Book-It '21! Book #26: "Mrs Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years" by Barbara Leaming
The all new 50 Books Challenge!
Title: Mrs Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years by Barbara Leaming
Details: Copyright 2001, Simon and Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "In this landmark work, critically acclaimed biographer Barbara Leaming has written the first full account-- poignant and deeply sympathetic-- of Jacqueline Kennedy during the dramatic thousand days of John F Kennedy's presidency. Drawing on revelatory new eyewitness testimony, profoundly moving letters written by Jackie, minute-to-minute Secret Service records, and recently declassified top-secret documents, the author has crafted an astonishing portrait of a Jackie Kennedy the world has not previously known. Leaming's meticulous reportage illuminates the tumultuous day-to-day life of a young woman fighting for her survival, her marriage, and her husband's presidency.
The book's unique perspective on the very public Kennedy marriage during an extraordinary period in our nation's history is both riveting and shocking. Here is the detailed, close-up story of a young woman who entered the White House at age thirty-one, seven years into a deeply troubled marriage, and left at thirty-four after her husband's assassination. Leaming reveals a marriage of appalling cruelty and deep love. After Jack's death, Jackie complained to a friend that few understood Jack's "tenderness and tragedy." One might well say the same of Jackie herself. Her crucial role in the Kennedy presidency constitutes the missing history of the White House years, and similarly, her personal story can be fully understood only in light of the unfolding events of one of American history's most dramatic presidencies.
Written with the vividness and sweep of a great historical novel, Mrs Kennedy will forever change your understanding of both the public and private Jacqueline Kennedy."
Why I Wanted to Read It: The second book about a First Lady this year! I've mentioned my semi-fascination with the idea of First Ladies (for a number of reasons, but including as a standard bearer both of their husbands' Presidencies and how close women have been allowed to get to power) and I'm not alone in finding Jacqueline Kennedy in particular one of the most fascinating First Ladies. I've read books mentioning and seen documentaries (and fictional depictions) of Kennedy, but never a biography. Even in the relatively scant amount of media I've consumed about the Kennedys, I'm familiar enough with most of the dramatic beats of several generations.
How I Liked It: Who is Jackie Kennedy?
Over a quarter-century after her death, she is still an icon, familiar to people whose parents wouldn't have even been alive when her husband was in office. It seems like every few years she's played by another A-list actress (Katie Holmes, Natalie Portman) and she continues to make notable cameos elsewhere (The Crown). In less than a full Presidential term, in part of why it wasn't a full Presidential term, she revolutionized the position of First Lady as well as the White House itself. She's frequently more caricature than character even now, a Halloween costume of a pink tweed suit and boxy little matching hat, with oversized sunglasses and a flipped hairdo. Frankly a book claiming to offer the real Jackie Kennedy is just as relevant today as it was twenty years ago.
And twenty years is a long time, particularly when it comes to biographies of this nature. At the time of this book's publication, Kennedy had only been dead for seven years. Generally (but certainly not always) the longer someone has been dead, the more likely people are to offer more detail (and accuracy without fear of retaliation) in their reminiscences. Add to that the fact this author is apparently a professional biography writer (nothing against that, necessarily, but just about any biography I've ever enjoyed did not come from a professional biography writer, but an expert on that person specifically) and it's questionable just how much this book was going to get right or truly inside the people that make up this story.
The book begins with Kennedy's husband's Inauguration Day, and a relative sense of unease about her new role as First Lady. From there, we swing into a potted history of Kennedy's early life and family, with her parents' unhappy marriage and her mother's remarriage to a stepfather Kennedy didn't like, and her mother's contempt for her, particularly her overwhelming resemblance to her father, both physically and personally. Jackie's education is detailed as is her meeting of John Fitzgerald Kennedy at a dinner party after graduation, and their subsequent courtship and troubled early marriage. The book goes back and forth a bit in the first chapter between Inauguration Day and how they got there.
From then on, it's rather straightforward with Kennedy's troubles. Her husband's inexperience and drug use for his medical ailments, his many, many, many affairs with increasing disregard for discretion, her floundering in her new role and being both hunted and criticized by the press.
Kennedy scores a few wins, though, including her legendary European trip, her revolutionary redecorating of the White House (including adding a unique private family area), and her strength and defiance in the immediate aftermath of her husband's murder.
The book follows with a potted life post-Presidency, including her friendship with Robert Kennedy and devastation after his murder, her decision to essentially flee the country for her children's safety into a marriage of pure convenience (and the public's horror at what they felt was her betrayal to legacy). A friend that helped see her through was British Prime Minister Harold Macmillian, a positive influence on her husband and a fellow victim of the wrong end of an extremely public affair (his wife had a lifelong affair with another politician). The book ends with Kennedy's death of cancer at the age of sixty-four and "the time she once spoke to of Macmillan as 'the days of you and Jack' remained the best of her life." (pg 360)
As I said, I haven't read any biographies about Jacqueline Kennedy before this one, nor can I trace public perception of her the way I can for other famous figures of this era. Marilyn Monroe, for example, like Kennedy, remains evergreenly fascinating to the public. Monroe's image morphed and continues to morph from era to era: a victim of mental illness, a victim of the patriarchy, during the height of heroin chic an image of body positivity, a civil rights advocate, and of course the very persistent rumors of her possible dalliances with other women (so far, none proven, darn it). More on her later.
But for Kennedy, I can't say whether or not in 2001 it would've been revolutionary/necessary to portray her the way this biography does, as a persistent victim of various nefarious forces. In the author's note at the beginning, the author opines that if she hadn't been a First Lady, it's "unlikely that a single book" would've been written about Kennedy. Yet, the author believes, in the dozens of books written about her, "specific details" of her time in the Presidency have been "largely excluded" as well as the fact books on her husband tend to exclude Kennedy's influence on his Presidency as well. Thus the title, the "missing history."
But while this book absolutely does chronicle primarily Kennedy's time as First Lady and her impact on her husband's Presidency, it does so with such an almost ridiculous, over-the-top level of sympathizing of Kennedy that becomes almost patronizing.
Just about any and all grievance you could imagine, Kennedy suffered and painfully. I don't doubt that Kennedy suffered these grievances, but in the book at some point she ceases to be a complex human being and becomes some sort of woebegone collapsible woman, trailing after her man and therefore negating the purported purpose of this book.
