Episode 6 - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis vs. Princess Lee Raziwill: Duel of the Debutante Sisters

This episode explores the complex relationship and rivalry between Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill, highlighting their lives of privilege, personal struggles, and interactions with high society.

1. The profound impact of their mother’s favoritism on the sisters’ rivalry.
2. Jackie's ascension to a public icon as First Lady contrasted with Lee's challenges in finding her own identity.
3. The influence of high society's expectations on their personal choices and marriages.
4. Personal tragedies, including the assassination of JFK, deeply affected their lives and relationship.
5. Despite outward appearances, both sisters faced lifelong struggles with happiness and fulfillment.

1: High Society Beginnings

The episode opens with the Bouvier sisters' introduction to high society, highlighting their debutante days and the beginning of their rivalry. "Bridget Todd: For most young women, an 18th birthday is celebrated with a party... But for daughters of the upper crust, it’s a much bigger deal."

2: Family Dynamics and Personal Struggles

Explores the family dynamics, particularly the influence of their parents, and the personal struggles both sisters faced growing up. "Bridget Todd: Both qualities being fairly portentous for the Bouvier girls’ future..."

3: Marriages and Public Life

Details Jackie and Lee’s marriages, focusing on how these relationships influenced their public personas and private lives. "J. Randy Taraborrelli: Lee dated JFK first and would have maybe ended up with JFK if the mom hadn’t decided..."

4: Tragedies and Trials

Discusses the impact of JFK’s assassination on Jackie and the subsequent personal and public challenges both sisters faced. "Bridget Todd: On November 22, 1963, the thin illusion of American innocence was irrevocably fractured..."

5: Later Years and Legacies

Covers the later years of their lives, including Jackie's remarriage to Aristotle Onassis and Lee’s attempts to carve out her own space in society. "J. Randy Taraborrelli: When you know that your sister is jealous of you... I think that Jackie began to feel not loved by Lee..."

1. Embrace Individuality: Regardless of external expectations, find and follow your own path.
2. Manage Family Dynamics: Understand how family relationships influence your actions and strive for healthy interactions.
3. Seek Personal Fulfillment: Pursue what truly makes you happy rather than conforming to societal expectations.
4. Handle Public Scrutiny: Maintain personal integrity and privacy when facing public scrutiny.
5. Support Siblings: Despite rivalry or differences, find ways to support and understand your siblings.

This week on Beef, Former First-Lady Jackie Kennedy and her sister Princess Lee Radziwill play tug-of-war with the public’s affection and adoration.

Grab a copy of J. Randy Taraborrelli's latest book about the Bouviers - Jackie: Public, Private, Secret.

People

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Janet Auchincloss, John F. Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis

Books

"Jackie, Janet & Lee" by J. Randy Taraborrelli

Guest Name(s):

J. Randy Taraborrelli

Content Warnings:

None

Bridget Todd

Next chapter podcasts it's one of life's great ironies that in some ways, the more wealth and status a person acquires, the more freedom they lose. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we should pity the 1%. The comfort, privilege, and power they wield is nothing to shake a stick at. And it is possible to buy anonymity if that's what you're really after.

But it should come as no surprise that some of the most well known people on the planet are also some of the richest. Some spend their lives in constant pursuit of it. Others are lucky enough to be born into it. But fame and fortune can be something of a gilded cage, with bars that are only visible to those looking from the inside out. Every word, every action becomes scrutinized or turned into a public spectacle, and an invisible wall of circumstance separates you from any sense of normalcy that the rest of humanity takes for granted.

Consider the following scene, for example.

I'm pretty sure most of you have never witnessed, much less participated, in, anything quite like what I'm about to describe. For most young women, an 18th birthday is usually celebrated with a party and maybe a cute new outfit, or possibly a parental gift of a car. But for the daughters of the upper crust, it's historically been a much bigger deal. That was the case one night in August 1947 at the Clambake Club of Newport in Middletown, Rhode island, one of the oldest and most exclusive private clubs in the United States.

