JOHN F KENNEDY seedy
It wasn’t only celebs who got caught up in the scandals. Amanda Killelea looks back at how plenty of politicians found themselves embroiled in dodgy dealings too...
Everyone remembers where they were when they heard JFK had been assassinated, such was the public appeal of possibly the United States’ most popular president.
The people loved the all-American couple that was John and Jackie Kennedy. A respected and loving husband, a devoted and beautiful wife and doting children, they were seemingly living the American dream.
But behind the Kennedy fairytale, his charismatic personality and good looks, JFK was a serial cheater known for his womanising and sex scandals.
His indiscretions nearly ended his relationship in 1956 when he left his pregnant wife behind to go yachting around Europe with Senator George Smathers. While he was partying on a different continent, Jackie gave birth to a stillborn girl, alone.
Probably his most infamous affair was with Marilyn Monroe — the ultimate American sex symbol.
The actress fuelled the ongoing speculation about their relationship when she famously sang Happy Birthday, Mr President to him in her sultry voice.
But Monroe was found dead in her apartment on August 5, 1962, behind a locked door with an empty bottle of pills beside her. It was ruled she had died from a drugs overdose – but that did nothing to quell wild speculation she was silenced to stop her going public about her affair.
JFK’s political career was not without controversy either, with fraught relations with communist states during the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime and he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby just two days later.
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Ronnie and Reggie Kray were notorious gangsters whose gang brought fear to the East End of London.
As West End nightclub owners the twins mixed in celebrity circles with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Diana Dors and Judy Garland, and they even became celebrities themselves.
But scandal was never far from their door.
In July 1964 an exposé in the Sunday Mirror about Ronnie’s relationship with Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician, caused such concern within Downing Street that the then-head of MI5 was summoned to the Home Office.
The Government feared a bigger scandal than the Profumo Affair.
Although no names were revealed in the article, the twins threatened the journalists involved and Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson’s solicitor, Arnold Goodman.
Wilson apparently wanted to protect the reputation of Labour MP Tom Driberg, a relatively open gay man known to associate with both Boothby and Ronnie, just weeks ahead of a pending general election Labour was hoping to win.
The police investigated the Krays on several occasions but the brothers’ reputation for violence made witnesses afraid to testify.
They were arrested in 1968 and, in March 1969, both were sentenced to life with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of George Cornell and Jack McVitie – the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey for murder.