tv Book TV CSPAN March 6, 2011 8:00am-9:00am EST
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but i ask god hourly for the power of endurance. i have the faith to believe that this excessive suffering which has now come to our family will in some little way serve to make atlanta a better city, georgia a better state and america a better country. just how i do not yet know, but i have the faith to believe it will. and if i am right, then our suffering is not in vain. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> coming up on booktv, william coon recalls the publishing career of jacqueline kennedy onassis who worked as an editor for doubleday and viking.
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mr. coon reports that her project selection as an editor mirrored her own personal interests. among these were a history of thomas jefferson and his relationship with sally hemings. a book on the assassination of john lennon, and even an effort to convince michael jackson to write a memoir. >> i want to tell you, begin by telling you a little story about what a nosey biographer does when he's invited over to your house for the first time. you offer me -- i may know you not very well, you offer me a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, maybe a glass of wine, and you go into the kitchen to get it for me, and while you're out of the room i sidle over, and i take a look at what's on your book shelf. [laughter] raise your hand if you've ever done such a thing. [laughter] all right. some other nosey biographers in the room.
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the point is that a collection of books tell you something important about a person and possibly something that that person might not be willing to tell you right away themselves. and the same is true of jacqueline kennedy onassis. you can tell a lot about her and a lot she may not have been willing to tell you herself about the hundred books she brought into print when she was an editor first at viking, and then at doubleday. for the last 20 year of her life, from about 1975 until when she died in 1994. if anything, an editor's books are even more indicative of her personality pause they -- because they include work that she's selected, she's investigated her time in, and -- invested her time in, and she's helped to bring to publication. so what i'd like to do is tell you the story of those 100 books and a little bit about how they
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can connect to her life and who she was. the first -- there are two things that i'd like to say about jackie's personality which i think you may not, may not know about. and the first is that she was a reader. among her earliest memories was being sent up to her mother's bedroom to take a nap when she was a child and getting out of the bed, taking down one of her mother's books from the book shelf and going over to the window seat for an hour and reading the book instead of taking the nap. and she told that story in a kind of essay she wrote with for a competition to go and to an internship at vogue. and i think that that's her admitting something important, an important memory about her childhood. that identity as a reader continued all her life. her white house secretary remembered that people usually
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thought what's jackie doing? well, she's out jetsetting with her international friends, and her secretary said, well, that wasn't usually the case. what was usually the case was she was by herself in a room reading a book. that was the prime memory that her white house secretary had of her. aaron shikler did several sketches of her for her official white house portrait, and this was one of those sketches. and it was the one she told him she liked the best. it wasn't the one that e he eventually developed into the official portrait, but it was the one she wanted to keep, and she said to him, that's me. jackie on the sofa reading a book. she was also a writer. when her children were away at school and her second husband died in 1975, she began trying out eyes for different careers ideas for different
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careers. she wrote a piece for the new yorker on the new institute of contemporary photography in new york city which was then on fifth avenue. and, indeed, one of the books she had in her room, in her bedroom when she died on fifth avenue in 1994 was a book commemorating an essay prize she'd won as a young, as a young woman at miss porter's school in connecticut. so being a writer was also important to her identity. after her new yorker piece was published, her former white house social secretary, latisha baldridge, suggested that jackie get in touch with an old friend of theirs, tom ginsburg, whose family firm was the viking press. a major publishing firm later acquired by penguin, but at this stage the family firm that belonged to the ginsburgs.
