Paraphrasing Eleanor Roosevelt, she once told Robert McNamara, "Nobody can humiliate you without your permission.". As long as she was the director, it was all right.". She was 64. [2][34] Maurice and Lilly Tempelsman were guests at the State Dinner given at Mount Vernon, Virginia in honor of the President Ayub Khan of Pakistan in 1961. In the 1960s Tempelsman hired as his business agent the CIA station chief in Kinshasa, Larry Devlin, who helped put Mobutu in power and afterward served as his personal adviser. It was only in the last third of her life that she seemed to develop friendships with women. Mr. Senator from Massachusetts, to meet a South African diamond magnate. She said aristocrats were not more virtuous than other people'what they had above all was courage, and after that, taste and responsibilityand endurance.'". Jackie loved the idea and soon started a job as an editor at Viking Press. During the period of their friendship, Simon said she had her own struggles. She would die in the New York City apartment she shared with him. At 16 he followed his father into the diamond industry, forging contacts that would make him a pillar of the diamond import industry. One day, Onassis went along with Simon to a recording session with the acclaimed opera singer Placido Domingo. In 1977 in a highly publicized move, Jackie resigned from her first bookpublishing job, as a consulting editor at Viking, supposedly because Guinzburg had surprised her by publishing Jeffrey Archer's novel Shall We Tell the President? They fled amid the rise of the Nazi party in their country. It was filled with adventure and wisdom, laughter and love, gallantry and grace. She met her longtime partner, diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman . With Jackie's death leaving a massive hole in his life, Maurice went on to date a career woman named Alice Kimball Malone, a romantic affair that earned support from his inner circle. In 1950, Tempelsman created a new marketing niche by persuading the US government to stockpile African diamonds for industrial and military purposes, with him as middleman. Brandus described Tempelsman as a "wealthy, reliable partner" and a . A friend from the White House years says, "She adored her father but could never depend on him. When Jackie emotionally battered by the difficult final years. Onassis son, John Jr., spotted Simon in the restaurant. It was this qualityof intensely shielded painthat those who knew her respected and never dared intrude upon. Walking in Central Park was one of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Maurice Tempelsmans favorite pastimes when they lived together on the Upper East Side. Even if Jackie had a limited amount of money to spend when she moved to New York in 1964, New Yorkers more accustomed to lavish displays of freshly milled chintz and newly quarried marble didn't understand her classic American style, which values comfort and continuity over the whims of fashion. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Maurice Tempelsman take a walk through Central Park April 4, 1994 in New York City. Before Maurice, Jackie dated one of the world's wealthiest men, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Her longtime friend, writer Jimmy Breslin, also urged Jackie to do it, saying, You should work as an editor. In a recent conversation, Robert McNamara agreed that Jackie "didn't reveal her feelings easily or often." . [37] At Onassis's funeral service, Tempelsman read Constantine P. Cavafy's poem Ithaca, one of her favorites, and concluded by saying: "And now the journey is over, too short, alas, too short. Jackie had already known Maurice Templesman for nearly two decades by the time she settled in New York in 1975, but it was only then that they grew close. She was so ravishing, and wearing this little handkerchief scarf, paisley scarf on her head, and looking so beautiful and so regal and so finally at home.. As directed by her will, White House and J.F.K. People who knew her ought to write memoirsotherwise biographers grappling with her life will have to rely on gossip. Jackie Kennedy dated several men after the death of JFK, including architect Jack Warnecke. Jackie Onassis and Maurice Tempelsman during Jackie Onassis and Maurice Tempelsman At La Cote Basque Restaurant at La Cote Basque Restaurant in New. Maurice lived and stayed with Jackie in her 15-room Fifth Avenue apartment in New York in the mid-'80s until she died of cancer in 1994. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. And it was a very intimate story. . Jackie Kennedy: Post-White House Life . We believe that every person's story is important as it provides our community with an opportunity to feel a sense of belonging, share their hopes and dreams. "She felt that Jackie had finally found someone worthy of her.". It features a small plaza made up of Cape Cod granite stones, quarried near John's Massachusetts home. She banished friends who broke the silence: writer William Manchester, for failing to adhere to her edits for Death of a President; Norman Mailer, an early renegade who, in an Esquire essay, criticized her performance in the CBS White House tour; Ben Bradlee, for describing private dinners and scenes in Conversations with Kennedy; her cousin John Davis for writing Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster; Truman Capote, for his catty portrait of her and her sister in Answered Prayers, and for regaling others with intimate details; and even actor Anthony Quinn, for his portrayal of the Onassis character in the movie The Greek Tycoon (with Jacqueline Bisset an unsatisfactory Jackie figure, wooden and prim, and much being made of the "10 nights a month" prenuptial agreement). [14], Tempelsman maintains relations with political and business leaders, in particular government leaders in Africa and Russia, and leading figures in the U.S. Democratic Party. Maurice had separated from his former wife a long time back, but he and Jackie agreed not to marry each other. But there was a certain line that I couldn't cross, that I wouldn't cross, just out of being careful.. [16][17] From March 3, 1977, Tempelsman briefly held the title of honorary consul general for Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), at the DRC's consular offices in New York City. They see in it a reflection of the uppercrust values of another era (benign neglect) and a reflection, as well, of her private self, as opposed to the immaculate public image. In the final hours of her life, Jackie Kennedy Onassis lay in the bedroom of her New York City apartment, surrounded by a group of close friends and relatives, including one of America's most. Her private role models were neither queens nor goddesses but adventuresses. Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis off the Isle of Skorpios (August 25, 1970) Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images. The two began their lengthy relationship in 1980, five years after the death of Jacqueline Onassis' second husband Aristotle Onassis. Whenever Simon showed up to a theater for one of their outings, she knew just where to find the famously-private Onassis. "You must understand," says one Kennedyfamily friend, "it isn't publicity they mindit's only publicity they can't control.'' To her children, Caroline and John, she left $250,000 apiece in cash, the Fifth Avenueapartment and other property and personal effects, and money in a trust that she . Onassis' health declined during these years, and he passed away in 1975 while the two were still married. Several biographies report that Jackie claimed that she herself had arranged for Grace Kelly to cheer up J.F.K. in the hospital in 1954 by pretending to be the night nurse. [9], He is chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Harvard School of Public Health's AIDS Initiative,[28] and is an honorary trustee and an honorary member of the corporation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She had already begun to write her life story months before, while preparing for her son's birth. Though Jackie and Warnecke attempted to keep things private, rumors eventually spread. Only months before she became ill, Langham replaced the bed hangings with Scalamandre glazed cotton in "Tuileries," a lavenderandsalmon pattern of undulating vines and small flowers. . And I could smoke a joint if I wanted to., She didnt have the license to be free, Simon added. She just didn't mind their presence as much as she might have. Onassis watched as Simon and Domingo sang a song from Miss Saigon for his album, The Broadway that I Love.. In April 1994, a family spokeswoman announced that Onassis had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. But in the interview, Simon said it was clear that the friend she knew as Jackie was wounded by some of the presidents behavior. "He was always holding her hand or caressing her cheek, and when they sat their heads were always close together, like a sweet older couple. Two were her children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr., and the third was Maurice Tempelsman. Maurice Tempelsman may have been the least famous of the men in her life, but he was the one who was with Jackie to the end. 6) Jackie Kennedy lived out her years with Maurice Tempelsman, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, whom she knew as early as the late-1950s, before she had even met John F. Kennedy. How exactly did the alleged illegal activity go down? The world has always been eager to see her as queen, goddess, mythical figure. Why should someone else always make the money?". The tapes of her interviews with William Manchester, entrusted to the J.F.K. And more! . Most people assume that the motive is money, that the publicity of an auction will generate skyhigh prices. [2][15] From 1993 to 1997, Tempelsman visited the White House at least ten times, met privately with Hillary Clinton on two occasions, vacationed with the Clintons and the Kennedy family in Martha's Vineyard, and flew to Moscow and back with President Clinton on Air Force One. Instead, Tempelsman and Jackie lived together in her 15-room Fifth Avenue apartment from the mid '80s until Jackie's death in 1994. Please fill in your e-mail so we can share with you our top stories! . The rest will be sold at auction by Sotheby's. The American public was repulsed by Aristotle Onassis, whose dark, pirate looks compared unfavorably with those of her dead husband. Not a showplace full of