A typical passage, from when Kennedy desperately needed doctor-ordered rest and had to neglect some official duties:
For years, Jackie had been the target of her mother's lectures about how things ought to be done and the ways in which, more often than not, Jackie fell short of her mother's exacting standards. Janet was capable of extraordinary pettiness and cruelty, her temper compounded by her stupidity. Jackie already felt guilty that she was letting Jack down, and Janet's diatribe only deepened her misery.(pg 25)
By many accounts outside this book, Kennedy could be genuinely personally unpleasant. She had a privileged upbringing, for all its troubles, and achieved a somehow even more privileged life than when she started. She had every reason to loathe the press and to some extent, the general public (at the beginning of her husband's political career, her posh upbringing and fondness for fine clothes and French things were fretted over by his campaign as unrelatable to average people), and many messy tragedies. Several of aforementioned tragedies were very public, from which it's clear she never healed, if someone could ever heal from having your husband brutally murdered on top of you in front of the world, a cultural touchpoint played over and over again. Any of these things would, more or less understandably, make that person not very pleasant.
About the most this book is willing to go though, is describing that Jackie's uncanny ability of impressions that while quite amusing perhaps not very kind and perhaps not very helpful in making good relationships, particularly with her mother-in-law.
The book does go into Kennedy's flair for public relations, particularly of the international kind. Among her many efforts, she realized a French translator a crucial dinner wasn't capturing her husband's wit, so she sent him away and took over the translating herself, unheard of at the time (and it probably still would be today). Yes, her husband is the President, but why did Kennedy decide to do these things? She took on more than many First Ladies, certainly, and it wasn't all because of her husband. The book scratches the surface of what's probably the greater truth: Kennedy found surprising purpose and reward in the diplomatic work she did.
The book also makes some quite curious choices. Kennedy, generally considered to be one of the most attractive First Ladies of all time and certainly one of the most attractive women of the era (and probably of all time, for various reasons), the author chooses to repeatedly dismiss as "not conventionally attractive," pouring over her supposed physical flaws (her eyes were so far apart she required special glasses, she wore gloves to hide her hands which she considered too big, her hair was naturally kinky and frizzy and required chemical straighteners of the time):
[T]o some of Jack's friends the very ideas that he was dating Jackie was puzzling. They were well aware of Jack's taste in women, his preference for stunning beauties. [...] With her unfashionably kinky hair and sloppy schoolgirl clothes, Jackie, then in her early twenties and far from the polished, iconic woman she would later become, was very obviously not his type. That he was aware she was no beauty was clear. When a photographer proposed to take her picture, Jack instructed Jackie to turn her face to get a more flattering angle. Jewel Reed, who was married to a former Navy friend of Jack's, remembered being mystified by Jackie. "I thought, 'That's an odd choice for him.' I was stunned. I thought she was almost homely." [Roommate of Jack Kennedy's sister Kick and wife of Jack's friend Charles "Chuck" Spalding] Betty Spalding had much the same reaction.(pgs 29 and 30)
While attractiveness is generally eye-of-the-beholder and one could absolutely be considered attractive in general and still not someone's type, trying to cast Kennedy as "homely" is unintentionally hilarious and a pretty pathetic attempt to try to make her likeable and relatable. Given how cutting and even downright nasty she could be to people, I absolutely don't doubt many would pile on to insult her that way if given the opportunity. While Kennedy might have not seemed like her husband's usual type which appeared to be curvy blondes like Inga Arvad (with whom he had an affair in 1942), at just about every stage of her life, even as a "sloppy schoolgirl", she was conventionally attractive by the standards of the time, even before she was First Lady.
Why on earth does it matter if Kennedy is considered conventionally attractive or not?
Because it speaks to the extremely clumsy attempt by the author to try to "humanize" her, but it does the opposite, since if most people don't know anything about Kennedy, they know she was physically attractive. Which begs the question again of what exactly the public thought of Kennedy at this time (2001).
From my admittedly cursory research, it seemed as though opinions were fairly cruel of Kennedy after her remarriage, and the press could sometimes be vicious. But that appeared to mellow a bit as presumably nostalgia set in and she appeared to enjoy a relatively comfortable celebrity in the 1980s and 1990s. At and after her death, she appears fairly canonized as the gold standard both for First Ladies and for fashion. So why exactly did the author choose to go this overly-sympathetic-to-the-point-of-practically tears route for Kennedy? This would've been a bold (and possible even necessary) move when public opinion of her was generally low, but for a book claiming to tell the story of her White House years, the real objective appears to be to sell Jackie Kennedy as a sympathetic figure and largely a pitiable victim. She was, in many ways, of course, but it does a complex, complicated person no justice to make her into a cartoon in another way.
Also, Jack Kennedy making sure his then-girlfriend is photographed at the most flattering angle doesn't mean he thought she was no beauty, it speaks to the fact he sounds like a generally pretty vain man who wanted the most attractive picture of his possession-girlfriend possible.
The book also has a theory that Kennedy was attractive to her husband because she reminded him of his sister. Really.
Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy Cavendish was Jack Kennedy's younger sister, very close to him, and possibly the closest to him of all of his siblings. She married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and died at only twenty-eight in a plane crash.
The book likens a lot of Jackie's personal appeal to Kick's:
Joe Sr., who had been noticeably closer to Kick than to his other daughters, desperately missed "the only one" he felt he could actually talk to. When Jack brought Jackie Bouvier home four years after Kick's death, Joe discovered "a substitute for Kick," in the words of Betty Spalding, who had been Kick's roommate and later married Jack's friend Charles "Chuck" Spalding. Jackie, like Kick before her, was someone Joe Kennedy could laugh with, a spunky girl "unwilling to take any guff" from him or any member of the Kennedy tribe. (pg 29)
Incidentally, if this book is to be believed, Kennedy had what sounds like a truly sweet relationship with her father-in-law, helping him through his stroke and in many ways taking on the role of daughter rather than daughter-in-law.