Jacqueline Leigh Bouvier had just come of age, and her parents were introducing her to high society with the opulent and elaborate tradition of the coming out. Her socialite mother and blue blood stepfather had gathered their friends, family, and social peers to bask in Jackie's astounding dark haired beauty and budding marriage ability. And amidst the din of light jazz and idle chatter about post war economic prospects over cocktails and canapes, Jackie did not fail to deliver. She wowed the discerning partygoers with her iconic looks, breathy, mysterious voice, and elegant off the shoulder white tulle gown. Her poise and quiet grace in the eyes of the elite would lead to gossip columnist Charlie Knickerbocker naming her debutante of the year and one of the biggest newspapers in the northeast.

Happy birthday.

But while this moment should have been an unequivocal triumph for Jackie, now taking her first steps toward becoming one of the most beloved women on earth, something was wrong. Jackie's mother, Janet Auchincloss, was livid, like so many football dads and stage moms that came before her. No one saw the importance of this moment as clearly as Janet. This wasn't about Jackie's ascent to womanhood. This was about Janet proving the unimpeachable perfection of her eldest daughter's breeding and its reflection on her own superiority.

And Jackie's younger sister, Leigh, was ruining it. While Jackie shone in white, Lee shimmered in a bedazzled, strapless pink dress, sucking the oxygen right out of the dignified room. They shared the same high, pale cheekbones and dark, wide set eyes. But some considered the lighter haired, more feminine Lee to actually be the prettier of the two. And her sense of style was so keen that Jackie would often take inspiration from her sister, despite her own eventual reputation as a fashion icon.

So a little bit of upstaging might have been expected. Lee would also be named debutante of the year after her coming out in 1950 after all.

Still, Lee's relatively harmless scene stealing went beyond the pale in the eyes of her mother, a woman obsessed with social etiquette and positioning. Lee had brought chaos into a world ruled by appearances and the illusions of dignity and control. And while Jackie seemingly shrugged off her sister's small scale offense at the time, this was far from the end of hostilities. It was one of the earliest salvos at a lifelong engagement between two women who both loved and loathed each other while living the kind of lives that most people can only dream of. Im Bridget Todd, and this is beef.

If you see the circumstances you're born into as the result of pulling the lever on the great cosmic slot machine of fate, few people have ever hit a bigger jackpot than Jacqueline Bouvier. Born in Southampton, New York, on July 28, 1929, Jackie took her first breaths in rarefied air. Her father, who she looked almost exactly like, was the handsome, well dressed and charming stockbroker John Blackjack Bouvier III. Despite the embarrassing fact of his ancestral lineage's connection to french cabinet makers rather than old world aristocracy, blackjack had made a fortune on Wall Street. Jackie's mother, Janet, was the daughter of a successful real estate investor who hid her shame at her irish descent with unubstantiated claims of sharing heritage with one of America's oldest and most powerful dynasties.

Remember, this kind of thing really matters to a certain kind of people, even to this day. Jackie was the apple of her fathers eye, clearly marked as his favorite. Even her name was a play on his. And this may have been why Janet had such a contentious relationship with her eldest daughter. Blackjack was an alcoholic and a womanizer.

Both qualities being fairly portentous for the Bouvier girls future and frustration at the public scandal that would eventually lead to their divorce likely played a big hand in why Janet was so hard on Jackie, especially when it came to her looks. Although overall, Janet was an extremely fastidious dresser who was consumed by minor details like never being seen in public without wearing white gloves. So it must have been no small amount of relief for Jackie. When Caroline Lee Bouvier was born on March 3, 1933, in New York City, Leigh would bond more with their mother, thus sparing Jackie at least some of Janet's scrutiny. Any such lifeline would have likely been greatly appreciated by Jackie, who by all accounts was the quieter, more private, and some would say, more enigmatic of the two.

Writer J. Randy Turabarelli says the two women's relationships with their parents, especially their mother, was in some ways the focal point of their animosity. He's the author of numerous New York Times bestselling celebrity biographies, including Jackie, Janet, and Leigh, the secret lives of Janet Auchincloss and her daughters, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radzivill. And at one point in his career, he even worked under Jackie. What's important to understand is that the competition was really sort of fostered by their mom, Janet, very early on, in.