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she met with tom ginsburg, he thought it would be great to have her on board. he thought, she knows everyone, she has the most -- she has the best sort of address book in new york. we can certainly get some good book projects out of her, and it'll be good pr for the company as well, so he was happy to take her on in 1975. their relationship, though, didn't go well because in 1977 the viking press acquired a novel by the british novelist geoffrey archer called "shall we tell the president?" and this novel imagined the presidency of ted kennedy, jackie's brother-in-law, and it imagined ted kennedy being assassinated in the novel. um, now, there's some question about how much jackie knew about this in advance, but when the book was published, "the new york times" reviewer said as the last line of his book review,
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"anyone who was associated with this novel should be ashamed of herself." which was a little bit unfair because she hadn't had that much to do with the novel, if anything. but under pressure from kennedy family, she resigned her position at viking. she was able to join doubleday just a few months later, early in 1978, and there she remained for 16 years until the day she died. her career there was much happier, and if we begin now to shift from the beginnings of her career in publishing to a consideration of the books themselves, we see that they fall into a number of groups. um, that sort of classified according to scenes in her life. i didn't want to just sort of cover the books chronologically, it seemed to me that they fit with certain kind of thematic
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areas that you could connect with her life, and that was more revealing about her personality. so i'd like to take you through those groups of books rather than just through a strictly chronological account of her career. the first of those themes is marriage. [laughter] finish well, everyone, i think, knows about jackie as the wife of husbands who were not entirely faithful to her. so it's surprising to find her backing diana vreeland, one-time editor of "vogue "and laterally special curator of the costume group at the metropolitan museum of art. may lin monroe -- marilyn monroe and maria callas with iowa spot l o onassis. in backing diana to do this book
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which was called "allure, "and it came out in 1980, jackie seemed to be able to rise above her own history with these women and to join vreeland in saying both these women have indelible allure, attraction and appeal. and it seems to me one of the things which is, which attracted me to jackie, which attracted me to her as an editor that she separated her job as an editor from what kind of personal history she might have had with these women. she also encouraged barbara chase riboud to write a book on sally hemings, the slave misstress of thomas jefferson. she commissioned elizabeth cook to write "raven's bride," a normal about a -- novel about a woman who had a marriage that lasted only a few weeks to sam houston which broke up, probably, because of his
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infidelity and spent the rest of her time in seclusion trying to protect her privacy. now, this book came to jackie via bill moyers and judith moyers, and they specifically recall recommending the book to jackie because it reminded them of her, especially in the character's insis ten si on her privacy finish insis ten si on her privacy. and jackie acquired the book and might bed it. jackie also accepted the novel, the last living member of the harlem renaissance, a book called "the wedding" about the troubled marriages of several generations of african-americans who summer on martha's vineyard. jackie's experience may not have been identical to these characters, but she endorsed all of these books, and they represent marriage on the whole as complex, problematic and neither romantic nor ideal. a second group of jackie's books
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i've grouped around the kind of category of motherhood, clearly a crucial phase in her own life. this image she commissioned also from aaron shickler has her son john reading and her daughter caroline writing or, perhaps, working in a sketch book. it's a key indication of what she cared about, and this comes out, too, in the books she commissioned. she did four books for children with carly simon and two more books for children with a young couple, a pair of young women, jodi and claudia, whom she met via the editor of "rolling stone." she also commissioned peter cease's book for children on prague called "three golden keys" which he later thought, the author, that her commissioning that book had laid the foundation her his being
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awarded a mcarthur townation genius grant -- foundation genius grant. her authors specifically thought of her as a kind of maternal figure. one of her authors said of jackie, an editor becomes kind of your mother. [laughter] and elizabeth crook who wrote "raven's bride" recalled that jackie was extremely motherly in the way that she treated crook and that she sometimes felt jackie was looking after her as a mother hen would. many of her younger colleagues remember the same thing. scott moyers, who's now a very high-powered literary agent in new york but who was then a very junior assistant to jackie, remembers that when he got sick one winter, she went out to the drugstore and brought him back theraflu. she reproached him for going outside with his hair wet, and then she sponsored him when he ran a marathon to raise money
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for leukemia from which his own mother had died. so not only did her children's books arise from her experience as a more, but her colleagues and authors all remembered a maternal strain in their editorial work with her. betty prix can thought jackie was a closet feminist, and although that may sound like sort of an intentionally provocative remark, actually, quite a few of jackie's books back up that contention. they are on women's history and, by the way, women's history far ahead of it time in some ways. women's he'stist hi -- history is now part of american universities and history departments, but in the 1970s when she began to do this, it was not. she was ahead of her time with this.