Jackie recalled Kick in many ways. Like Kick, she was ambitious, adroit in social situations, and, though not conventionally pretty, dazzled nonetheless. There were numerous striking parallels in their life stories. Both had worked for the Washington Times-Herald, been recommended to the post by Arthur Krock, hired by Frank Waldrop, and dated journalist John White. Both had spent a crucial year in France, studying the language as well as art and design, and had a passion for all things French. The most important similarity was their transforming effect on Jack. He seemed to connect to Jackie as he once had with his sister. (pg 29)
From the first, both Jack and his father were drawn to Jackie because she could fill the enormous void Kick's death had opened for both men. (pg 29)
Long after they were married in 1953, there would be a good deal of public speculation that Jackie had been chosen as the presidential hopeful's wife because, being refined and polished, she was utterly different from the Kennedys. Much would be made of the notion that for all her usefulness to Jack's future, she had no real place in the Kennedy family. The truth was also the very opposite. Jack had been drawn to her precisely because of her multifaceted resemblance to the family "star," as Arthur Krock dubbed the lost Kathleen. (pg 30)
The precedent of Kick is the piece of the puzzle that is missing from all previous accounts of Jackie's marriage to Jack Kennedy-- the simple explanation for what went so painfully wrong. For all of her marvelous rapport with him, Jackie had married a sexually voracious man for whom she functioned, in large part, as a replacement for a vanished sister. (pg 30)
If she sometimes seemed alienated in the family, it was because in unwittingly taking over Kick's role with Jack and Joe Sr., she provoked the resentment of Jack's mother and sisters, who saw her as a usurper. Unlike Kick, who was easy and charming with both sexes, Jackie tended to work her magic only on men and found it hard to communicate with most women. (pg 30)
With Jackie, confirmed by marriage as part of his family, he replicated the charmed life he had enjoyed with his sister. Sadly, she never understood why he had been drawn to her, why he had bothered to marry her, why he could seem so happy when they were together yet betray her so relentlessly. She never grasped that because she was his sister's stand-in, her ceaseless efforts to make herself sexually attractive had to fail. She never realized that the very thing that had brought her together with Jack-- Kick's precedent-- had doomed the marriage from the start. (pg 31)
Because she reminded him of Kick, in many ways Joe Kennedy favored her over his surviving daughters. (pg 31)
Trained to observe closely and well, [the Secret Service agents watching the Kennedys] had visual evidence of how strongly she felt, though time and time again, Jack recoiled from physical intimacy. In private moments, something about the Kennedy's body language reminded one agent of siblings. "You would think they were a brother and sister if you saw them waking along," remembered Larry Newman. "They communicated in their own language. They were happy waking along and talking. They weren't nose-to-nose or anything like that. I think that would have made Kennedy wet his pants." (pg 204)
While it sounds like Kennedy and Kick could share some similarities, they looked nothing alike. Also, while it's certainly more salacious of a claim to say that Kennedy was her husband's lost-sister-replacement and that's why he cheated relentlessly, a far more plausible explanation exists. People certainly don't have to cheat because their current partner resembles a sibling. They cheat for a number of reasons, and for Jack Kennedy, from both this book and other sources, the answer is pretty plain. He was a product of both his time, social standing, and his truly terrible father (who loved his daughter Kick, but ruined her twenty-fifth birthday party by insisting she invite his mistress) whose influence was not unique in the opinion that there are some women with whom you have sex, and some women with whom you have marriage. Sex is dirty and sinful and the Catholic Church even classifies lust as a sin even within marriage. So it's far more likely that her husband wasn't turned off because Kennedy reminded him of his sister, he sought frequent sex elsewhere (and frequently) because he felt he was entitled to it and his wife didn't exist for that purpose. Her husband's truly horrifying misogyny and even his sexual assaults (more on that later) is why his cheating was a problem, not the fact his wife may or may not share personality similarities with his dead sister.
As for the Secret Service agent's recollection, it sounds a lot like the author is attempting to make it fit her theory. Jack Kennedy didn't like PDA, clearly, is more what I take from that story. Again, Jack Kennedy embodied his time and upbringing: this is the wife and the mother of his children, therefore it wouldn't be proper to kiss her or hold her hand in front of other people, even agents with whom you're familiar. This isn't even necessarily exclusive to Kennedy as a politician. Sure, in the past, say, thirty, thirty-five years it's not only acceptable but even expected for the President and his (because so far, it's only been "his") wife (ditto) to show affection publicly. Maybe a kiss and/or a hug after a speech, but that was probably it. It's not even politicians, it's Americans of the Greatest Generation as a whole.
The President himself, as you may imagine, does not come off well in this book. At best, he is an oversexed loose cannon, a child really, handed the reigns to one of the most powerful nations in the world. Many incidents generally held up as evidence of Kennedy's might and leadership prove far more tenuous with a closer look, according to the author (and I believe to an extent that this is true).
At worst, he was criminally incompetent (among other things, the author suggests the start of the Vietnam War was due in part to his grief over the death of his infant son Patrick in 1963, so he was distracted) and increasingly cruel to his wife (not even bothering to hide his affairs, having his mistress to dinners with Jackie).
Certainly, there were numerous other third-floor rooms to which he could have led [his mistress], had it occurred to him that it might be preferable not to have sex amid his children's toys and books. (pg 182)
The President talked to [Washington Post publisher Phil Graham who in the midst of mental breakdown, drunkenly addressed a room full of newspaper publishers and blurted out details of the President's affair with socialite Mary Meyer before taking off his clothes and then being urged to enter a mental hospital] for a good twenty minutes, a conversation that made Kennedy so nervous that when he departed he inadvertently left behind some classified documents. (pg 259)
[Jack Kennedy] was highly susceptible to the fierce campaign for his soul that [Prime Minister] Macmillan waged passionately and tirelessly over a remarkable two year period.
It was a campaign that, as Macmillian himself understood, would have had little hope of success had Jack Kennedy lacked a fundamental core of decency, what David Ormsby-Gore called with characteristic understatement, "the right instincts." As Betty Spalding was reminded at the time of Patrick [the baby the couple lost in 1963]'s death, Jack had been endowed by nature, as had his sister Kathleen, with a sensitivity and kindness that his father's influence and training had grotesquely distorted. had these instincts been lacking, Macmillian might not have succeeded so brilliantly in helping the President develop the beginning of a moral sense. (pg 323)
More troublingly, especially when seen through a 2021 lens although it would've still been sexual harassment and assault regardless of when it took place, are some of the President's sexual attitudes which today would hopefully be clear red flags. In the book however, published to a 2001 audience, it's treated as playful and fun:
In fact, when a woman did refuse [his sexual advances], Kennedy seemed almost to like her the better for it. "if you didn't want to play, then he would try again, because he liked the chase," recalled Susan Stankrauff, who worked for Kennedy in the Senate and on the campaign trail, and who later worked for Bobby Kennedy in the Justice Department. (pg 62)
They were together [Kennedy and a mistress] for eighteen minutes: the sort of quick act of sex, typical of Kennedy, that George Smathers once likening to a rooster getting on top of a hen so briefly that afterward the poor little hen, feathers ruffled, is left to wonder "what the hell" just happened to her. (pgs 263 and 264)
This is of course before the 2012 allegations by White House intern Mimi Alford and while this was published after Anita Hill became a household name, it was before "Me,Too" became a movement.
The book does into some truly interesting detail about Kennedy's work in the White House, as I said, including her innate skills with diplomacy and being an asset on the campaign trail, rather than a liability. Kennedy working through various illnesses and ailments (including both recovering from pregnancy and becoming pregnant again only to have her infant son die days after his birth) and trying to carve out a family life and a life with her husband is genuinely fascinating. In the hands of a different author, this could have been truly a tribute to the complex, multi-faceted person Kennedy was.
But the author doesn't just stop at reducing Kennedy to a victim caricature (even when recalling stories that ostensibly challenge that narrative), it's the style of writing as a whole.