The sense that when they were little. Girls, Janet would say to Jackie and Lee, you two are all that you have. You should never compete with one another. You should always be there for each other. And then she would take Jackie off to have tea at the plaza, and she would leave Lee behind by herself in her bedroom.

J. Randy Taraborrelli

Right? And if you do that enough times, that girl who's left behind is going to start to feel very competitive to the one who gets to have tea with the mom. And that competition lasted for pretty much their entire lives. I think that the way that we see somebody as a child is often the way that we see that person for the rest of our lives. Because the competition between Jackie and Lee was one sided.

Jackie wasn't competing with Lee ever, you know, not really. Jackie always got everything she wanted. Lee dated JFK first and would have maybe ended up with JFK if the mom hadn't decided. Well, I think we should let Jackie have this one. It's time for her to get married.

She needs to have children. Like, what if Lee had ended up with JFK? Would Lee have had Jackie's life? Would Lee have ended up being first lady? So if you're Lee, you're like, dang, what do I have to do to be on on the upside of this, and she never really was.

Bridget Todd

Both sisters would look back fondly on the summers they spent at Black Jack and Janet's idyllic twelve acre estate, La Sada in east Hampton, Long Island.

Jackie became an award winning horseback rider, and Lee developed a lifelong love of swimming and the sea. But the happy times were short lived, as by 1940, their mother and father were divorced.

Black Jack's drinking and dalliances with other women, along with some major financial difficulties he faced in the Wall street crash of 1929, led to he and Janet ending things, a truly unspeakable decision for so called decent people at the time. But, of course, while it was a major taboo, divorce certainly wasn't uncommon among our betters. And in 1942, Janet married one of the heirs to a huge portion of the Standard Oil empire, Hugh D. Auchincloss. Auchincloss had burned through two previous ex wives of his own, one of whom was the mother of celebrated writer Gore Vidal from her own first marriage.

I know. Messy, right? Black Jack and Janet's split was hard on Jackie and Leigh, but at least they had each other. They felt like outsiders in their new stepfathers home, yet another palatial abode called Merrywood in McLean, Virginia. They werent just marred as children of the big D word.

They were also the only Catholics in a protestant household with roots burrowed deep into the waspy epicenter of Americas ruling class. Again, this is the kind of thing these people really cared about. So their outsider mentality fused the sisters together with a web of codependency so deep it reached the cellular level. They lovingly referred to each other as jacks and peakes and were often found together, completely detached from the outside world, lost in their own universe of gossip and giggles. Auchincloss also had several of his own biological children to prioritize, creating an early inflection point for both Jackie and Lee's ever present desire for financial security.

This was heightened by the fact that their real father had begun to spiral into financial ruin. But let's not feel too sympathetic for our principal characters here. They were still afforded every level of comfort available to young oligarchs. In the mid 20th century, both girls attended the prestigious chapin school in Manhattan's Upper east side, as well as the ultra exclusive Miss Porter's school in Farmington, Connecticut. And it was at school that the differences between Jackie and Lee began to crystallize.

Both girls loved art and design. Their father, Jack, who they adored, had deeply ingrained in them the idea that, quote, style is not a function of how rich you are or even who you are. Style is more a habit of mine that puts quality before quantity, noble struggle before mere achievement, honor before opulence. It's what makes you a bouvier.

Jackie was the more academic of the two, with an insatiable curiosity for subjects like history and literature and impeccable grades to match. She was also the more athletic of the two and the less outgoing, though she did become the editor in chief of her high school newspaper, and her calm exterior hid a more secretive rebelliousness than Lee's outward thirst for adventure. That was Lee's whole vibe, really, like she wasn't so big on book learning, but she excelled in the performing arts and the all too important private school social sphere, especially with boys. Showing off was part of my character, Lee once told Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, authors of the Fabios Bouvier sisters. I behaved as if the whole world should know me, she said.