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so she did book on women's history, but she also did several fictional narratives of independent women fighting against the odds in a man's world, and i'd like to tell you about a few of those. this is the cover of "remember the ladies" which accompanied an exhibition in the year of the bicentennial, 976 -- 1976, and it was one of her first works at viking and one of the first of her works on women's history. another book that she acquired was a bostonian's book, a novel on working women in the hills of lowell, massachusetts, during the 19th century. so a historical novel covering a good deal of 19th century history but with women workers as heros, and that book was called "call the darkness light." another book to accompany an exhibition this time at the metropolitan museum in the new york was called "the 8th century
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woman." including some of the figures jackie admired most including the subject of a very popular biography of about ten years ago, and abigail adams who was the first lady jackie was on record as having admired most. jackie also commissioned louis to write on how these powerful 18th century women were ahead of their time during the 18th century in asserting their equality to men. and that book came out as "false dawn." the contention was they had a great deal, this small group of women had a great deal of legal and social and educational equality in the 18th century which was later lost and not regained until modern times. she also published the diary of an independent debutante at the end of the 19th century called "maverick in mauve."
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[laughter] she asked eugene kennedy who was no relation to her first husband's family to expand an article he'd written for "the new york times" on the first female mayor of chicago, jane byrne, and that became a novel called "queen bee." and not all of these are sort of uncritical accounts of women in power. "queen bee" in many ways is about a figure who's sort of power-hungry and power-mad, and when the book was published, jackie joked with eugene kennedy, you might have to leave chicago now, eugene. [laughter] she had some surprising sources for books. she found an article in "people" magazine about how -- isn't that great? jackie reading "people" magazinesome. [laughter] about how an enterprising african-american woman who was trying to put together a reunion of the descendants of both the masters and the slaves of a
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north carolina plantation called "summerset." that article turned into one of jackie's books called "summerset homecoming," which the reviewer was the story of a remarkable woman, dorothy redford, who'd been inspired by alex haley's roots to try to uncover some of her own ancestors. jackie gave very, very few interviews to the press in her post-white house days. you can count them on one hand. but one of them was in, was to gloria stein am's ms. magazine in be connection with promoting the book called "call the darkness light." and in this interview, jackie says explicitly something about women's position in the 1970s and '80s. and this is her, this is jackie speaking. what has been sad for many women of my generation is that they weren't supposed to work if they
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had families. there they were with the highest education, and what were they supposed to do when the children were grown, watch the rain drops coming down the window pane? leave their fine minds underexercised? of course women should work if they want to. you have to do something you enjoy. that's one definition of happiness. it applies to women as well as to men. we can't all reach it, but we can try to reach it to some degree. so that was jackie in ms. magazine. well, um, the next group of books, um, is on photography, and it's interesting, it was interesting to me to find probably the most photographed woman in the worldal specializing in books -- also specializing in books on photography. she did a number of books with diana seeland, and here they are together at the constitute of
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contemporary photography in new york on which jackie served on the board, so photography was an interest of hers in the museum world as well. and jackie had organized a special exhibition to go along with the publication of vreeland's allure in 1980s and this photo was snapped at that exhibition in 1980. vreeland introduced jack key to a "vogue" photographer by the name of deb deborah tushville, and together they did a book of weird, staged fashion photographs including monkeys and dead leaves and scantily-clad models on the back stairs of versailles called unseen versailles. louis onen cloth also wrote the introduction to that book, and he remembered the head of the research division at versailles calling up and saying this book is going to be all about soft pornography. how can you defend it? and louis said here's jacqueline
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onassis' telephone number, give her a call. [laughter] and that was the end of the troubles. [laughter] i like this photograph because they look not like two ethereal fashion-clad beauties, but two very determined women who want to bring their book out. jackie also contributed to the production of this book of the southern photographer, william eggleston, a major artist in the world of art photography, but also a kind of bizarre figure who was a gun swiewz -- enthusiast. he's known for being the first to bring color to art photography. but interestingly, in this book eggleston included pictures of the i would being in the dallas in which -- of the building in dallas in which lee harvey oswald had stood to take aim at jfk. jackie didn't flinch. she allowed the photograph to go ahead just as eggleston had planned it.
