Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (27 page)

When Joan made her comments, a resounding “Ah-ha!” could practically be heard
en masse
from a suspicious media. One of Jackie’s handlers telephoned Joan to tell her that the First Lady would appreciate it if she did not give away any of her grooming secrets in the future. “The First Lady is livid,” Joan was told. “She guards her privacy with her very life, and you should know that.”

At that time—not only because of Joan’s occasional
faux pas
but also because it was a politically correct thing to do— many publications would send completed stories to the Kennedy camp for approval prior to publication. This prac- tice—regarded as unethical by some reporters—assured that cooperative magazines would be on the Kennedys’ “ap- proved list” for future stories and that writers from the mag- azines would have “access” when such cooperation was necessary to complete a feature.

Magazines such as
Time
and
Newsweek
would always publish unauthorized features rather than jeopardize their reputations as unbiased, credible sources of news. But many—in particular the women’s magazines, such as

Ladies’ Home Journal
and
Good Housekeeping
, which appealed to a large cross section of female voters—would happily send their stories to the Kennedy camp before publication, in order to ingratiate themselves with the family. This practice always proved to be problematic for all three Kennedy wives because whatever they said in in- terviews for these magazines would be picked apart by their husbands and their husbands’ attorneys and publicists prior to publication. As a result, they would often be be- rated for not having had better judgment in expressing themselves.

An excellent example of the extremes to which the Kennedys went to make certain that the wholesome, spit- and-polish image they wished to feed their constituency re- mained intact is the way a simple “puff-piece” story about Ted in the women’s magazine
Redbook
was handled. Ted had encouraged Joan to consent to an interview for the story, and prior to its publication, the feature was gone over re- peatedly by Bobby and Ted, as well as attorneys and publi- cists and other Kennedy handlers, each word scrutinized for its impact and meaning.

The twenty-eight-page manuscript for
Redbook
, titled “What Makes Teddy Run” and written by William Peters, was submitted to the Kennedy camp by Peters for its ap- proval on December 1, 1961. The feature was sent to Ted’s office. Ted then sent a copy of it to Bobby for his approval as well, along with a memo (not dated, but found in the Kennedy Library).

Ted noted in his memo to Bobby that the first half of the article was favorable, but that his greatest concerns in- cluded a comment from Joan about her youth in Bronxville in which she was quoted as having said: “The entire com-

munity is so highly restricted that I actually never met a Jew as I was growing up.” He was also concerned about Joan’s description of the amenities found at the Kennedys’ Cape Cod compound: “Besides all of the sports equip- ment—boats, water skis, tennis courts, riding horses, nearby golf courses, and everything else—they have their own projection room for movies. If you want a steam bath, they have that, too!”

Ted also noted Joan’s comment that even when the adults are playing “hide-and-seek and kick-the-can with the chil- dren, they play as though they were adult games of wits. They play hard, and to win.” There were other problems as well, having to do with the writer’s references to, as Ted put it, “my emotional detachment and insensitivity” when it came to segregation issues at the University of Virginia, where he attended school.

In response to this memo, Bobby wrote a six-page mem- orandum to Ted, dated December 14, 1961. In it, he sug- gested that Ted speak directly to the author, William Peters, about his concerns, rather than go above his head to the magazine’s editor.

“You will want to have them eliminate the quote on what Joan said about never meeting a Jew,” Bobby wrote. And re- garding Joan’s enthusiasm for the luxuries found at Cape Cod, Bobby suggested that Ted ask Peters to “leave out the projection room and the steam bath. I would just say to him that you don’t think it adds anything and it might appear that it shows our bragging about being more fortunate than oth- ers.” Bobby also suggested, “Peters should straighten out the fact that you
did
know there had been Negroes at the law school.” Bobby pointed out other passages in Peters’s article that he wanted to change.