Up to this point, the girls had mainly competed for their parents attention, a game that, for better and worse, tilted clearly in favor of Jackie. Their father could be just as critical of Jackie as Janet could, but now Lee was in her glory, getting top billing in the duo. Hence the spotlight nabbing incident at Jackie's big introduction to society that I mentioned at the beginning. To Jackie's credit, though, she was pretty cool with the whole situation. She likely acknowledged in Lee what many of her acquaintances would note over the course of her life, that Lee had two personalities.

One on one, she was warm, present and congenial. But in social settings she could be cold, conniving and manipulative. Unbothered at being shown up at her own big night, Jackie doubled down on her studies and went on to attend Vassar College. In 1980, while enrolled at Vassar, Jackie decided to spend her junior year at the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne in France. There she fell in love with the language and culture and, as one rumor has it, lost her virginity, a detail we're only able to even speculate on because of how minutely analyzed a lifelike hers can become.

Then, in her senior year, Jackie transferred to George Washington University, where she graduated with a degree in french literature. Right after college, she won an essay contest with Vogue magazine that would have sent her to work in its Paris office for half a year, then its New York office for the other half. But her parents refused, worried that at the ripe old age of 22, a high powered career might interfere with the much more important pursuit of finding a husband. As a consolation prize, Janet and Hugh Auchincloss agreed to fund a three month long sojourn across Europe for Jackie and a newly 18 year old Lee in 1951. There they would be introduced to nobility and distinguished members of the arts community.

The letters, poems and drawings the sisters made for their mother during the trip would eventually be published in 1974 as a book titled one special Summer. This was an incredibly strong period of Jackie and Lees relationship, but it also did little to delay the eventual dunking on one another that theyd both be either actively or passively attempting for the rest of their lives. The next w went to Lee. After dropping out of Sarah Lawrence College, the school Jackie supposedly wanted to attend originally, which her parents had refused, Lee did the exact thing that would make their parents the proudest. She got married.

Jackie had been the first to get engaged, with a January 1952 newspaper announcement of her pending nuptials to a young stockbroker endorsed by her father in law that summer. But the engagement only lasted a few months in the spring of 1953. In 1963, Lee beat Jackie to the punch by marrying Michael Temple Canfield, her on and off boyfriend of the last five years, who was also believed to be the illegitimate son of Prince George, Duke of Kent. Canfield worked for publishers Harper and Roe and when he was offered a position at their London office, Lee supposedly directed him instead to a position with the US ambassador to England. This job positioned them perfectly amongst the cream of the british crop.

Like her mother, Lee was ever the social climber. Like her father, she was also prone to sleeping around. But probably the biggest problem for the marriage was Canfields lack of funds. After he balked at Jackies advice that the best way to keep her sister happy was to make more money, she reportedly responded to his assertions that he earned plenty by saying, no, Michael, I mean real money. More on this in a second, though, because six months after Lee got hitched, Jackie managed to pull off a redemptive maneuver.

While working in DC as a journalist and photographer for the Washington Times Herald, Jackie was able to hobnob with the nation's political movers and shakers. This ignited her interest in politics and a romance with a dashing young war vet and senatorial candidate from Massachusetts whose family was much wealthier and more proudly irish than Janet Auchincloss could have ever dreamed of. It is a great pleasure to come back to a city where my accent is considered normal. That man was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After a year of dating, the two were married on September 12, 1953 with a 1200 person reception at the Auchincloss's other luxuriant mansion, Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island.

Jackie and JFK were the perfect avatars for the idealized fantasy of american exceptionalism for the boomer generation, beautiful and charismatic, worldly and yet empathetic, despite being occasionally criticized by the press for their highborn, snobbish upbringings and full of the foolish hope, or rather the hollow promise, that one could achieve anything as long as they work hard enough and believe in their country's inherent good. A ton of ink has already been spilled over the life, career, and tragic death of the 35th president of the United States, and to a lesser but still substantial extent. The same is true of jackies role in her first husbands legacy, acting as the stylish personification of modern womanhood in the post war era. So to avoid beating a thoroughly desiccated horse, lets just say she was pretty damn important to him. She helped him write his first ever speech on the Senate floor, and she stolidly safeguarded the secret of his many, many affairs.

