Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author and two of his thirteen books have been bestselling, headline-making biographies of the Kennedy family – The Other Mrs. Kennedy, and RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the dream.
Like so many other Kennedy women, Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy, had a public life that was often hailed and honored — but her private life was often hellish and tragic.
Like the Kennedy matriarch Rose, like Jackie and Ethel, the widows of JFK and Senator Robert Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith was cheated on by her adulterous husband, suffered from the Kennedy curse of assassinations and tragedies, and faced her own horrific and humiliating family sex scandal.
But she bravely rose above all of it – until she went outside her marriage to have an affair with another man to spite her philandering husband.
The second youngest of a brood of nine born to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and her husband, the powerful patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith died Wednesday at the age of 92, in her home in New York City.
Along with participating in various Kennedy political campaigns, Jean was the first female member of her generation of Kennedys – America’s so-called Royal Family – to become seriously involved in active politics – but only with a little influence from her powerful family.
Jean Kennedy Smith died last week aged 92 at her home in Manhattan; she was the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy
Jean was the eighth of nine children born to Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy and she tragically outlived several of them by decades. Pictured are Jean Kennedy, Patricia Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Congressman John F. Kennedy, and Eunice Kennedy during JFKs 1952 Senate Campaign
Author Jerry Oppenheimer writes of how she had a public life that was hailed and honored but her private life was often hellish and tragic
Her brother, the hard-drinking, womanizing U.S. senator Ted Kennedy – Rose and Joe’s youngest child — used his influence with another philandering and scandalous political power, President Bill Clinton, to have Jean appointed ambassador to Dublin, where she worked to help bring about peace in Northern Ireland.
But there was little familial peace for Jean, the sister who famously played Cupid – introducing her brothers, Jack, Bobby, and Teddy, to their future wives, Jackie Bouvier, Ethel Skakel, and Joan Bennett (who later suffered from alcoholism and was divorced from Ted).
On May 19, 1956, Jean, who was educated in Roman Catholic schools and received a college degree in English, married the handsome Stephen Edward Smith, from a wealthy New York family.
They were wed in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with hundreds waiting outside to see the new bride and groom. Steve had all the correct Kennedy credentials: He had graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in history; he had served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. And he was a financial analyst and a brilliant political strategist. Moreover, like many of the men in the Kennedy family, he was a womanizer of the highest order.
But as his brother-in-law and close friend, Ted, who was aware of Steve’s cheating, once publicly noted, ‘For 34 years, from the day he married Jean. Steve was like a brother in our family. He was the wisest adviser, the most skillful campaign manager, and the best friend that any of us ever had.
‘There wouldn’t have been a Camelot [the mythical name invented by Jackie after the assassination] without Steve Smith.’
And as The New York Times once called him in a puffy profile, Steve Smith was ‘the man to see and be seen with in New York.’
The thing is, he also didn’t mind being seen around New York with his mistresses – to the distress and embarrassment of his heartbroken and devastated Kennedy wife who was quite aware of her husband’s immorality.
Like Ted, Jack, Bobby and other Kennedy men, Steve Smith was a notorious philanderer who practically publicly cheated on Jean.
‘Jean knew about it and did nothing, initially’ a Kennedy family insider told me during research for my books, The Other Mrs. Kennedy, and RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream.
‘Like Rose and Jackie and Ethel and Joan, Jean buried her head in the sand and played the loyal, loving Kennedy wife, at least for public consumption,’ the source continued.
‘She was too embarrassed to fess up to what was going on – even though her own sister-in-law, Jackie, had told her, ‘Divorce that son-of-a-bitch. He’s no damn good for you.’ Jean thought about divorce but that was a no-no in her staunch Catholic beliefs. But later that all changed.’
Jean married Kennedy family financial adviser and future White House chief of staff Stephen Edward Smith in 1956
Like Ted, Jack, Bobby and other Kennedy men, Steve Smith was a notorious philanderer who practically publicly cheated on Jean
Steve’s brother-in-law and close friend, Ted, who was aware of Steve’s cheating, once publicly noted, ‘For 34 years, from the day he married Jean. Steve was like a brother in our family. He was the wisest adviser, the most skillful campaign manager, and the best friend that any of us ever had.
