Jack by Geoffrey Perret

Author:Geoffrey Perret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781588360625
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

In April 1954 Patricia Kennedy married an English actor, Peter Lawford, and they set up home in a large house on the beach at Malibu. The marriage came at almost the moment Lawford’s career as a screen idol fell apart. Although he was exceptionally handsome, Lawford had nothing but journeyman talents: he wasn’t big enough or deep enough to carry a film on his own. The studios stopped sending him scripts. Joe Kennedy bankrolled various television series, such as The Thin Man and Dear Phoebe, to keep his son-in-law employed and Patricia happy. 11

Lawford became Jack Kennedy’s new link to Hollywood. Joe’s connections were with an older generation of directors, producers and actors. It was Lawford who knew the exciting new stars and introduced Jack to Marilyn Monroe. Through Lawford, too, he was asked to narrate a thirty-minute documentary on the history of the Democratic party that was being made for the 1956 convention by Oscar-winning writer and producer Dore Schary. Jack spent a pleasant week in July at the Lawford beach house, working on the film by day, coupling by night.

Called The Pursuit of Happiness, Schary’s film was largely a hymn to the New Deal. Rumors were rife that Joe Kennedy had put up $500,000 for the film on the condition that Jack did the narration. Dore Schary insisted that wasn’t so, but Joe Kennedy knew how to hide his hand. The selection of Jack instead of someone venerated across the party, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, seems too fortuitous to take at face value. 12

On August 11 Jack arrived in Chicago for the convention at the head of the Massachusetts delegation. Tip O’Neill, Jack’s successor as congressman from the Eleventh District, had been planning to go to Chicago as a member of the state delegation, but Jack had pressured him to get Bobby named as a delegate. “You know, lightning may strike at that convention, and I could end up on the ticket with Stevenson. I’d really like to have my brother on the floor as a delegate so he could work for me.” O’Neill surrendered his own place on the state delegation to Bobby. 13

Jack was also accompanied by Jackie. Nearly eight months pregnant, she would stay with Sargent Shriver and his wife, Eunice, well away from the frenzied atmosphere of Jack’s suite at the Stockyards Inn, two blocks from the Chicago Amphitheatre.

Passing through Boston shortly before the convention, Stevenson had praised Jack’s record in the Senate and said he’d make “an excellent choice” for VP. Jack had responded by getting Sorensen to send a four-page letter to one of Stevenson’s advisers, Ken Hechler, that stressed the advantages to Stevenson of having Jack Kennedy as his running mate. 14

Even so, Jack continued to tell journalists, “I am not a candidate. I am not campaigning for office.” Who then did he think would be Stevenson’s running mate? “I think it will be a Southerner.” Whatever he said to the press, Stevenson’s comments nonetheless could only lift his hopes higher.

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