Setting the Record Straight on Jackie O

Jacqueline Kennedy’s oral history is now out, as told to the Kennedy courtier cum historian Arthur Schlesinger. In a foreword her daughter Caroline, another keeper of the Camelot flame, says that her mother’s story was told during “the extreme stages of grief.” I do not doubt it, but the widow’s sadness certainly does not come through when polishing the Kennedy apple. My recollections of the time differ from those of Jackie’s, but they would, wouldn’t they?

Here’s the way things stood before November 22, 1963. Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill, was having a flirtation with the golden Greek Aristotle Onassis. Her husband, Stas, was also having a flirtation (I choose euphemisms in reaction to modern celebrity writing’s crudeness) with Henry Ford’s eldest daughter Charlotte. When JFK was told of the situation, he asked Lee and Stas to put their future plans (Lee to marry Onassis and Stas to wed Charlotte) on hold until after the 1964 election. Both agreed to do so. Jackie flew to Greece and spent a few days with her sister on the Onassis yacht, while Stas and Charlotte canoodled innocently around The Hamptons. Then the president was assassinated and their world went topsy-turvy. Onassis decided to go after bigger fish than the president’s sister-in-law—namely, Jackie. Stas and Lee decided to stay together, as the Polish prince rightly divined that leaving his wife after the president’s death would look callous and cruel. Charlotte Ford then turned to yet another oldie, Onassis’s brother-in-law, Stavros Niarchos, got pregnant by him, and married him briefly. Lee found solace in the company of Warren Beatty and yours truly.

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