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that's eggleston on the left, and the photo that jackie allowed to go ahead which was eggleston's photo of the texas school book depository in dallas. what that says about her, i think, is that questions of art were higher for her than questions of her own biography or her own trauma. nor was she put off by bizarre personalities. one of her colleagues remembered eggleston in jackie's office at doubleday standing on top of her desk demonstrating a prussian goose step. [laughter] and jackie was just sitting in her desk chair with her arms crossed, completely unfazed by this. so i kind of like that picture of her dealing with one of her authors. she did another book of photography with the french photojournalist marc riboud which was called capital of heaven with photos taken on top of a chinese mountain which was
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often the hiking destination of recently-married couples, young married couples. she and riboud happened to be in china together in the late 1980s. she's gone for the opening of a new building, and he was there because he'd been commissioned to photograph the opening of a new university for "time" magazine. and he asked her, well, jackie, you're going to be here, why not come and help me out with this photo shoot? and so she did. and the amazing thing was that the chinese didn't recognize her. and back in those days they didn't have the same kind of access to the mass media. to her she was just another western woman on the street. they didn't want to take her picture, they didn't want to point at her, they didn't come up to her and say, are you jackie o.? so she felt enormously free. and one of the things she and riboud did together was they went to a small walk-in photography studio usually used by recently-married couples, and
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they had this picture of themselves taken. [laughter] and it was taken in black and white, and then the chinese kind of hand colored it. [laughter] and sent it to riboud. and riboud came back and forth between new york and paris quite a lot, and he was invited to a dinner party at jackie's house at 10 45th avenue, and one evening he said in front of the guests, he said, jackie, i have the picture of your wedding with me. voila. [laughter] one of her last books in 1994 was on the work of tony frissell, a photographer who was a friend and contemporary of jackie's mother janet. and the jacket copy for this book in which she would have had some direct involvement hints at the way at which a woman's work might also be a commentary on her life.
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frissell says the jacket copy for this book stretched the boundaries of the privileged world into which she was born and became one of the most innovative and renowned photographers of her time. her photographs were her autobiographer, her pictures were her life. and i'd say that the same can be said of jackie's books. she stretched the boundaries of the privileged world to which she was born, and she did that via her books. this is the photo of a model that frissell had dropped into a dolphin tank in marine world in the 1940s, and jackie chose it for the cover of the book. i think we think of her as somebody who is sort of one definition of sartorial elegance, but i think her selection of this photo for the cover of the book shows she had a real instinct for visual and photographic elegance as well because it's such an amazing picture. jackie was deeply involved in the selection of these photos
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for the frissell book. frissell's daughter was involved as well, her name was sydney, but because the author was no longer around, jackie was involved in selecting things as was george police officerton who wrote the forward. jackie's selection or the selection all these people made from frissell's photography covers a wide range of subjects. this is a photo of the vanderbilts have tea in florida, and i love this picture. they've hauled oriental rugs and everything out into the corridor so they can have it outdoors in a kind of a breezeway. and that wonderful woman over on the far right-hand side is congress swale low vanderbilt who became duchess of marlboro and then married again. but frissell wasn't just
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interested in fashion and privilege, as jackie wasn't either. she went to europe during the second world war and photographed bomb damage, displaced refugees and the tuskegee airmen, an all-black group of fighter pilots in what was then still a segregated american army. when she was working on the book of photographs, jackie went to washington, d.c. to the library of congress with a group of doubleday staffers to make one of the preliminary selections of the photos that were going to be in the book. and in the striped top that's library of congress photography curator beverly brannen with jackie in the center and sydney frissell stafford on the right. they brought with them some disposable cameras to make record of the images they wanted to select, and someone snapped this photo of jackie at work on
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the boxes of photographs. bruce tracy, one of jackie's assistants, said when he saw this photograph if he, if she heard that snap of that pocket camera, she wouldn't have been happy. but in a way, i'm happy that that picture is there because it shows that she was a working editor. she traveled when necessary on behalf of her books, she wrote in the margins of manuscripts, she sent letters to authors saying this isn't good enough, you need to do another draft, and in the case of the frissell books, she man handled the box when they were at the lie prayer of congress. or woman handled them. [laughter] while they were at work in the library of congress, everybody was conscious of the fact that toni frissell had photographed jackie's wedding to jfk in 1953, but they were all shy about asking her to go through those photos pause they knew that those -- because they knew that
