Jackie Makes News Wherever She One might have guessed that from the assassi- nation of President Kennedy on, short of robbing a bank or committing some other unlikely crime, Jac- queline Kennedy would have been above and beyond criticism. Within a year or two of her husband's assassination, Jackie was reproached for mi- nor things she did — dining out with movie stars, having places renamed after JFK and didn't do: for not moving to Harlem as a symbol of her fate husband's civil rights bill, for not attending Lyndon B. Johnson's inauguration. The love affair was over and it "MY LIFE WITH Jacque- didn't end as amicably as line Kennedy," the 1969 tat- some affairs do. tle-telling book by Mary Bar- After Jackie's attempt to elli Gallagher, Jackie's for- censor William Manchester's mer personal secretary, de- "The Death of a President" in picted Jackie as a penny-wise late 1966, the press treated b u t pound-foolish, terrible- Jackie like a jilted lover, and tempered petty tyrant whose two national polls determined personal maid was required to that her image had been tar- change her sheets for her aft. nished by the Manchester ernoon nap and to iron her flap. stockings — a far cry indeed The public took Jackie's from Mary van Rensselar marriage to Aristotle Socrates Thayer's adorable bride, Onassis in October 1968 as a "Jacqueline Bouvier Kenne personal affront. After six dy," of eight years before. straight years of being No. 1 One tends to regard the on Gallup's Women-The-Amer- Jackie-of-the-moment as the ican - Public - Admires - Most "real" Jackie. It was this lat List, Jackie plummeted to est Jackie — the post-Manch- seventh place. ester, post-Onassis, post-Gal- The press, ever sensitive lagher "bad" Jackie whom it to the shifting winds if public was hard to imagine as the opinion, realized that the author of the letter to Teddy: "good'. Jackie was out of sea- The main difficulty with son and that there was now this supposed transformation Jackie and son John Kennedy Jr. stroll down a New York City more mileage to be gained of Jackie from fairy-princess sidewalk with Aristotle Onassis bringing up the rear. The from maligning the "bad" Jackie. Onassises take little part in splashy social events. •', L.,t",,n;SW.:ZiTiAr.l Goes inaccurate impression of Jackie's life. A news item is, by defini- tion, an event. It was an event when Jackie went to see to gold-digging, super-consum- the X-rated Swedish film "I ing, jetsetting hedonist (ac- Am Curious (Yellow)" in New cording to a recent series of York on a Sunday afternoon newspaper articles. She and last October and when, upon her second husband spent $15 leaving the movie theatre, she million to $20 million during either did or didn't use judo the first year of their mar- (eye-witness accounts of the riage) is that, upon examina- incident differ) on one of the tion, it seems to have more to photographers who was stand- do with the making and de- ing on the sidewalk outside bunking of a legend than with the marquee waiting to snap the subject of the legend. her picture. The event was re- What is interesting about ported in our newspapers for Jackie is that she hasn't days and contributed to our evolved from "good" to belief that Jackie is constant- "bad" but that she has al- ly besieged by photographers ways been a very diverse per- and creating scenes. sonality: an intriguing mix- immunhosinuEMEIMIElnammaz JOURNALISM almost in- variably alters the truth if One of a Series only by withholding non- events. Jackie now spends By about half the time at events like the "I am Curious (Yel- SUSAN SHEEHAN low)" episode would lead one to think. New Yorker Take, for example, a mov- ie excursion she made with Magazine Writer her old friend William Walton, numminainceinammemommooLor the abstract painter. One Sat- ture of the provocative, the urday morning in late Janu- willful, the fey, the bitchy, ary, Walton ran into Jacque- and the sensitive, along with line Onassis on Fifth Avenue. a good many other paradoxi- Walton asked Jackie what she cal qualities as well, was doing that evening. She said she was free after din- CONSIDER HER lifelong ner, so he suggested that they willfulness. It has always "go see a flick." been a characteristic of Jack- They hailed a cab and set ie to want her own way and out for the midtown theatre she has had a talent for get- where "Z" was playing. The ting it. At 15, when her par- line looked endless so they ents wouldnt let her take her kept the cab and proceeded to —AP WIREPHOTO. favorite mare off to boarding a newsstand, where Walton Glowing beneath the traditional school with her because they bought a copy of Cue maga- thought it an unnecessary $25 zine. They studied the movie headdress of an Andalusian woman per month expenditure, Jackie listings and chose another was able to persuade her pa- movie playing nearby, "The is Jackie at a bullfight in Sevilla, ternal grandfather to pay the Damned," where there was no Spain. The picture was taken before mare's stable bills. line. During her White House• They had no trouble find- her marriage to Onassis. years, she continued to call ing a taxi when the movie her own tune. One. day in was over. Around 12:30, Wal- . splashy social events — they friend Robert S. McNamara, 1962, she had a "cold" when ton dropped Jackie off at her don't attend charity balls or the former Secretary of De- large cocktail parties. she was supposed to play apartment house and contin- fense. says), and magazines, hostess at an afternoon recep- ued by cab to his studio on tion for foreign students; she A GREAT DEAL of Jack- from which she clips recipes the Bowery. Not a word about and sundry other material. was photographed in a Wash- the evening, a non-event, got ie's time in New York passes "The public wants to ington art museum that morn- into the newspapers. quietly in her 15-room apart- think that Jackie is at El Mo- ing. Jackie's ment, which one visitor de- nonmoviegoing rocco every night," a friend Even if we lived in the life is equally pacific — not scribes as "just like anyone of Jackie's said to me on a best of all possible worlds, the stuff of which legends are else's Fifth Avenue Apart- recent evening. "First off and if every item we read made, or even debunked. She ment" and another as "very they can claim to be scandal- about Jackie in our newspa- walks, shops, goes to the hair- pretty but not very opulent" Npers and magazines was ac- dresser and to doctor's ap- ized by her frivolity. As it and which Jackie, with char- happens, Jackie spends more 'urate — two very big ifs — pointments. Sometimes she a c t e r i stic understatement, of her time at home with her ese items would give us an has lunch or dinner out with a sometimes refers to as "this few friends; occasionally she children than anywhere else. I dump." She spends many bet if I call her now, she'll be gives a small dinner party at hours drawing and painting, in her apartment, helping the home. The Onassises go to a reading books ("Jackie has nightclub every once in a kids with their homework:, I read more books than any conceded the point. while but take little part in other woman I know," her (e3, 1970, New York Times Service) .