This Day in Presidential History (Death of Jackie Kennedy, First Lady of Camelot)

May 19, 1994—Jacqueline Kennedy, one of her husband’s prime political assets in the White House and chief force behind the post-assassination “Camelot” legend of his administration, passed away at age 64 in her sleep in her Manhattan apartment, five months after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Mrs. Kennedy has often been likened to royalty, a description that applies to more than the youthful allure she brought to the White House when she became First Lady at only age 31. Inherent in the persona of queens and princesses, until Princess Diana exploded the concept, was a carefully maintained distance that nurtured a sense of mystery and fascination. Part of the modus operandi behind this was an ironclad discretion, even when one’s royal husband kept mistresses.

Twelve years after John F. Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, it was revealed that he had a mistress, and, with time, that number passed well beyond the single digits. Yet his widow, no matter how put-upon she might have been in life, offered no rebuttal or even comment. In the talk-show age of oversharing, the necessary precursor to our social-media era of total exposure, her silence and insistence on privacy only heightened the reverence many felt for her.

With all due respect to court historians Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore Sorensen, Mrs. Kennedy was the chief architect of “Camelot.” She not only gave rise to the term in a post-assassination interview with Theodore H. White published in Life Magazine (in which she described JFK’s joy in the Lerner and Loewe musical), but, as a James Piereson post on The Daily Beast notes, she insisted that the quote remain in the piece after the editors had wanted to delete it as too hopelessly sentimental. Thereafter, she acted as keeper of the flame by censoring accounts of her husband’s life (e.g., PT-109 friend Red Fay’s The Pleasure of His Company, and, more controversially, William Manchester’s Death of a President).

She was also responsible for the highly ritualized stoicism that began with images broadcast all over the world, then kept up, by herself and other family members, in the face of shattering grief. She approved plans for her husband’s funeral, based on similar final rites from a century before used for another martyred President, Abraham Lincoln. Her last-minute request for an eternal flame beside her husband's grave at Arlington Cemetery, similar to one she had seen at Gettysburg, led to an indelible image that tourists continue to seek out at the site.

As her brother-in-law Robert continued to struggle with almost disabling grief in the months after Jack's assassination, she urged him to read what became for the younger Kennedy a virtual primer in stoicism—Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way. In April 1968, only two months before his own murder, RFK would recite lines translated by Hamilton from Aeschylus, on how even in despair, “comes wisdom,/By the awful grace of God.”

Many—including, it seems, Schlesinger--were so deluded by that breathy voice of hers that they did not sufficiently credit her biting wit or steely will. It was Jackie who gave the nickname “the Murphia” to the so-called “Irish Mafia” of Bostonian political operatives of Hibernian descent, a male coterie of unbending toughness and absolute loyalty. In the deeply sexist environment of the early postwar period, she knew that a First Lady who freely offered public opinions could provoke a ferocious reaction. The cause she ultimately embraced—advocacy of the arts—eventually took concrete form in the most visible public memorial to her husband, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Even Mrs. Kennedy’s remarriage to Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis did not noticeably change the public’s view of her. As an early target of the paparazzi (she ended up suing photographer Ron Galella twice), she zealously guarded the privacy of herself and her two children. One result was that relatively little information about her leaked out in her lifetime. (In the period just before her death, most people were not only unaware of her fatal illness, but that she had a longtime companion: diamond merchant and lover of the arts Maurice Tempelsman.)

I believe that the fascination with Jacqueline Kennedy will continue indefinitely. It’s not simply because, as the first occupants of the White House who truly exploited the relatively new medium of television, she and her husband embodied youthful glamor that even death cannot deface. It also has to do with the fact that there is still so much not known about the Kennedys.

For years, the JFK Library has released information on even long-deceased family members with excruciating slowness. Though privacy considerations for those currently living have been the most frequently stated reason for this, that tendency has also conveniently coincided with the continuing political ambitions of the younger generation of Kennedys. New information about Mrs. Kennedy, then, has hardly been exhausted, as indicated by the very interesting collection of letters just released that were written by the First Lady to an Irish priest, Fr. Joseph Leonard, in the 1950s and 1960s.

(The image accompanying this post might be my favorite photo of Mrs. Kennedy. It was taken during the White House years, showing her with her son John--or, as the baby-boom generation came to think of him, "John-John.")

