by Edward Klein
Lee with Prince Stanislas Radziwill, the husband she planned to divorce so she could marry Aristotle Onassis. Jackie suspected her sister was living in a dreamworld when it came to Onassis, whose well-publicized love affairs were part of his publicity machine. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Author William Manchester in his Middletown, Connecticut, house with some of the foreign magazines that serialized his controversial book The Death of a President. “My first impression [of Jackie], and it never changed,” said Manchester, “was that I was in the presence of a very great tragic actress.” (Mondadori/Archive Photos)
Journalist Theodore H. White in his Manhattan town house. White collaborated with Jackie in creating the Camelot myth, but he left the riddle of her true identity to future biographers. (Courtesy of David White)
Jackie whispers to John Carl Warnecke at the seventh annual Robert Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament in 1978, more than a decade after their love affair ended. The need for discretion added a further dimension to their romance—the delicious aura of secrecy. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Ltd.)
Despite a tabloid’s prediction, wedding bells were not in the cards for Jackie and Jack Warnecke. He came to realize that he would never be able to provide Jackie with what she really needed: total security from the outside world. (Courtesy of John Carl Warnecke)
Jackie tours the ruins of Ankgor Watt with Lord Harlech, former British Ambassador to the United States. Onassis wondered whether there was more to Jackie’s friendships with other men than met the eye. (Archive Photos)
New Frontiersman Roswell Gilpatric accompanies Jackie on a trip to Los Angeles, where Bobby Kennedy was fatally wounded by an assassin in June 1968. Jackie’s purloined “Dear Ros” letter was used by her enemies to poison her relationship with Onassis. (UPI/Corbis/Bettmann)
Onassis, with his bride by his side, waves to newsmen from his yacht, the Christina, shortly after their wedding on Skorpios. Onassis fulfilled Jackie’s deep need for a man who could rescue her from feelings of helplessness. If that was a definition of love, then she loved Onassis. (UPI/Corbis/Bettmann)
Sailing aboard the Christina. For Jackie, Greece acquired some of the mythic attributes of Camelot, and in her mind Onassis became mixed up with her mythological view of John Kennedy, a man who paid with his life for defying fate. (Courtesy of Niki Goulandris)
Jackie pins a flower behind Onassis’s ear. When they were together, Jackie doted on her Greek husband, sketching his portrait, buying him modish neckties, and presenting him with a cigar cutter for his long Havanas. She filled a book with translations from Homer’s Odyssey and illustrated it in the margins with photos she took of Onassis, depicting him as Ulysses. (Peter Beard/The Time Is Always Now Inc.)
On the beach in Skorpios. “Jackie is a little bird that needs its freedom as well as its security,” Onassis said, “and she gets both from I me. She can do exactly as she pleases.” (Settimio Garritano Gamma Liaison)
Caroline paints a design on John Jr.’s back. As John grew older, his impulsive behavior, which first became noticeable after the assassination, developed into a serious problem. (Courtesy of Niki Goulandris)
Shopping in the Greek Isles with Niki Goulandris. In many ways, Niki was a Greek replica of Jackie’s best American friend, Bunny Mellon. Both women embroidered life with flowers. (Courtesy of Niki Goulandris)
Jackie in Greece with Onassis’s sister Artemis. “Jackie, you are so young and beautiful,” Artemis told Jackie after the death of Onassis. “Now you need to find a man who will give you some happiness.” (Gamma Liaison)
Jackie and Onassis seated far apart in the back of his limousine. They did not understand each other’s world. She was Catholic, Anglo-Saxon. He was Eastern Orthodox, Mediterranean. (Gamma Liaison)
Jackie with her stepdaughter Christina on the way to Onassis’s funeral. “Christina was angry as hell,” said Onassis’s attorney. “She thought that Jackie was behaving badly by asking for a bigger share of the estate.” (Keystone/Sygma)
A windblown Jackie captured in an off guard moment in New York by paparazzo Ron Galella. She sought privacy by marrying Onassis, but was as exposed and vulnerable as she had been after Kennedy’s assassination. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Ltd.)