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there would be photos of her in that box. they finally took her aside and said, jackie, these are the pictures of your wedding, and she said, right away, okay, yes. we've got to have one from that. let's open it up and see what we have. she chose one right away almost to sort of get it over with, and this is the one she chose. let's take that one, she said. and sydney frissell stafford specifically remembered it wasn't the best one or the most flattering of her. now, this isn't a bad photo of jackie by any means, but sydney stafford said she was without vanity on this. she acknowledged that a picture of her probably ought to be in the book, and that was the one they chose. ordinarily, she didn't like her fame being referred to not by her authors, not by her colleagues, not by anybody at doubleday. she didn't like especially toward the end of her career her name appearing on her books. but when it came to a
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photographer whose work she admired, she was ready for her own image to be reproduced in one of the books. in some cases, again, i think this is a question of art for her, in some cases she put what she regarded as art before questions of her own privacy. now, jackie also did a significant number of books on ballet including memoirs by martha graham and judith jamison and several books by the prima a ballerina kirkland as well as a collection of dancers' memories of the corologier if george balanchine. jackie commissioned sarah giles' biography of fred astaire soon after he died and an edition of fairy tales with an introduction by rudolph nareyev. the ballet critic told me shortly before he died that he
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didn't believe for a second that nareyev actually wrote the piece he gave to jackie. he said, he was a dancer, he couldn't string a sentence together. i don't believe he wrote that. [laughter] but he did agree to his name going on the cover, and mason did remember that they both wanted to help promote one another's careers, and that was -- that went for jackie as well. one of the few interviews she did with "the new york times" in her post-white house years was for a magazine article on nareyev which took up the critics' accusations that he was dancing into his 1940s. he was too old, he should get off the stage, and jackie stood up for him and gave an interview for that article saying, no, he's magnificent, and he should dance until he drops. he died very young of aids in the end, and she was, she was one of his supporters all the way to the end. ..
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>> a picture of her from the 1930s in a dance called every soul is a circus. the caption to this reads, just before i tap the eric with the flower in every soul of a circus, i thought, where did you come from? i could eat you up. and she seems to be saying it to eric's bottom. [laughter] but that's jackie's selection.
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okay, the woman who was called america's queen by the tabloids, and this is another thing that surprised me, also did a significant number of books on the royal courts euro. here she is on an official visit during jfk's presidency in the early 1960s. but in her editorial career she brought out a whole series of books on the bourbon quartet at her site and the napoleonic court that succeeded it, including biographies of louis the 14th, louis the 15th, and letters of marie antoinette. she told her dressmaker in the 1960s when she was in the white house that unless he kept quiet about her dress budget, she would rapidly turn into the marie antoinette of the 1960s herself. so there was some degree of personal identification between jackie and court figures, especially reviled queens.
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she told deborah when they're working in versailles that she particularly identified with one royal mistress, who was precise motion famous 18th century patron of the are. it seems pretty likely that jackie may have had pompadour as one of the pattern for her own white house patronage of the arts in the 1960s. so some sense that she might have tried to do 1960s what pompadour did under louis the 15th. later on in her editorial career, jackie and princess grace personally selected this portrait with a book in her hand as a symbol of her learning. for princess grace is a book with jackie, which was called my book of flowers, and for anyone who's interested in this, it's surely not the most viable book in the collection but it has in its collection a copy of this
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book signed by princess grace. so if your nights to stephen, the curator of rare books, he might show what do you. jackie went to russia in the 1970s with the metropolitan museum of art, then director tom to ask the russians to be as generous as possible in their loans of closing for an exhibition diane was doing at the costume institute. while she was there she tried on an opera cape worn by the last czar of russia. this is something which hoving brought back in his holiday snaps of her. she also commissioned russian playwright edward kaczynski to write on the life and assassination of nicholas ii
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which came out in 1992 as the last czar. is a bestseller. here she is with him at the launch party for his book in the russian tea room in new york. did you identify with the subject of this book? it's hard to say, radzinsky decided he would take a book. the translator of the book said no, jackie just took the book because she thought sales potential. appoint a she had a long-term interest in royal patronage of the arts in court costume and royal biography. and what that says about her is not so much that she wanted to be a queen herself, issued a report history in the chapter in the history of art, and thought it worthy of attention. of course, she may have once as a little girl imagine being a
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queen herself. her cousin remembered when she was a child jackie wanted to be queen of the circus, and she had a little tinfoil crown and said she's going to run away to the circus with the tinfoil crown. i'm sorry, that's radzinsky with jackie at the russian tea room. radzinsky is a great storyteller, and i talked to him for the book, and it's hard to get a word in edgewise when you're talking to you. jackie of seems pained as the story is going on a long time. [laughter] now, jackie resented being thought of as what she called just a sheltered social life. but it has to be said that she had an interest in some of the things that sheltered socialites are interested in.
