Including a look into the family’s famous curse.
Let’s be honest: We can’t resist political drama, especially when it involves an entire family and dates back generations. The secrets, the lies, the power struggles, and the occasional shady business dealings captivate even the most gossip-adverse among us. Since the late 1880s, the Irish-American Kennedy family has been no exception to our obsession — they set the bar seriously high for any family political drama that followed. Sure, there are plenty of “normal” reasons to fawn over the family: JFK is one of the most memorable presidents of all time (he’s also still the youngest president elected to office), his wife Jackie O. was endlessly iconic (who remembers her White House tour that captivated 80 million viewers?), and Ted Kennedy was a senator for nearly 47 years. The family’s commitment to public service is noble enough to ensure adoration and fame.
But like it or not, the Kennedys are just as famous for tales of tragedy. Their various scandals have been making headlines for generations, and they’re notorious for catastrophes ranging from premature deaths to accidents to assassinations and other disasters. And because the Kennedys have been in the public eye for over a century, their very real-life personal drama is almost inextricable from decades of rumor. To help set the record straight, we’ve dug into a few of the most prominent and controversial myths about the Kennedys.
Was Joe P. Kennedy a bootlegger?
Because Joe P. Kennedy was a shrewd businessman and the son of a saloon owner who also imported alcohol, critics and fans alike have often theorized that he illegally sold liquor during Prohibition. These rumors may seem a bit more substantial because Joe P. Kennedy built a lucrative liquor franchise after Prohibition ended, too.
However, Joe P. Kennedy’s biographer David Nasaw (author of The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy) insists that there’s no hard evidence that Joe ever turned to a life of crime. Speaking to History, Nasaw says, “as his biographer, I would have loved to have discovered that he was a bootlegger. It would have given me all sorts of great stories. I tracked down every rumor I could find and none of them panned out. It became really clear that all of the stories about his bootlegging were just farcical.” Nasaw also points out that Richard Nixon, when running against JFK, hired a team of sleuths to investigate the Kennedys. None of these researchers found any proof of bootlegging, even though they also would have loved to build a smear campaign around that kind of dirt.
Did JFK receive Last Rites?
Well…yes. Unfortunately, JFK received the Catholic sacrament multiple times. Plagued with lifelong health issues (a bad back, Addison’s disease, and digestive issues), he teetered close to death on three occasions before being assassinated. History reports that JFK first received the sacrament in 1947, as he traveled home to America shortly after being diagnosed with Addison’s. He also received his Last Rites in 1951 when he had a disturbingly high fever and again in 1954 when he suffered a post-surgery coma.
Actually, the depth of JFK’s hidden disabilities is pretty fascinating. JFK’s chronic pain almost kept him out of the military — however, his father pulled some strings and he was eventually able to join up. According to PBS, “his back was so stiff from pain and arthritis that he could not even bend over to tie his shoes.” PBS also points out that JFK’s doctors prescribed “a slew of opiate pain killers, local anesthetic (lidocaine) shots for his back pain, tranquilizers such as Librium, amphetamines and stimulants, including Ritalin, thyroid hormones, barbiturate sleeping pills…” and other medicines to treat his pain. In retrospect, it’s sad to think he was undergoing such suffering while also taking on responsibilities on the world stage.
Did JFK have an affair with Marilyn Monroe?
There’s no denying that reports of JFK’s extramarital affairs brought him a lot of extra fame. And decades after his death, rumors still swirl about his involvement with mid-century bombshell Marilyn Monroe.
Narrowing down a timeline is tricky, though. Woman’s Day reports the pair could have only met a handful of times, and historians agree that the most likely scenario was a one-night fling at Bing Crosby’s southern California home. In Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, Monroe’s friend Ralph Roberts agrees with this theory: “Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ‘affair’ with JFK. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.”
Did Jackie O. warn JFK Jr. not to fly?
There’s definitely truth to this rumor. Most of us remember the sad story of JFK Jr.: As a magazine owner and New York City socialite, he worked on his family’s various campaigns and also made tabloid headlines for romps around the world. As an amateur pilot, he planned on flying his wife and sister-in-law to Massachusetts for a wedding; unfortunately, his plane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It turns out that his mother, Jackie O., was pretty wary of planes herself. After sitting next to her husband as he was shot, Jackie seemed very reasonably afraid that the Kennedy family was prone to disaster. Plus, multiple Kennedys had previously died in air accidents. InStyle reports that before her death, Jackie did make JFK Jr. promise he wouldn’t fly. According to the biography The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee, on Jackie’s deathbed she also made Ted Kennedy and her partner Maurice Tempelsman promise to prevent JFK Jr. from piloting a plane. However, JFK Jr.’s passion for flying outweighed his mother’s pleas, and after her death, he began working toward receiving his pilot’s license. Sadly, the rest is history.
So…is there actually a Kennedy family curse?
This is a tricky one. “The Kennedy Curse” is a popular take on the family’s prevalence for headline-grabbing disaster and despair. Since this drama is in such stark contrast to their reputations as powerful, intelligent world leaders, it makes sense that people think something fishy is at play. Even Ted Kennedy wondered aloud during a speech if “some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys” after his own notorious involvement in the Chappaquiddick incident.
However, if anyone did curse the Kennedys, there is no proof — though wild theories abound. Edward Klein’s The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years posits that the Kennedys had a special “thrill seeking gene” or that a rabbi cursed Joe P. Kennedy when the two got into an argument on a boat. Others simply attribute the calamities to the conditions of Kennedy family life: In his book The Kennedy Curse: Shattered, Les Williams argues that Joe Kennedy’s intense parenting style is at fault. Obsessed with power, Joe Kennedy pushed his children to value ruthless ambition and their own exceptionalism — this could have led to reckless behavior, the accumulation of too many enemies, or a high pressure environment that didn’t allow for anything short of conventional success. There is some proof of this, since Joe Kennedy’s preoccupation with the family reputation certainly harmed his daughter Rosemary. Slow to learn and prone to temper tantrums, Joe Kennedy made her undergo a lobotomy so that she wouldn’t accidentally embarrass him. The procedure rendered her disabled and she spent the rest of her life institutionalized and shunned from the family. Maybe the ultimate cause of the curse isn’t genetics or an angry rabbi — it could just be plain old power hunger.