marble like the homes of all these new people. You are so lovely. The day Jackie Kennedy became Jackie Onassis. In 1968, she married Aristotle Onassis and remained his wife until his death in 1975. One close friend tells how she would never speak of things she found disagreeable; months after Onassis died she reminisced warmly about her marriage to him, describing "a marriage that did not exist and an affection that was not there," says the friend. But Onassis sometimes opened up to her even about one of the most taboo subjects: JFKs affairs. I think she saw a free spirit who had the license to be, in a rock and roll kind of way, loose as a goose. Work? Jackie had joked. Short and balding, Tempelsman was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Belgium before his parents emigrated to New York to escape the rising Nazi party. Cassini remembers, "She wanted haute couture but with dignity. This time, as he worked, she went as far as to list each step, by number, on a long yellow notepad. Unlike Jackie's other public paramours, Tempelsman was never one to steal the spotlight, or even to seek ithe once reportedly secured a retraction by a gossip columnist who'd claimed that he and Jackie planned to marry. Yale professor Wayne Koestenbaum recently published the 291page Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon, which treats Jackie as "an idea, not a person." We collect and tell stories of people from all around the world. It was because of his connections that Tempelsman first met Jackie in the 1950s, when he arranged a meeting between then-Senator Kennedy and South African diamond interests. A large portion of his estate went to his daughter Christina. The public regarded her as a symbol of American sophistication and style. She would characterize the Kennedy clan as "the vanillachocolateandstrawberry Kennedys," referring to their unsophisticated Yankee taste. This follows their relationship leading. Simon also cherished their relationship for other reasons. He [Maurice Tempelsman] was [Jacqueline "Jackie" Kennedy] Onassis' last great love and her unofficial third husband. She gave me advice like nobody else did, Simon said. Maurice arranged a meeting with the late American politician and other business associates interested in diamonds. Its seared in my brain what she looked like, Carly Simon told NBC News. But Jackie was forthright.. "Maurice doesn't show her off like Onassis, who considered Jackie another jewel in his crown. Ivana Marie Zelnkov escaped from behind the Iron Curtain to storm New York City and help create the twisted miracle of Donald Trump. She left maddeningly few traces of her real self. She was photographed diving from boats, waterskiing in bikinis, dripping with jewels at fashionable nightclubs, strolling through the narrow streets ) of faraway islands in cinchwaisted Gypsy skirts or jeanscostumes wildly different from her ladylike White House clothes. The Italian government first claimed the items when they were displayed in a 1988 exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu; the museum had listed them as belonging to a private collector. She would really like to meet you, Simon remembers John Jr. saying to her. ", As the young married Jackie Kennedy, she was "a Beaux Arts type of girl," as Arthur Krock of The New York Times once described her, "merry, arch, satirical, terribly democratic, and, yes, brilliant. The music selection Onassis had made played in the background with Simon stating she heard: Is there any chance this could lead to prison time? But about 80 pages in, she scrapped the idea. The thing is she did it in very sensitive ways. "Jackie demanded so little from her friendsit seems only right to respect her privacy," says Drew. Each thud of the auctioneer's gavel will open a Pandora's box of memories: the Van Cleef & Arpels gold rubyanddiamond necklace with matching ring given to her by Aristotle Onassis as wedding presents in the fall of 1968; a wedding dress that many speculate is the gown she wore to marry J.F.K. After John's assassination in 1963, Jackie dated many men before Maurice. Even those inured to the commercial theater of the celebrity auction find it bizarre, even "unseemly," that the public be invited to paw through the personal belongings of the former First Lady. ", Those with refined sensibilities found it admirable that Jackie seemed to have remained immune to the decor mania of the late 70s and 80s and that she preferred to spend her time working as a book editor, riding, and playing with her grandchildren, rather than pondering species of fringe or the intricacies of upholstery with a decorator. How Screwed Are Donald Trump and His Adult Children, and Other Questions You Might Have About the Staggering Fraud Lawsuit Against Them. My mother was still alive then. It would emphasize her "noble" French background, and would first appear in Ladies' Home Journal under the byline of Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer. Columnist David Patrick Columbia reports that she burned much of her private correspondence in the weeks before her death, an act that seems, to those who knew her, in keeping with her character. "It was," says designer Carolina Herrera, "an apartment of someone who comes from an old family. Says Joan Ganz Cooney, a founder of the Children's Television Workshop, "Jackie belongs to history. de Maintenon, and Mme. Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (Jackie Kennedy) was the wife of John F. Kennedy from 1953 until his assassination in 1963. Advertisement After all, though Tempelsman was most often noted in print as a "companion" or "frequent escort" the reality to those who knew them had long been obvious: Maurice Tempelsman had been Jackie's last great love, her third husband in all but legal terms for the last decade of her life. Onassis agreed, and Simon went on to write two childrens books for Doubleday. "She loved them because they were free spirits, unguarded and spontaneouswhat she couldn't be," says an observer. Jackie with her colleagues in the Studio Books Department at the Viking Press in New York in 1977. Extravagance, even profligacy became part of her legend, yet she was shrewd about money. Rich Schapiro is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. She tended to compartmentalize her friends into four groups: social, kindred spirits, publishing, and those from the Kennedy years, or "the Murphia," as she called them. Even Onassis's seathe warm, sapphire Aegeanwas at odds with the bracing Atlantic of the Kennedys' Hyannisport. She wrote to him after her wedding in Greece, explaining her choice by saying that Onassis had been lonely and wants to protect me from being lonely. Many find it curious that the family should have chosen this route, with all its voyeuristic ramifications. Jackie had already known Maurice Templesman for nearly two decades by the time she settled in New York in 1975, but it was only then that they grew close. Among the subsidiary papers is a sheet, written in her rounded, cerebral hand, specifying only three bequests to close friends: two 18thcentury Indian miniatures to philanthropist and garden expert Bunny Mellon, a copy of J.F.K. They went out to lunch and to the opera. Says Langham, "It's almost as if she knew what was going to happen."). It was her taste.". "They're going to pay for the paper napkins," says an art and auction observer. "I would imagine it's probably true," says Robert McNamara. Simons relationship with Onassis also yielded a fair share of awkward moments. The rest was French and Italian decorative painted furniture, souvenirs from Jackie's travels (an obsidian sphinx said to have been given by Anwar Sadat, Greek worry beads of blue glass), stacks of books, her collection of drawings of animals dating from the 17th century onward, and overstuffed sofas and chairs. . To those. He is also a general partner of Leon Tempelsman & Son, an investment company specializing in real estate and venture capital. He remembers first seeing Jackie in a red robe at the end of a long foyer. On the other hand, objectively, she would have been very interested in herself, Simon said. Starting in 1980, she found a new companion in Belgian businessman and diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman, who remained . Despite the past tense, her figure continues to arouse fascination. In the process, the pair developed a friendship that spanned the final 10 years of Onassis life. Like Jackie, Ormsby Gore was a widower and the two shared a bond over the sudden and tragic deaths of their spouses. . Much about Onassis was tinged with the erotic. They were introduced; Manzoni was led into her bedroom, with its large baldachino bed and "millions of books," and from there into the bathroom, which he remembers as being "huge, with an oldfashioned porcelain sink on a pedestal, and windows galore." These were women who derived their power from the kings and statesmen who loved them, but who eventually exercised power in their own right. It's only the residue.". He has served on several Presidential Commissions including the President's Commission for the Observance of Human Rights, the Citizen's advisory board of Youth Opportunities and the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee, and was appointed to the New York Council on International Business. With a tab estimated to run approximately $200 million, the extravagant . The public regarded her as a symbol of American sophistication and style. While in the White House, the first couple's son Patrick died two days after he. But Jackie was more than merely useful for his ambitions, and his son's; she was a kindred spirit. Carly Simon at her home in Martha's Vineyard. says Benno Graziani, former editor in chief of Paris Match, who first met Jackie in Paris at a dinner given by Paul de Ganay. Joe had learned from his exposure to Hollywood what his gifted daughterinlaw knew intuitively: that the public might identify with the middle class, but what it craved was royalty. To tell her that I'd gotten this letter from Placido, Simon said. With Jackie's death, and the passage of time, the question is still unanswered: Who is the real woman behind the myth? That image, more than any other, would forge her role in history. She also revered Danish author Isak Dinesen, and wrote tellingly of her in an afterword for Peter Beard's Longing for Darkness: "She felt that the noble spirit was the true aristocrat. 