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including sumptuous table settings and luxuries into design to another group of her books fits into this category of kind of interiors. she did six books with tiffany's design director john laurie, and she sorely considered a friend as well as the author. this is jackie with john loring on the left of the kennedy library and at the right of the launch party at tiffany's or one of their books. together, she and john loring did six very profitable books, profitable for tiffany and profitable for doubled as well. and they include tiffany table settings, tiffany taste, tiffany history, tiffany parties, tiffany wedding, and a tiffany cookbook. and she once told him, john isn't this great. for our next book will just go on and on and do tiffany mushrooms. [laughter]
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>> as with photography, she agreed to john loring incenting i had ever involved in the book even though her name is nowhere to be found on the jacket cover. for the book on tiffany weddings they superimposed this picture of a sapphire engagement ring on an image of hammersmith farm, the house in newport from which she serves herself had been married to jfk in 1953. she also allowed this picture of herself and jfk at a party in newport to go opposite the title page of tiffany parties. it was her way of saying, i think, rather quietly but distinctly this is who i am. this is about something i love. and not all her books are highbrow increase into the nature of art, and she wasn't ashamed to admit it. she wasn't ashamed to admit her involvement with some of these commercial projects.
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steve rubin who was her boss at doubleday in the 1990s before she died had one distinct memory of her, and that was, he she brought a project to him, if he wasn't entirely sort of certain about, it wasn't quite sure how to criticize it, he would say, jackie, this might lose money and she would drop it right away. so she would definitely respond to that kind of stimulus from the doubleday higher ups. okay, the next to last of these groups of her books that i would like to talk about is a group of programs that i call camelot books. they took up things or events of jfk's presidency and of his brother, robert kennedy's shorter political career. with chicago is eugene kennedy, and that's jackie and eugene kennedy and the doubleday suite of the fifth avenue in new york, back in the kind of the days
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when publishing still had a lot of money, monies are flashing around for promotion. doubleday had a specific room where they would have their launch parties. that's no more. with chicago's eugene kennedy and the doubleday suite, she did a biography on mayor daley which address of the accusation that jfk had won the presidency by daley stuffing the ballot boxes in chicago. not true, says the book. as you might expect. [laughter] >> or the other interesting dimensions of this book for me anyway is that we know jack if somebody was very fierce, protecting her privacy. daily didn't want this biography of him written. he told eugene kennedy as much. and jackie and kennedy got the idea of cornering daley at one of the democratic conventions in 1970 and asking him personally at the convention with a notion that he had so much respect for
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the kennedys, so much respect for jackie, that he immediately caved in. but he didn't even. when they said we would like to do your biography he said, i'll look into it. and he never called them back. but she went ahead and she was willing to sponsor this biography, even though he was an unwilling subject of the biography. she also did a book with stewart udall, who was secretary of the interior under both jfk and lbj come a very strong environmentalist, kind of before his time. he's only recently died. you don't want to write on the legacy of the early spanish explorers in arizona and new mexico, so as a way of getting jackie to get on board with his book concept, he invited her and maurice tempelsman to come out to arizona to go on a hike with him and his wife on the trail which they believed had been
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followed by the 16th century conquistadors. and this is a them on that hike assuring a plastic cup of wine to celebrate having forwarded the black river. the picture i'm not showing you is a picture of her almost falling in the river, but kind of udall and a friend helping her across. jackie also helped institute a profile in courage award to recall the book of the same name by jfk, which identified historical figures who have sacrificed their political -- their political careers on questions of principle. the first award went to former congressman carl elliott who had lost his seat in congress and sacrifice his political career in a showdown with alabama governor george wallace. he was not only the first recipient of the award, but jackie also commissioned him to write his memoir for doubleday
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which she published as the cost of courage and that's elliott in a wheelchair at the kennedy library with ted kennedy and jackie -- jackie and caroline to receive the first award. one other book which i think falls in this category is the biography of another crusading southerner, judge frank johnson, whose landmark rulings advanced civil rights for african-americans. for example, by striking down the band that local authorities want to place on the march of martin luther king and others from selma to montgomery in 1965. judge frank johnson took away -- i think, struck down the ban, the march went ahead, and the biographer made that important event obviously in johnson's biography. when the book's author went to jackie after it had been published and he would say, i fully think kerry is why, why did you agree to do this book with me, why did you commission