Paparazzo Ron Galella snaps one of the 4,000 pictures he took of Jackie. She suffered an ordeal by the media such as no other woman in this century, with the possible exception of Britain’s Princess Diana, has had to undergo. (Ron Galella Ltd.)
Jackie O with (from left) Liza Minelli, Irving “Swifty” Lazaar, and Bianca)agger. Suddenly Jackie was the new “in” personality to invite and hope to be invited by. “More than anyone else in New York,” wrote Liz Smith, “Jacqueline [typifies] the new society of the metropolitan Eastern Seaboard.” (Sonia Moskowitz)
With Leonard Bernstein and Oliver Smith at Studio 54. Jackie’s friendship with gay men had a profound effect on her outlook. She came to believe that no good would ever come from trying to sanitize or standardize behavior. (Corbis/Bettmann)
With journalist Pete Hamill at a 1977 movie premiere. Hamill embodied many of the bad-boy qualities that attracted Jackie to Kennedy and Onassis. But Hamill also represented a break with the past. He was both masculine and sensitive. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Ltd.)
With constant compainon Maurice Tempelsman on the way to a Kennedy Library fundraiser. They made no attempt to disguise their living arrangements, though visitors noticed that Tempelsman occupied the guest room, not Jackie’s bedroom. (Brian Quigley/Outline)
The Bouvier sisters enjoy a reunion in Montauk, Long Island. Lee blamed Jackie for meddling in her life. The breach between the sisters became so great that it never completely healed. (Peter Beard/The Time Is Always Now Inc.)
At a bookstore in Vineyard Haven in 1989, Carly Simon autographs her children’s book Amy the Dancing Bear, which was edited by Jackie. After Jackie fell ill, Carly wrote Touched by the Sun for her good friend. (Stephen Rose/Gamma Liaison)
With Ted Kennedy and Caroline at a 1990 JFK Memorial dedication. Considering the snares and pitfalls of growing up a Kennedy, Caroline was amazingly well adjusted. (J. Bourg/Gamma Liaison)
With John Jr., Jackie summed up the difference between her children this way: “Caroline is focused and dedicated. John is spread out.” (Ira Wyman/Sygma)
Jackie and Tempelsman return to her apartment after a stroll in April 1994, one month before her death. “He’s a special person,” a hospital aide said of Tempelsman. “Oh, yes,” said Jackie, “he is.” (Paul Adao/Sygma)
With granddaughter Rose. Jackie struggled to recapture her old life, with all the power and glory, only to discover that the key to her happiness lay where she least expected to find it—in the simple pleasures of family, friendship, work, and nature. (Keith Butler/Rex USA Ltd.)
Alexander was another matter entirely. Ari often lost his temper at his son, but his rage was tempered by pride and love. Alexander was the apple of his father’s eye. Like Christina, he had benefited from plastic surgery on his conspicuous Onassis nose. But unlike his overweight sister, Alexander was turning into a lean and attractive young adult.
For dessert there was galaktoboureko, a sort of crème caramel, after which Jackie excused herself and went upstairs to her room. Ari lit a long Cuban cigar. He told his children to follow him into the library. He closed the door.
Ari knew that Alexander did not like Jackie. His son had never liked any of his women, Maria Callas especially. Alexander and Christina wished that he would remarry their mother, even though that was impossible.
But Ari had made up his mind about Jackie, and he was not one to mince words.
“I plan to marry Jackie as soon as possible,” he said.
Alexander bolted from his chair. “I will never sleep in the same house as that American woman!” he shouted.
He stormed out of the room. A few moments later, the whole neighborhood was shaken by the deep roar of an engine as Alexander took off in his Ferrari.
Ari was aware
that Christina disliked Jackie even more than her brother did.
“Christina was jealous of Jackie,” said Stelio Papadimitriou, Onassis’s second-in-command. “Jackie was all that Christina was not—thin, composed, loved.”
After Alexander had gone, Ari turned to his daughter.
“Well, what about you?” he said.
“It’s a perfect match,” she said, staring contemptuously at her father. “You like names, and Jackie likes money.”