Lee tried to keep pace the best she could. In 1958, Vogue magazine invited her to be its permanent fashion representative for the US at the World's Fair in Brussels. And while her marriage to Michael Canfield unraveled, she managed to upgrade her station in the arms of her second husband, Prince Stanislav Stas Radzivill, he introduced her to even more of Europe's upper rungs. The thing is, though, it turns out his regal title wasnt all it was cracked up to be. Staschs lordly family line traced back through generations of polish history, but he lost everything when the Nazis invaded Poland and Stasch was forced to flee to England.

After fighting for the polish underground, Stasch was able to rebuild his fortune. But noble titles had been abolished in Poland years before, and in order to regain british citizenship, he was required to give up any force formal royal claims. So by the time Lee and Stosh were married on March 19, 1959, her attacking princess to the start of her name was really considered a joke by the people she was hoping to impress the most. Still, this was another period of intense closeness and shared joy for the sisters. Stosh and JFK were instant bros.

Radzivill stumped for the presidential hopeful and polish american communities. During the 1960 election, the two couples vacationed at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod, and once in the White House, Jackie even held her first ever dinner dance as first lady in Stash and Lee's honor in March of 1961. She couldn't help her elder sibling instinct to constantly try to look out for Lee, who, while grateful for a secondhand celebrity, also harbored a desire to be her own entity. It's really complicated. Sisters are a trip, you know, the bottom line is that they loved each other very much.

J. Randy Taraborrelli

And when you love somebody that much, it's hard, I think, to figure out your relationship with that person when you're also jealous of that person, you know? Like, on one hand, Leah was very proud of Jackie, you know, being first lady. And I think it was really frustrating for Lee because she knew she had a lot going for herself, and she wished that people would acknowledge it. But I think she also wished her mother would acknowledge it. You know, she knew she wasn't going to get her mom's acclimation, and she just hoped that maybe she'd get the worlds instead.

And then she didn't get that either, you know? So I had a chance to know her a little bit, meet her. And one of the last times I ever had a conversation, conversation with her, I asked her, Lee, are you happy? And at this point, she was, like, in her sixties, maybe seventies. Lee, are you happy?

And she said, I'll never forget it. She said, I'm almost happy, right? I'm almost happy. Wow, that really struck me. Imagine that you're in your seventies and you almost happy.

You know.

Bridget Todd

I'm nobody's kid sister, Leigh would tell People magazine in 1976. But Jackie also couldn't help becoming the cultural force of nature she was. Her sophisticated, trend setting eye, as well as her intelligence and composure, were never more evident than in her efforts to redecorate the presidential abode. Forming a fine arts committee that enlisted museum curators, interior decorators, and art collectors, Jackie aimed to restore and replace much of the artwork and artifacts that had gone missing from the White House over the last 150 years. Then, on Valentine's Day, 1962, CB's broadcast a televised tour of the building led by Jackie.

It was viewed by 56 million Americans and one Jackie and Emmy, making her the only first lady so far to win that award. This house will always grow and should. It just seemed to me such a shame when we came here to find hardly anything of the past in the house. Keep in mind that much of Jackie's taste was influenced by, if not outright copied from, Lee. As if that wasn't enough, Jackie had also horned in on the international limelight.

Lee had become something of a societal impresario of the bohemians in highbrows at home and abroad. She had flings and friendships with the likes of global ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev. And famed author Truman Capote, both of whom had uniquely intimate connections to one possibly dubious story, goes that Nureyev even claimed Lee had aborted his unborn child. But no one could deny the fever like adoration exuding from roughly 500,000 Parisians screaming things like when the Kennedys arrived in the city during their first official trip to Europe in the spring of. 1961, I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I've enjoyed it.