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it? and she said it's all very simple. i can remember jack and bobby talking about judge frank johnson and how much they admired him. now, a slightly, a different sort of the story but also one which kind of connects back to sort of kennedy presidency. she was also ready to commission a book for a man she'd never met before, philip myers, who came to her with a proposal to write a book about a group of russian cold war era spies who organize to get united states warning of any impending russian nuclear attack. and what's more surprising still is that myers identified a spy, a man who jackie had known personally, a curator of historical arms and armor at the armitage in st. petersburg, but and affected and came, it was later a curator at the metropolitan museum in new york. and that's how jackie knew him. she had been introduced to him
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and they work together on her book on russian costume. this photo given to me by his daughter, well, i think it came from philip myers, but also by his daughter to him, he has a weapon in his hands. he and his wife died in an automobile accident in france in the early 1990s. and after jackie heard from philip myers, historic about the cold war activity, she openly wondered whether or not he and his wife's accident was not an accident at all, but possibly even a revenge killing. myers was willing -- was surprised she was willing to consider his proposal and help him with research even though it had come in over the transom. in other words, he didn't have a literary agent. he had no special introduction to jackie. and yet it was a store that
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interested her, and is a story she wanted to help him with. when she later had talked with myers and learn some of the difficulties that might be in the road both from the russian and from the american secret services about his telling this story, jackie laughed and said, you ought to be careful, or you're going to end up squished at the bottom of a trashcan. so i think that also sort of says something about her courage as an editor, or willingness to follow a good story when she found one. okay, that's jackie with bill moyers and her longtime companion, long-term companion maurice tempelsman. and perhaps the most interesting collection of her books is on a subject she herself knew well, that is, on fame, celebrity and myths. and one of her proudest achievements was to a suggested a series of interviews that bill
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moyer did on pbs with a scholar of comparative religion, joseph campbell ought to be a book. jacki said that's fascinating material, let's make a book out of it and bill moyer said i don't think that's about. and she said no, i'm sure it will be. this became the power of myth and it was another one of her best sellers. one of its most interesting passages in the power of myths is about how ordinary people, hollywood movie star, for example, like john wayne, my become something more than a tabloid but a kind of a legendary ithaca figure whose celebrity help shape people's lives. she did a number of books in this area including works on film stars clara bow, and jean harlow, as was her book with michael jackson, moonwalk. all of these are about ordinary people being transformed into something superhuman. something extraordinary, sometimes with ridiculous, but
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sometimes with meaningful results, especially when living legends get comfort or give shape to people's lives. it seems to mean that we like to make fun of the cheapness of celebrity culture, but the power of myth insights as to reflect on how famous figures can be touchstones, guiding lights even for people's lives, how in an age of decline of religious faith, at least in the west, we still long for contact with human figures we regard as bigger than ourselves. well, i've just gone through some of the scenes of the hundred bucks that she did as an editor and showed you some of the images and subject she worked with to bring those books to life. but to really get a sense of what she's like, you have to turn to something other than these images. and i'd like to end with a story told to me by paul taliban was another young man working at
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doubleday at the same time as a. he was sitting at an internal desk next to the offices that had windows. and he recalled sitting there in his desk and hearing a commotion down at one end of the hallway and hear footsteps and a quarter he looked up and there was chocolate on nasa's in stocking feet run down the corridors like a schoolgirl, and he said that she wasn't wearing any shoes. she was tearing down the hall she was in her 60s event. did i just see that? he asked himself. did it really happen. and his reflection was, it humanized or. she was one of us. she was on a deadline. is something any of us would have done to get our books in on the deadline into print. reading jackie was also running jackie, and for the most authentic vision of that woman intent on getting one of her titles into print turned out not
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to a picture of her, but to the pages of one of her 100 bucks. thank you very much. [applause] >> i think we've got some time before 7:00 for some questions. and i would love to hear from many of you. if you have questions about what i said or experience of your own that you would like to bring to this. i see a hand right there. and would you like me to repeat the question or to have a mic on her and she'll be okay? why don't you go ahead? >> -- any particular agent she relied on? >> unit, that's a good question.