"There were women [that had affairs with the President] that kept scorecards," said Secret Service agent Larry Newman, "and they cared not at all for Jackie's feelings." (pg 61)
Why on earth would that quote be included? If his mistresses cared about Jackie's feelings, they wouldn't be having sex with her husband in the first place (at least, not without making sure there's not some sort of consensual arrangement in place) and that quote is ridiculously unnecessary, save to spoonfeed to the reader that we're supposed to have sympathy for Kennedy, when we can develop that on our own.
Dr Feel Good had been called in to help the Kennedys and their friends enjoy their outing in the Cacotin Mountains after a night of hard drinking. (pg 164)
That'd be referring to a questionable doctor infamous at the time (and soon well-known among the administration) for shooting up famous figures with performance drugs, generally uppers. "Dr Feel Good"? Really? You gave him a nickname in the biography?
Given Mary's crackpot plan to achieve world peace by slipping L.S.D. to men in power, Jack's having made it possible for her to be present at this critical moment [the Cuban Missile Crisis] boggles the mind. (pg 242)
That would be Kennedy mistress Mary Meyer, who gets a considerable amount of text in the book and who this book suggests was the one mistress that worried Jackie, as she was from their social class and could (and did) challenge him intellectually. She's an interesting figure (who yes, did frequently use LSD) who was murdered after the assassination and conspiracy theories abound. Her murder is still unsolved.
The overt casualness (for lack of a better term) reminds me of another book that could get too familiar. But that book was (largely) about a kooky toy fad in the 1990s. This is a biographer who was given considerable access to a legendary First Lady.
"Jack had appeal for women," recalled Jewel Reed, contemplating the collapse of her own marriage, "but had far more appeal for men. Men who were older, wiser, more senior than he were very, very much drawn into his thinking [about having mistresses and casual sex]. He was the alpha, without any question at all." Under his influence, friends would "strip away their own personal values, compromise their integrity, and become, certainly intellectually, all but hostages to him," she observed. "It was as if he emasculated them. They emerged deprived of original loyalties... I think the wives of these men would understand perfectly what I am saying." The men, forced to choose between Kennedy and their families, were drawn ineluctably to the former. In such cases, Kennedy's appeal "had a homosexual effect," Reed insisted, though the men involved "weren't homosexual." (pg 250)
That's quite the unnecessary word salad (and homophobia) to say that Jack Kennedy had a lot of magnetism to and power over men, same as he did with women, to come around to his way of thinking about mistresses and casual sex. You don't have to try to "no homo" it, we get what was meant.
The book also has one of the most luridly graphic depictions of the assassination and aftermath and goes hard on the gore. Presumably it's to communicate how traumatic and hideous it was for Kennedy, but going deeper on her emotions would've accomplished that better. Instead, Kennedy's actions are described as though the author is checking off a list (which she probably was, for historical accuracy's sake).
Who is Jackie Kennedy? While twenty years ago there was no shortage of books about Kennedy, twenty years and several successful cinematic depictions later, there is literally a cottage industry of books on that very subject. Everything from her relationship to her brother-in-law, to her relationship with her son, to her relationship with her sister, to her relationship with her sister when they were girls, to her "celebrity" years in New York, and on and on, including, I assume, more biographies that specifically look at her years in the White House. They probably draw from information in this book. And hopefully they're much better books. Who is Jackie Kennedy? Someone who didn't deserve to have her contributions to history on numerous levels flattened into a cartoon.
Notable: Unlike Jacqueline Kennedy, I know a lot about Marilyn Monroe. I've read very nearly every biography worth the trouble and plenty more that weren't. I've listened to podcasts, seen documentaries, and for this same author having a book on Monroe as well, she makes a fairly odd claim about Monroe's infamous 1962 performance at Jack Kennedy's birthday party:
Her performance was funny to many, but in ways most viewers could not have suspected Marilyn was enacting a painful personal drama. Devastated by Arthur Miller's recent remarriage, she was sending a message to the celebrated playwright and political hero: If you don't want me anymore, Kennedy (whom she knew Miller admired) does. To be sure that Miller watched, Marilyn, always the strategist, had drafted her aged former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, to escort her to the gala. (pg 198)
Marilyn's performance was the desperate scream of a dying woman. Its other intended audience was Ralph Greenson, her psychiatrist, who, on vacation in Europe, seemed to have abandoned her. To the psychiatrist, as to the ex-husband, Marilyn declared her actions: See how bad I can be now that you have left me. (pgs 198 and 199)
This was a couple months before Monroe's death and she was pretty much treading water. She wasn't thinking clearly let alone strategically. She was impulsive (and long-term thinking wasn't ever one of her strong suits even when she was healthier) in performing and was clearly going for comfort in a weak moment by inviting her former father-in-law (she stayed friendly with her in-laws, although not with their son). The author notes she was clearly high, so how exactly would it be that she'd have the mental faculties to send these carefully choreographed (pun unintended) messages? Also, by every account I've read, she felt betrayed by Miller while still in their marriage, which led her to cheat on him and once she was done, she was done. I'm not saying you can't cheat on someone and later regret that they've moved on, but I'd never heard any account of her giving an ex husband a second thought except for when she was truly nearly gone (we're talking within weeks of her death) and thought (according to some sources) she and Joe DiMaggio might get back together. While she was dependent on Greenson and was unmoored by his absence, she certainly wasn't thinking clearly enough to send that kind of a message.
Since we have video of her performance, we can see for ourselves, and despite the fact she and the President were never really more than a fling, she's his most famous mistress, this "proof" exists, and thus often incorrectly portrayed as the biggest threat to his wife (which to her credit, the author portrays their relationship for what it was). Pull up her performance and watch it again. It isn't any sexier or attempting to be sexier than any of her film performances (which occasionally pushed boundaries at the time), she is so out of it and clearly struggling, she looks barely aware of her surroundings at times. We're supposed to believe this is not irrational behavior from someone both under the influence and in mental duress but actually a calculated, strategic move. I agree with one thing, though. It was one of the desperate screams of a dying woman.
__________________________________________________
By then [the arrival of her husband's mistress], Jackie was able to contain herself no longer [at the dinner to celebrate her husband's recent big success with international diplomacy]. She put on Jimmy Dean's popular record, "P.T. 109" about Jack's Second World War exploits. Over and over she sang along to the silly song about the young Navy officer's heroism. No one but Jack seemed to understand quite what she was up to, and before long he excused himself and went to bed. A night that had begun in celebration ended with Jackie deflating all the talk of Jack's greatness. (pg 249)
Trolling your cheating spouse with repeated sing-along performances of a corny pop song from the period about their war hero story to punish them for their infidelity is truly cinematic material (not to mention hilarious).
This is exactly the story in the hands of a better author that would shape a far more interesting and more accurate portrayal of Kennedy.
