Washington Monthly: AMERICA'S QUEEN: A Life of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis. - Review

AMERICA'S QUEEN: A Life of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis by Sarah Bradford Viking, $30.05

IN 447 PAGES OF EXTRAORDINARY detail, English biographer Sarah ,Bradford has dished the dirt on Jackie O, trashed the glare of Cam, and told us more about the Bouviers and the Kennedys than most of us will probably ever want to know.

To collect this mountain of material she has read every book on the subject, (those, according to the bibliography, total more than 300 works); scoured the archives on both sides of the Atlantic, and conducted interviews with a raft of the legendary first lady's relatives and friends, including her sister Lee Radziwill and sister-in-law Joan Kennedy, as well as one insistent self-professed lover, architect John Carl Warnecke. The result is largely a rehash of every rumor and story in the public domain, assembled in one large volume. It is not a pretty picture but rather a devastating portrait of social climbing, venality, and deceit.

Right here I should say that I know Sarah Bradford. We met in Washington while she was researching this opus, and I was extremely skeptical that there was anything more to be written on the iconic Mrs. Onassis. But Bradford's compilation, plus some new revelations, is a truly stunning feat.

Jackie's addiction to playboys and priapic older men sprang from her adoration of her boozing, philandering father, John Vernou Bouvier III. Known as "BlackJack" for his striking dark looks and Valentino manner, he instructed her early on that "all men are rats," and lived up to his aphorism. While visiting her at Farmington, her boarding school, one weekend he casually discussed his conquests and future prospects among the mothers visiting at the same time. Jackie was his favorite daughter and Bradford suggests there was almost an incestuous component to their intense relationship.

Her mother Janet, whom Jackie basically disliked, was a schemer who tried to elevate her pedigree by seeking social approbation and big money. After a bitter divorce from the womanizing Bouvier, she managed to snag the twice divorced, extremely well-heeled Standard Oil heir, Hugh D. Auchincloss. A retiring, mild man with a penchant for pornography, Hughdie, as he was called, was the ultimate WASP: A member of the establishment and a pillar of Washington and Newport society, with several children and two large estates, including Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island, where Jack and Jackie's wedding reception was held.

Jackie and her younger sister, Lee, learned the art of manipulation early on. Despite their luxurious lifestyle, they realized they were merely stepchildren with a $50-a-month allowance and unlikely to inherit any of the Auchincloss fortune. So under their mother's tutelage they set out to acquire wealth the only way they knew how--by marrying into it. "All [Jackie] was fundamentally interested in was money," said a long-time friend, John White. "That was really the guiding motive of her life" Lee saw this obsession as "insulation" from the world.

Jackie began to develop a Geishalike quality, the famous doe-eyed stare and a breathy, little-girl voice that appealed to men and eventually became her trademark. By the time she had set her sights on JFK, she had already dumped one fiancee, John Husted, a prosperous but boring Wall Street banker who was conveniently airbrushed out of her sanctioned biography.

Throughout their marriage, Jackie dismissed Kennedy's flagrant infidelity by comparing him to her father, who formed a bond with Jack and even became an ally in his pursuit of women. She was attracted to Kennedy because he lived on the edge, was dashing, charismatic, and, above all, rich. With little or no interest in politics, she would not have settled for an insignificant congressman. "There was nobody else pursuing her with that kind of money," observed her friend Demi Gates, who warned her against the marriage.

Financial security seems to have been so important throughout her life that she was able to ignore even the most obvious of her husband's many liaisons, including the one that took place in the White House right under her nose with her own press secretary, Pamela Tumure.

A look into the Kennedy White House provides a glimpse of Jackie's unique cunning. She managed to disguise from the world that she was wearing French and Italian haute couture by having the dresses sent to, or smuggled in by friends. When k came to restoring the premises, her signature project, she artfully concealed the fact that preeminent French decorator Stephan Boudin was winging back and forth from Paris to oversee work, until The Washington Post destroyed his cover. Another fascinating tidbit was her determination to acquire the Rutherford B. Hayes desk, that her husband used during his tenure in the Oval Office. It had been a gift to the mansion from Queen Victoria, but that did not deter Mrs. Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, and Clark Clifford all got into the act, but finally a determined young curator stood his ground and insisted the desk remain in its proper place.

After JFK's assassination Bradford maintains that Jackie became involved with a string of high-profile males, such as Lord Harlech and Roswell Gilpatric, but that her true love was Bobby Kennedy. After his death, her marriage to Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, whom she had stolen away from Lee, was inevitable. Once again she found a rogue, a notorious Don Juan with a shady reputation but with enormous wealth and power. Although delighted, at first, with his trophy wife--Bradford describes dubious sexual feats that supposedly took place in airplanes and on yachts--Onassis never gave up his passionate relationship with opera star Maria Callas, and soon tired of Jackie and her extravagance. At the end of his life he tried desperately to cut her out of his will, but Jackie prevailed and ultimately wound up with more than $20 million plus $200,000 annually.

At this point one is tempted to ask, was little Jackie happy at last? Apparently yes. She began publishing books and took up with a portly, Belgian-born diamond merchant, Maurice Templesman, who was married, well-connected, and not known for his sexual prowess. He moved into her Fifth Avenue apartment, became her acolyte, and stayed by her side until the end of her life.

For Jackie aficionados this book is probably the quintessential rap on the world-famous widow. And though Bradford successfully punctures the Kennedy myth, author and friend Edna O'Brien explains why the allure of Jackie continues to linger in our psyche. Her hurts and wounds were confined to "ice zones," according to O'Brien, and distance and distancing were central to her character. "It was what gave her that inexplicable aura," she wrote. "The barriers she (Jackie) built around herself betray a woman who had espoused self-preservation from the start. Her mystery was that she was a mystery to herself. She was caught in the gap between ingenue and empress, between innocence and worldliness"

SANDRA McELWAINE is a Washington-based journalist.