Flashback, August 1923: Scandal-Fearing President Harding Dies

Following a swing through the Western states and a detour through the Alaska territory, President Warren G. Harding died in a San Francisco hotel after several days of sudden, perplexing physical deterioration—just as he became aware of multiple scandals affecting his administration and, ultimately, his standing in history.

Three decades before Judith Miller and Jayson Blair’s work called into question The New York Times’ reputation for accuracy, a caption in its Sunday magazine made me think heresy about the Newspaper of Record. Harding, the caption mistakenly stated, had been assassinated on August 2, 1923. 

Maddeningly enough, however, the circumstances involving the President’s death were confusing and murky enough that some suspect foul play to this day, eyeing particularly the role played by First Lady Florence Harding.

In this scenario, Harding’s imperious “Duchess” becomes a kind of Roaring Twenties counterpart of Mellie Grant, the President’s vengeful wife on Scandal, and Beth MacMann, the heroine (if “heroine” is the proper word for a woman accused of offing her cheating hubby with Paul Revere’s spittoon in the White House) of Christopher Buckley’s insanely funny No Way to Treat a First Lady.

Florence dispensed with an autopsy and a then-commonly-used death mask for her husband, then had many of his papers destroyed—actions that only fed the imaginations of conspiracy theorists. 

(Equally remarkable was the speed with which this was done—within an hour of his death, Harding was “embalmed, rouged, powdered, dressed, and in his casket,” according to Russell Aiuto's "Strange Life and Death of President Harding." “By morning, he was on a train, headed back to Washington, D.C.”) 

The President’s weakness for other women, according to this theory, fed the Duchess’ desire to take revenge on her husband.

Others, somewhat less sensationally minded, point to an emotional rather than physical poison acting on the President. In this version of events, Harding, buffeted by (take your pick) a young mistress clamoring for him to divorce his wife, persistent racist claims that he had African-American blood, and worries that some close aides were mired in corruption, had grown so despondent that he literally worried himself to death.

To be sure, the Hardings had any number of secrets: Florence had eloped at age 19 to a drinker she soon divorced, and Warren had at least one affair, with a friend from Marion, Ohio, who was paid by the Republican National Committee to take a trip abroad so she could be conveniently out of the way during the 1920 Presidential race. (I discussed Harding’s nomination that year in what became known as the “smoke-filled room” in a prior post.)

But when it came to secrets, Harding was no match for a later President who bedded more women than he could count (including an intern); medical ailments so severe and multitudinous that he required injections by a shadowy physician nicknamed “Dr. Feelgood” to cope; a father whose days as a bootlegger furnished him with underworld connections; and a secret intelligence operation aimed at overthrowing a recently installed Cuban caudillo.

It’s hard to believe now, when he is perennially ranked at or near the bottom of Presidents by historians, that, in an age before television, when radio was still in its infancy, the mourning for Harding was every bit as intense as that of this other President who died in his third year in office, John F. Kennedy. (Approximately nine million Americans lined up to view the funeral trip back to Ohìo.) 

Yet Kennedy’s reputation has survived much more intact than Harding’s—this despite the fact, for instance, that it was the activist liberal President, not the laissez-faire conservative one, who laid the groundwork for American involvement in a divisive, ruinous foreign war.

There are a number of reasons why that has occurred, including that Harding called for a “return to normalcy” while Kennedy urged service to the nation and others. But key among them is the place of the President’s widow in the time surrounding his death.

Jacqueline Kennedy carried herself with a stoic dignity that won universal applause after her husband’s assassination. She was largely silent and aloof in the 30 years after Dallas, and the one interview she did give—with journalist Theodore H. White, when she spoke of her husband’s love for Camelot—played an indelible part in the creation of his legend. 

Secret Service aides had enough respect for her that they would not speak to Dark Side of Camelot author Seymour Hersh about her husband's many assignations until after her death.

Harding did not enjoy that posthumous shield, as his wife—more sickly in life than himself—died within a year of him. That opened the floodgates to all kinds of accounts, many untrue, by men who knew they could speak without fear of contradiction. 

Prominent among them: the roguish Gaston B. Means, a man described by his publisher as an “ex-Department of Justice investigator.” Means’ book The Strange Death of Warren Harding, is the source of the rumor that Florence poisoned her husband. 

Even though Means’ account was so shot full of inaccuracies and even downright lies that it was denounced by his own co-author, it had already done its damage in the form of a preposterous conspiracy theory.