All of the changes that the Kennedys hoped would be made to the
Redbook
story were made before the magazine went on sale.*

Joan would continue to cause problems with her candor. A size eight, she was always a clothes horse, enjoyed fash- ion, and often wore gowns that had been designed by Oscar de la Renta and Galanos, as well as Zuckerman suits and dresses by Mollie Parnis and Adele Simpson. In 1962, she would tell an interviewer that she appreciated Oleg Cassini’s clothes “because he gives me fifty percent off, which I think is terribly nice.” Cassini wasn’t happy that Joan had an- nounced that she got a discount to wear, and advertise, his creations, and he sent the magazine’s editor a letter saying that Joan was “mistaken.” (“Why, I don’t recall that at all,” Oleg Cassini says today. “I know that I didn’t design any- thing for her specifically. But if she ever wore my clothing, I’m sure I was honored.”)

“Ted is the favorite uncle,” Joan also said to the same re- porter when talking about the Kennedy offspring. “He’s so big, he can roughhouse with all the children. The President is the same way. But now his back is a problem. He can barely pick up his own son.”

The White House was extremely sensitive to reports about Jack’s bad back, which had become an issue in the 1960 election. Ever since the 1954 spinal surgery, the Kennedy handlers were careful to never mention his back as a problem. Dr. Janet Travell regularly administered Novo- cain injections just to get Jack through the day because he

*See the source notes at the back of this volume for detailed cor- respondence between the Kennedy brothers relating to the
Red- book
story.

was so crippled by his back, and the White House did all it could to keep the truth of his condition under wraps. Then, in one interview, Joan blew years of public relations strat- egy.

“What is wrong with you?” Ted asked Joan after reading the story. “Are you crazy? Look at the mess you’ve caused.”

Joan burst into tears and apologized.

The matter became such a Kennedy camp scandal that Bobby told Ted, “We’re going to have to just make sure Joan doesn’t say a word about anything to anybody. What else can we do? Tell her to issue a denial. And tell her not to say a single thing about anyone’s health ever again.”

So, doing her Kennedy duty, Joan issued the required de- nial, saying, “My remarks were taken completely out of context.” The media jumped all over Joan, making her out to be either a liar or an idiot. “Personally, I think she’s doing the best she can,” Ethel said to a secretary of hers, trying to be charitable. “I mean, we’re talking about Joan here, aren’t we?”

When Jackie heard about what had been happening, she telephoned Joan to put her mind at ease. According to what Joan later told family friend Joan Braden, Jackie said not to worry about what had occurred. “Look, you’re only human,” she told Joan. “My goodness, they are overreact- ing, those guys.” Jackie said that it was obviously true that Jack had a back problem, and the fact that he could still run the country despite it should be considered “admirable, not controversial. So don’t give it a second thought, Joan,” she concluded.

Joan later said that she was so grateful to Jackie for trying to put her mind at ease, “I couldn’t stop crying for three days about the whole thing.”

Of the three wives, Joan was still the best liked by reporters, despite—or maybe even because of—her blun- ders with the press. Her brand of thoughtfulness was rare on Capitol Hill. For instance, a fashion reporter from a Washington daily once telephoned her to ask what she in- tended to wear at a charity fashion show. The writer ex- plained that she wanted to put her “piece to bed” on the day of the show rather than wait until after the show had occurred to write about it. The fashion reporter was uneth- ical, perhaps, but Joan empathized with the woman when she said she wanted to spend some extra time with her chil- dren.

“I’ll be wearing a lovely white chiffon gown,” Joan said, before giving details of the designer and exact description.

However, that night at dinner before the show, Joan spilled red wine on herself. Some of the other senators’ wives who were not modeling offered to switch dresses with her, but Joan wouldn’t hear of it.

“I promised a writer I’d be wearing this dress, and she al- ready wrote her story,” Joan explained as she frantically at- tempted to remove the stain with seltzer water. “I can’t embarrass her. So I’m going to wear this darn dress if it’s the last thing I do.”

Joan did wear the gown, wine stain and all.