Jackie not only won over the sternly anti american french president Charles de Gaulle with her fluency in his culture and language, she also warmed the heart of intimidating soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. At the next stop on the Kennedys diplomatic tour in Vienna, Khrushchev requested to shake her hand before her husband's, and later sent Jackie a puppy born from Strelka, the dog the Soviets used as a test subject in their early attempts at spaceflight. In 1962, Jackie continued to try and include her sister by inviting her on a diplomatic visit to India, for which they were both heaped with praise and affection. And in the summer of 1963, Lee was asked to step in for Jackie, who was too pregnant to travel when JFK traveled to Berlin and gave his famous ich bien ein berliner speech. But Lee still knew that at this point she had been left holding a big, fat l on the world stage.

On November 22, 1963, the thin illusion of american innocence was irrevocably fractured when a series of 6.5 millimeter rifle rounds destroyed the life of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. The flash apparently official, President Kennedy died at 01:00 p.m. Central Standard time some 38 minutes ago. And it could have been some comfort to know that this national nightmare put an end to whatever rivalry remained between Jackie and Lee.

But sadly, it instead seemed to be the first domino to fall that would eventually bring their relationship crashing, ultimately downward. As if this is a shock to anyone, Jackie was utterly devastated by the murder of her beloved husband. She proved to be the living symbol of stoic grief as she refused to change out of the clothes stained with Jack's blood during Lyndon Johnson's swearing in, and later led his funeral procession ahead of 92 other foreign dignitaries.

But on the inside, she was broken. Lee claimed she did everything she could to console her sister. Yet in one truly bizarre story from the following months, Lee confided in a friend that she had actually told Jackie to stop feeling sorry for herself and move on with her life. And just as literally anyone else would have likely responded, given what she was going through. Jackie hauled off and slapped Lee across the face.

Lee's reaction was to suggest that Jackie was jealous of her for still having a husband. You know, just normal, healthy family stuff. Here's where things go from bad to worse.

I guess it's true what they say, once a cheater, always a cheater. Because Lee never stopped. She and Stosh had a friendly, sexless dynamic. But her attraction to wealth was palpable. And just as with her father years before, her husband's fortune was starting to fade.

Enter self made shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis from Greece, who happened to have more money than most people alive at the time, meaning about $2 billion today. Billion with a B. JFK and his brother, US Attorney General Robert Bobby Kennedy, had outright hated the so called Golden Greek, as he had been indicted for illegally operating a fleet of us ships. Stosch didn't seem to mind his wife shacking up with the dark haired 57 year old, though I guess Onassis, making Stosh director of his company, Olympic AIrlines, must have helped. Anyways, Lee introduced Jackie to AristoTle in late summer of 63, just a few months before the events in Dallas.

Because when it rains, it fucking pours. Jackie's infant son, PAtrick, had died on August 9, just two days after being born, and Jackie had sunk into a deep depression. So Lee invited her sister to come recuperate on Onassis's yacht, anchored off the Amalfi coast. Much of the Kennedy administration was against it, as was much of AMerica, but Jackie went anyway, and the press managed to capture a few tender photo ops of Onassis consoling her. Lee must have thought nothing of it, inviting Onassis to JFK's funeral.

She was sure as shit surprised five years later, though, when she heard that Jackie and Aristotle were getting married. One story has it that when Truman Capote received a call from her, crying about the news, Lee could be heard shouting, how could she do this to me? The how couldn't have been more simple, at least in Jackie's mind. Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible?

J. Randy Taraborrelli

Is that possible? Is it possible? Ladies. On June 5, 1968, then presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy had been shot to death in the kitchen of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles. Jackie was quoted as saying, if they're killing Kennedys, then my children are targets.

Bridget Todd

I want to get out of this country. She believed Onassis had enough wealth and power to give her the security and anonymity she so desperately desired. But there might have been another big how behind this whole ordeal. According to Gore Vidal, Lee's first husband accused Lee of going to bed with JFK. Maybe that's why Lee publicly acted totally fine about the whole thing.

