Jack Kennedy's Other Women

When Judith Campbell Exner said last week that she had "a close personal" relationship with Jack Kennedy, she was only confirming what had long been a matter of open and widespread speculation: that even after he entered the White House, the handsome and fun-loving Kennedy never stopped pursuing attractive women--nor they him. His privacy guarded by discreet Secret Service agents, his wife often away on vacations, his duties affording frequent travel, and the aura of his office proving nearly irresistible, Kennedy as President found the catching all the easier.

Inevitably, a legend of prodigious sexual activity would enwrap as romantic a figure as the wealthy, glamorous young President. Kennedy, moreover, seemed to enjoy the image. He never hid his fondness for attractive women, seeking them out for special attention as he moved into crowds to shake hands or spotting a comely campaign worker among his wide-eyed supporters. Once he startled two proper Britons, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Minister R.A.B. Butler, during a 1962 conference in Nassau by casually confiding that if he went too long without a woman, he suffered severe headaches.

Plenty of Fire. The eagerness of many women to cure his headaches may have stretched the legend beyond reality. Insists one woman who moved in Kennedy's show-business social circle: "If all women who claimed privately that they had slept with Jack had really done so, he wouldn't have had the strength left to lift a teacup." Yet under all that smoke, there was apparently plenty of fire.

At least two well-known beauties told close friends about their affairs with Kennedy. Before her accidental death in 1967, Actress Jayne Mansfield claimed to have carried on a three-year intimate and intermittent romance with Kennedy. There is little doubt that Marilyn Monroe also had a sexual relationship with the President. Show-biz Chronicler Earl Wilson claims without qualification in his book Show Business Laid Bare: "Marilyn Monroe's sexual pyrotechnics excited the President of the United States." According to Wilson, their intimate relationship began about a year before her death and was pursued in New York's Carlyle Hotel, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Peter Lawford's Santa Monica home, the White House, and even in Kennedy's private plane, Caroline. Once, Wilson relates, Monroe returned from a meeting with the President and confided to a friend: "I think I made his back feel better."

Other celebrities linked with Kennedy in gossip columns have either denied any intimacies with him, refused to talk at all, or in some cases said they had never even met him. They include Actresses Angie Dickinson, Kim Novak, Janet Leigh and Rhonda Fleming.

Sources familiar with the Kennedy White House contend that Kennedy's liaisons were mostly with relatively unknown young women. Most often cited are two women who displayed few secretarial skills but worked on his staff. Bright and charming, they were attractive--but were neither sensational beauties nor sultry playgirls. British Director Jonathan Miller, who once saw them around the White House, claimed that they looked "like unused tennis balls --they had the fuzz still on them."

No Discernible Duties. The two often turned up in the presidential entourage when Kennedy was traveling. Although assigned no discernible duties, they were with Kennedy in Nassau when he met Macmillan to discuss cancellation of the Skybolt missile program, at Yosemite Park when he plugged conservation measures, at Palm Beach when he was vacationing. They usually were assigned quarters near the President and were code-named "Fiddle" and "Faddle" by the Secret Service.

Somewhat sadly, one young woman who had known Kennedy intimately when he was a Senator had fallen in love with him. Assigned a job on the National Security Council staff when he became President, she was always available. Kennedy's nonchalant attitude toward such encounters--as well as his agility in keeping his outside pursuits from interfering with his official duties--was shown one summer afternoon when the two were interrupted by a knock on the Lincoln Bedroom door. Angered, Kennedy threw the door wide open. There stood two top foreign affairs advisers with a batch of secret cables--and a clear view of the woman in bed. Never bothering to close the door, Kennedy cooled down, read the dispatches, and made his decisions before he returned to his friend.

It was apparently not uncommon for some of Kennedy's closest male friends to send willing young women to the White House. One newspaper columnist was once overheard telling a smashing brunette how to get into the mansion with a note that he wanted delivered to Kennedy. Kennedy later called the columnist back to confirm: "I got your message--both of them." Secret Service agents would pass such casual women under presidential instructions, although they worried about it. More frequent visitors, including a number of airline stewardesses, underwent full Secret Service investigations.

Recent reporting has put one celebrated Kennedy anecdote into a different perspective. Newsmen watching

Kennedy's movements on the night before he was nominated as the 1960 Democratic presidential candidate caught him climbing over a backyard fence near his suburban Los Angeles hideaway. Kennedy shouted that he was going off "to meet my father." Reporters have since learned that the stealthy visit was more likely to the nearby home of a former diplomat's wife he had known for some time.

The only book by a former White House employee to delve into Kennedy's sexual activities as President is Traphes Bryant's Dog Days at the White House. A temperamental, unreliable source, Bryant was an electrician and kennel keeper at the White House from Truman's days through Nixon's. The gossipy book is selling briskly with tales of backstairs intrigue that are impossible to verify.

Telltale Hairpins. According to Bryant, the housekeeping staff engaged in "a conspiracy of silence" to keep Jack's trysts a secret. Jack would sometimes lounge naked around the White House swimming pool when Jackie was away, and women would arrive, undress, and join him. He also tells of once taking the elevator past the family quarters in the course of his duties after the First Lady had left the mansion. "Just as the elevator door opened, a naked blonde office girl ran through the hall between the second-floor kitchen and the door leading to the West Hall. There was nothing to do but to get out [of the vicinity] fast and push the basement buttons."

The staff always scurried around after a woman had visited Kennedy, according to Bryant, to retrieve telltale hairpins. He also relates a conversation when Jackie allegedly found a woman's undergarment tucked into a pillow slip. She is supposed to have said calmly to Jack:

"Would you please shop around and see who these belong to? They're not my size."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.