Lee Radziwill, stylish sister of Jackie Kennedy, at 85
Lee Radziwill, the stylish jet setter and socialite who found friends, lovers and other adventures worldwide while bonding and competing with her sister Jacqueline Kennedy, has died. She was 85.
Anna Christina Radziwill told The New York Times her mother died Friday of what she described as natural causes. The Associated Press left messages Saturday and Sunday for the family.
The husky-voiced Ms. Radziwill shared her older sister’s affinity for fashion and globe-trotting, as well as her dark, wide-set eyes and high cheekbones. They were confidantes as young women, and Ms. Radziwill was a frequent guest at the White House during President John F. Kennedy’s administration. She was with the president when he made a trip to London in 1961, and Kennedy was godfather to Ms. Radziwill’s daughter, Anna Christina.
The Kennedys and Radziwills spent Christmases together in Palm Beach, Fla., and the sisters traveled to India and Pakistan. Ms. Radziwill helped select the wardrobe for what became one of Jackie’s signature moments — her trip to Paris with her husband in 1961.
“She had to travel a lot and liked to have me with her,” Ms. Radziwill wrote in “Happy Times,” a memoir published in 2001, seven years after her sister’s death. “Apart from mutual affection, I think our strongest bond was a shared sense of humor.”
But tensions emerged after Kennedy’s assassination, in 1963.
Ms. Radziwill had worried that her brother-in-law’s ascent would overshadow her and told Gloria Steinem for a McCall’s magazine interview that her life during the JFK years was “so limited, so . jetset, empty, cold, and not true.”
In 1968, Jackie wed the Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, whom Lee herself had once thought of marrying, only to have her sister urge her not to. Friends would say Ms. Radziwill felt betrayed and never entirely forgave Jackie.
Ms. Radziwill’s life apart from her sister was eventful enough. She married a prince, Stanislas Radziwill of Poland, and had two children, Anthony and Anna Christina.
There were friendships with Steinem, Rudolf Nureyev, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, whom she joined for a 1972 Rolling Stones tour.
“I can see how people found him (Mick Jagger) sexy,” she told interviewer Sofia Coppola for a 2013 New York Times story. “But I found him a little repulsive.” (Keith Richards would call her “Princess Radish.”)
She began work on a film with collage artist and photographer Peter Beard about her childhood in East Hampton, N.Y. But after a few creative evolutions, and the introduction of filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, it became “Grey Gardens,” the classic documentary about her eccentric aunt and cousin.
Edith Bouvier Beale and her eponymous daughter were immortalized in the 1975 release, later a Broadway musical and Emmy-winning HBO movie.
Ms. Radziwill also made forays into interior decorating and fashion event planning. A brief, unhappy acting career in the 1960s proved she was best at playing Lee Radziwill.
In the introduction to her memoir, Ms. Radziwill wrote that “so much has already been said about my family and the people I was close to, that it would be more enjoyable to only remember the best times with them.”
It seemed at times that tragedy followed tragedy. In the aftermath of the death of her beloved nephew, John F. Kennedy Jr., on July 16, 1999, her own son died of cancer less than a month later.