Final Grade: C
DON'T FORGET I'M ON BLOGSPOT NOW!
Title: Mrs Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years by Barbara Leaming
Details: Copyright 2001, Simon and Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "In this landmark work, critically acclaimed biographer Barbara Leaming has written the first full account-- poignant and deeply sympathetic-- of Jacqueline Kennedy during the dramatic thousand days of John F Kennedy's presidency. Drawing on revelatory new eyewitness testimony, profoundly moving letters written by Jackie, minute-to-minute Secret Service records, and recently declassified top-secret documents, the author has crafted an astonishing portrait of a Jackie Kennedy the world has not previously known. Leaming's meticulous reportage illuminates the tumultuous day-to-day life of a young woman fighting for her survival, her marriage, and her husband's presidency.
The book's unique perspective on the very public Kennedy marriage during an extraordinary period in our nation's history is both riveting and shocking. Here is the detailed, close-up story of a young woman who entered the White House at age thirty-one, seven years into a deeply troubled marriage, and left at thirty-four after her husband's assassination. Leaming reveals a marriage of appalling cruelty and deep love. After Jack's death, Jackie complained to a friend that few understood Jack's "tenderness and tragedy." One might well say the same of Jackie herself. Her crucial role in the Kennedy presidency constitutes the missing history of the White House years, and similarly, her personal story can be fully understood only in light of the unfolding events of one of American history's most dramatic presidencies.
Written with the vividness and sweep of a great historical novel, Mrs Kennedy will forever change your understanding of both the public and private Jacqueline Kennedy."
Why I Wanted to Read It: The second book about a First Lady this year! I've mentioned my semi-fascination with the idea of First Ladies (for a number of reasons, but including as a standard bearer both of their husbands' Presidencies and how close women have been allowed to get to power) and I'm not alone in finding Jacqueline Kennedy in particular one of the most fascinating First Ladies. I've read books mentioning and seen documentaries (and fictional depictions) of Kennedy, but never a biography. Even in the relatively scant amount of media I've consumed about the Kennedys, I'm familiar enough with most of the dramatic beats of several generations.
How I Liked It: Who is Jackie Kennedy?
Over a quarter-century after her death, she is still an icon, familiar to people whose parents wouldn't have even been alive when her husband was in office. It seems like every few years she's played by another A-list actress (Katie Holmes, Natalie Portman) and she continues to make notable cameos elsewhere (The Crown). In less than a full Presidential term, in part of why it wasn't a full Presidential term, she revolutionized the position of First Lady as well as the White House itself. She's frequently more caricature than character even now, a Halloween costume of a pink tweed suit and boxy little matching hat, with oversized sunglasses and a flipped hairdo. Frankly a book claiming to offer the real Jackie Kennedy is just as relevant today as it was twenty years ago.
And twenty years is a long time, particularly when it comes to biographies of this nature. At the time of this book's publication, Kennedy had only been dead for seven years. Generally (but certainly not always) the longer someone has been dead, the more likely people are to offer more detail (and accuracy without fear of retaliation) in their reminiscences. Add to that the fact this author is apparently a professional biography writer (nothing against that, necessarily, but just about any biography I've ever enjoyed did not come from a professional biography writer, but an expert on that person specifically) and it's questionable just how much this book was going to get right or truly inside the people that make up this story.
The book begins with Kennedy's husband's Inauguration Day, and a relative sense of unease about her new role as First Lady. From there, we swing into a potted history of Kennedy's early life and family, with her parents' unhappy marriage and her mother's remarriage to a stepfather Kennedy didn't like, and her mother's contempt for her, particularly her overwhelming resemblance to her father, both physically and personally. Jackie's education is detailed as is her meeting of John Fitzgerald Kennedy at a dinner party after graduation, and their subsequent courtship and troubled early marriage. The book goes back and forth a bit in the first chapter between Inauguration Day and how they got there.
From then on, it's rather straightforward with Kennedy's troubles. Her husband's inexperience and drug use for his medical ailments, his many, many, many affairs with increasing disregard for discretion, her floundering in her new role and being both hunted and criticized by the press.
Kennedy scores a few wins, though, including her legendary European trip, her revolutionary redecorating of the White House (including adding a unique private family area), and her strength and defiance in the immediate aftermath of her husband's murder.
The book follows with a potted life post-Presidency, including her friendship with Robert Kennedy and devastation after his murder, her decision to essentially flee the country for her children's safety into a marriage of pure convenience (and the public's horror at what they felt was her betrayal to legacy). A friend that helped see her through was British Prime Minister Harold Macmillian, a positive influence on her husband and a fellow victim of the wrong end of an extremely public affair (his wife had a lifelong affair with another politician). The book ends with Kennedy's death of cancer at the age of sixty-four and "the time she once spoke to of Macmillan as 'the days of you and Jack' remained the best of her life." (pg 360)
As I said, I haven't read any biographies about Jacqueline Kennedy before this one, nor can I trace public perception of her the way I can for other famous figures of this era. Marilyn Monroe, for example, like Kennedy, remains evergreenly fascinating to the public. Monroe's image morphed and continues to morph from era to era: a victim of mental illness, a victim of the patriarchy, during the height of heroin chic an image of body positivity, a civil rights advocate, and of course the very persistent rumors of her possible dalliances with other women (so far, none proven, darn it). More on her later.
But for Kennedy, I can't say whether or not in 2001 it would've been revolutionary/necessary to portray her the way this biography does, as a persistent victim of various nefarious forces. In the author's note at the beginning, the author opines that if she hadn't been a First Lady, it's "unlikely that a single book" would've been written about Kennedy. Yet, the author believes, in the dozens of books written about her, "specific details" of her time in the Presidency have been "largely excluded" as well as the fact books on her husband tend to exclude Kennedy's influence on his Presidency as well. Thus the title, the "missing history."
But while this book absolutely does chronicle primarily Kennedy's time as First Lady and her impact on her husband's Presidency, it does so with such an almost ridiculous, over-the-top level of sympathizing of Kennedy that becomes almost patronizing.
Just about any and all grievance you could imagine, Kennedy suffered and painfully. I don't doubt that Kennedy suffered these grievances, but in the book at some point she ceases to be a complex human being and becomes some sort of woebegone collapsible woman, trailing after her man and therefore negating the purported purpose of this book.