Pat Finds Jackie “So Insecure”

B
y mid-July 1962, the President had ended his relationship with Marilyn Monroe. In fact, Jack had so quickly distanced himself from Marilyn that, according to close associates, he referred to the actress, his relationship with her, and Jackie’s concern about it as “The Monroe Matter.” However, Mari- lyn was still not entirely out of the picture. Jackie was now apparently aware that Bobby also had some involvement with the actress, though she was unsure to what extent. In Jackie’s view, Marilyn Monroe was probably like a bad headache that wouldn’t go away.

It was Lee Radziwill’s idea that Jackie meet her in Italy for a vacation to take some time away from “The Monroe Matter.”

Nunziata Lisi, the Italian friend of Lee Radziwill’s who lived in the small, picturesque Italian resort village of Rav- ello, on the southern coast of Italy, now says, “Lee told me that she wanted to take Jackie’s mind off a big problem hav- ing to do with the President and a famous movie star, whom she did not name.

“She said that Jackie was completely worn out by the whole business and, for some reason, thought that it was all going to come out, be made public, because there was so much carelessness involved in it,” says Lisi. “She didn’t want to be around for the fallout. She was exhausted. Lee suggested that she spend a couple of weeks in Ravello— where Jackie’s stepbrother Gore Vidal would later live—so I made all of the arrangements for her to arrive on August 6.

Pat Finds Jackie “So Insecure”
209

Lee was in France and would be meeting Jackie in Italy. Most of all, I was looking forward to meeting the much- beloved Jackie Kennedy, and was hopeful that she would forget all of her troubles while in the lovely town of Rav- ello.”

Before leaving for Ravello, Jackie had decided to rent her summer home at Hyannis Port to her sisters-in-law, Eunice and Pat. Though she didn’t say so at the time, it seemed clear to people that she planned to be gone all summer.

Preparing the house for Eunice and Pat was no easy task. The home was furnished simply but in good taste, with a lot of white-painted rattan furniture and large, stuffed, floral-printed sofas and chairs. Jackie asked her secretary to make certain that recently purchased cushions for the furniture on the porch—where Jackie did many of her watercolors—were stored out of sight in the basement. They were replaced by a much older set, there and also outside on the patio. Not trusting that her nieces and nephews would be as considerate of the furniture as her own children, Jackie ordered old, worn, green chintz slip- covers put on the indoor furniture over the flower- patterned cushions. All of her expensive glass and china was to be stored, and only the cheap pieces left on view. All towels and other linens, including sheets and pillow- cases, were to be packed away in the basement. John Jr.’s and Caroline’s toys were to be stashed away as well, lest any of their rowdy cousins break one of them. “But you can leave the croquet set,” Jackie said. “I don’t see how they can break a croquet set.”

After the house was ready for them, Jackie met with Pat there to talk about the terms of the rental, according to Beverly Brennan. “As I recall it, the plan was that the two

sisters-in-law would rent the place for the months of July, August, and September, at $1,800 per month,” said Bren- nan. “But the problem was that Jackie wanted all of the money up front—$5,400. Pat had a check prepared for only $900 for the first month. Jackie was adamant. Grudg- ingly, Pat tore up the original check and wrote another for

$2,700, telling Jackie she would have to get the rest from Eunice.”

At that meeting, according to what Pat Lawford later told Beverly Brennan, Jackie took this opportunity to discuss the Marilyn Monroe problem, and she asked Pat to talk to Mar- ilyn. Jackie may have been just as concerned about Bobby’s relationship with Marilyn at this time as she had been about Jack’s. It’s not known what Jackie asked Pat to say to Mari- lyn.

Pat, always determined to maintain her privacy, did not discuss many details of her talk with Jackie about Marilyn, but she did later tell Brennan that she thought Jackie was being “ridiculous.” She told her, “Jackie is the First Lady. What does Marilyn have that she doesn’t have? Why is Jackie so insecure? I don’t get it.”