Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (2 page)

I was deeply touched by Lem Billings’s devotion to the Kennedys, troubled by his strained relationship with them, and also inspired by his optimism that somehow it would all work out for the best. I quickly became intrigued by his rec- ollections that—politics aside—the Kennedy family was like most large families, in that loving relationships often gave way to conflict and then usually—or at least hope- fully—to reconciliation.

I decided to research and then write an in-depth article about Jackie, Ethel, and Joan. My intention was that the re- sulting feature would be candid enough to relay the kinds of

stories that would be identifiable to anyone who has ever watched as his or her own family, regardless of wealth or status, grew and its members interacted with one another during difficult times. After just a few interviews with key people in the Kennedy circle, the story of the three sisters- in-law quickly began to emerge.

My career as a reporter took a different turn when, in 1984, I signed with Doubleday and Company to write my first book, a biography of Diana Ross. Throughout the years, as I wrote a number of other books, I continued developing the story of Jackie, Ethel, and Joan Kennedy, hoping to one day find a publisher for the work. Like most things having to do with the publishing business, the timing had to be right, the research completed, and the publisher willing—all of which finally occurred after my eighth book,
Sinatra: A Complete Life
, was published in 1997. It was then that Warner Books publisher Maureen Mahon Egen agreed with my ICM agent, Mitch Douglas, that it was time to publish this work, which was originally titled
The Kennedy Wives
. Over a two-year period, Ms. Egen masterfully helped me shape the manuscript into the book you are now holding in your hands,
Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot
.

Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, and Joan Bennett Kennedy were strong and courageous women who, despite the many challenges presented them, still managed to lead full, joyous lives. Over the years that I dedicated my- self to this work, I found their stories to be heartwarming and moving. This was truly a labor of love for me; I became personally attached to these women in a way perhaps only another biographer can relate to. It is now my hope that the reader will recognize just a bit of his or her own familial ex- perience in the complex relationships among the Kennedy

sisters-in-law because, power, politics, and money aside, people are still people, families are families . . . and most of us, at one time or another, have to work to get along with those we dearly love. In the end, at least in my view, it’s al- ways worth it.

Contents

Prologue: Long Live the Queen
1

Part One

Joan . . .
7

Jackie . . .
11

Ethel . . .
14

. . . and the Secret Service
18

Jack Defeats Nixon
22

The Pre-Inaugural Gala
31

Jack
36

The Five Inaugural Balls
39

Bobby
44

The Skakels
49

Not One to Feel Sorry for Herself
60

White House Infidelities
63

The Bouviers
68

Jackie’s First Meeting with Ethel
76

Jack Proposes Marriage
82

All of This, and More
90

Joseph and Jackie’s Deal
98

Sisterly Advice
103

The Bennetts
109

Part Two

A Legacy of Infidelity
125

Jack’s Affair with Marilyn
129

Jackie’s Expensive Diversion
133

Madcap Ethel during the Kennedy Presidency
139

Joan’s Social Impasse
143

Trying to Understand Each Other
146

Jackie’s Documentary:
A Tour of the White House
151

The Voice
155

“Secrets Always Come Out”
160

Part Three

Bobby Meets Marilyn
170

“Life’s Too Short to Worry about Marilyn Monroe”
172

Jackie’s Ultimatum to Jack
179

Bobby’s Rumored Affair with Marilyn
181

Joseph’s Stroke
183

At Horizon House
187

The Walking Cane
191

Life at the Hyannis Port Compound
193

The Fourth of July in Hyannis Port, 1962
197

Joan’s Many
Faux Pas
200

Pat Finds Jackie “So Insecure”
208

Marilyn Monroe’s Death
211

Jackie Goes Away to Think
215

Part Four

The Kennedy Women Do Men’s Work
223

Jackie’s Wicked Scheme
238

The Cuban Missile Crisis
241

Joan—The Senator’s Wife
250

Part Five

Delighted to Be Pregnant
259

The Deaths of Infants Arabella and Patrick
261

Lee Radziwill Invites Jackie-in-Mourning
272

“Not Ethel’s Best Moment”
276

Aboard the
Christina
279

Jack Summons Jackie—To No Avail
284

“Ari Is Not for You”
287

Part Six

Jack’s Rapprochement with Jackie:

“Getting to Know You”
293

Tragedy
298

“The President’s Been Shot”
302

Holy Mary, Mother of God
306

“The Party’s Been Canceled—The President’s Dead”
309

In Mourning
317

Tea with Lady Bird
322

Thanksgiving, 1963
327

Jackie’s Camelot
333

“Let It All Out”
338

Aftermath
342

Part Seven

Moving Out of the White House
353

Lyndon Johnson “Using Jackie”
358

The Kennedy Camp on LBJ:

“A Blight on the New Frontier”
366

Joan’s Bottled-Up Anxiety
372

Jackie’s Saddest Days
375

Jackie and Brando—The Rumors
382

Part Eight

Ted’s Plane Crash
387

Joan Wins the Election for Ted
396

Jackie on the Anniversary of November 22, 1963
403

Using Jackie—Yet Again
406

Joan the Emissary
409

Cead Mile Failte
412

Joan’s Continuing Struggle
417

Part Nine

The Rumor Mill
425

RFK for President
434

Enter “The Greek”
438

The Appeal to Jackie
444

Ethel’s Thoughtless Remark
449

Another Tragedy
457

“The Hand of a Dead Man”
464

“No God of Mine”
468

Senator Robert Francis Kennedy Is Dead
472

Bobby’s Funeral
478

“We Shall Carry on with Courage”
484

Ethel—Just a Shell
489

Part Ten

Ted Negotiates Jackie’s Nuptials
501

Andy Williams
507

Ethel Pushes Jackie Too Far
515

“Bobby’s Little Miracle”
518

Part Eleven

Chappaquiddick
525

Jackie Tells Ari: “I Have to Be There”
529

Joan Accuses: “All You Care about Is How It
Looks
?”
536

Ethel to the Rescue
541

Mary Jo’s Funeral
544

Ted Asks for Forgiveness
549

Joan Loses the Baby
555

A Final Gathering for Joseph
558

The End of Camelot
562

Part Twelve

Ted Hurts Joan Again
573

Ethel’s Troubled Brood
579

Will Ted Run? The Joan Factor
584

Joan and Ted: Creating the Illusion of a Marriage
592

Joan in Control of Joan
600

The Announcement: EMK for President
603

Joan’s White House Fantasies
608

EMK’s Candidacy: Not Meant to Be
610

The Last Straw for Joan
617

Postscript: Jackie, Ethel, and Joan after Camelot
621

Acknowledgments and Source Notes
637

Index
705

JACKIE ETHEL JOAN

“Even though people may be well known, they hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth: birth, marriage, and death.”

—Jackie Kennedy October 1968

Prologue:

Long Live the Queen

I
t was a somber Monday morning in May 1994, when the friends and family of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis gathered at St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church in New York City for a final farewell to her. It wasn’t easy for anyone to say good-bye to this remarkable woman—those who knew her well, those who loved her dearly, and the rest of the world, fans and skeptics alike, who had watched her extraordinary life unfold over the years.

Though she was an accomplished woman with a wide scope of personal experiences, her friends realized that Jackie’s greatest source of pride was the way she had raised her two children, John and Caroline. When they were grown, she then found satisfaction as a book editor for two major publishing companies, Viking and then Doubleday: simply another working woman fetching her own coffee rather than troubling her assistant with such a task.

In truth, she must have known that she was much more than just another nine-to-five member of the Manhattan workforce. After all, she had been married to a president. She had been the First Lady. She had traveled the world in

grand style, met with kings and queens, lived in luxury and wealth, never wanted for much (at least in terms of the ma- terial), and experienced the intense love and unabashed adoration—and, of course, criticism—of millions of peo- ple, just for being who she was: Jackie. Though her last name was now Onassis, she was still Jackie Kennedy to everyone who remembered a certain time . . . a certain place.

Once, long ago, though it seemed like just yesterday, Jackie had been the queen of what was the brightest and best of Camelot: the mythical kingdom she took as an emblem of the Kennedy years when she spoke to a journalist in the days after her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was brutally cut down in his prime, shot to death as he sat next to her in an automobile in Dallas in 1963. As First Lady, and even be- yond her classic reign over this so-called Camelot, she was a woman whose style, personality, and refinement had made such an indelible imprint on our culture that she actually seemed immortal—which was why her death was such a shock. If it was sometimes difficult to remember that she was a woman—flesh and blood like the rest of us—her mor- tality, the result of the very human and unforgiving disease, cancer, was an all-too-cruel reminder.

Hundreds of mourners—friends, politicians, socialites, writers, artists, entertainment figures—as well as the many members of the Kennedy family came to bid a tearful adieu to Jackie and to remember their experiences with her. It was a funeral of deeply felt prayers, music, poetry, and warm feelings in the same great marble New York church in which the former First Lady had been baptized and confirmed.

“It was a service that Jackie would have loved,” said Joan Kennedy afterward, “full of meaning, full of genuine emo-

Prologue: Long Live the Queen
3

tion. If you knew Jackie, you knew that there was nothing insincere about her.”

Perhaps no one understood Jackie better than her Kennedy sisters-in-law, Ethel and Joan, for the three of them shared the special burden of having married into a powerful, ambitious, and often confounding family. Like sisters, they would reach out to one another over the years to comfort and console during times of immeasurable disappointment and pain. And, like sisters, they were also known to accuse and attack one another. However, throughout the Camelot years of the 1960s they would forge a sisterhood, sometimes against great odds.

Ethel and Joan likely would never forget what Jackie had meant to them. As Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy, his ex-wife, Joan, must have been reminded of Jackie’s patience and kindness to her during the many challenges presented by a life sometimes gone awry. “She was a blessing to us, and to the nation, and a lesson to the world on how to do things right,” said the senior senator from Massachusetts. Joan had been able to depend on her older sister-in-law for a sympathetic ear and sensible advice. Now, with the finality of Jackie’s death, Joan might find it difficult to reconcile the fleeting passage of years.

Sitting with her large family, Ethel seemed contemplative and understandably saddened this morning. Through the years, her relationship with her sister-in-law had been com- plex, a mixture of admiration, respect, and understanding, as well as envy and the inevitable contentiousness that arises from vast differences in temperament. As often happens in life, the two sisters-in-law allowed a personal disagreement to come between them. With the passing of time, their diffi- cult estrangement became the natural order of things, almost

a habit. Still, inextricably bound to Jackie by tradition and history, a visibly shaken Ethel Kennedy was present at her sister-in-law’s bedside in New York the day that non- Hodgkins lymphoma took her from this world.

At just sixty-four years old, Jackie most certainly was gone too soon—“too young to be a widow in 1963, and too young to die now,” as Ted Kennedy put it in his stirring eu- logy. Just as she had requested, she was laid to rest on a ver- dant hillside in Arlington National Cemetery beside the eternal flame she herself had lit thirty-one years earlier for her husband. As their mother’s mahogany casket, covered with ferns and a cross of white lilies, was placed next to the final resting place of their father, Caroline and John Jr. knelt at the graveside and fought back tears in the stoic manner known to all Kennedys. On either side were buried Jackie’s stillborn daughter, Arabella, and infant son, Patrick.