The Patriarch (21 page)

Kennedy had no intention of leaving Rose and his children to live with Swanson in Los Angeles—or anywhere else. Other men might have had to make a choice between wife and mistress, but not Joseph P. Kennedy. Having a wife at home and girlfriends away from home was neither an ethical nor a logistical problem for him. He had always been a ladies’ man. Among men of his social set, this was far from unusual. Though we know nothing about P. J. Kennedy’s marriage, there is abundant evidence that Honey Fitz, Rose’s father, had been serially unfaithful to her mother. Kennedy followed in this family tradition, while Rose, like her mother before her, did her best to look the other way. Before Swanson, there had been flings with dozens of women, in Boston, New York, Chicago, Palm Beach, and Hollywood. But the liaison with Gloria was different—and he and his friends knew it. Swanson was a catch, the most famous, the most alluring film star in the world and a woman who, while married, had no compunction about having relations with other married men. Kennedy had to have been delighted with his conquest. It gave him a cachet in Hollywood and a badge of honor he wore proudly in the company of his male friends.

And yet, their affair was not as important to him as Swanson wanted it to be. Years later, she would be so appalled by Rose’s rather dismissive account in her memoir,
Times to Remember
, of her relationship with Joe that she wrote her own memoir,
Swanson on Swanson,
to correct the story. Still, as much as she tried to impress on the reader how infatuated Kennedy was with her, it does not appear that they spent much time together. During their romance, they were never in the same place at the same time for more than six weeks or so. Had he wanted to, Kennedy could have spent up to ten months a year with Gloria in Los Angeles (while Henri was in Paris) and pleaded business necessity for doing so. But he did not.

The inescapable truth was that for Joseph P. Kennedy, Swanson was another sexual conquest, one of many he would fit into his busy life. That he wandered from the marriage bed was inconsequential to him. Adultery was a sin, but one easily forgiven.

In notes headed “Joe Rosebud,” Swanson tried to make sense of the fact that Kennedy, a devout, churchgoing Catholic and married man, was able to carry on his affair with her, a married woman, without shame or guilt
.
“Joe believed in hell and he believed in Purgatory. It didn’t worry him too much because he also believed in confession and the forgiveness of sins. He believed you could wipe the slate clean just by going to confession. It worked for him like sleeping pills for other people.” Swanson teased him often about his confessors, who she claimed were “all after his money. That’s why they let him off with a penance of a few Hail Marys. . . . Joe always had a confessor handy. Someone at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. New York and Hyannisport. There was always one on the boat to Europe too. . . . Joe usually knew in advance what the penance would be. He never wanted to take a chance on running into some smarty pants priest there in a dark confessional from some poor diocese where he didn’t have any real estate holdings.”
³⁷

Nine

L
AST
E
XIT FROM
H
OLLYWOOD

I
n September 1929, the eight Kennedy children moved into their new Bronxville home and prepared to return to school. Their parents were thousands of miles away in Europe and not expected back until the end of the month.

First days are never easy, not even for Kennedys, but this one may have been particularly tough. They had changed schools before, three times in the past four years, but they had always moved as a pack. Now, in September 1929, with their parents overseas, their oldest brother and sister were sent away: Joe Jr. to Choate in Wallingford, Connecticut; Rosemary to the Devereux School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.

“Joe and I had agreed,” Rose wrote in her memoirs, “that the responsibility for education for the boys was primarily his, and that of the girls, primarily mine.” Joe Jr. was now ready for high school and had done moderately well at Riverdale, though schoolwork did not come easily to him. His father, who had never been a particularly good student, never ceased to remind him (though usually gently) that he could do better if he worked harder. The last year at Riverdale had been a tough one, as Joe Jr. had had to compile a good enough record—and complete enough courses—to move on to a good high school. When he succeeded in doing so, his father made sure to congratulate him. “Your making up those subjects,” Kennedy wrote his son from Los Angeles in June 1929, “was a real worthwhile achievement, and while we may have had a little disagreement once in a while about some particular thing, I am very proud of your effort and results.”
¹

Kennedy had no real problem with Riverdale for his girls, but he wanted something better for his boys, a school like Boston Latin with rigorous academics and competitive sporting teams. “Joe did a lot of investigating, thinking, and discussing,” Rose wrote in her memoirs. “For a time his chief adviser was Mr. Pennypacker, who had been headmaster of Boston Latin, and who became dean of admissions at Harvard.” Kennedy also contacted his Harvard classmate Russell Ayres, who was coaching baseball and teaching history at Choate, to inquire about the possibility of Joe Jr., and maybe Jack, transferring there in September.
²

Choate was seventy miles away, closer to Bronxville than the older, more prestigious New England prep schools, and though Protestant, it was neither rigidly Episcopal like Groton or St. Paul’s nor overly celebratory of its WASPish ancestors and alumni like Andover and Exeter. The Kennedy boys would be welcomed at Choate, while they might not have been at the New England boarding schools that the “proper Bostonians” attended.

