A deeper look at Jackie and her sis
But book doesn’t settle Bouvier rivalry. Review,
Lee Bouvier was prettier and savvier about art and fashion than her older sister, Jacqueline. But Jackie became first lady at 31 and President John F. Kennedy’s widow at 34, events that forever enshrined this shy woman as a figure admired worldwide for her dignity and grace in the aftermath of her husband’s assassination.
That’s the takeaway from “The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee” by Sam Kashner, a Vanity Fair contributor, and biographer Nancy Schoenberger (Harper, 296 pp., ★★g☆), which definitely takes Lee’s side in this tale of sibling rivalry among the jet set.
The book begins with Jackie’s devastating 1994 post-mortem slap at Lee: Dead of cancer at 64, Jackie pointedly left Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwill Ross out of her will, though she did provide for Lee’s two children. Why the estrangement? This book tries to explain through a lifetime the sorrows, slights and devotion these sisters shared.
Raised to look good and marry well, Lee and Jackie were ruled by the twisted triumvirate of money, love and men. Their lives paralleled women’s changing roles in the 20th century and beyond. Lee, now 85, submitted to interviews by the authors; Jackie, dead for 24 years, did not.
What do we learn about these style mavens we haven’t read before in previous books?
Depending on your level of Kennedy obsession, “Sisters” synthesizes wellchronicled history in interesting ways but stumbles when repeating what the authors openly question as truth when the accusations are juicy enough. Some of their observations:
❚ Their parents’ divorce scarred
them for life: The Bouvier sisters were shattered when their beloved stockbroker father, the handsome, charming and alcoholic “Black Jack” Bouvier, lost his fortune in the crash of 1929, and his marriage soon after. Their mother, Janet, remarried wealthy banker Hugh Auchincloss, but the girls felt divided loyalties and desperately missed their father.
❚ Lee loved Aristotle Onassis first:
Lee and the Greek shipping magnate were lovers when Jackie lost her infant son Patrick in 1963, and Lee invited Jackie to his yacht in Greece to recover. Lee wept to hear Jackie would wed Onassis after a brief courtship in 1968 (soon after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination). Still, Lee dutifully served as matron of honor. One startling fact: Onassis, distrusted by both Bobby and Jack Kennedy, stayed at the White House at Lee’s request in the days after JFK’s assassination.
❚ Both women were clothes horses, but Jackie consigned her worn designer duds: Kennedy, Onassis and Ross’s second husband, Polish Prince Stanislaw Radziwill, complained of the money they spent on their wives’ clothing. But Jackie – married to a wealthy shipping tycoon at the time, mind you – sold her worn clothes for extra cash.
❚ Lee’s list of lovers reads like a who’s who of the 20th century: They include Polish royalty in Radziwill; dancer Rudolf Nureyev; Onassis; director Herbert Ross; and photographer Peter Beard, whom she credited with opening her up to new adventures.
❚ It was Lee, not Jackie, who accompanied Kennedy on his trium
phant trip to Berlin in 1963: Jackie was pregnant at the time. Photos of Lee in Berlin depict her glowing in her role as first sister.
Faithful readers of Vanity Fair won’t learn much new here, and Kashner and Schoenberger stoop to quoting the late viper-tongued author Gore Vidal that Lee slept with JFK, noting, “It is hard to know if he is telling the truth here.”
So why not ask Lee and settle the matter once and for all?