Darwin Porter - The Kennedys: All the Gossip Unfit for Print

HERES HOW THEY WERE REVIEWED BY
SOME OF THEIR CONTEMPORARIES:

JFK was a lout, a cad, a boor, an oaf, a schemer, a liar, a blackmailer, and a reckless gambler with the nations security, its integrity and its institutions. Kennedy was a man thoroughly out of control, thoroughly out of his depth, and maybe thoroughly out of his mind. Kennedy wasnt just a hoodlum Prince of Camelot, he was the incarnation of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Seymour Hersh,The Dark Side of Camelot

During the Thousand Days, Kennedy arrogantly and irresponsibly violated his covenant with the people. While saying and doing appropriate things in the public light, he acted covertly in ways that seriously demeaned himself and his office. With the appointment of his brother as attorney general, he tried to found a political dynasty, abhorred by the founding fathers. The metaphor of Camelot, after all, is ultimately un-American and undemocratic, conjuring up images of crowns and dashing young princes and noble birth.

Professor Thomas Reeves

Kennedy did not have incisiveness and he was out of his depth where he was. I hate to say this because I know its going to be misunderstood, but his reputation is greater because of the tragedy of his death than it would have been if he had lived out two terms. He did not seem to me to be in any sense a great man.

Dean Acheson, former Secretary of State

Jack told me he wasnt through with a girl till hed have her three ways.

Traphes Bryant, Veteran White House staff member

I found the president very penetrating.

Marilyn Monroe

He never said a word of importance in the Senate and never did a thing.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Why should I go back? What good would it do?

John F. Kennedy on the stillbirth of his child in 1956
when he was sailing the Mediterranean
with a boatload of females.

Joe Kennedy was one of the biggest crooks who ever lived.

Mob boss Sam Giancana

Listen, honey, if it wasnt for me, your boyfriend wouldnt even be in the White House.

Sam Giancana to Judith Campbell Exner

Maybe Marilyn, had she lived, her back stooped from osteoporosis, munching carrot sticks and sipping Dom Perignon, would sink into her sofa one autumn evening, slide in one of those tapes made-for TV movies and smile at just how wrong the filmmakers had gotten it all. Still, she might have mused, it made a lovely story.

David Marshall

I never had Addisons disease.

John F. Kennedy

Thats a liehe looked like a spavined hunchback.

Lyndon B. Johnson

The dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail. You must cut off the dogs head.

Carlos Marcello, mob chief of New Orleans who controlled Texas,
vowing revenge when JFK had him deported and
dropped in a Guatemala jungle.

A vulgar slut, a publicity seeker, an egomaniac, a self-promoter, a vicious bitch, an unbalanced drug addict, an alcoholic whore, a dime-a-dance floozie.

Jacqueline Kennedy on Marilyn Monroe

Bobby Kennedy was human. He liked to drink and he liked young women. He indulged that liking when he traveledand he had to travel a great deal.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger

Sex to Jack Kennedy was like another cup of coffee, or maybe dessert. For this Kennedy, evidently, sex was not to be confused with love.

Journalist Nancy Dickerson

The Kennedy story is about people who broke the rules, and were ultimately broken by them.

Christopher Lawford

God, I hate Camelot. Ive begged Jackie to tell them to play something else, but its like talking to a goddamn brick wall.

John F. Kennedy, on the Marine String Orchestra playing at the White House.

The point is, youve got to live every day like its your last day on Earth. Thats what Im doing.

John F. Kennedy

I dont think there are any men who are faithful to their wives. Men are such a combination of good and bad.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Joe Kennedy represented the height of vulgarity. He was hornythats all he was.

Columnist Doris Lilly

JFK was one of the great cunt men of all timeexcept for me.

Jerry Lewis

Jack always had his mind between his legs.

Lady May Lawford

Kennedy was the frequent recipient of nonreciprocal fellatio from longtime close friend LeMoyne Billings.

Mart Martin

Is it not possible to be an effective president of the United States without necessarily being personally virtuous?

Alice Leavenbrook

John F. Kennedy was the most overrated public figure in American history.

American Heritage

According to our poll, John F. Kennedy was the most popular president in U.S. history75% rate him good to great, 30% wish he were still president.

Newsweek

Lifting us beyond our capacities, he gave the country back to its best self, wiping away the worlds impression of an old nation of old men, weary, played out, fearful of the future; he taught mankind that the process of rediscovering America was not over. He transformed the American spirit.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Im afraid hes going to grow up to be a fruit.

Jacqueline Kennedy, discussing JFK Jr.

We want winners. We dont want losers around here.

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., to his sons

I dont think Jack Kennedy was a ladies man. He always felt they were a useful thing to have when you wanted them, but when you didnt want them, put them back.

Charles Houghton, JFKs roommate at Harvard

Well, JFK Jr. is kinda nave, like a young boy.

Madonna

In the brief time Jack had, he touched our hearts with fire, and the glow from that fire still lights the world.

Senator Ted Kennedy

Granny-O, they called her in the later years. She had become the dowager First Lady, the last American Queen, editing books, escorting the Clintons on a cruise. People had long since stopped gossiping about whether she knew of Jacks infidelities, if Warren Beatty had once been a beau. It didnt matter. She was a survivor. It was almost impossible to separate her from the myth of Camelot. After all, she actually invented it. In the end, she liberated herself from the Kennedys and became the last real Kennedy--glamorous, desirable, mythic.

Reggie Nadelson, describing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

If theres anything Id hate in a son-in-law, its an actor. And if theres anything I think Id hate more than an actor as a son-in-law, its an English actor.

Joseph P. Kennedy to his daughter, Patricia,
about her upcoming marriage to Peter Lawford

The old man [Joseph P. Kennedy] had an eye out for every woman that walked. In the Kennedys sense of morality, that was all right.

Fashion designer Oleg Cassini

Women keep calling to invite me to dinner, and I keep turning them down.

John F. Kennedy Jr.

The greatest twenty seconds of my life.

Angie Dickinson, describing JFK

Jack lost his virginity when he was seventeen years old in a Harlem whorehouse to a black prostitute.