A typical passage, from when Kennedy desperately needed doctor-ordered rest and had to neglect some official duties:
For years, Jackie had been the target of her mother's lectures about how things ought to be done and the ways in which, more often than not, Jackie fell short of her mother's exacting standards. Janet was capable of extraordinary pettiness and cruelty, her temper compounded by her stupidity. Jackie already felt guilty that she was letting Jack down, and Janet's diatribe only deepened her misery.(pg 25)
By many accounts outside this book, Kennedy could be genuinely personally unpleasant. She had a privileged upbringing, for all its troubles, and achieved a somehow even more privileged life than when she started. She had every reason to loathe the press and to some extent, the general public (at the beginning of her husband's political career, her posh upbringing and fondness for fine clothes and French things were fretted over by his campaign as unrelatable to average people), and many messy tragedies. Several of aforementioned tragedies were very public, from which it's clear she never healed, if someone could ever heal from having your husband brutally murdered on top of you in front of the world, a cultural touchpoint played over and over again. Any of these things would, more or less understandably, make that person not very pleasant.
About the most this book is willing to go though, is describing that Jackie's uncanny ability of impressions that while quite amusing perhaps not very kind and perhaps not very helpful in making good relationships, particularly with her mother-in-law.
The book does go into Kennedy's flair for public relations, particularly of the international kind. Among her many efforts, she realized a French translator a crucial dinner wasn't capturing her husband's wit, so she sent him away and took over the translating herself, unheard of at the time (and it probably still would be today). Yes, her husband is the President, but why did Kennedy decide to do these things? She took on more than many First Ladies, certainly, and it wasn't all because of her husband. The book scratches the surface of what's probably the greater truth: Kennedy found surprising purpose and reward in the diplomatic work she did.
The book also makes some quite curious choices. Kennedy, generally considered to be one of the most attractive First Ladies of all time and certainly one of the most attractive women of the era (and probably of all time, for various reasons), the author chooses to repeatedly dismiss as "not conventionally attractive," pouring over her supposed physical flaws (her eyes were so far apart she required special glasses, she wore gloves to hide her hands which she considered too big, her hair was naturally kinky and frizzy and required chemical straighteners of the time):
[T]o some of Jack's friends the very ideas that he was dating Jackie was puzzling. They were well aware of Jack's taste in women, his preference for stunning beauties. [...] With her unfashionably kinky hair and sloppy schoolgirl clothes, Jackie, then in her early twenties and far from the polished, iconic woman she would later become, was very obviously not his type. That he was aware she was no beauty was clear. When a photographer proposed to take her picture, Jack instructed Jackie to turn her face to get a more flattering angle. Jewel Reed, who was married to a former Navy friend of Jack's, remembered being mystified by Jackie. "I thought, 'That's an odd choice for him.' I was stunned. I thought she was almost homely." [Roommate of Jack Kennedy's sister Kick and wife of Jack's friend Charles "Chuck" Spalding] Betty Spalding had much the same reaction.(pgs 29 and 30)
While attractiveness is generally eye-of-the-beholder and one could absolutely be considered attractive in general and still not someone's type, trying to cast Kennedy as "homely" is unintentionally hilarious and a pretty pathetic attempt to try to make her likeable and relatable. Given how cutting and even downright nasty she could be to people, I absolutely don't doubt many would pile on to insult her that way if given the opportunity. While Kennedy might have not seemed like her husband's usual type which appeared to be curvy blondes like Inga Arvad (with whom he had an affair in 1942), at just about every stage of her life, even as a "sloppy schoolgirl", she was conventionally attractive by the standards of the time, even before she was First Lady.
Why on earth does it matter if Kennedy is considered conventionally attractive or not?
Because it speaks to the extremely clumsy attempt by the author to try to "humanize" her, but it does the opposite, since if most people don't know anything about Kennedy, they know she was physically attractive. Which begs the question again of what exactly the public thought of Kennedy at this time (2001).
From my admittedly cursory research, it seemed as though opinions were fairly cruel of Kennedy after her remarriage, and the press could sometimes be vicious. But that appeared to mellow a bit as presumably nostalgia set in and she appeared to enjoy a relatively comfortable celebrity in the 1980s and 1990s. At and after her death, she appears fairly canonized as the gold standard both for First Ladies and for fashion. So why exactly did the author choose to go this overly-sympathetic-to-the-point-of-practically tears route for Kennedy? This would've been a bold (and possible even necessary) move when public opinion of her was generally low, but for a book claiming to tell the story of her White House years, the real objective appears to be to sell Jackie Kennedy as a sympathetic figure and largely a pitiable victim. She was, in many ways, of course, but it does a complex, complicated person no justice to make her into a cartoon in another way.
Also, Jack Kennedy making sure his then-girlfriend is photographed at the most flattering angle doesn't mean he thought she was no beauty, it speaks to the fact he sounds like a generally pretty vain man who wanted the most attractive picture of his possession-girlfriend possible.
The book also has a theory that Kennedy was attractive to her husband because she reminded him of his sister. Really.
Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy Cavendish was Jack Kennedy's younger sister, very close to him, and possibly the closest to him of all of his siblings. She married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and died at only twenty-eight in a plane crash.
The book likens a lot of Jackie's personal appeal to Kick's:
Joe Sr., who had been noticeably closer to Kick than to his other daughters, desperately missed "the only one" he felt he could actually talk to. When Jack brought Jackie Bouvier home four years after Kick's death, Joe discovered "a substitute for Kick," in the words of Betty Spalding, who had been Kick's roommate and later married Jack's friend Charles "Chuck" Spalding. Jackie, like Kick before her, was someone Joe Kennedy could laugh with, a spunky girl "unwilling to take any guff" from him or any member of the Kennedy tribe. (pg 29)
Incidentally, if this book is to be believed, Kennedy had what sounds like a truly sweet relationship with her father-in-law, helping him through his stroke and in many ways taking on the role of daughter rather than daughter-in-law.