Christina got up from her chair, picked up one of Artemis’s prized vases, and smashed it against the wall.
SKORPIOS
As its name implied, the island of Skorpios was formed in the shape of a scorpion: short and thick on one side, long and slender on the other, with curving tendrils of land running out into the sea like a pair of large pincers. When Jackie arrived there in August, the island was bathed in that fuming, glaring light that she had come to love about Greece.
“The sun was everywhere, the setting sun, the rising sun, shining on the other islands in the distance,” recalled Karl Katz, a friend of Jackie’s, who visited Skorpios as her guest. “The warm water was a color that is often mentioned in Greek mythology as wine colored, a deep purple that wasn’t blue, the clearest, most beautiful water. It was like a lake. There were various places on the island where you could swim or have tea or eat dinner or lunch. Each site was perfect at a different time of the day.”
Brilliant butterflies came out into the blazing noonday sun to pollinate the flowers in the sprawling gardens. Lemons seemed to ripen to bright yellow in a matter of hours. An army of servants made up the beds, cleaned and cooked, and brought iced drinks to the swimming pool behind the Pink House. Everything was lush and fragrant, and Jackie began to feel as though she, too, was coming to life.
“Onassis was proud of Skorpios,” said Stefanos Daroussos, who in addition to being the chief engineer on the Christina also functioned as the steward of the island. “Onassis personally supervised the construction of every single mile of road that was carved into the hillsides, the planting of every single tree, the building of every guest house. He had the sea dredged and two harbors built, one for the Christina, the other for the yachts of his wealthy guests. But I have to tell you that as much as he loved Skorpios, he never slept on the island. He always slept on the Christina. That was his real home.”
The Christina sparkled in its dock. Four decks high, it was an immaculate white leviathan whose proportions seemed out of scale with the small island. Throughout the day, the ship’s Piaggio seaplane ferried people and parcels back and forth from the mainland, which was visible across Nydri Bay. In Jackie’s honor, Ari brought a bouzouki band from Athens, and in the evenings the ship’s running lights twinkled over scenes of gay, boisterous parties.
“Two pretty girls, one blonde and the other dark and with her leg in a cast, are there,” the journalist Nikos Mastorakis reported in Life magazine. “All, including Jackie and Telis, seemed pleased with their lives, and they ate black caviar and red tomatoes. Jackie, who is resplendent in a red blouse and long gypsy skirt, prefers the vodka. She leans close when Telis whispers in her ear. At dinner, Onassis eats his lamb like a youth. She eats little and nibbles white grapes. But at four A.M., with Mr. Moon above, the sweet Mrs. Kennedy sings with Telis when he starts Adios Muchachos and I feel they are close.”
After the guests had departed, Ari pulled on a pair of bathing trunks, and lowered himself down a narrow ladder into the pitch-black waters of the Ionian Sea. For the next hour or so, he swam alone around the dark island, his powerful arms and shoulders pumping in a steady rhythm. When he got back, he ordered Captain Anastassiadis to disconnect the ship’s telephones and radios, to cut off all communication with the outside world. Then he went to his cabin, and as the fuming, glaring light of a new day brightened the water, he slipped silently into bed, careful not to wake Jackie.
A CREATIVE SOLUTION
Several days later, Senator Edward Kennedy was deposited by helicopter on Skorpios like a deus ex machina. The sudden appearance of Jackie’s surviving brother-in-law gave rise to a number of rumors. According to one story, Kennedy had come all the way to Greece to prevent Jackie from being carried off by Onassis like a modern Helen of Troy. Another story portrayed Jackie as the instigator of Kennedy’s visit. It was said that she had summoned Teddy to Skorpios to help her wheedle a huge prenuptial settlement from Ari.
That was the story that gained the widest circulation and made its way into subsequent magazine articles and books about the marriage. In this version of events, Teddy was acting as a spokesman for Jackie’s team of lawyers in America, and spent several days on Skorpios haggling with Ari over the terms of the prenuptial agreement.