“My only hesitancy about doing it,” he wrote C. Wardell St. John, the Choate assistant headmaster (and headmaster’s son), “is I realize that when the boys go away now to school, they are practically gone forever, because it is three years there and then four years at college, and you realize how little you see of them after that. I may be selfish in wanting to hold on for another year at least. . . . However I am talking the matter over with his mother and will try to come to a decision and make out the applications as you suggest.”
³

Kennedy filled out the application for Joe Jr. to enter in September 1929, Jack two years later. St. John wrote to thank him and “confess that we ‘fell’ immediately for those attractive snap shots that were clipped to the applications. Both boys look like mighty good Harvard material.” Still not sure whether Kennedy would actually send the boys, he invited him, Rose, Joe Jr., and Jack to visit “before the end of the school year.” Kennedy did not visit the school, but he did enroll his oldest son.
⁴

Joe Jr. did not take immediately to the rigidly ruled prep school environment. As the privileged older son, he had ruled the roost at home, lording it over Jack and his sisters. Rose had tried to keep an orderly home, but as the family grew in size, she had concentrated her attention on the babies and on Rosemary, who needed more guidance than her brothers and sisters. She made sure Joe Jr. and Jack remained in good health, did their homework, got to school and church on time, learned proper table manners, watched their language, and took care of their younger siblings. She had long ago given up trying to make them clean up after themselves. Joe Jr.’s room was always a mess, his clothes a bit disheveled; he never made his bed or put away his clothes; and he spent far too much time roughhousing with his scrawny little brother Jack, who never gave up and never won.

Choate did not countenance such behavior. Roughhousing and teasing were frowned on, rooms had to be clean and neat, beds made, ties and jackets worn to class. Joe Jr. struggled, then adjusted and thrived. His father watched over his progress, offering advice and encouragement and interceding with the school officials when necessary. When, days after arriving at Wallingford (probably escorted there by Eddie Moore), Joe Jr. wrote to ask his father to arrange for him to go horseback riding on a regular basis, Kennedy suggested he concentrate on football instead. “Perhaps both of these things can be done but I would not give up the chance of participating in school athletics for the sake of riding horseback. I also have written the school for permission for you to attend First Friday [Mass], and I know you will fix this up so that you can go.”
⁵

Rosemary would also be sent away to boarding school that fall. Her parents had put off this day as long as they could. It was no secret to any of the Kennedys that Rosemary, now eleven, was “different from them and from children of her age group,” as Rose would put it in her memoirs. She was attractive, as pretty as her sisters, if a bit taller and plumper, round-faced, with a lovely smile. But she had none of their athletic grace; she lacked their sense of humor and whimsy, their gift of gab. She was shy, withdrawn, a bit distant. Nothing came easily to her.
⁶

The Kennedys had been given the same advice that was offered other parents of “mentally retarded” children. Rosemary should be sent away to a training school or institution for “slow” children. Rose was a loving, devoted mother, but that, the experts believed, was part of the problem, not its solution. The love of mothers for their “retarded” offspring blinded them to the reality of their children’s deficiencies, the impossibility of a cure, and the dangers and disappointments “slow” children faced in the world outside the institution. It also led to the mother’s focusing exclusive attention on the “retarded” child and neglecting the needs of their other children and their husbands.
⁷

Rose worried about these issues, but she never wavered in the belief that her daughter should not be sent away. “Much as I had begun to realize how very difficult it might be to keep her at home, everything about me—and my feelings for her—rebelled against that idea, and I rejected it except as a last resort.” Kennedy was as adamant that his eldest daughter remain at home. “When psychologists recommended that Rosemary be placed in an institution,” Eunice later recalled, “he said, ‘What can they do in an institution that we can’t do better for her at home—here with her family?’ So my sister stayed at home.” Rose encouraged the other children to include Rosemary in their activities. “They were merely told that Rosemary was ‘a little slow’ and that they should help her and encourage her. When she did something well, tell her so. If she made a joke, laugh with her, don’t give her a quick retort,” she remembered telling them all. “If there is some activity going on, let her participate, invite her to be involved.”
⁸

Rose had sent Rosemary to school with Kick in Brookline and with Kick and Eunice in Riverdale, but at age eleven she had fallen so far behind them—and her classmates—that it no longer made sense for her to continue in a regular public or private school. The same September that Joe Jr. was sent away to Choate, Rosemary was enrolled in the Devereux School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, a private boarding school founded in 1920 by Helena Devereux of Philadelphia, who had studied with psychologist Henry Goddard, author of the
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness
. At Devereux, Rosemary would be taught (or, more properly, drilled in) silent and oral reading, arithmetic and making change, spelling, social studies, and the womanly arts of handwork (making doilies), music, art, dramatics, and sewing.
⁹