Yet in other ways, it was Florence, who had made possible so much of Warren’s success, as both newspaper editor and politician, who inadvertently helped undermine his enormous popularity with the public.

When he learned the full dimensions of the scandals threatening to break over his administration (primarily in the form of the “Teapot Dome” scandal involving Interior Secretary Albert Fall and Navy Secretary Edwin Denby), Harding cried out, "I can handle my enemies, but God protect me from my friends!” He might just as well have said, “God protect me from Florence’s friends.”

Florence had insisted on one friend, Charles Forbes, to be appointed to head the newly created Veterans Bureau. He betrayed the couple’s—and the nation’s—trust through massive kickbacks and corruption at the bureau.

The second friend of Florence’s was Dr. Charles Sawyer, personal physician to the President. He had endeared himself to the first lady by advising her she did not need surgery for what seemed like a life-threatening kidney ailment, at a time when other prominent physicians were urging surgery. When she recovered, she ascribed to him almost the same level of medical wisdom that Czarina Alexandra of Russia regarded the mad monk Rasputin. 

The Hardings adored this little, somewhat pompous man, but much of the White House staff were cool toward him.

Dr. Sawyer was a homeopath, which meant he did not possess the requisite expertise when the President, even before his fatal trip west, began to develop what sounds like serious heart trouble. 

Carl Anthony, a prominent historian of First Ladies in general and Florence in particular, believes that Harding’s so-called “mysterious death” is not so mysterious at all—it was the result of misdiagnosis, mistreatment (including the use of purgatives) and medical neglect.

Furthermore, Florence enlisted Harding’s private secretary, George Christian, in attempt to destroy her husband’s papers, in a misguided attempt to sanitize his memory. (She was not the last First Lady to do so. Some years later, Harry Truman found his wife burning his letters. “Think of history,” he protested. “I am!” she answered.) 

What she did not realize, however, was that Christian only sent her a few cartons. He kept more than 100 cubic feet of records in the White House basement. Many commentators and even historians wrote under the belief that they need not consult any primary documents from his administration because none existed. 

It was only in the 1960s that the Harding Memorial Association began to relinquish its tight grip on this material, which then ended up in the hands of the Ohio Historical Society. It has taken historians (including, interestingly enough, John Dean of Watergate fame) all this time, after consulting these records, to construct a more nuanced view of this heavily maligned President.

This Day in Film History (Grace Kelly, Star-Turned-Royal, Dies)

September 14, 1982—Nearly three decades after a film scene in which her character gave Cary Grant the willies with her hairpin turns in Monte Carlo, Princess Grace of Monaco—a.k.a. Grace Kelly—died at age 52 in an auto accident on a similar hilly road in the place where she turned from Hollywood royalty to actual royalty. Death brought a dramatic end to a life that had become boring, anti-climactic—anything but the fairy tale she had seemed to live, of the beautiful young woman who had married a prince.

Like those of Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood, Kelly’s death became unmistakably engraved on the consciousness of film fans. Her hold on the public was all the more extraordinary because her film career was only half the length of Monroe’s and only one-sixth of Wood’s.

Several years ago at a wake, someone asked a priest of my acquaintance if he had noticed a couple of rows up a striking young Irish-American woman whom he had baptized years before. He corrected the name used by the questioner: “You mean Grace Kelly,” he joked.

The producers of the award-winning cable TV series Mad Men had to be aware of that icon of beauty and style when they cast January Jones as the young suburban wife Betty Draper.  That same blond elegance and sense of cool remove were so noticeable that the editors at Oprah Magazine created a fashion spread in which the star of today emulated the looks of the Fifties actress.

To other characters who encounter Betty Draper in her role as helpmate to her husband, Madison Avenue prince Don Draper, she seems a thousand times blessed: handsome spouse, cute kids, wonderful house, and, of course, her own looks. Longtime viewers know that, like much else on that show, it’s a carefully manufactured illusion. Betty lives in a gilded cage, committed to a husband who disappoints her, suffocated by her own nagging sense of unfulfillment.

So, sadly, did Princess Grace feel in her final years. After fulfilling the duty of perpetuating the royal line of Monaco, she began to chafe at her stultifying life. Prince Rainier would openly yawn when observing his wife’s creative floral displays, and is said to have rejected any notion of her returning to the silver screen, in the 1977 ballet film Turning Point and, more intriguingly, in Marnie, where she would have collaborated with the director who most appreciated her allure (and, indeed, who might be said to have obsessed about it), Alfred Hitchcock. 

