While briefly attending Stanford University in 1940, Kennedy, who had previously attended mostly all-male classes at private eastern boarding schools and Harvard, wrote to a friend, “Still can’t get use to the co-eds but am taking them in my stride. Expect to cut one out of the herd and brand her shortly, but am taking it very slow as do not want to be known as the beast of the East.” The actor Robert Stack, later star of The Untouchables TV series, witnessed Kennedy in action on the Stanford campus, and recalled, “I’ve known many of the great Hollywood stars, and only a few of them seemed to hold the attraction for women that JFK did, even before he entered the political arena. He’d just look at them and they’d tumble.” Kennedy himself wasn’t quite sure why this happened. He once wrote to a college friend, “I can’t help it. It can’t be my good looks because I’m not much handsomer than anybody else. It must be my personality.”
That personality was highlighted by a relaxed, powerful charm, a genuine curiosity in other people and their opinions, a sharp, sardonic of humor, and a striking sense of confidence and optimism, all of which inspired powerful bonds of affection and loyalty with many of the people he met, female and male alike.
By his early-twenties, John F. Kennedy was living one of the most extraordinary young American lives of the twentieth century. He traveled in an orbit of unprecedented wealth, influence, global mobility, and power. As a student and as diplomatic assistant to his father, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, Kennedy journeyed to England, Ireland, France, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Damascus, Athens, and Turkey, pausing briefly from a vacation on the French Riviera to sleep with the actress Marlene Dietrich. He met with top White House officials and traveled to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Peru, and Ecuador. He gambled in a casino in Monte Carlo; visited Naples, Capri, Milan, Florence, Venice, and Rome; rode a camel at the Great Pyramid at Giza; attended the coronation of Pope Pius XII; and witnessed a rally for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He recalled of these momentous years, “It was a great opportunity to see a period of history which was one of the most significant.” In a visit to British-occupied Palestine, Kennedy recalled, “I saw the rock where our Lord ascended into heaven in a cloud, and [in] the same area, I saw the place where Mohammed was carried up to heaven on a white horse.”
In 1939, in an encounter that could have been written into a Merchant Ivory script, Kennedy, dressed in silk knee breeches, met the king and queen of England at a court levee. Spotting their dark-haired, thirteen-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, Kennedy was soon chatting up the future queen over tea. “She is still pretty young but starting to look like a looker nonetheless,” he wrote to a friend. “I think she rather liked me and now I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a thing for me. The knee breeches are cut tight to show off my crotch at its best, and the uniform—worn by everyone but Dad at these court functions—seems to have caught the polite eye of the young heir.”
That summer, Kennedy attended a grand coming-out ball for seventeen-year-old Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill at the mammoth Blenheim Palace, which he told a friend was “nearly as big as Versailles.” British politician Sir Henry Channon described the dazzling scene: “I have seen much, traveled far and am accustomed to splendor, but there has never been anything like tonight. The palace was floodlit, and its grand baroque beauty could be seen for miles. The lakes were floodlit too and, better still, the famous terraces, they were blue and green and Tyroleans walked about singing.” He added, “it was gay, young, brilliant, in short, perfection,” with “literally rivers of champagne” flowing. On one of the grand terraces, John Kennedy could see Anthony Eden smoking cigars and gossiping with the great man himself, Winston Churchill. It was the culmination of what many remembered as a fairy-tale summer of 1939 in England, a spell that was shattered on September 1, when Germany invaded Poland and World War II descended upon Europe.
Kennedy even hit the bestseller lists in 1940 with Why England Slept, an analysis of the British appeasement at Munich and the path to World War II. Adapted from his senior thesis at Harvard, Kennedy’s book relied on his insider’s perspective of events in England to take the contrarian view that the chief culprit in failing to block Hitler’s expansion was not Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, but rather the system of British democracy itself, which was too slow to respond to the Nazi threat.