With her parents in Europe, Rosemary was probably taken to Berwyn by Mary Moore. She would not see her mother, her father, or her siblings until Thanksgiving; visiting at Devereux was strongly discouraged. In mid-November, Kennedy received his first letter and responded immediately. “I cannot tell you how excited and pleased I was to get your letter. . . . I think you were a darling to write me so soon.” He filled her in with news of the family: “Mother went over to Boston to see Grandma Fitzgerald.” He bragged a bit about his Hollywood connections: “Miss Swanson is sending you a picture and writing you a letter.” And he congratulated her on her accomplishments, while exhorting her to do better: “I was very glad to see a lot of improvement in the report card, and I am sure that within the next couple of months it will be even better.” He closed by asking her to write again: “Thanks again, my sweetheart, and if you have some time write me another letter. Lots of love.”
¹⁰

Rosemary had a difficult time at first, but as her teachers reported to her parents after her first year there, she had made the necessary “social adjustments” to life away from home. She also learned to sew, sing, and dance, exhibited “excellent social poise and is quite charming at times,” had done reasonably well in her arithmetic and in social studies and had “written several very good stories about the robin and her trip to Washington.” Her major problem was that she had little or no self-confidence, needed constant praise and encouragement, was too hard on herself, and was given to outbursts of impatience.
¹¹

Rosemary would return to Devereux in the fall of 1930 for a second year, but, as her teachers reported in November, she appeared to have given up on academics. She was “impatient” in silent reading and, instead of attempting to comprehend the story, “skips a good deal and fills in from her imagination.” She was not progressing in arithmetic because she “dislikes making the effort necessary to attain good results. . . . She is very impatient and does not persevere.” Her progress in English class was stalled because she “dislikes exerting the effort necessary to accomplish acceptable results.” Her teachers were especially troubled by her almost total lack of self-confidence and difficulty in concentrating on any but the simplest tasks. “Rose’s achievements in class work are seldom commensurate with her ability, and an effort is being made to bring her work up to the standard she is really capable of. This is a difficult task, as she has so definitely acquired the idea that her abilities are negligible and that her work cannot reach [any higher] standard.”
¹²

Rosemary’s second year would be her last at Devereux. She would return to Bronxville, but not to school. “As we had a large family,” Rose remembered, “life probably was easier for her with us, because she liked to play with the younger children who were less advanced than the older ones and she could sort of keep up with them.” Because her father was absent so much of the time, he had less to do with his oldest daughter than anyone else in the household. Neither a patient man nor one who easily accepted defeat, he had a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with Rosemary’s condition. Like her teachers at Devereux, he clung to the hope that she could do better if only she tried harder and were more patient. “My father supported her,” Eunice Kennedy Shriver would later recall, “but he was much more emotional, and was easily upset by Rosemary’s lack of progress, her inabilities to use opportunities for self-development.”
¹³

—

T
he “GALA PREMIERE of GLORIA SWANSON in her ALL-TALKING Sensation ‘The Trespasser’. . . A Joseph P. Kennedy presentation” was scheduled for Friday, November 1, 1929. Kennedy was proud enough of the film—and his role in it (minimal though it was)—to invite dozens of friends and former business associates to join him at the Rialto in Times Square for the opening.

Gloria Swanson was his mistress, but she was also his business property. The discovery that she had a decent speaking voice and could sing made her potentially more valuable than ever. No opportunity was overlooked in publicizing the arrival in New York of the “Voice that has Thrilled Two Continents!” Swanson sang on a nationwide radio hookup; her recording of “Love, Your Spell Is Everywhere” was widely distributed; sheet music covers, banners, posters, and newspaper ads ballyhooed her newfound talent, while reminding audiences of her past achievements: “Her talking and singing voice will amaze you! Her supreme dramatic acting will hold you spellbound—her clothes will delight you! Secure Your Tickets Now!”
¹⁴

The Trespasser
turned out to be an enormous box office attraction, and given its minimal cost, a huge moneymaker.

On Thursday, October 24, eight days before
The Trespasser
’s
American premiere, the stock market crashed. Prices steadied on Friday and Saturday, then plunged again on Monday and Tuesday. By the second week in November, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 40 percent from its high in September. Only a few escaped unscathed. Joseph P. Kennedy was one of them. “The crash in the market left me untouched,” he wrote the Boston attorney who was working on his father’s estate. “I was more fortunate this time than usual.”
¹⁵

Having learned from the inside how markets worked, he knew enough to resist the trading euphoria of the late 1920s. At base, a conservative man who disliked gambling, he had shifted gears, taken his profits, and months before the crash, refocused his attention on protecting rather than increasing his already considerable fortune. On leaving Hollywood, he had cashed in his options, pocketing millions of dollars. A portion of his Hollywood windfall was used to buy real estate in Bronxville and Hyannis Port; the rest was put into family trust funds and invested in blue chips and secure bonds.