Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (6 page)

Jackie reached for Ethel. However, rather than melt into an embrace with Jackie, as had the other women, Ethel took a step backward and then held out her hand, palm down.

After Jackie took it in hers, the two sisters-in-law shared an uncomfortable and brief moment, one that said a great deal about their uneasy relationship. Later that evening, in the presence of photographer Stanley Tretick at a photo session for the Kennedy women, Ethel would be overheard express- ing concern that perhaps the family had afforded Jackie more preferential treatment than necessary by giving her such an ovation.

“Okay now,” Jackie finally said, turning from Ethel, “let’s take those pictures now, shall we?”

“Show us how they do it in Hollywood,” Eunice joked to Peter Lawford, who crossed his eyes and made a face. Everyone laughed.

As the motorcade that would take the Kennedys to the Ar- mory for the press conference began to form in front of the Big House, the family members inside busied themselves deciding who would sit where for the photograph. Two more photographers, Paul Schutzer of
Life
and Stanley Tretick of UPI, were invited to join Jacques Lowe in his work. “It was sheer bedlam, with all three of us shouting at the Kennedys,” Lowe recalls. “ ‘Look this way, Mr. Kennedy. Over here, Mrs. Kennedy.’ It was just madness. Everyone was laughing, trying to figure out what to do, where to look. It was a wonderful, joyous time.”

In the several photos taken that afternoon in the library, the entire Kennedy family—Rose and Joe, Jack and Jackie, Bobby and Ethel, Ted and Joan, Pat and her husband Peter Lawford, Eunice and Sargent Shriver, and Jean and Stephen Smith—look to the future with confidence, their faces frozen in bright smiles.

The Pre-Inaugural Gala

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anuary 19, 1961, was the date on Jackie Kennedy’s calen- dar that marked the Pre-Inaugural Gala at the National Guard Armory in Washington. Calling upon her “over- whelming good taste,” the new First Lady had decided that she wanted to wear the color white for the occasion, and so, following her explicit instructions, Oleg Cassini designed a white, double-satin gown with elbow-length sleeves, princess-shaped bodice, and a two-part bell-shaped skirt. World-renowned hairdresser “Mr. Kenneth” (whose full name is Kenneth Battelle) was flown in from New York to create a hairstyle that he hoped would be dazzling with the dress.

It would be a new era of elegance in the White House; clearly, Jackie had already decided as much. The dowdy and dreadfully conservative Eisenhowers were “out.” After eight years of that stuffy old guard, it was now time for youth, el- egance, and glamour in Washington. All of Jackie’s fashions would be original creations, she insisted to Cassini. “Make sure no one else wears exactly the same dress I do,” she would write to him, adding that she did not want to see any “fat little women hopping around in the same dress.”

This was a Big Night, and Jackie had always savored Big Nights. However, she was ill and weak after the recent ce- sarean section necessary for the arrival of John Jr. and not feeling at all well. Was she up to the task of re-creating her- self, of masking any appearance of poor health and of radi- ating nothing but youthful, blooming vigor? As a public

person, she believed it to be her responsibility to always be cordial, look her best, and pretend she felt that way even if she didn’t. “You shake hundreds of hands in the afternoon and hundreds more at night,” she said. “You get so tired, you catch yourself laughing and crying at the same time. But you pace yourself, and you get through it.”

Oleg Cassini’s shimmering winter-white satin gown turned out to be another lucky choice in the life of Jackie Kennedy, for the night of the Pre-Inaugural Presidential Gala (organized by Frank Sinatra and actor Peter Lawford) marked one of the biggest blizzards in Washington’s history. In some ways, Jackie’s superbly cut gown transformed the unfortunate snowstorm into a magical backdrop for a modern-day snow queen. By the time the Kennedys left for the gala, huge snowdrifts had brought the city to a standstill, but that didn’t prevent hundreds of spectators from lining the streets, all straining to catch a glimpse of the glamorous First Couple as their limousine crept by at ten miles per hour.

When Sinatra heard that the Kennedy car was at last pulling up to the door, he rushed into the swirling snow to personally escort them inside. Jackie, her hair heavily lac- quered to withstand the fiercest gusts, extended her white- gloved hand and Sinatra led her into the building.

At this time, it was no secret that Jackie disliked Frank Sinatra. She found the singer’s personal style and behavior unseemly. On this point, she and Bobby were in whole- hearted agreement. About three weeks after the Pre- Inaugural Gala, when Jack mentioned that he and Jackie should buy Sinatra a gift to thank him for his work on the campaign, Jackie would suggest a book of etiquette—“not that he would ever actually read such a thing.”

However, this was such an important night—the kickoff to what would be her career as First Lady—that Jackie tran- scended her dislike for Sinatra. While flashbulbs popped all around her, the glamorous Mrs. Kennedy just smiled broadly as the handsome crooner led her to the raised presi- dential box.

Sinatra’s friend Jim Whiting, who was a part of the singer’s circle for years, recalls that “Sinatra once told me that when he was escorting her to the box, she may have been all smiles, but she was very tense. She was gripping his hand so tightly he didn’t know whether she was angry at him or just nervous.”

According to Whiting, when Sinatra whispered words of comfort in Jackie’s ear, she poked him in the ribs with her elbow and, still maintaining a happy face for the photogra- phers, hissed at him under her breath, “Look, Frank. Just smile. That’s all you have to do, okay? Just smile.”

“Frank said that she was very rude,” recalled Whiting. “He said she was pissed off, at the weather, at him, and who knows at what else. Frank was annoyed at her as well, be- cause as he said, ‘If it wasn’t for me, the whole goddamn event wouldn’t have taken place.’ He set it all up, every sec- ond of the entertainment, anyway.”

