on top of everything.’6
She was especially close to Jack, a thin, underweight child who continued to be plagued with illness. Like many clever, sickly children who miss a lot of school, he devoured books and had a precocious intellect. His passion was for history and reading literature and poetry. One of his defence mechanisms was a highly developed sense of humour. Kick was the butt of many a brotherly joke poking fun at her lack of intellect, but this was part of their teasing relationship. A schoolfriend from Riverdale days observed that ‘Kathleen was bonded to Jack with a profundity that mere blood seemed insufficient to describe.’7
Kick was given a very special birthday present for her eighth birthday: a new baby sister. She was to be called Jean. Kick wrote to ‘Dear Daddy’ and told him, ‘I like Jean very much.’8 Her father was taking his usual long vacation in Palm Beach. ‘I hope you are having a nice time in Florida. Do you go in swimming? Is the water cold?’ she asked in one of her earliest surviving letters.9 In her neat, bold hand, she described a funny moment when she was given a present of a little box of powder for her doll, which she managed to spill over herself. Neither of Kick’s parents was home that winter. Rose had returned to Boston to have the new baby, and Joe refused to sacrifice his annual vacation with his male buddies and business associates.
There was a team of nannies and nursery maids dedicated to looking after the children in the absence of the parents. Joe’s closest friend and adviser was an old friend of Honey Fitz, a man called Edward Moore. He and his wife Mary were childless and they became surrogate parents to the Kennedy children. When Rose and Joe were away, the Moores stepped in to help.
In the days after Jean’s birth, a huge bouquet of flowers was delivered to St Margaret’s Hospital from the actress Gloria Swanson, congratulating Rose on the birth of her child. Joe finally arrived from Palm Beach at his wife’s bedside, carrying three expensive diamond bracelets. This was not just a gift for having the baby, it was a guilt present. What did Rose really think when she looked at Gloria Swanson’s bouquet of flowers and the diamond bracelet glittering on her arm? It was an open secret that Joe and Gloria Swanson were in the throes of a passionate affair.
They had met for the first time in November 1927. Gloria was just twenty-eight, beautiful, charismatic and perhaps the most famous movie star in the world. She looked like a younger, more glamorous version of Rose. She had the same black, glossy hair, luminous skin and sapphire-blue eyes. Joe was utterly captivated. She could further his reputation as a serious studio head. He was tired of making B movies and cowboy films. He saw the way Hollywood was going – talkies. He wanted a business partnership with the screen goddess and he wanted her for himself. When they first met for dinner to discuss their partnership, Joe assured her, ‘Together we could make millions.’10 He offered to manage her, promising that he would reduce her debts and make her an even bigger star.11
The affair was to be a lasting one, and it posed a serious threat to his family. Gloria was utterly unlike the usual chorus girls that had previously attracted Joe. Before her, it was easy for him to compartmentalize his sexual affairs and his love for Rose. Rose was his wife, the mother of his children; the showgirls were there just for sex and for fun. Gloria was in an entirely different category.
Joe, more than ever, began to lead a bifurcated life, between his wife and large brood of handsome children and the glamorous movie star, the ultimate trophy mistress. In October 1928, he invited Gloria to a Halloween party in Riverdale along with her children. Gloria initially refused to meet the wife of the man she was sleeping with. But she did allow her children to go to the party. Her daughter, known as ‘little Gloria’, was the same age as Kick. She remembered the party with the decorations and all of the Kennedy children.
Kick was intrigued to meet the daughter of the world’s most famous movie star. She liked little Gloria, and took her to her Bronxville school to meet her schoolfriends. She introduced her guest as ‘Gloria Swanson’s daughter’. The other girls laughed and thought it was a joke: ‘After all, Gloria Swanson was, to them, practically a supernatural being, so she wouldn’t be in Bronxville.’12 Kick was indignant that nobody believed her story.
She liked her new friend, but she longed even more to meet the beautiful star herself. She wouldn’t have to wait long. The seriousness of the love affair was evident from Joe’s deliberate and highly risky merging of his two lives. He was adamant that his star, Gloria Swanson, should meet the family.
4
Our whole lives were centered in this one place.
Teddy Kennedy1
August 1929.
A chorus of residents and vacationers in the small seaside-resort town of Hyannis Port huddled excitedly around the harbour overlooking Nantucket Sound. In the distance they heard the buzzing of the Sikorsky amphibious plane, watched it flying low over the sea before it landed gracefully on the water and came to a halt: a more dramatic entrance could not be imagined, but then again, the flying boat was carrying one of the most famous women on the planet, and she was known for her love of drama.
Out from the tiny plane stepped Gloria Swanson. There was her lover, Joe Kennedy, in his launch, piloting her back to the shore where his wife waited to greet her. The women looked so eerily alike, except that the guest was nine years younger than the hostess. Joe was ecstatic at having Gloria on his arm, and, in the throes of his obsession with her, paid not the slightest attention to the whispers of his neighbours and friends. Nor did he care what his wife was thinking.
Rose was far too intelligent not to be aware of the gossip that circulated about her husband and Gloria, but she was not about to confirm the rumours, and certainly not to the nosy rubberneckers who clustered around the harbour waiting for a glimpse of the actress. Rose warmly welcomed her husband’s mistress. Gloria later mused on her rival’s sangfroid: ‘Was she a fool, I asked myself … or a saint? Or just a better actress than I was?’2 Rose was neither fool nor saint. She knew exactly what was going on and, if she thought Joe was going too far expecting her to befriend his mistress, she didn’t show it. As usual, she held her head high, dressed impeccably and put on her best show. Gloria might be Joe’s mistress, but Rose was his wife.
Nine-year-old Kick was especially excited to be meeting Gloria Swanson. She and her sisters had converted a room above the garage into a clubhouse. They pasted movie posters on the walls and discussed their favourite stars. Gloria paid a special visit and scrawled her name on the wall. Kick may have intuited that something was not as it should be. Her best friend Nancy Tenney later recalled that the girls at school had two fan clubs, one for Constance Bennett and one for Gloria Swanson. None of the Kennedy sisters wanted to be in the Swanson camp: ‘Kathleen never discussed the reason she was so adamant. I didn’t know what it was all about until years later.’3 However, Kick’s letters to her father suggest that she worshipped Gloria Swanson. Or perhaps she was following her mother’s example in pretending that Gloria was nothing more to her father than a business associate. She treasured a signed photo and constantly asked after little Gloria, with whom she began a correspondence.4