Jackie recalled Kick in many ways. Like Kick, she was ambitious, adroit in social situations, and, though not conventionally pretty, dazzled nonetheless. There were numerous striking parallels in their life stories. Both had worked for the Washington Times-Herald, been recommended to the post by Arthur Krock, hired by Frank Waldrop, and dated journalist John White. Both had spent a crucial year in France, studying the language as well as art and design, and had a passion for all things French. The most important similarity was their transforming effect on Jack. He seemed to connect to Jackie as he once had with his sister. (pg 29)
From the first, both Jack and his father were drawn to Jackie because she could fill the enormous void Kick's death had opened for both men. (pg 29)
Long after they were married in 1953, there would be a good deal of public speculation that Jackie had been chosen as the presidential hopeful's wife because, being refined and polished, she was utterly different from the Kennedys. Much would be made of the notion that for all her usefulness to Jack's future, she had no real place in the Kennedy family. The truth was also the very opposite. Jack had been drawn to her precisely because of her multifaceted resemblance to the family "star," as Arthur Krock dubbed the lost Kathleen. (pg 30)
The precedent of Kick is the piece of the puzzle that is missing from all previous accounts of Jackie's marriage to Jack Kennedy-- the simple explanation for what went so painfully wrong. For all of her marvelous rapport with him, Jackie had married a sexually voracious man for whom she functioned, in large part, as a replacement for a vanished sister. (pg 30)
If she sometimes seemed alienated in the family, it was because in unwittingly taking over Kick's role with Jack and Joe Sr., she provoked the resentment of Jack's mother and sisters, who saw her as a usurper. Unlike Kick, who was easy and charming with both sexes, Jackie tended to work her magic only on men and found it hard to communicate with most women. (pg 30)
With Jackie, confirmed by marriage as part of his family, he replicated the charmed life he had enjoyed with his sister. Sadly, she never understood why he had been drawn to her, why he had bothered to marry her, why he could seem so happy when they were together yet betray her so relentlessly. She never grasped that because she was his sister's stand-in, her ceaseless efforts to make herself sexually attractive had to fail. She never realized that the very thing that had brought her together with Jack-- Kick's precedent-- had doomed the marriage from the start. (pg 31)
Because she reminded him of Kick, in many ways Joe Kennedy favored her over his surviving daughters. (pg 31)
Trained to observe closely and well, [the Secret Service agents watching the Kennedys] had visual evidence of how strongly she felt, though time and time again, Jack recoiled from physical intimacy. In private moments, something about the Kennedy's body language reminded one agent of siblings. "You would think they were a brother and sister if you saw them waking along," remembered Larry Newman. "They communicated in their own language. They were happy waking along and talking. They weren't nose-to-nose or anything like that. I think that would have made Kennedy wet his pants." (pg 204)
While it sounds like Kennedy and Kick could share some similarities, they looked nothing alike. Also, while it's certainly more salacious of a claim to say that Kennedy was her husband's lost-sister-replacement and that's why he cheated relentlessly, a far more plausible explanation exists. People certainly don't have to cheat because their current partner resembles a sibling. They cheat for a number of reasons, and for Jack Kennedy, from both this book and other sources, the answer is pretty plain. He was a product of both his time, social standing, and his truly terrible father (who loved his daughter Kick, but ruined her twenty-fifth birthday party by insisting she invite his mistress) whose influence was not unique in the opinion that there are some women with whom you have sex, and some women with whom you have marriage. Sex is dirty and sinful and the Catholic Church even classifies lust as a sin even within marriage. So it's far more likely that her husband wasn't turned off because Kennedy reminded him of his sister, he sought frequent sex elsewhere (and frequently) because he felt he was entitled to it and his wife didn't exist for that purpose. Her husband's truly horrifying misogyny and even his sexual assaults (more on that later) is why his cheating was a problem, not the fact his wife may or may not share personality similarities with his dead sister.
As for the Secret Service agent's recollection, it sounds a lot like the author is attempting to make it fit her theory. Jack Kennedy didn't like PDA, clearly, is more what I take from that story. Again, Jack Kennedy embodied his time and upbringing: this is the wife and the mother of his children, therefore it wouldn't be proper to kiss her or hold her hand in front of other people, even agents with whom you're familiar. This isn't even necessarily exclusive to Kennedy as a politician. Sure, in the past, say, thirty, thirty-five years it's not only acceptable but even expected for the President and his (because so far, it's only been "his") wife (ditto) to show affection publicly. Maybe a kiss and/or a hug after a speech, but that was probably it. It's not even politicians, it's Americans of the Greatest Generation as a whole.
The President himself, as you may imagine, does not come off well in this book. At best, he is an oversexed loose cannon, a child really, handed the reigns to one of the most powerful nations in the world. Many incidents generally held up as evidence of Kennedy's might and leadership prove far more tenuous with a closer look, according to the author (and I believe to an extent that this is true).
At worst, he was criminally incompetent (among other things, the author suggests the start of the Vietnam War was due in part to his grief over the death of his infant son Patrick in 1963, so he was distracted) and increasingly cruel to his wife (not even bothering to hide his affairs, having his mistress to dinners with Jackie).
Certainly, there were numerous other third-floor rooms to which he could have led [his mistress], had it occurred to him that it might be preferable not to have sex amid his children's toys and books. (pg 182)
The President talked to [Washington Post publisher Phil Graham who in the midst of mental breakdown, drunkenly addressed a room full of newspaper publishers and blurted out details of the President's affair with socialite Mary Meyer before taking off his clothes and then being urged to enter a mental hospital] for a good twenty minutes, a conversation that made Kennedy so nervous that when he departed he inadvertently left behind some classified documents. (pg 259)
[Jack Kennedy] was highly susceptible to the fierce campaign for his soul that [Prime Minister] Macmillan waged passionately and tirelessly over a remarkable two year period.
It was a campaign that, as Macmillian himself understood, would have had little hope of success had Jack Kennedy lacked a fundamental core of decency, what David Ormsby-Gore called with characteristic understatement, "the right instincts." As Betty Spalding was reminded at the time of Patrick [the baby the couple lost in 1963]'s death, Jack had been endowed by nature, as had his sister Kathleen, with a sensitivity and kindness that his father's influence and training had grotesquely distorted. had these instincts been lacking, Macmillian might not have succeeded so brilliantly in helping the President develop the beginning of a moral sense. (pg 323)
More troublingly, especially when seen through a 2021 lens although it would've still been sexual harassment and assault regardless of when it took place, are some of the President's sexual attitudes which today would hopefully be clear red flags. In the book however, published to a 2001 audience, it's treated as playful and fun:
In fact, when a woman did refuse [his sexual advances], Kennedy seemed almost to like her the better for it. "if you didn't want to play, then he would try again, because he liked the chase," recalled Susan Stankrauff, who worked for Kennedy in the Senate and on the campaign trail, and who later worked for Bobby Kennedy in the Justice Department. (pg 62)
They were together [Kennedy and a mistress] for eighteen minutes: the sort of quick act of sex, typical of Kennedy, that George Smathers once likening to a rooster getting on top of a hen so briefly that afterward the poor little hen, feathers ruffled, is left to wonder "what the hell" just happened to her. (pgs 263 and 264)
This is of course before the 2012 allegations by White House intern Mimi Alford and while this was published after Anita Hill became a household name, it was before "Me,Too" became a movement.
The book does into some truly interesting detail about Kennedy's work in the White House, as I said, including her innate skills with diplomacy and being an asset on the campaign trail, rather than a liability. Kennedy working through various illnesses and ailments (including both recovering from pregnancy and becoming pregnant again only to have her infant son die days after his birth) and trying to carve out a family life and a life with her husband is genuinely fascinating. In the hands of a different author, this could have been truly a tribute to the complex, multi-faceted person Kennedy was.
But the author doesn't just stop at reducing Kennedy to a victim caricature (even when recalling stories that ostensibly challenge that narrative), it's the style of writing as a whole.