With American involvement in the conflicts in Europe and Asia growing increasingly inevitable, Kennedy enlisted in the military in 1941, along with millions of young men of his era. “I am rapidly reaching a point where every one of my peers will be in uniform,” he wrote to a friend, “and I do not intend to be the only one among them wearing coward’s tweeds. I am sure there is somewhere where I can make a contribution in all this, despite whatever glaring physical deficiencies might be in evidence on my illustrious person.” Given his lifelong connection to the sea, it was natural for Kennedy to be drawn to the Navy, and in September 1941, with the help of behind-the-scenes string-pulling by his father, he was appointed as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve and put on the staff of the Office of Naval Intelligence at the Pentagon in October.
Weeks before, in the summer of 1941, as he sailed his personal sloop Victura from Hyannis Port to Martha’s Vineyard, Kennedy was struck by the sight of a strange-looking vessel at the Edgartown dock. It was a “motor torpedo boat,” or PT (patrol torpedo) boat, that the U.S. Navy had put on exhibition. PT boats were new fast-attack and patrol craft, sometimes called “mosquito boats,” that typically carried four torpedoes, ten depth charges, mounted machine guns, and a small crew of a dozen or more men. They were inspired by similar models already being used by Britain and Germany. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and General Douglas MacArthur championed their development for use in defending the Philippines, where their speed and maneuverability made them ideal for patrolling labyrinthine coastal waters. Journalist Robert Donovan, who interviewed Kennedy about the Edgartown encounter, reported that “the trim lines and scrappy look” of the boat fascinated Kennedy: “when he inspected her he had an urge to climb behind the wheel and open the throttles wide.” Soon Kennedy learned the tiny new PT fleet offered naval officers the opportunity of being able to command their own boat very early in their career—an attractive draw for JFK and many other sailors, especially those such as himself with experience in handling small craft.
Kennedy later described the versatile capabilities of PT boats, which eventually saw wartime action across the Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the English Channel: “Small though they were, the PT boats played a key role. Like most naval ships, they could carry out numerous tasks with dispatch and versatility. In narrow waters or in fighting close to land they could deliver a powerful punch with torpedo or gun. On occasion they could lay mines or drop depth charges. They could speed through reefs and shark infested waters to rescue downed pilots or secretly close to the shore to make contacts with coast watchers and guerilla forces.” Kennedy added, “PT boats filled an important need in World War II in shallow waters, complementing the achievements of greater ships in greater seas.”
During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, PT boat personnel were among the very first Americans to draw blood during World War II when Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 1 Gunner’s Mate Joy van Zyll de Jong and Torpedoman’s Mate George B. Huffman, aboard the PT 23, opened fire with .50-caliber machine guns and shot down two Japanese Nakajima “Kate” torpedo bombers.
With United States’ formal entry into the war in the days that followed, Ensign John F. Kennedy yearned for an overseas combat assignment, but to his extreme frustration, he was condemned to eight months of dreary paper-pushing and office work stateside. At the end of July 1942, after passing two physical fitness tests, Kennedy finally maneuvered himself into the naval officer training course at Northwestern University, outside Chicago. If he passed the course, he hoped to be sent overseas on assignment to a combat zone.
The battlefield was
where Kennedy’s heroes King Arthur, Winston Churchill, and T. E. Lawrence proved themselves, where they forged their reputations and tested their manhood. Now Kennedy was poised to join them.
2
SUMMIT MEETING ON FIFTH AVENUE
THE PLAZA HOTEL
NEW YORK CITY, MID-SEPTEMBER 1942
Joseph P. Kennedy had a favor to ask.
The Kennedy patriarch decided his twenty-five-year-old, second-born son, John, had a chance of becoming president of the United States someday, and he had a long-range plan to make it happen. He was already maneuvering his eldest son, Joseph, Jr., toward national politics and a path into the White House, but Kennedy knew that having two strong cards in play would increase his odds of winning the ultimate prize in America.
Kennedy’s New York City operations usually revolved around his business headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center, lunch spots like the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, and suites at the exclusive Carlyle hotel. But for a critical occasion like this, he chose the opulence of the centrally located Plaza hotel, an imposing French Renaissance–style “château” which boasted idyllic views of Central Park. It was the perfect setting to stage a seduction. He had a proposition to make, and he was not a man who took no for an answer. On this day, Kennedy thought he could change history by launching an American political dynasty.
