The Other Kennedy Curse

Rose Kennedy

In his book The Kennedy Women, Laurence Leamer writes that Kennedy patriarch Joe cheated countless times on Rose, the mother of his nine children. According to Leamer, Joe brought some of these women to the family home, flaunted his relationships publicly, and even, supposedly, bragged about an affair with a duchess. In Jackie, Ethel, Joan, J. Randy Taraborrelli adds that at one point, in disgust, Rose left Joe and went to live with her parents, but in time she returned and adopted a policy of ignoring her husband's dalliances, thereby becoming the family's model of long-suffering decorum.

Rose's anger came out only fitfully—she once complained about her marital problems to a masseuse, Leamer writes. The rest of the time, she averted her eyes. When Joe had the audacity to bring the actress Gloria Swanson, one of his mistresses, to the family's home in Hyannis Port, Rose treated her cordially.

"This extraordinary willful act of negation was one that her daughters observed," Leamer writes, "and subtly inculcated into their own belief system of how a woman should behave."
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy with her husband, Joseph, in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 1938. Photograph by AFP/AFP/Getty Images.
Jacqueline Kennedy
The rumors of JFK's dalliances with countless women, up to and including Marilyn Monroe, are at this point so familiar as to be almost yawn-worthy. But it wasn't merely the affairs that tested his wife; it was the brazenness with which he conducted them. In the run-up to the 1960 presidential race, Leamer writes, "Jack's problem was not his affairs but the daring indiscretion of it all, as if he were tempting fate."
Of course Jackie knew, writes Taraborrelli. And it hurt. But she loved him, and they had kids together, and she had a role to play as political spouse and later as first lady. A cousin, Taraborrelli notes, once referred to Jack's infidelities as "Jacqueline's festering wound."
A 1975 Time magazine story on the president's philandering singled out two attractive staffers with "no discernable duties" who traveled everywhere with Kennedy and were nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle by the Secret Service. One White House visitor described them as looking "like unused tennis balls —they had the fuzz still on them." The story also referenced an "impossible to verify" anecdote that, true or not, sounds typical of the controlled way that women who were either born or married into the Kennedy family learned to handle their husbands' waywardness. Finding a piece of women's underwear in a pillowcase, Jackie is supposed to have said to Jack:
"Would you please shop around and see who these belong to? They're not my size."
John Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier on Sept. 12, 1953, their wedding day. Photograph by Toni Frisell/Courtesy Library of Congress.
Jean Kennedy
According to various accounts, Jean, the eighth child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, followed the family tradition of marrying a man with a wandering eye. Stephen Smith, a businessman who went on to help run several of the family's political campaigns, "didn't try to hide his affairs," a Kennedy staffer is quoted as saying in Leamer's book.
For a long time, Jean put up with these affairs, Leamer writes, "as if they were part of the obligatory penance of a Kennedy woman." But in time, Jean sought out her own satisfaction on the side. She started an intense "friendship" with another man, one she was far more careful to keep under wraps than her husband was his own relationships. The man wasn't interested in marrying her, and in time the relationship ended. Jean's marriage, however, continued. She survives Steve, who passed away in 1990.
At right, Jean Kennedy christening the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., in 1945, more than a decade before her marriage to Stephen Smith.
Jean Kennedy christening the USS CREDIT: Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., in 1945, more than a decade before her marriage to Stephen Smith. Photograph Courtesy Kennedy Library.
Patricia Kennedy
Pat, the strong-willed sixth child of Joe and Rose, also suffered in her marriage, writes Kennedy family historian Leamer. British actor Peter Lawford was, in the words of Lawford's fourth wife, "incapable of loyalty." At one point, during a Hawaii vacation with Frank Sinatra, Lawford is even said to have made a pass at the woman Sinatra was dating. Lawford was also into drugs and alcohol and adventurous sex; Pat, a good Catholic, was said by Leamer to be shocked by the things her husband wanted her to do.
But unlike her mom and some of her sisters, Pat didn't suffer in silence. She divorced her husband in 1966, making her the first Kennedy to do so. According to The Kennedy Women, the combination of the split and her brother's assassination gave rise to her own difficulties with alcohol.
Patricia Kennedy circa 1948, some six years before her marriage to Peter Lawford. Photograph Courtesy the Kennedy Library.
Joan Bennett Kennedy
Joan Bennett married Ted Kennedy in 1958, when he was still a law student. In Jackie, Ethel, Joan, Taraborrelli writes that Joan often blamed herself—and specifically her drinking—for the emotional distance that developed during their marriage. But if she drank too much, it was in part to avoid having to think about Ted's wandering eye. It was in the aftermath of his 1969 car accident at Chappaquiddick (and the death of his passenger, young Mary Jo Kopechne), she told Leamer, that she "truly became an alcoholic."
Joan stayed by her husband in the accident's aftermath and suffered a miscarriage soon after. By the time the couple unofficially separated in 1977, however, she was changing, becoming stronger and fighting to overcome her alcoholism, Taraborrelli writes. When, around this time, a reporter asked Joan if Ted still loved her, she replied honestly. "I really don't know."
They divorced in 1982.
Joan Kennedy and her son Patrick, right, on their way to the funeral of Patrick's father, Sen. Edward Kennedy, on Aug. 29, 2009, in Boston. Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
Kerry Kennedy
When Kerry, the daughter of Robert and Ethel, split from Andrew Cuomo in 2003 after 13 years, at least some of the story was familiar. According to a source close to Kerry quoted in the New York Times, she had considered ending the marriage earlier, but stayed by Andrew's side to help him in his first run for governor, in 2002. "It was Mr. Cuomo's career that kept Ms. Kennedy Cuomo in the marriage," the Times wrote.
But that is where the usual Kennedy script abruptly ended. Andrew offered a not particularly cryptic statement implying that Kerry had cheated on him ("Mr. Cuomo was betrayed and saddened by his wife's conduct during their marriage"), a move so boneheaded that even Donald Trump called it "terrible." The tabloids leapt into the fray, and soon were publishing stories about "Kerry's Lover Boy," whom the New York Post described as an already-married "polo-playing playboy."
Kerry Kennedy with then-husband Andrew Cuomo during his failed 2002 New York gubernatorial bid. Photograph by Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images.
Maria Shriver
Much of the speculation about what drove the split between Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger is just that. All we know for sure is that Shriver and Schwarzenegger are living apart while working on what they call "the future of our relationship." But a Los Angeles Times story suggests that, at least from Shriver's point of view, the marriage had been troubled for some time.
When, during Arnold's gubernatorial race in 2003, allegations of rampant woman-groping surfaced, Shriver stood by him, vouching for his character. She went on Oprah, where the talk show host asked Shriver to comment on what Oprah described as a widespread assumption that Maria was sticking by Arnold because "you know, she's a Kennedy woman, and they always look the other way."
"That ticks me off," Shriver retorted. "I am my own woman. I have not been, quote, 'bred to look the other way.' "
And yet a Shriver friend suggests to the Los Angeles Times that in deciding to stay in a failing marriage for so long, Shriver appears to have felt the pull of duty just as keenly as so many Kennedy women before her. "Part of it is family legacy, part of it is Catholicism," the friend said. "But the most important thing was their four kids."
In any case, that legacy—or curse—appears to be lifted now.
Maria Shriver with her husband, then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger on Oct. 6, 2003, in San Bernardino, Calif. Photograph by Robert Galbraith/Getty Images.