Life of JFK3: FDR's Widow Lends a Hand

My main contribution to Kennedy’s election was inadvertent, and it was delivered by Eleanor Roosevelt.

We had run a piece by FDR’s widow, “My Advice to the Next First Lady.” The producers of the “Tonight” show called me to ask her if she would appear with Jack Paar. To my surprise, she agreed.

On the way to the studio, I asked Mrs. Roosevelt, who had supported Adlai Stevenson during the convention and been visibly cool to JFK, what made her decide to take part in a talk show. “I want to help elect Senator Kennedy,” she said.

On the “Tonight” show, she did just that. As Paar sat beaming deferentially, she compared Kennedy to FDR during his first campaign in 1932, inspiring voters and responding to their enthusiasm, and predicted he would make a fine President. In Kennedy’s hairline victory, her testimonial may well have been significant.

Jacqueline Kennedy’s contribution was more iffy. For the 1960 article I sent my college classmate Bob Levin to interview her. A few years earlier, he had taken his family to Italy while writing a novel. I asked him to try for an interview with Ingrid Bergman, the first since the uproar over her affair with Roberto Rossellini. Surprisingly, he got it.

Back home, I assigned him to write about Grace Kelly, who had agreed to marry Prince Rainier after spending only a few hours with him. Why would a beautiful, rich and famous young woman marry a man she hardly knew to become princess of a tiny realm? Her sisters were so intrigued by the question they persuaded Grace to see him. Her musings about being a quiet, overlooked and undervalued member of a hyperactive family was on the stands the day her first child was born.

Bob spent several days with Jacqueline Kennedy in Hyannisport. She was less forthcoming than Ingrid Bergman and Princess Grace, sounding more like a Stepford Wife: "The most important thing for successful marriage is for a husband to do what he likes best and does well. The wife's satisfactions will follow...If the wife is happy, full credit should be given to the husband because the marriage is her entire life."

She never deviated from this submissive line until Bob put away his notebook. Then she looked him in the eye and said, "But I'm smarter than Jack, and don't you forget it."

From today’s perspective, the 1960 campaign boils down to the first TV debates ever, Kennedy’s speech to Houston ministers about his Catholicism and the beginning of a “youthquake” decade symbolized by a 43-year-old with young children moving into the White House after all those gray-haired elders.

All true enough, but that fails to appreciate the enormity of JFK’s accomplishment. He was in so many other ways “other” than Americans had come to expect in a President, from a family even richer than FDR’s, nouveau riche at that and culturally more sophisticated.

His sexual proclivities were not a campaign issue but not entirely a secret either. When a young Manhattan matron wearing a Kennedy button was told by another, “There’ll be a line of women at the back door of the White House,” she responded with a smile, “Where does it form?”

In that campaign, the advantage of a sitting Vice President was overcome both by Nixon’s sleaziness and Kennedy’s confident authenticity. “It must be terrible to be Nixon,” JFK told friends, “and wake up every morning having to decide who you’re going to be that day.”

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, Kennedy gained confidence as the campaign wore on and eked out a victory to usher in something new in American history.

Next: The glamorous White House.

Life of JFK 2: A Star Is Borne

From the start, the Kennedys were relentless about appearing lovable. In 1958 as editor of Redbook, I got a phone call from Robert Kennedy, whom I had never met. After seconds of small talk, he asked about pictures I had been sent of his kids and their cousins at the beach. Was I going to use them?  When I said no, he responded cheerfully, "Maybe next time."

That was the Kennedy version of charm. Hanging tough was their idea of foreplay.

When I proposed a cover story about Jacqueline Kennedy, Evelyn Lincoln, JFK's secretary, called back. "Mrs. Kennedy," she said, "isn't sure she wants to do an interview for your magazine. She's still upset about the last story."

We tangoed. "Would you tell Mrs. Kennedy that a cover story about her during the primaries could only be helpful. I know she'll understand."

She did and we went ahead. What had upset her (read Bobby, she and JFK never bothered with grudges) was an earlier piece. After losing the vice-presidential nomination the year before, the Kennedys had gone into a full-court press for 1960. Our story had taken a hard look at JFK's record as a senator, including the judgment by a colleague that, in his votes on civil rights and stand on McCarthyism, the author of "Profiles in Courage" could have shown less profile and more courage.

At the cover shoot for the new story, I first met JFK. He came to the studio of Howell Conant on schedule, but his wife was very late. He passed time asking about Princess Grace. Conant was just back from Monaco photographing the former Grace Kelly--he had made her famous years earlier with a Collier's cover.

As Kennedy questioned Conant, it seemed more than idle chatter. Was he thinking about a compliant movie-star wife rather than the woman who was now keeping him waiting? Their marriage had been visibly shaky since JFK had gone off to Aristotle Onassis' yacht after the 1956 convention, leaving behind his pregnant wife, who had a miscarriage while he was away.

(That the Kennedys and Kellys were very aware of one another would become clear for me years later when Jacqueline Kennedy was musing about what her life would be like as JFK’s widow. That famously soft voice hardened as she said emphatically, “I don’t intend to become another Princess Grace!”)   

Then, for an hour, Kennedy sponged up everything I knew about New York politics and kept asking for more. I had never met anyone with such insatiable curiosity and grasp. He really wanted to know everything and knew so much himself in astonishing detail. Drained and running very late, I excused myself. Before I left, he looked past my shoulder and said, "What do you do if your wife is always late?"

"Senator," I answered, "you can't win. Overlook it, you're not worried something might have happened to her. Raise hell, you're a brute."

He considered this for a moment. "I'd rather," he said, jaw muscles tight, "be a brute."

In the proofs of that session (Mrs. Kennedy arrived soon after I left), anger was visible. Rather than a couple eager to move into the White House, they looked like condemned prisoners posing for a joint mug shot. They invited us to try again at their Washington home and Conant produced much better results. 

 
 Soon afterward, Kennedy’s secretary called. He would be in Manhattan and wanted to see the pictures. Should someone bring them to his hotel? I asked. No, his father’s office was in the same building as mine. He would just stop in.

Next day, JFK was leaning over my lightbox, looking at transparencies with a magnifying glass. Every once in a while he would smile and exclaim, “Excellent...This is first class, really first class.”

He left the office expressing pleasure, shaking a few hands on the way out. The cover was “first class,” another small step on his way toward an amazing Presidency.

Next: Helping FDR’s widow help JFK.