The target of his scheme was the most popular American fighting man of the day, Lieutenant Commander John D. Bulkeley, the compact, blunt-talking, New York–born commander of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3. Earlier that year, Bulkeley had staged a series of daring operations in the Philippines and helped orchestrate the escape by PT boat of General Douglas MacArthur and his family from capture by Japanese forces converging on the doomed American garrison at Corregidor. “Bulkeley, you’ve taken me out of the jaws of death,” a deeply grateful MacArthur told Bulkeley, “and I won’t forget it.” True to his word, MacArthur recommended him for the Silver Star and sent him back to the United States to publicize the morale-boosting exploits of PT boats, as well as to lobby for a fleet of two hundred of the vessels that could be dispatched to the Pacific Theater as fast as possible.
Bloodied by defeats at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, America yearned for heroes at this early stage of the war, and Bulkeley, a modest, dark-haired thirty-one-year-old boat captain with an exotically beautiful wife and a young baby, fit the bill perfectly. He was showered with adoring publicity when he returned to the United States, and New York City rewarded Bulkeley with two rapturous celebrations, starting with a ticker-tape parade down Seventh Avenue on May 13, 1942, that drew some 250,000, spectators. Four days later, 1,250,000 people turned out to salute Bulkeley in and around Central Park. City officials estimated it was the biggest crowd ever gathered in American history. On August 4, 1942, Bulkeley had the nation’s highest military citation, the Medal of Honor, placed around his neck by President Roosevelt in the Oval Office.
Joseph Kennedy had never met Bulkeley, but he sent a telegram to the officer summoning him to a lunch meeting at his Plaza hotel suite. Bulkeley accepted, no doubt intrigued at the prospect of meeting one of the most wealthy and powerful men in America. The intensely charming, sandy-haired Joe Kennedy was, in the words of writer Jacob Heilbrunn, a “ruthless businessman and investor” who “capitalized on his wealth to become perhaps America’s premier social climber, an Irish-Catholic outsider who stormed the bastions of the WASP aristocracy.” The son of a solidly middle-class Boston tavern owner and Democratic Party activist and ward boss, Kennedy attended Harvard and became a banker and financier, propelled by a hunger for family prestige, wealth, financial manipulation, deal making, and social and political power.
PT boat recruiting poster featuring Lt. John Bulkeley. (USN)
In a brilliantly prescient financial maneuver, Kennedy cashed out most of his stock market holdings shortly before the Crash of 1929, protecting his family’s wealth through the Great Depression. “From the beginning, Joe knew what he wanted—money and status for his family,” said a close friend. “He had the progenitor’s sense; to him, his children were an extension of himself. Therefore, what he did, he did with them always in mind. He played the game differently than if he had been after something entirely for himself.” The elder Kennedy was capable of tremendous charm, with a confident, quick smile, a firm handshake, and a meticulous personal presentation, which featured a wardrobe that was hand-tailored (down to his underwear) in London and Paris.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Kennedy was well on his way toward amassing a personal fortune that the New York Times valued at $500 million at the time of his death in 1969. He earned his money through banking, real estate, corporate takeovers and consulting, liquor importing, and movie production, displaying a Machiavellian flair that left a trail of broken companies and smashed careers in his wake. Movie superstar Gloria Swanson, who was Kennedy’s mistress and management client before he double-crossed and abandoned her, recalled that Kennedy “operated just like Joe Stalin”; “their system was to write a letter to the files and then order the exact reverse on the phone.” When she met Kennedy, Frances Marion, America’s highest-paid screenwriter at the time, thought, “He’s a charmer. A typical Irish charmer. But he’s a rascal.” In a stunning four-year raid on Hollywood, Kennedy took over three movie studios and ran them each simultaneously, launched the talking-picture revolution, established the prototype of the modern motion-picture conglomerate, and cashed out with millions of dollars in his pocket. Betty Lasky, daughter of Paramount founder Jesse Lasky, observed, “Kennedy was the first and only outsider to fleece Hollywood.”
