ap/wide world photos PREMIERING MONDAY, OCTOBER 4 • 9-11PM ON PBS • pbs.org/amex/rfk “We prayed every night that John Kennedy would be the best president ever, and that our father, Robert Kennedy, would be the best attorney general ever.” kathleen kennedy townsend fter an assassin’s bullet took John F. Kennedy’s life, RFK was bereft, not only of a brother he loved, but a role that had given meaning to his life; he had suppressed his own ambitions for the sake of the Kennedy A name. JFK’s death plunged him into unremitting pain and grief, and left him struggling to find his own voice. In his suffering he began to empathize with impoverished Americans and others who were marginalized or disenfranchised – African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans. Just as he began to discover his own identity and move beyond the shadow of his brother, he, too, was assassinated. On Monday, October 4, American Experience presents RFK, written and directed by David Grubin (Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, LBJ), and produced by David Grubin and Sarah Colt. An in-depth look at the film and at the life of RFK will be provided on a companion Web site at www.pbs.org/amex/rfk. “RFK is a story about change and suffering,” says Grubin. “Robert Kennedy not only changed his mind about the great issues of his day – civil rights and the war in Vietnam – he changed himself. I wanted to explore his enormous capacity for growth and its relationship to the death of his brother, clearly the defining moment in his life.” In the tradition of American Experience’s acclaimed presidential portraits, this new biography features interviews with historians, journalists and biographers. RFK features Robert Dallek, Anthony Lewis, Jeff Shesol, and Ronald Steel, combined with first-hand recollections of those who knew him well: Peter Edelman, Richard Goodwin, Nicholas Katzenbach, John Seigenthaler, Adam Walinsky, Jack Newfield, Roger Wilkins, and Harris Wofford. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend provides a perspective on her father as a family man. The first hour of RFK, The Garish Sun, focuses on Bobby’s life as a young Kennedy. Born November 20, 1925, he was the third of the Kennedy boys, nearly ten years younger than Joe Jr. and Jack. Small, pious and shy, Bobby was determined to prove he was as tough as his brothers. But in 1944, the death of Joe Jr. changed the Kennedy family forever. Jack became the Kennedy standard bearer, and it was Bobby’s role to help him. In 1952, Bobby managed Jack’s successful bid for the Senate, assuming the role of protector and defender, earning a reputation as ruthless. “I don’t care if anyone around here likes me,” he said, “as long as they like Jack.” With his brother elected to the Senate, Bobby set out to make a career of his own. He turned his • 1 • rfk is a david grubin productions, inc., film for american experience in association with the bbc AMERICAN EXPERIENCE • RFK piety and strong sense of right and wrong toward crusading against evil in America, first working on the staff of Senator Joseph McCarthy, then as chief counsel on what became known as the Rackets Committee. But just as Bobby was gaining a reputation in his own right, Jack announced he would run for president. Bobby resigned his position to take on the messy, often dirty business of campaign politics once again. With Bobby’s help, Jack won the nomination, then chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. When it appeared to Johnson that Bobby wanted to deny him the vice-presidential spot, their relationship grew bitter and contentious; it would never change. The newly elected President Kennedy named a new attorney general: Robert Kennedy. Bobby became the president’s indispensable counsel. “There was only one person in the world that John Kennedy trusted unequivocally, and that was Robert Kennedy,” says biographer Jeff Shesol in the documentary. RFK was soon at the center of everything, from covert operations in Cuba, to foreign policy and civil rights. A thousand days into the Kennedy presidency, the brothers were already planning for the upcoming election, when Robert Kennedy received a call from J. Edgar Hoover. “I have news for you,” he said. “The president has been shot.” The second hour, The Awful Grace of God, opens with RFK deep in mourning. “Every day, every hour, every minute, he felt the loss of his brother,” says journalist Anthony Lewis. Brooding and inconsolable for months, he turned to Greek tragedies to help make sense of the chaos and suffering. He began to memorize lines of poetry. “In agony, learn wisdom,” he read in Aeschylus. Gradually, because he had suffered, he would come to identify with the suffering of others. While RFK grieved, President Johnson claimed the Kennedy agenda as his own and began to consolidate presidential power. Bobby resigned from the cabinet and ran for the Senate from New York, winning, much to his chagrin, with Johnson’s help. Bobby was searching for a way to carry on his brother’s legacy and at the same time find a voice of his own. He began to sympathize with Americans who had been left behind – blacks, Latinos, Indians, the poor – and came to be seen as a man of the people. Meanwhile, LBJ was escalating the war in Vietnam. While Bobby believed that the Vietnamese communists needed to be defeated, he began to question Johnson’s strategy. As the presidential election approached, aides, friends, and ordinary Americans pleaded with Bobby to run, but he refused. It was only after another liberal democrat, Eugene McCarthy, entered the race, and the Vietnamese Tet offensive demonstrated to Americans that the war was far from over, that Bobby announced his candidacy. His campaign for the Democratic nomination was part politics, part crusade. As he spoke out against the war and railed against Johnson, rapturous crowds did anything they could to get close to him. “People treated him like he was some rock star,” says Congressman John Lewis in the program. “It was young people, it was blacks, whites, Hispanics, just pulling for him.” Johnson watched with undisguised panic. On March 31, 1968, a physically and emotionally exhausted LBJ put an end to the contest, announc- ing that he would no longer seek or accept the party nomination. Kennedy’s plan was to prove that he was the candidate of the people. “I have to win through the people,” Kennedy told a reporter. “Otherwise I’m not going to win.” With the overwhelming support of blacks and Mexican-Americans, he gained a much-needed victory in California. Bobby still had a long road ahead of him, but at a celebration at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, he confidently told an aide “I feel for the first time that I’ve shaken the shadow of my brother.” • 2 • AMERICAN EXPERIENCE • RFK The party was in full swing just minutes after midnight on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy, on his way to a back exit, was fatally shot. Like JFK less than five years before, Robert Kennedy passed on into legend. Carved on his gravestone are the words from Aeschylus that he could recite from memory: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES David Grubin • Writer, director, producer, RFK David Grubin has won every major award in his field, including two Alfred I. duPont- Columbia University awards, three George Foster Peabody awards, and nine Emmys. A director, writer, and cinematographer, his many films for television range across a wide variety of disciplines: science – The Secret Life of the Brain; poetry – The Language of Life; psychology – Young Dr. Freud, art – Degenerate Art; world history – Napoleon; public affairs – Kofi Annan: Center of the Storm. He is widely known for his acclaimed series of presidential biographies for American Experience on PBS – LBJ, FDR, Truman, TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided. A member of the executive committee of the Society of American Historians, Grubin has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, and is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Hamilton College. He is member of the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild, and is a former chairman of the board of directors of The Film Forum. He is married with three children and lives in New York City. Sarah Colt • Producer, RFK Sarah Colt came to David Grubin Productions in 1997 to direct research on a film entitled America 1900 and has since worked on Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, and Napoleon. In 2000 she co-produced two hours of the five part science series The Secret Life of the Brain, an Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Science, Nature and Technology Programming. Her most recent credits include Young Dr. Freud, a two-hour biography for PBS that aired in the fall of 2002 and Kofi Annan: Center of the Storm, a ninety minute profile of the secretary general of the UN that aired on PBS in January, 2003. Prior to working with David Grubin, Colt worked at Guggenheim Productions and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Focusing on documentary still photography, Colt earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1992. She is currently a Pew Fellow in International Journalism at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies working on a video project on land reform in Namibia.