The mistress who mattered most
JACKIE Kennedy knew the names of each of John F Kennedy’s mistresses and Marilyn Monroe bothered her the most, a new book claims. As the wife of a popular young president in an age when the infidelity of powerful men was discreetly ignored, Kennedy put up with a lot.
She apparently knew the names of each of her husband’s mistresses and was able to quietly dismiss them. But according to These Precious Few Days, a book on the Kennedys’ last year together, there was one love rival she was unable to ignore: Marilyn Monroe.
Kennedy brooded on her husband’s affair with the film star more than any other fling and Monroe “seemed to bother her the most,” reports the book by US journalist and biographer Christopher Andersen.
The first lady was worried that the actress “was a loose cannon who could go public at any time, causing a scandal that would obliterate her husband’s reputation, destroy her marriage and hold her up to public ridicule”.
Monroe reportedly became convinced that she would be the president’s second wife and told friends: “Can’t you just see me as first lady?”
The book reports one unconfirmed episode when Monroe is said to have telephoned the White House and spoken to Jackie Kennedy, telling her of the affair with her husband.
Kennedy reportedly replied: “Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great. And you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibilities of first lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems.”
The first lady reportedly confided in Dr Frank Finnerty, one of her personal physicians, about her inadequate sex life, telling him: “[Kennedy] just goes too fast and falls asleep.”
After “some understandable hesitation”, Finnerty offered some sex advice that improved the first couple’s relations, but it did not stop the president’s extramarital activities, according to the book.
It also describes the alarm of some of John F Kennedy’s intimates when they learnt that both he and his wife were being treated by Dr Max Jacobson, a German physician known as “Dr Feelgood” for his habit of regular injections.
At the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Jacobson was reportedly injecting both Kennedys as well as other members of the “Camelot” set. — © The Daily Telegraph, London