Based on what is known from well-placed sources, Steve Smith began his cheating after about a decade of marriage to Jean, with his Kennedy brothers-in-law giving him ‘the thumbs up for joining the cheaters club,’ says another close source.
‘It was a way of life for those guys. Cheating on their wives was a rite of passage for Kennedy men, and Steve was kind of a hero to Teddy and Bobby because he was more open about it.’
In the 1970s, for example, Steve Smith was impressively juggling two mistresses at the same time, and they covered the religious gamut – one was Catholic, the other Jewish, and ‘neither was aware of the other. They would pass each other on Park Avenue or in Saks Fifth Avenue, and had no idea each was sleeping at the same time in different beds with Jean Kennedy’s husband.’
With Smith, the Kennedy family fixer, heading the Park Agency, in New York City, which handled Kennedy family finances and other matters, he had access to untold amounts of money.
While there was never any evidence that he put his hand in the Kennedy till for his own use – or even formal accusations of such activity – Smith spent what was described as ‘vast amount of money buying gifts and other kinds of presents for his lovers,’ a Kennedy insider told me.
Steve, noted the source, felt he was ‘untouchable, that he had the power and the prestige to do anything he wanted, especially when it involved women. In the Kennedy family, he was like God. Jean was too afraid to confront him.’
Kennedy Smith is the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy. She is pictured above with him at the opening day of baseball in 1961
‘Like Rose and Jackie and Ethel and Joan, Jean buried her head in the sand and played the loyal, loving Kennedy wife, at least for public consumption,’ a source claimed. Members of the Kennedy family pose at a fundraising dinner at New York in 1979. From left: Steve Smith, Pat Lawford, Jackie Onassis, Jean Kennedy Smith, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, and Steve Smith Jr.
According to another source, Smith would take his girlfriends – he tended to favor ‘those with great bodies and blonde hair,’ and there were more than just the two mentioned above – to some of the big-name fashion shows. ‘He’d sit on the front row next to them, never caring about the photographers who were present, and then arrange to buy the women very expensive designer couture.’
Among his favorites was Halston – who had ironically earned his fame by designing Jackie Kennedy’s famous pillbox hat that she wore to JFK’s inauguration. Halston, who was gay, died of an AIDS-related illness in 1990.
After having enough of her husband’s cheating, Jean began an affair with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (pictured)
There came a time, however, when Jean had had enough of Steve’s blatant infidelity. At the age of 37, and against all of her staunch Catholic belief, the married mother of four began what was described to me as an ‘intimate and furtive relationship,’ with another man – thus joining the once exclusive Kennedy boy’s club of philanderers.
Her lover wasn’t just anyone. He was reputed to be the famed, dashing, and handsome lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, who was chauffeured around town in a Rolls-Royce, and whose lyrics were about romance, making him even more intriguing to the Kennedy wife who knew of her husband’s cheating.
A romantic himself, Lerner had been divorced four times when he and Jean Smith began their relationship. In all he would have eight marriages, four of them were to actresses. Moreover, he had been a classmate of Jean’s brother Jack at the ritzy Choate School and at Harvard.
A close friend of Jean’s believed it was ‘the first time she was ever truly, head-over-heels madly in love.’
At one point, she reportedly accompanied Lerner on a romantic trip to Venice. On another occasion, he had a yacht anchored in the Boston’s Charles River so he could have secret trysts with Jean on board.
Worse still, Lerner took Jean along when he visited Max Jacobson, the New York City physician known as ‘Dr. Feelgood,’ who supplied amphetamines to the addicted Lerner – an addiction that was said to have been ignited by Jacobson who had other high-profile patients. But Jean refused to get turned on.
A year or so into their relationship, the womanizing Lerner began seeing a gorgeous young journalist who moved in with him while he was still involved with Jean. In the mid-60s, Jean decided to leave Steve and was planning to make it permanent with Lerner, with a plan for her to meet him in Paris.
But he never showed up, and when she returned to New York, she got a ‘Dear Jean’ note from Lerner. The relationship was over. Lerner died in 1986, at the age of 67.