The odyssey of Betty Draper, fans might recall, begins with her auto accident, a signal to a select but largely uncomprehending few that all is not well with her world. In contrast, the odyssey of Grace Kelly ended with an accident.

Betty’s accident caused consternation because children were in the car when she crashed. Kelly’s crash took on a murkiness of its own, involving one of her children. An autopsy concluded that she had had a massive brain hemorrhage just before the accident. That would have accounted for how she lost control of the car.

But for nearly two decades after the tragic day, tabloid speculation swirled, first claiming that it was Princess Stephanie, not her mother, who had been driving—then, when that became harder to prove, that the 17-year-old wild child of the Grimaldi royal family had been arguing with Princess Grace.

It might be more correct to see Betty Draper as a Grace Kelly counterfeit than as a counterpart. Betty’s lack of fulfillment can only be partly ascribed to dismay with her marriage to the philandering, deceitful Don. She is one of the most abusive mothers in the history of television, and it seems to come from a spot in her psyche beyond accountable experience. While Grace Kelly adopted some of the methods of her own strict mother, abuse was not the default option for her. (The writer for the blog Mad for Monaco has an interesting piece on the princess’ supportive, complex, and completely individual relationships with her three children.)

No, I think we’ll have to look to other woman for parallels to Kelly, somehow who, in fact, was her exact contemporary: Jacqueline Kennedy.

One incident did, in fact, unite them briefly: After her husband, then a Senator, had painful back surgery, Jackie smuggled into his hospital room the movie star, dressed in this case as a nurse. Few people would have been more appreciative of the prank than JFK.

Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly were born in the same year. While Kelly married into royalty, Jackie helped to create her own legend of royalty, relating, in a famous interview with Theodore H. White, how her late husband had loved Camelot. Each woman was, if you will, a Catholic American Princess.

Each woman also had, for want of a better phrase, father issues. Though their fathers' personalities were diferent, their clear failings affected how their daughters approached life. John Bouvier earned his nickname “Black Jack” for his dark tan and playboy image. It is hard not to see Jacqueline finding in the rising politico from Massachusetts someone who reminded her more than a little of her father. John Kelly, a hugely popular Olympic oars champion, had gone on to earn a fortune as a Philadelphia contractor. But his opinion of his famous daughter was blunt and off-putting. After Grace won the Best Actress Oscar for The Country Girl, he told reporters that she was the last of his daughters he would have expected to win such an award.

Each woman, after marriage, bore three children (the Kennedys’ third, Patrick, was stillborn in 1963). Each, after entering her high position, threw herself into causes (Jackie, the arts and beautification of the White House; Kelly, also a patroness of the arts, as well as the Red Cross and numerous other charities).

Each woman became an icon of beauty and fashion, but they were also distinctive for their voices. In a thousand days in the White House—particularly in the televised tour of the President’s house—Jackie’s breathy voice left a lasting impression on Americans. Kelly’s was one the actress had to work at. In acting school, she listened to thousands of recordings and practiced for hours dropping her voice, until the cool, cultured tones made her a kind of American aristocrat.

Above all, Kelly had more in common with Jackie Kennedy than with Betty Draper because of her strong will and sense of self-possession. She was talented, intelligent, and ambitious. Her fate—confinement to her gilded cage at Monaco—might not have been the happiest, but it was, indisputably, hers, one she had chosen, like a Hollywood version of Henry James' Isabel Archer, encountering her destiny in an environment and with a husband she knew all too little about beforehand. 

And, like Kennedy, she exerts a continuing fascination because she was content to let others gossip about her life--not condescending to feed the media or even acknowledge its existence. (After her death, a number of members of the Hollywood community opened up--one might say opened fire--about her string of affairs with older and/or married co-stars, including Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Ray Milland, and Bing Crosby. According to Peter Bogdanovich's Who the Hell Is in It, one of these alleged conquests, Jimmy Stewart, acknowledged his feelings about kissing her in Rear Window: "Waall, I'm married, but I'm not dead!") She kept something in the deepest part of herself that remained not only private, but inviolate.

You can find a fine career retrospective on Grace Kelly in this post by the Austin, Texas freelance writer Leah Churner on the blog BAM 150. 

(The photo of Kelly accompanying this post was part of a publicity release for Rear Window in 1954.)