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and i think the answer is no. scott moyers remembered that she didn't like taking lunches with literary agents, because there was a sense that if she did it with one or two, all of them would want to come and have lunch with her. and so, her more standard format for getting books tended to be through newspaper articles, through friends, through contacts of her own, from her previous life. she did take a few things via literary agents, but i don't have a feeling that was something she was doing regularly. but good question. >> there's another question right down here. man, maybe if you'll stand out. right here. >> you so nicely told us about how the elements of her life,
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and perhaps inspired, but anyway, if they encouraged and fit in with her, her interest fit in with the books she added it. and i'm wondering if we could ask the same question of you. [laughter] >> and your life and your interests. thank you. >> that's an excellent question, thank you very much. i think if you were to come over to my house and i were to go get you a glass of wine, and you are to saddle over to mike bookshelves, you would find a lot of books on rico figures in history. so, my previous work has been kind of on court studies in some way. i've been books on people who worked for queen victoria and on the prime minister in the 19th century was probably associated with being queen victoria's closest friend, benjamin
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disraeli. so one of my ways into jackie was sort of thing i'm interested in court studies, she's interested in court studies. and so that was sort of kind of a natural kind of bridge for me. and if you're depressed me further and say why court? know, but okay, why court studies, bill? that i'm less certain about. that has something to do with, to have something to do with my parents taking me to england for a year when my father had -- i was 12 years old. i hated it. and my brother was allowed to go see the tripping of the color and i wasn't. [laughter] >> and that in sort of a fascination with royal ritual that has something to do with my own biography. and other than that i think you probably have to look a little bit further.
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you, the psychoanalyst, what have to tell me rather than me telling you. adam barry, back there in the back of the back of the room has got a very mischievous question i can see from the look in his eyes speak of no, no, no. just a simple question which is, how was jackie's performance financially? sort of our books from a business perspective, did she make money for doubleday in the and? did she lose money? you know, did she make a lot of money but what was her financial performance relative to some of the other editors were working during her time spent i think should be much easier time of it than the other editors. the other editors kept much more strictly to being sort of forced to do books that were profitable year in and year out. jackie did have some bestsellers, so important money spinners for the company. the power of myth was one,
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moonwalk was another, the last czar was another bestseller. almost all of the tiffany books brought in money to doubleday. i don't have a sense in the end from looking at the hundred whether or not on balance they brought in money or doubleday. my sense is that she was allowed to do some projects at other editors would not have been allowed to do, simply because she was who she was. and it was a kind of pr element, both providing and doubleday in saying we have jackie onassis on staff. so that was a sort of a thing which they didn't really assign a dollar value to, but which they regard as kind of a commercial benefit. good question. there's a question right there. >> just a follow-up. get her publisher won't -- you said her name wasn't always associate with books.
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she did want her name on the book. up from a commercial standpoint that the publisher want her name on the books? >> i think they would have liked her names on the book but they didn't pressure. they didn't pressure on that and another came across anybody asking her from on the publisher's part, on publishers from the publisher's point of view to actually do it. oftentimes her authors would say jackie, can i please acknowledge you at least? because, you know, she did contribute to the book are so. and often have should say please don't put me in the acknowledgment. peter want to put in the three golden keys this book which was a profitable book actually on a children's book about prague. you want to put her name in acknowledgment and she said no. but he do in a little picture of his daughter in a cat caution with a little balloon over her head sank thank you for a dream,
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j.o. so she is there. one more question. >> well, there's one more right there. >> did you get cooperation or discussion with family members? >> the head of doubleday, the head of doubleday was in touch with caroline kennedy about the beginning, about the beginning of this project and let her know going ahead, but i didn't talk to her, no, about these, about these books. so she decided -- probably she gets about a dozen inquiries a year, and she doesn't reply very much to any of them, and so i wasn't all that offended that she didn't reply. so no, i didn't have cooperation of the family, but in some ways
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with this book, the books themselves are the record. and those things are out there in the public. and all of you can go and take a look at those books now yourselves. the athenaeum owns a majority of them and they are on the shelves here. does matter to me more than kind of personal correspondence or personal recollections and family members in a way, but good question. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> that was william kuhn on booktv. for more information visit williamkuhn.com. >> mit american history
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