gay!” Jackie had to laugh. “Oh, Joan, you are too much,” she said, kidding her. “Gay? He’s as gay as paint! We’ll never be able to corrupt you, will we?”
* Jackie had filed a highly publicized lawsuit against William Manchester to prevent him from using, in his book The Death of a President, highly personal material he had gotten from her in an interview. In the end the material was deleted from his work, but not until it was reprinted in newspapers and magazines everywhere as the result of reports about the lawsuit, all much to Jackie’s dismay. “I am so dazed,” she wrote during the litigation, “I feel that I will never be able to feel anything again.”
* In an interview years later, Gwendolyn Kopechne would say that, while Joan Kennedy was pleasant enough and seemed genuinely saddened, the call was a disappointment to her. “It was a sympathy call,” she said. “Nothing was explained.”
* During this period, a bully was taunting John daily in the third grade, saying “John-John wears shorts.” One day John drove his fist into the child’s nose, almost knocking him out, much to Jackie’s dismay. Alarmed, she asked her son where he learned to hit like that. He replied, “The Secret Service, Mom!”
CONTENTS
Welcome
Dedication
A Note From the Author
Epigraph
Prologue: Long Live the Queen
PART ONE
Joan…
Jackie…
Ethel…
… and the Secret Service
Jack Defeats Nixon
The Pre-Inaugural Gala
Jack
The Five Inaugural Balls
Bobby
The Skakels
Not One to Feel Sorry for Herself
White House Infidelities
The Bouviers
Jackie’s First Meeting with Ethel
Jack Proposes Marriage
All of This, and More
Joseph and Jackie’s Deal
Sisterly Advice
The Bennetts
PART TWO
A Legacy of Infidelity
Jack’s Affair with Marilyn
Jackie’s Expensive Diversion
Madcap Ethel during the Kennedy Presidency
Joan’s Social Impas
se