As the world mourns the death of socialite Lee Radziwill, the details of her complex relationship with older sister Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are being recalled.
Raziwill died on Saturday at the age of 85 at her home in New York City, 25 years after the death of her dear sister and bitter rival in love, Jackie.
The two socialite's rivalry over men was legendary, and came to a head in early 1961, at a swinging party at Lee's handsome house near Buckingham Palace, where the hostess couldn’t hide from guests her dismay at events taking place across the Atlantic.
Jackie was about to become the most celebrated First Lady in U.S. history. But instead of intense family pride, Lee’s emotions were far from positive.
‘How can anyone compete with that?’ she hissed. ‘It’s all over for me now.’
Lee Radziwill (left) and Jackie Onassis had a turbulent relationship - the Bouvier sisters when they were younger were two of the most glamorous women of their generation
Janet was only 21 when she married her first husband and the girls’ father, Jack Bouvier, a handsome but heavy-drinking Wall Street stockbroker and socialite, whom she divorced 12 years later over his philandering - she later married Hugh Auchincloss
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is seen here in earlier days - left, a young Jackie Bouvier is seen on her 10th birthday 1939. Center, Mrs John F. Kennedy appears in a 1953 Boston Travler file photo. Right, Mrs Jackie Kennedy is seen in a 1961 file photo in the White House Diplomatic Reception room
The Bouvier sisters, Jackie and Lee, were two of the most glamorous women of their generation. Described by the writer Truman Capote as ‘American geishas’ — women who existed only to captivate the world’s richest and most powerful men — their conquests included John F. Kennedy, Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and various royals and aristocrats.
However, as Lee’s bitterness over Jackie’s trump card — becoming wife of a U.S. president — made clear, they weren’t the most loyal of siblings. Their fierce and lifelong rivalry — over money, men, success and even their mother’s love — is revealed in a riveting book.
In Jackie, Janet & Lee, veteran Hollywood biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, drawing on interviews with family members, reveals how their formidable and hard-nosed mother, Janet Bouvier Auchincloss, sought to mould her daughters in her own ruthlessly mercenary and social-climbing image.
He also reveals startling new details of a little-known love affair Jackie had with Jack Warnecke, the architect who designed JFK’s tomb and whom she almost married.
The new book upset Lee who reportedly felt ‘betrayed’ by relatives who talked to Taraborrelli.
‘Lee doesn’t like her dirty laundry being aired and she feels betrayed by her cousins,’ according to a friend. And what laundry it is.
Many argued that Lee Radziwil, sister of Jackie Kennedy, matched her more famous sibling's beauty
When they were young, Janet liked to take her two beautiful daughters to tea at New York’s Plaza Hotel to show them off - and to impart some motherly advice.
‘Do you know what the secret to happily-ever-after’ is?’ she once asked them. ‘Money and power.’
Janet later recalled that while Lee looked appalled by the notion of a loveless match, Jackie, three years older, was perfectly accepting of the idea.
Janet was only 21 when she married her first husband and the girls’ father, Jack Bouvier, a handsome but heavy-drinking Wall Street stockbroker and socialite, whom she divorced 12 years later over his philandering.
She struggled financially for years, but was determined her daughters should never want for money themselves. They must always ‘marry up’, she told them.
And when Janet married a second time, it was to a much older, rather dull — but very wealthy - investment banker, Hugh Auchincloss. Together, they had a daughter, also Janet, and son, James.
Former first lady Jackie Kennedy outside her New York City apartment after a meeting with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in February 1967
Janet tried to instill in Jackie and Lee sisterly support, insisting the girls should never compete with each other.
And yet she made that all but impossible by showing undisguised favoritism towards Jackie - as did Jack Bouvier.
It engendered not only a huge insecurity complex in Lee, but also a lifelong determination to avoid her sister’s shadow - quite a challenge when Jackie became the most famous woman in the world.
Jackie was more polished and more intellectual. Younger sister Lee was more of a rebel, more slender than Jackie and - some thought - even more beautiful.
As children, Janet had washed their lustrous brunette hair with raw egg yolk, and would drag them to museums and libraries and then quiz them remorselessly on what they had learned.
If the girls defied her, Janet could be vicious. Jackie was 21 when she lost her virginity in a Paris hotel lift to John Marquand Jr, son of a celebrated writer. When Janet discovered he was penniless, she slapped Jackie across the face.
Jackie Onassis pictured with her sister Princess Lee Radziwell
Undated picture of US Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) his wife Jacqueline Kennedy - her sister Lee is also believed to have an affair with the President
A shameless snob, Janet instead steered her towards a British-educated stockbroker, John Husted, who was dull but socially connected and - she thought - rich. He and Jackie became engaged but when Janet investigated his finances and learnt he earned ‘only’ £12,000 a year (about £115,000 today), she vetoed the match.
Jackie simply took her engagement ring off her finger and slipped it into Husted’s jacket pocket when she next saw him.
‘She was ice cold. Like we never knew each other,’ Husted recalled.
‘I understood the end had come. I never heard from her again.’
Janet had more trouble steering the mercurial Lee away from Michael Canfield, a young publishing executive who, it was later claimed, was the illegitimate brother of the Duke of Kent.
Lee defied her mother, insisting she would marry for love - and she was determined to beat her sister, then dating a young U.S. Senator, Jack Kennedy, up the aisle.
She was just 19 when they wed, but their marriage struggled from the start as Lee discovered Canfield couldn’t fund the expensive lifestyle she expected.
Canfield went to Jackie for advice. ‘The best thing is for you to get her some real money,’ she told him.
When he objected and said they had a perfectly decent standard of living - they had a house in London’s Belgravia and two servants - Jackie responded: ‘I mean real money, Michael.’
Janet had no objections to Jackie’s boyfriend, Jack Kennedy - not least because he was a member of a clan worth at least $500 million. But she was alarmed by his reputation as a philanderer.
Jackie - in thrall to JFK’s huge political ambitions and his family’s glamour - brushed her mother’s reservations aside.
In London, meanwhile, Lee was rumoured to be having a fling with the handsome and charismatic playboy David Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, who owned the 52,0000- acre Badminton estate. She was also seeing the ‘dashing’ property developer Stanislaw ‘Stash’ Radziwill, a twice