"There were women [that had affairs with the President] that kept scorecards," said Secret Service agent Larry Newman, "and they cared not at all for Jackie's feelings." (pg 61)
Why on earth would that quote be included? If his mistresses cared about Jackie's feelings, they wouldn't be having sex with her husband in the first place (at least, not without making sure there's not some sort of consensual arrangement in place) and that quote is ridiculously unnecessary, save to spoonfeed to the reader that we're supposed to have sympathy for Kennedy, when we can develop that on our own.
Dr Feel Good had been called in to help the Kennedys and their friends enjoy their outing in the Cacotin Mountains after a night of hard drinking. (pg 164)
That'd be referring to a questionable doctor infamous at the time (and soon well-known among the administration) for shooting up famous figures with performance drugs, generally uppers. "Dr Feel Good"? Really? You gave him a nickname in the biography?
Given Mary's crackpot plan to achieve world peace by slipping L.S.D. to men in power, Jack's having made it possible for her to be present at this critical moment [the Cuban Missile Crisis] boggles the mind. (pg 242)
That would be Kennedy mistress Mary Meyer, who gets a considerable amount of text in the book and who this book suggests was the one mistress that worried Jackie, as she was from their social class and could (and did) challenge him intellectually. She's an interesting figure (who yes, did frequently use LSD) who was murdered after the assassination and conspiracy theories abound. Her murder is still unsolved.
The overt casualness (for lack of a better term) reminds me of another book that could get too familiar. But that book was (largely) about a kooky toy fad in the 1990s. This is a biographer who was given considerable access to a legendary First Lady.
"Jack had appeal for women," recalled Jewel Reed, contemplating the collapse of her own marriage, "but had far more appeal for men. Men who were older, wiser, more senior than he were very, very much drawn into his thinking [about having mistresses and casual sex]. He was the alpha, without any question at all." Under his influence, friends would "strip away their own personal values, compromise their integrity, and become, certainly intellectually, all but hostages to him," she observed. "It was as if he emasculated them. They emerged deprived of original loyalties... I think the wives of these men would understand perfectly what I am saying." The men, forced to choose between Kennedy and their families, were drawn ineluctably to the former. In such cases, Kennedy's appeal "had a homosexual effect," Reed insisted, though the men involved "weren't homosexual." (pg 250)
That's quite the unnecessary word salad (and homophobia) to say that Jack Kennedy had a lot of magnetism to and power over men, same as he did with women, to come around to his way of thinking about mistresses and casual sex. You don't have to try to "no homo" it, we get what was meant.
The book also has one of the most luridly graphic depictions of the assassination and aftermath and goes hard on the gore. Presumably it's to communicate how traumatic and hideous it was for Kennedy, but going deeper on her emotions would've accomplished that better. Instead, Kennedy's actions are described as though the author is checking off a list (which she probably was, for historical accuracy's sake).
Who is Jackie Kennedy? While twenty years ago there was no shortage of books about Kennedy, twenty years and several successful cinematic depictions later, there is literally a cottage industry of books on that very subject. Everything from her relationship to her brother-in-law, to her relationship with her son, to her relationship with her sister, to her relationship with her sister when they were girls, to her "celebrity" years in New York, and on and on, including, I assume, more biographies that specifically look at her years in the White House. They probably draw from information in this book. And hopefully they're much better books. Who is Jackie Kennedy? Someone who didn't deserve to have her contributions to history on numerous levels flattened into a cartoon.
Notable: Unlike Jacqueline Kennedy, I know a lot about Marilyn Monroe. I've read very nearly every biography worth the trouble and plenty more that weren't. I've listened to podcasts, seen documentaries, and for this same author having a book on Monroe as well, she makes a fairly odd claim about Monroe's infamous 1962 performance at Jack Kennedy's birthday party:
Her performance was funny to many, but in ways most viewers could not have suspected Marilyn was enacting a painful personal drama. Devastated by Arthur Miller's recent remarriage, she was sending a message to the celebrated playwright and political hero: If you don't want me anymore, Kennedy (whom she knew Miller admired) does. To be sure that Miller watched, Marilyn, always the strategist, had drafted her aged former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, to escort her to the gala. (pg 198)
Marilyn's performance was the desperate scream of a dying woman. Its other intended audience was Ralph Greenson, her psychiatrist, who, on vacation in Europe, seemed to have abandoned her. To the psychiatrist, as to the ex-husband, Marilyn declared her actions: See how bad I can be now that you have left me. (pgs 198 and 199)
This was a couple months before Monroe's death and she was pretty much treading water. She wasn't thinking clearly let alone strategically. She was impulsive (and long-term thinking wasn't ever one of her strong suits even when she was healthier) in performing and was clearly going for comfort in a weak moment by inviting her former father-in-law (she stayed friendly with her in-laws, although not with their son). The author notes she was clearly high, so how exactly would it be that she'd have the mental faculties to send these carefully choreographed (pun unintended) messages? Also, by every account I've read, she felt betrayed by Miller while still in their marriage, which led her to cheat on him and once she was done, she was done. I'm not saying you can't cheat on someone and later regret that they've moved on, but I'd never heard any account of her giving an ex husband a second thought except for when she was truly nearly gone (we're talking within weeks of her death) and thought (according to some sources) she and Joe DiMaggio might get back together. While she was dependent on Greenson and was unmoored by his absence, she certainly wasn't thinking clearly enough to send that kind of a message.
Since we have video of her performance, we can see for ourselves, and despite the fact she and the President were never really more than a fling, she's his most famous mistress, this "proof" exists, and thus often incorrectly portrayed as the biggest threat to his wife (which to her credit, the author portrays their relationship for what it was). Pull up her performance and watch it again. It isn't any sexier or attempting to be sexier than any of her film performances (which occasionally pushed boundaries at the time), she is so out of it and clearly struggling, she looks barely aware of her surroundings at times. We're supposed to believe this is not irrational behavior from someone both under the influence and in mental duress but actually a calculated, strategic move. I agree with one thing, though. It was one of the desperate screams of a dying woman.
__________________________________________________
By then [the arrival of her husband's mistress], Jackie was able to contain herself no longer [at the dinner to celebrate her husband's recent big success with international diplomacy]. She put on Jimmy Dean's popular record, "P.T. 109" about Jack's Second World War exploits. Over and over she sang along to the silly song about the young Navy officer's heroism. No one but Jack seemed to understand quite what she was up to, and before long he excused himself and went to bed. A night that had begun in celebration ended with Jackie deflating all the talk of Jack's greatness. (pg 249)
Trolling your cheating spouse with repeated sing-along performances of a corny pop song from the period about their war hero story to punish them for their infidelity is truly cinematic material (not to mention hilarious).
This is exactly the story in the hands of a better author that would shape a far more interesting and more accurate portrayal of Kennedy.
Final Grade: C
DON'T FORGET I'M ON BLOGSPOT NOW!