Joe Kennedy was, in short, a master manipulator of money and people. In the words of a January 1963 profile in Fortune magazine, he was “a smart, rough competitor who excelled in games without rules. A handsome six-footer exuding vitality and Irish charm, he also had a tight, dry mind that kept a running balance of hazards and advantages. Quick-tempered and mercurial, he could move from warmth to malice in the moment it took his blue eyes to turn the color of an icy lake. Friendships shattered under the sudden impact of brutal words and ruthless deeds, yet those who remained close to him were drawn into a fraternal bond.” Kennedy had, in the opinion of one colleague, a gift for speculation, based on “a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment, a marvelous sense of timing.” Another colleague attested to his magnetic personality, which pulled people into his orbit: “Joe led people into camp. It was the showman in him. You were riding with human destiny when this glamorous personality beckoned you to his side.” Biographer David Nasaw has written, “Those who had worked with him in the past marveled at the energy he expended, the impossibly long hours he kept, his ability to concentrate on several matters at once, and his capacity for juggling numbers, accounts, personalities, staffs, employees, and contracts as he flitted back and forth from office to office, city to city, coast to coast.”
Joe Kennedy did have one personality defect: he had a big mouth, a flaw which eventually sank his own political career. In two bursts of devilish humor, his friend Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Kennedy to jobs for which he appeared grossly unsuited. First, in 1934, he tapped notorious inside trader and stock manipulator Kennedy to be the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, making him in effect the top cop of Wall Street. In private, FDR wisecracked, “It takes a thief to catch a thief!” Then, in 1938, Roosevelt appointed the highly opinionated, often blunt-talking and undiplomatic Irish-American Kennedy to the top diplomatic post in the U.S. foreign service: ambassador to the United Kingdom. Less than three years into the job, after being largely ignored and bypassed by both FDR and the British Foreign Office, and with the Nazis advancing virtually unopposed across Europe, a dispirited and increasingly isolationist Kennedy blurted to a reporter, “Democracy is finished in England.” With that remark and the firestorm of bad press it triggered, Kennedy’s career in public service was over by the end of November 1940. He resigned under pressure from FDR’s State Departmen
t and transferred his ambitions for political power to his male children Joseph Jr. and John, both of whom he could envision capturing the White House someday—with his help. In September 1942, securing Lieutenant Commander John Bulkeley’s help in placing John into the PT boat service was a key step in his plan.
At the appointed hour of 1 P.M., Bulkeley arrived at Joe Kennedy’s Plaza suite, accompanied by his wife, Alice. It would be a marathon meeting, stretching from lunch into the dinner hour, finally ending at 8 P.M. Fifty years later, Bulkeley described the Plaza summit: “Joe Kennedy had been fired as ambassador to England by his old friend Roosevelt, and he had a lot of bitter things to say about the president. Kennedy said that his son was a midshipman at Northwestern [University], and that he thought Jack had the potential to be the president of the United States. Joe said he wanted Jack to get into PT boats for the publicity and so forth, to get the veteran’s vote after the war.”
This impulse for shaping his family’s outward image through public relations was typical of Joe Kennedy, a shrewd student of the emerging business arts of advertising and media promotion. Among the mantras he ingrained in his children were “It’s not who you are that counts, it’s who they think you are,” and “Things don’t happen, they are made to happen in the public-relations field.”
According to Bulkeley, Joe Kennedy wanted to know if Bulkeley had “the clout to get Jack into PT boats.” Bulkeley assured Kennedy he did, and, if the son measured up, he said he would recommend his acceptance into the service. Kennedy was delighted, though asked that his son not be sent someplace “too deadly.”
Bulkeley would soon deliver the first part of the arrangement, by admitting John Kennedy into the PT boat service. He did not however, fulfill Joe Kennedy’s request to protect his son by stationing him out of harm’s way. JFK himself would soon sabotage that idea.
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