During the show, Sinatra sang a special rendition of “That Old Black Magic” (changing the lyrics to “That old Jack magic has me in its spell”), while a white spotlight fell on the President and First Lady, bathing them in an ethereal glow. Later Sinatra sang the title song from his 1945 Oscar-awarded short film on racial tolerance, “The House I Live In,” which re- duced even the chilly Jackie to sentimental tears. “She was dabbing at her eyes like some little bobbysoxer,” Whiting said. “In the end, I guess even she couldn’t resist him.”

The next day, January 20, was a bitterly cold Inauguration Day, but the always distinctive Jackie would be the only woman on the President’s platform not covered in mink. Her refusal to wear a fur coat had inspired Cassini to design a simple, fawn-colored suit with a trim of sable and a match- ing muff. On her head she wore what would soon become a trademark of hers—a pillbox hat—this time in matching beige, by Halston.

At twelve o’clock, Jackie stood in the freezing cold be- tween Mamie Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson in the stands and watched the historic moment as her husband was sworn in as the thirty-fifth President of the United States, taking his oath on the Bible that had belonged to his mater- nal grandfather, “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald. Along with her sense of style and fashion, Jackie’s other touches were al- ready imprinting a sense of culture and beauty on the Kennedy administration. It was she who had suggested that Robert Frost recite a poem at the ceremony. The eighty-six- year-old poet, blinded by the sun and continually interrupted by the fierce winds blowing at his pages, gave up trying to read what he had written especially for the occasion and in- stead recited a poem from memory. It was Jackie’s idea also for black opera singer Marian Anderson to sing “The Star- Spangled Banner,” making a statement about civil rights right from the beginning of her husband’s administration.

Ethel, Joan, and the other Kennedy women—the sisters, Eunice, Pat, and Jean, and mother, Rose—watched with misty-eyed reverence. “We all knew that Jack had reached a new plateau,” Ethel would later recall, “and that nothing would ever again be the same, for any of us.”

Probably because so much attention was focused on Jackie, there was some discussion among reporters about the

fact that her relationship with Jack seemed remote, even on this important day. For instance, after the swearing-in cere- mony, he didn’t follow tradition and kiss his wife, as his pre- decessors had done. Because she was regarded as having been so loving and supportive through the years, the fact that Jack seemed to ignore her did trouble some female ob- servers. (He hadn’t mentioned her name when he accepted the nomination of his party in Los Angeles, either.)

“Why didn’t he kiss her? That was what a lot of women wanted to know,” recalls Helen Thomas. “Actually, he didn’t really pay any attention to her at all. It made some women in the country a bit uncomfortable. However, Jack also fairly ignored his own mother, Rose, that day. His was considered a male victory by the men in the family, and the hugs and handshakes between Jack and his father and brothers made that fact clear not only to Jackie, but also to Eunice, Pat, and Jean, as well as Ethel and Joan.”

For her part, Jackie did not attempt to kiss her husband when she saw him at the Capitol rotunda following his speech, not so much as a matter of taste but rather because she was just feeling so unwell. “Everyone noticed how de- tached she looked during the ceremonies,” recalls John Davis, Jackie’s first cousin, who was present, “and how she and Jack never seemed to exchange even so much as a glance during the speeches and recitations. Grimly, she hung in there, trying to look enthusiastic in the freezing cold.”

Jack

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ohn Fitzgerald Kennedy, known to his friends and family as “Jack,” was born on May 29, 1917, in the Massachusetts suburb of Brookline, the second of nine children. Descended from Irish forebears who had immigrated to Boston, his pa- ternal grandfather, Patrick J. Kennedy, was a saloonkeeper who went on to became a Boston political leader. Jack’s fa- ther, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, a Harvard graduate, was a bank president at twenty-five before marrying Rose Fitzger- ald, the daughter of John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, mayor of Boston.

As an infant, Jack lived in a comfortable but modest home in Brookline, but as the family grew and Joseph made more money in the stock market, the Kennedys moved to larger, impressive estates, first in Brookline, then in the suburbs of New York City. Jack’s childhood was a happy one, full of the family games and sports that would characterize the Kennedys’ competitive nature. He attended private, but not Catholic, elementary schools. He later spent a year at Can- terbury School in New Milford, Connecticut, where he was taught by Roman Catholic laymen, and four years at the ex- clusive Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. Jack grew up in the shadow of his older brother, Joseph, who dominated family competitions and was a better student. However, after young Joseph was killed when his plane ex- ploded in midair over England during World War II, father Joseph focused on Jack as the family’s entrée into political prominence.

Jack
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Of the three remaining brothers, Jack was the first to enter the political arena, running for Congress from Massachu- setts’ Eleventh District in 1946, which he won by a large majority. He stayed in the House of Representatives until 1953, when he was elected senator. Every step along the way, Jack was encouraged, prodded, coaxed, and bullied by his father to run for President. However, during the 1960 Presidential campaign, Joseph kept a low profile. Even though he was constantly advising Jack and Bobby, he stayed away from crowds and photographers, giving rise to the then-popular chant: “Jack and Bobby will run the show, while Ted’s in charge of hiding Joe.” Joseph realized that coming out in support of his son would not enhance the can- didate’s progressive image. It was good that he stayed out of sight because, politically, Joseph was poison. He had com- pletely destroyed his own political career and reputation by making negative comments about FDR and seeming to en- dorse some of Hitler’s policies, so suppressing his inflam- matory nature was the best thing he could do at this time. The less said by him during his son’s campaign, the better.