Oh! Poor Jackie O - So Much But Yet So Little
Wednesday 11th October 1978
Poor Jackie O. She married two of the most powerful and charismatic men in the world and loved them both.
She had everything that their wealth could buy. She was - and still is - a woman of immense beauty.
Poor Jackie O, to have had so much and yet so little. For, despite her looks and wealth, she did not have the one thing that countless ordinary wifes have - a husband's fidelity.
Neither husband was faithful to her. John Kennedy's wanderings are legendary, and hurt her bitterly. Onassis's affairs throughout their marriage must have wounded her equally.
"Who says so?" Frank Brady, the author of a new biography of Onassis, whom I spoke to when he was over in this country this month, plugging his book.
Brady, a tall quiet American, spent nearly a year writing the book and months beforehand researching it. He is one of the handful of outsiders ever to have been allowed aboard Onassis's fabled yacht, the Christina.
"It really is," he said in a slow, thoughtful drawl, "terribly opulent. You get the feeling you're inside a floating palace, not a boat. There are beamed ceilings, fantastic paintings, and treasures worth a fortune, dozens of servants. Even Onassis's bathroom had gold-plated taps."
RICHEST
Money was the central purpose of Onassis's life; wealth is the theme of Brady's biography.
But did money make Onassis a happy man? No. I don't think it did. In the end, all his wealth meant little to him, although his sole ambition had been to become the richest man in the world.
"Neither of his marriages, thought happy at first, lasted, and his wealth was no compensation when his only son, Alexander, died at the age of 24."
Onassis's life was a Greek tragedy. Born into a wealthy family, he knew sorrow from early on when his mother died. In his teens there was political war in Smyrna where his family lived. His uncle was publicly hanged, his father imprisoned, and his grandmother, step-mother and three sisters all taken to evacuation camps for deportation to Greece.
Another sister, her husband and child were burned to death when the Turks set fire to a church in which they were sheltering*.
Onassis himself escaped to Argentina. He arrived there at the age of 23 with less than £30 in his pocket.
Onassis himself escaped to Argentina. He arrived there at the age of 23 with less than £30 in his pocket.
Six years later, he was a millionnaire. But despite his enormous wealth, Onassis rarely gave to charity and often insulted waiters by giving little or no tip.
One of his best known economies was that he never wore a coat and he reckoned this saved him around £100,000a year - calculated on the basis that if he wore a coat, people would expect a tip every time he put his hands in his pocket: that it would have to be an expensive coat anyway: and that it would have to be insured.
Onassis was not, of course, mean with Jackie, though Brady believes it was her extravagant spending (nearly £15,000 one month alone on clothes) that contributed to his death.
STATUS
But when they married, her wedding present from him was jewellery worth a million dollars, while the marriage contract between them contained 173 clauses, one of which said that if he divorced her, she would get ten million dollars for each year they were married.
There were many things about Onassis that Brady grew to dislike as he researched his subject.
"There was a lot in his character that I found despicable. I didn't find him attractive as a person.
"For example, he and he alone was responsible for practically decimating the whale population of the world, despite a lot of pressure for him to cease his activities.
"But he made a lot of money through whaling, and the only reason he got out of it was that the price of whale oil had dropped."
Onassis love of money and the status it bought was, according to Brady, the reason why his first marriage, to Tina Livanos, failed.
"It started off so well, but Onassis became obsessed with travelling and fame - his own and other people's."
Among the famous and beautiful women he knew were Greta Garbo, Liz Taylor, Princess Grace, and, of course, opera singer, Maria Callas.
Among the men were Howard Hughes, and Winston Churchill - the latter called Onassis, "a man of mark".
Along with his devotion to beautiful women, Onassis was also devoted to night life and apart from his wealth and sprawling business empire, Onassis was also known for his genuine zest for living. Undoubtedly, this was part of his attraction to Jackie Kennedy.
"Onassis was a very warm person, compared with Kennedy, who was cold" Brady told me.
"Doing my researches, I couldn't find a single picture of Kennedy kissing Jackie. But it was difficult to find a single picture of Onassis not kissing her."
But all the same, there were those affairs with other women? "Oh, sure. All the time".
Brady not only went aboard the Christina, but also visited Onassis legendary island, Skorpios, where he and Jackie married and where Onassis now lies buried alongside his beloved only son.
A SHOCK
It was after Alexander died that Onassis lost his own enthusiasm for living and contracted the disease Myasthemia Granis, finally dying a sad and lonely man in Paris, three years ago.
What of Onassis's only other child, daughter Christina, now married to a Russian? Brady, having just completed a major series on her for the New York Times, has become something of an expert on her too.
'I think the marriage is a genuine love match," he said. "It's as much of a shock when a dedicated capitalist marries a communist as when Royalty marries a commoner, but I think they love each other. And I think the marriage will last.
"Of course, when Christina left her husband on honeymoon, there were many who thought the marriage already over. But Onassis did exactly the same thing. He left Jackie back in '68 when they were on their honeymoon.
"I see Christina's own husband taking a greater and greater part in the business. She's very like her father. Stubborn, attractive, but not quite so fastidious. She's much more introverted.
"It's upset the Onassis clan, but I think she'll get what she wants.
"She doesn't," he added, "speak Greek. She speaks English and French, and some Italian, and of course she doesn't speak Russian. She and her husband communicate mainly in English."
Brady, 6 feet 4 inches and a former editor of Playboy, has written previous biographies of the chess player Bobby Fischer and Playboy chief Hugh Hefner. Now he's working on a biography on another rich and fascinating man, Orson Welles.
But there is little doubt that the fascination Brady has for Onassis still lingers. It's a fascination shared by many, especially women. Wealth, sex and power are an irresistible combination.
And perhaps only women could understand how Onassis must have felt at the end of his life, after two failed marriages and the loss of his beloved son, when being one of the richest men in the world counted for little.
What I find particularly sad is that Onassis did not even realise the one driving ambition of his life; to become not one of the wealthiest men in the world, but THE wealthiest.
He was beaten to it by Howard Hughes and by at least half a dozen nameless, faceless oil sheiks.
Notes
Death of sister in a church fire: Onassis had one full sister, Artemis and two half sisters. All three outlived him, and the younger two girls were children at the time of the massacre.
Christina's marriage: Sadly for Brady, this did not last.
Myasthenia Granis: It's actually "Myasthenia Gravis".
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