Although this may have just been the notoriously catty author stirring the pot, as he and Lee greatly disliked one another. And supposedly Fadal had been drunkenly ejected from a Kennedy White House party years before. Either way, Jackie and Aristotle got married on October 20, 1968, on his private island, Scorpios.

J. Randy Taraborrelli

When you know that your sister is jealous of you and this is just a thing that is a part of your dynamic, I think that Jackie began to feel not loved by Lee, and then she began to act out. You know, I think that Jackie wished that Lee wasn't so competitive, but then I think that Jackie inadvertently fostered that competition. Look, she could have said no to JFK. Like, she could have. She could have said, no, mummy.

You know, he's. Lee's sorry, mummy, but no go right. But she didn't. She went right for JFK. She could have not gone for onassis.

Jackie was already engaged to somebody else when she met onassis. She was engaged to Jack Warnecky. She could have said, no, I'm going to stick with Jack Warnecky. Lee should have onassis. Lee's been dating onassis for, like, the last six or seven years, so Lee's not being paranoid.

You know, it's like, it's not like this sort of unfounded situation where, you know, I don't understand, you know, why I feel this way. She. She had good reason to feel this, the way she felt. Jackie always did end up on, you know, on the upside of every equation. So I wanted to just say that, you know, it's not just Lee's fault if there's fault to be found.

You know, Jackie participated in this. And when Jackie was in therapy in the 1970s, trying to work all this stuff out, that's when she realized. When her therapist, Marianne Chris, said, wait a second. You're not blameless in all of this. You participated in this rivalry, you fostered this competition.

Your mom started it, and you continued it. And that's when Jackie really started to figure out, wow, she's right. A lot of this is my own fault. That's what happens when you go into therapy, is that, you know, you start to realize, wait a second. You know, I got some problems, too.

Bridget Todd

The next few years would prove difficult for both Jackie and Lee. Public opinion turned against Jackie, as many Americans felt betrayed by the idea that she was forsaking her eternal martyrdom as the widow of the nation's. Slain hero, all for a marriage that turned out to be fairly loveless. Onassis seemed primarily motivated by gaining proximity to the levers of political power in the US. And he was, let's say, less than discreet about his heart really belonging to his longtime mistress, world renowned opera singer Maria Callous.

Calus biographer Ariana Stasinopoulos claimed Onassis had planned to divorce Jackie, accusing her of being an embittered money grubber, which by some accounts she had become. After all, she had negotiated a $3 million dowry for herself before the wedding. She also spent two years fighting Onassis daughters for an inheritance roughly in the neighborhood of $25 million when he died of a neuromuscular disorder in 1975. And she wasn't even by Onassis side when he passed. Lee, for her part, suffered a series of ridiculous disappointments.

Her attempts at entering the acting world were widely panned after she was given the starring role in a production of the Philadelphia story in 1967 and forgot her lines and the opening performance, a performance that Jackie didn't even bother to attend despite having a seat reserved for her. In 1972, Lee convinced Truman Capote to join her on tour with the Rolling Stones to write a book about the band. But Jagger and the boys did nothing but terrorize Capote, and because of his negative experience, he never finished the book. In 1974, CB's gave her a talk show called conversations with Lee Radzivill, but it was canceled after six episodes because, frankly, given everything else going on in the world, no one was interested. It was like the more she fought to be a star, the harder the public kicked her to the curb.

And to make matters worse, she struggled with alcoholism, and her marriage to Stosh finally ended in divorce in 1974. Some say because of her love affair with photographer Peter Beard. Stosh died two years later, leaving behind nothing but dead. Despite everything, Jackie tried to maintain her vigil of watchful guidance over her sister. She helped Lee get sober, mainly out of concern for her niece and nephew.

But one story suggests that Jackie's gentle meddling turned into bungling interference. In 1979, Lee had fallen quickly in love with San Francisco hotel magnate Newton Cope, and rumors surfaced that the two were going to tie the knot. Jackie was supposedly concerned that Cope lacked the cash to keep up her sisters opulent standard of living, and so she tried to force cope into making an upfront payment to Lee, similar to what she had negotiated with Onassis, causing Cope to spook and pull out of the engagement. It was around this point that the two women apparently had had enough of relying on men for money. Lee created a small but fairly successful interior design business in New York and made a few pretty savvy real estate investments.