2023 Cond Nast. In her household alone, Jackie lost a pregnancy in 1955, then had a daughter, Arabella, who was stillborn in 1956. His contacts eventually ranged from South African anti-apartheid politician Oliver Tambo to Zaire's kleptocratic dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko and the influential Oppenheimer diamond family. They seem disconcerted that she never traded up: her library carpet was threadbare, the fabric on the diningroom walls (originally bought for a dollar a yard on Orchard Street on New York's Lower East Side) faded, and her kitchen, in the words of one friend, "deplorable." When asked what kind of help, he replies without a moment's hesitation, "Money. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. One friend with an expert eye recalls that one of the few important pieces of furniture in the apartment was a subtly painted Louis XV table with a marble top, on loan from Bunny Mellon. When he was 16, Tempelsman began working for his father, a diamond broker. Simon always called the same person. But the woman Simon knew had a playfulness and a practical joker mentality that played out in multiple ways. They attended parties together and had frequent movie dates. He recalls that she did not look wellher hair was rather sparse, and she was exceedingly thin. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. At her funeral at St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church on Park Avenue five days later, he stood alongside her children and read out a poem, Ithaka by C.P. Jackie had a complicated attitude toward money. Grieving with the Kennedy children was Maurice Tempelsman, who stood by Jackie's side until the end. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's death today has taken me into my archives and our May 2, 2006 Q&A about her relationship with diamond broker Maurice Tempelsman, long-time companion of Jackie Kennedy. What the public didn't realize was that Mrs. Kennedy carefully planned and directed all the publicity that the children received. Tempelsman was born on August 26, 1929, in Antwerp, Belgium, the son of Leon and Helene Tempelsman, both Orthodox Jews,[4] in a Yiddish-speaking family in Antwerp's Jewish community. She knew how absentminded he . They vacationed together in Martha's Vineyard and even hosted then-President Bill and Hillary Clinton aboard Tempelsman's 70-foot yacht, the Relemar, the year before Jackie's death. Their friendship was so strong that Simon was invited to join the family by her deathbed in 1994, along with Kennedy Jr. and Onassis' longtime friend, Maurice Tempelsman. So I went over to their table and had a little bit of a sit-down with them, Simon said. . [18] In addition to the DRC, Tempelsman has played a key role in the diamond industries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and Sierra Leone. 340 Jackie Kennedy Funeral Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images Images Creative Editorial Video Creative Editorial FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO 340 Jackie Kennedy Funeral Premium High Res Photos Browse 340 jackie kennedy funeral photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more photos and images. With the death of Onassis, she abandoned jetset freneticism and returned to New York to lead the quiet, controlled life we came to associate with her. HOW DID JACQUELINE KENNEDY AND MAURICE TEMPELSMAN FIRST MEET? At one point Maurice Tempelsman came in and said, "II ne faut pas faire une poupee." [36] The couple frequently took walks through Central Park and were photographed doing so in the days preceding her death from Non-Hodgkin lymphoma at age 64 on May 19, 1994. Just before Onassis' death, Simon had written a song about her called Touched by the Sun. When Onassis was nearing the end of her life, she asked Simon to perform the song at Grand Central Terminal, a New York landmark Onassis helped save. It is notable for the absence of gifts to charitable foundations, although a charitable lead trust is set up to be administered by her children, Forger, and Jackie's last companion, Maurice Tempelsman, for causes that make "a significant difference in the cultural or social betterment of mankind or the relief of human suffering." [When she] wrote Out of Africa, she left out how badly her husband had treated her. "Mrs. Kennedy and Me" by ClintHill A staple for any Jackie Kennedy lover is Mrs. Kennedy and Me book by her former Secret Service agent Clint Hill. And when I got married to Jim (Hart), my second husband, she at first was not in favor of that because Jim was not a provider in the sense that she thought women should have a provider as their husband.. The last lover of Jackie Onassis, super-rich international diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman, has a new love - 39 years his junior. When he told her about Archer's book, she winced, but upon reflection told him, "Maybe the time has come when you ought to make a little money. She hardly spoke! Maurice first met Jackie in 1950 when then-senator John was still alive. ith marriage to Onassisher "privacy marriage," as photographer Peter Beard calls itshe, like Persephone, descended to a dark, pagan world of compulsive spending, barbaric appetites, and gaudy jewels.