Jean’s brother Ted (center) the hard-drinking, womanizing U.S. senator, used his influence with another philandering and scandalous political power, President Bill Clinton, to have Jean appointed ambassador to Dublin, where she worked to help bring about peace in Northern Ireland
Smith was appointed ambassador to Ireland by President Bill Clinton, who called her ‘as Irish as an American can be’. She served in the role from 1993 to 1998
President Barack Obama presents a Medal of Freedom to Jean Kennedy Smith during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in 2011
Jean and Steve Smith resumed their toxic marriage, which included the adoption of two daughters, one of whom was Vietnamese.
Meanwhile Steve continued having his affairs – one of long duration with a beautiful Manhattan socialite.
Jean, mother of Steve’s four children, would outlive her husband by three decades. He died from lung cancer at the age of 62 in 1990.
In April 1991 – a year after his father’s death – 30-year-old William Kennedy Smith, a fourth-year medical student at his father’s alma mater, Georgetown, was partying in Palm Beach with his uncle, the womanizing, alcoholic ‘Lion of the Senate,’ 59-year-old Ted Kennedy.
Two decades earlier Teddy had escaped a horrific scandal when a pretty blonde Kennedy family friend and campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned when Kennedy’s car went into the water on Chappaquidick Island, after a night of partying.
In Palm Beach, again after a night of partying and drinking at the chic club Au Bar with his uncle Ted, Jean Smith’s son, Willy, was accused of raping a local woman he met at the club. He took dark-haired, attractive 29-year-old Patricia Bowman, an unmarried mother of a two-year-old daughter, back to the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach estate where she claimed the assault had taken place.
Ted Kennedy would later call it ‘a traditional Easter weekend.’
With the senator stalling the police who wanted to question Willy, and with the police dragging their feet because of the Kennedy family’s power and prominence, there were cries by the public and the media of a cover up – just like those made when the Chappaquidick incident occurred, and Ted Kennedy walked away with little more than a slap on the wrist – a scandal, however, that kept him from ever occupying the White House.
Jean was the eighth of nine children born to Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy and she tragically outlived several of them by decades. Seated from left are: Patricia Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, John F Kennedy, Joseph P Kennedy Sr with Edward Kennedy on his lap. Standing from left are: Joseph P Kennedy Jr, Kathleen Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy and Jean Kennedy
About a month after the alleged assault, Willy Smith was charged with felony sexual battery and misdemeanor battery. Jean was at her son’s side when he gave himself up to Palm Beach police for the booking ceremony — and she would devote herself to her son’s defense.
At one point, she told reporters, ‘I’m distressed that someone is trying to ruin his life and career when he’s trying to help people’ as a future physician.
The scandal made worldwide headlines and Palm Beach was invaded by hundreds of journalists, probing the case and covering the eventual 10-day circus-like trial, with Willy’s devastated mother, Jean, and other Kennedy family members in the courtroom to support Willy — only Jackie and her daughter Caroline refused to attend.
As I reported in my book, RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream, only John F. Kennedy Jr., then an assistant district attorney in New York City, had questioned his cousin, Willy’s, innocence. His assertion appeared in a little known December 30, 1993, sworn affidavit given to a member of the U.S. Congress, the Ohio Democrat James Traficant, and read into the Congressional record.
In the end, however, having hired the best defense attorneys Kennedy money can buy, Jean’s son, Willy, was acquitted of rape by a jury that deliberated just 77 minutes. His lawyer claimed the case was ‘right out of a romance novel,’ and that rape never happened.
Through it all, Jean’s fury was aimed not at her son, a reputed womanizer like his late father, but rather at Jean’s younger brother, the senator, Teddy, who had accompanied Willy to drink and party on the night the sex scandal broke.
With her death this week, Jean Kennedy Smith’s 2016 memoir, The Nine of Us, was remembered by the media, in which she wrote, ‘It is hard for me to fully comprehend that I was growing up with brothers who eventually occupy the highest offices of our nation, including president of the United States. At the time, they were simply my playmates. They were the source of my amusement and the objects of my admiration.’