Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (20 page)

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 entertain- ment. 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.

*Mesta, appointed Ambassador to Luxembourg by Harry Tru- man, was immortalized by composer Irving Berlin in the hit Broad- way musical
Call Me Madam,
starring Ethel Merman.

“How can I compete with
that
?” Doing her best to try, Joan booked Lester Lanin’s orchestra, as well as a group of fla- menco 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 at- tended 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 cou- ple of cabinet members and the wife of the French ambas- sador. 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 ei- ther 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

“
I
t’s not always easy,” Joan Kennedy once said when dis- cussing 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 personal- ities, 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, es- pecially 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 ath- lete. 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, in- cluding 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 some- times 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 bal- lerina. 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 re- sist 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
mag- azine 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 re- ally 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 sisters, after all.”

True to Ethel Kennedy’s contradictory nature, though, there were also times when she would come to Joan’s res-

cue. 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 compli- mented her. “Oh my God, Joan! Just look at you,” she ex- claimed, 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 compli- ment 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.”

Jackie stared at her brother-in-law for a moment, her lips pressed together, a hard look in her eyes. She started to speak but checked herself. Instead, she walked away, shak- ing her head in disgust.

Ten minutes later, a campaign worker came over to Joan and paid her a compliment about her hairstyle. “Why, thank you,” Joan said, her smile bright. “I just thought I’d try something a little different, you know?”

“You wanna see different?” Ted asked, cutting in. He had walked away, but suddenly he was back. “You oughta see her hair when she wakes up in the morning,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s not so pretty.”

As the staffer walked off, muttering to herself, the expres- sion on Joan’s face was of complete bewilderment. Quick tears came to her eyes; she blinked rapidly.

Ethel Kennedy happened to have overheard the exchange. She grabbed Ted by the arm. “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “This is your wife. How dare you insult her here, of all places? Now leave her alone, you big brute.” Then Ethel grabbed Joan’s hand. “Come on,” she said to her stunned sister-in-law, “I have someone I want you to meet.” The two women headed for the other side of the room, leav- ing Ted staring into his empty dessert bowl. As they left, Joan, with an aching expression on her face, looked over her shoulder at her embarrassed husband. For just a moment, it was evident that there was a richness of understanding be- tween Ethel and Joan.

Jackie’s Documentary:

A Tour of the White House

I
t was February 14, 1962, when the public got its longest and closest look at Jackie Kennedy in a remarkable hour- long documentary,
A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy
. During the program, television cameras followed the First Lady and news correspondent Charles Collingwood from room to room as she answered questions about the recent renovations she and her committee had made to the presidential quarters. In truth, Jackie’s televi- sion special was as much a political exercise as it was an op- portunity to show off her work, for as First Lady she represented her husband in everything she did.

Politics being the essence of the Kennedy men’s world, much was expected of the Kennedy women whenever cam- paign time rolled around, and they did their part, usually with great success. TV appearances, though, were a bit more challenging.

In 1958 during Jack’s senatorial campaign, a television special was broadcast to Massachusetts viewers titled
At Home with the Kennedys
, featuring Rose, Jackie, Eunice, and Jean, who had her baby, one-year-old Steve Jr., on her lap. Sitting up as straight as rods, their hands clasped in their laps, they looked like robots. “You have the Sacred Heart way of sitting,” explained Joan, who, though she wasn’t pre- sent for this television appearance, was well aware of the importance of posture in the Kennedy family. “Rose showed

us all how to sit on stage, poised. You don’t have your legs crossed. They’re together, maybe crossed at the ankle. From the beginning, she was after me about my poor posture. I was five feet eight when I was twelve, one of those tall girls who are always scrunched over. And she would say, ‘Stand up straight. You have a beautiful figure. Stand up and show it.’ ”