According to sources who were never named, Teddy argued that the marriage would cost Jackie her status as John Kennedy’s widow, and with that loss, her $200,000-a-year income from JFK’s trust. She needed to have money of her own. It was said that Teddy even threatened to take Jackie back to America unless Ari agreed to give her an obscene amount of money—$20 million was the figure most frequently mentioned—as well as lump-sum payments for each of her children, a monthly stipend for her of $30,000, and written assurances regarding their sleeping arrangements, the frequency of their sexual relations, and Jackie’s right not to have a child.
Ari reportedly balked at the $20 million figure and the written assurances about sexual relations, or any other kind of relations, for that matter. Teddy returned to America a defeated man. All that he succeeding in extracting from Ari was a measly $3 million.
It was a gripping tale of suspense, starring Ari as the plucky underdog. The only trouble was, the story was made up of whole cloth by Ari, and did not contain a shred of truth.
Ari wanted the world to believe that he had made a fabulous deal when he married Jackie. As always, a deal meant an opponent, and Ari concocted the story of a confrontation between himself and Teddy Kennedy to prove that he had outwitted the Senator and the best legal minds in America.
The facts were quite different.
“There was nothing in any written prenuptial agreement about money for Jackie’s children,” said Stelio Papadimitriou. “And there was nothing about a monthly stipend for Jackie.”
In fact, Kennedy had come to Skorpios more to lend moral support than to act as Jackie’s financial adviser. Indeed, die idea of a prenuptial monetary settlement had not been Jackie’s at all. It had originated with Ari, and was prompted by his concern over Greece’s inheritance laws.
Under that country’s laws, the spouse was entitled to 25 percent or at least to a compulsory 12.5 percent of the deceased spouse’s estate. Since Ari was worth about $500 million at the time (or about $2 billion in today’s money), Jackie would have been entitled for her minimum 12.5 percent, an amount of $62.5 million (or $250 million converted into current dollars) in the event of his death.
Ari had put his lawyers to work on the problem, and they came up with a creative solution. They had discovered that under American law, Jackie could renounce her inheritance rights as long as she received reasonable consideration for doing so.
“If I die,” Ari told Jackie, according to Papadimitriou, “you will automatically inherit a large part of my estate under Greek law. That will put you in competition with my children. This is something I do not want. In order to keep my children satisfied in matters of inheritance, I want you to sign a document renouncing your rights to my estate.”
“Jackie agreed to Onassis’s request,” Papadimitriou told the author. “Jackie was victimized by the press, which portrayed her as avaricious, but it was her behavior in this matter that made me dead certain that she was not marrying Onassis for his money.
“Just look at the facts,” Papadimitriou continued. “First, Jackie agreed to renounce her inheritance rights under Greek law, thereby forfeiting a huge financial windfall in the event of the death of Onassis, who was sixty-two years old, and not in the best of health. She did not have to do th
at.
“Second, she did not demand any money. It was something that we in the Onassis camp insisted on giving her because it was required under American law for a valid renunciation.
“And third, the money she agreed to was ridiculously low given the size of Onassis’s fortune. She got less than the $3 million that has been widely reported. Much less in fact. It was between $2 million and $3 million. And there was nothing in the prenuptial contract about any other payments, either for Jackie’s monthly upkeep or for her children.
“It is true that, as the wife of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie expected to live a wealthy life. But she did not go into the marriage looking for money.
“The irony of this whole story is that it was all for nothing,” Papadimitriou said. “In my view, that prenuptial agreement was not legally binding. I advised Onassis that it would not work. I told him, ‘If you die twenty years from now, when you’re eighty-two, maybe this prenuptial agreement will hold. And maybe it won’t. But if you die any sooner, necessity will undo the agreement. We will not be able to send Jackie away without enough money to live according to her station in life as the widow of Aristotle Onassis.’ ”
It was a couple of years later that Stelio Papadimitriou advised Ari that notwithstanding the prenuptial agreement, Jackie, in the event of his death, would still be entitled to the compulsory minimum of 12.5 percent of his whole estate on the basis of the forced heirship provisions of Greek law.