Jackie went into publishing, where she became an editor at Viking Press and Doubleday. She also turned her inheritance from Onassis into $150 million through some smart money moves of her own. But no amount of fame or fortune slows the incessant wheel of time in November 1999. In 1993, former first lady Jackie Bouvier Canadianassis was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's lymphoma. While she had been a heavy smoker her entire life, she was never photographed with a cigarette, a testament to how intensely private she really was.

She died six months later, thankfully too soon to see her son, JFK Junior, die in a plane crash in 1999.

And so we come to the final blow. Jackie harbored major resentment over the fact that Lee had done little to help care for their mother when Janet succumbed to Alzheimer's at the end of her life. That, along with hard feelings from Jackie's daughter Caroline over Lee's perceived absence during her mother's illness, meant Lee was not given a preferred seat or a chance to speak at her sister's funeral. But the coup de grace came in the 38 page will for Jackie's considerable estate, where she bequeathed a generous amount to her niece and nephew, but nothing to Lee. I have made no provision in this, my will for Leigh B.

Radzivill, for whom I have great affection, because I have already done so during my lifetime, the will read. Leigh was not without success in her life. She was named to Vanity Fair's international best Dress hall of Fame in 1996, and she fostered many meaningful friendships with influential people over the decades, like artist Andy Warhol and filmmaker Sofia Coppola. Do you see yourself as strong? Yes, I do.

And I see myself as vulnerable. You're just engaged with life and with people and with art and with culture. Well, otherwise I wouldn't want to live. If you weren't engaged and curious. If I wasn't curious, yeah, I wouldn't want to live.

Nevertheless, no matter how much she would cultivate and claw her way toward it, everything her sister had would constantly linger, just out of Lee's reach. Dying on February 19, 2019, she would never have a White House garden named after her or be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. She would never have the gravitas of being an inspiration to millions of young women across the globe. She would never have as much money. And the funniest thing is, Jackie probably would have given everything to switch places with Lee and escape the great currents of history, reveling in the cheerful placidity of being lost in the background.

Well, maybe not everything. She definitely wouldn't have traded the money. She was fallible. You know, she had moments when she wasn't her best self, and she was always working on herself, and she made mistakes, and then she tried to go back and rectify them. And I think that people, that resonates with people, you know, that when you have an icon who is fallible, it makes people feel that they might be able to learn something from that person's life.

J. Randy Taraborrelli

And that's what I think is important in having a conversation about any celebrity. We only do that if we feel that, that it touches us in some way. We don't really have conversations about people that we can't relate to. You know, the reason why the Kardashians are so famous is because you would think that we can't relate to them because of all their money and their wealth and their prestige. Like, that looks like a family you can ever relate to.

But the reason that their show was so and is so successful is because of the way they are with each other. It's very relatable, the problems that they have with each other, the problems they have with their mother, this sort of overbearing mother whose mother has not been overbearing at times, this jealousy between sisters who's not been envious of their siblings. So that's what I think is important in understanding celebrity culture, is that we try to, if we can understand them and empathize with them, that means something. And it can cut through the noise, because otherwise, it's just a blur. We're just living in a culture of blur, of constantly being bombarded and inundated with stuff on our phones, on our laptops.

You know, everywhere we go, we're getting text messages from, you know, we're getting alerts, we're getting news bulletins. We're like. It's like, oh, my God. You know, and so for to cut through that, it really means something. It really does.

Bridget Todd

Beef is a production of next chapter podcasts. This episode is written by our showrunner editor and sound designer, Pete Musto, with support from our senior producers, James Levine and Ben Austin Docampo. Our executive producer is show creator Jeremiah Tiddle. Don't forget to follow, rate, and review our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us get the word out.

I'm Bridget Todd. Thanks for listening. To beef and remember to stay petty. Who knows how far it'll take you.

Next chapter podcast.