JFK Jr's shocking outdoor fetish... the drug play... and the girls who slept on the floor waiting for more: MICHAEL GROSS knew the REAL Kennedy prince so well, he wrote him a letter admitting it was all correct
Rarely do television biopics of dead celebrities get it right. But then, rarely do portrayals of any celebrity come close to objective truth.
I say this as a long-time writer of magazine profiles going back to when a well-reported cover story could bring Manhattan to a screeching halt.
I wrote two such cover stories on John F Kennedy Jr. The first appeared in New York magazine in 1989, the second in Esquire six years later. The former was New York Magazine's top-selling issue of the year, and people who thought they knew JFK Jr told me they were astonished by what my pieces revealed.
It seems JFK Jr was as well.
A month or two after that 1989 profile appeared, I came home to a letter in my mailbox with a handwritten 'JKennedy' on the envelope where the return address should have been.
'Now that I can stop glaring at myself glaring back at me, I wanted to write you what is not quite a thank you letter,' the note began. 'Yet since I've never written one of these before, it defies a better label.'
Rarely had I received a 'thank you' from a story subject before; dark accusations of character assassination were more common.
I'd learned a lot about John from writing those stories and quietly came to like him. So, I approached Love Story — the new FX series about Kennedy and wife Carolyn Bessette — warily, assuming it would be shallow. And it was, so much so that I abandoned the entire effort barely halfway through the first episode.
JFK Jr is pictured in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts
I approached Love Story — the new FX series (pictured)about Kennedy and wife Carolyn Bessette — warily, assuming it would be shallow. And it was
It wasn't JFK Jr's nephew Jack Schlossberg's preemptive rant against the show that dissuaded me from continuing. Rather, it was the utterly obvious inauthenticity on display from moment one, when we encountered a John who looked and behaved nothing like the original.
I only met and spoke to John a few times before his death in 1999. And my contacts with Carolyn were even fewer, mere glimpses of a slight, gorgeous apparition across the runway at her employer Calvin Klein's fashion shows.
But it was painfully clear that this television facsimile was flimsy at best. And that was before the real-life Daryl Hannah joined the chorus of complaints of what, for her at least, is a Hate Story.
Take Klein, for instance: the Calvin I knew (and wrote about to his great ire) was manipulative and fey, pre-rehab and far better looking than the actor dubiously portraying him on Love Story.
The John Kennedy I profiled wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was stunningly handsome, charismatic, witty and, by 20th Century standards, quite rich.
Though he'd been born on third base into his famous and powerful family, he was modest enough to accept he hadn't hit a triple — the Kennedys had. And he was even more fortunate to have been raised by a mother who knew the perils of being part of this clan and ensured that her son didn't grow up spoiled and wild, like many of his cousins.
Indeed, Jackie's paradoxical strength was clear to me the day I met her on a benefit receiving line and she whispered appreciation for the stories I'd written about her children—even though she'd summoned an inquisition to ferret out who spoke to me as I reported one of them.
Despite John's status as Public Curiosity Number One, his fondest wish was to be normal, ordinary, a good son, brother and friend — even if half the women on the planet (and many men) would have followed him anywhere.
Girls even slept outside his college freshman dorm room at Brown University — where apparently, according to my sources, Kennedy would casually let his junk fall from his shorts while playing football.
According to my sources, Kennedy would casually let his junk fall from his shorts while playing football. (Pictured: JFK Jr playing football in 1981 at Brown University)
Girls even slept outside his college freshman dorm room
JFK Jr is pictured in 1981 at Brown University
But back to that letter he wrote me, which my wife framed. It still hangs over my desk.
The story that inspired the 1989 profile was a frenzied public appearance on behalf of a family charity at Bloomingdale's in fall 1988. The then 28-year-old was appalled by the mass hysteria he inspired; his friends said he hoped to be seen as substantial, not studly.
That's how I tried to treat him, despite a thin record of accomplishment at that point — he'd just been appointed an assistant district attorney and it was widely assumed nepotism played a part. But unlike People magazine, which had just named Kennedy the Sexiest Man Alive, I gave him credence — party boys don't aspire to jobs as prosecutors — even as I detailed his teenage flirtations with drugs, attention-seeking and alleged affairs with equally-famous women like Brooke Shields, Molly Ringwald and Princess Stephanie.
Kennedy also notoriously squired Madonna, who 'was the aggressor' in their relationship, a friend of his insisted. Presumably, she needed his notch on her belt more than he needed hers.
Michael Gross is a long-time book author and magazine editor
JFK Jr refused through intermediaries to be interviewed for my stories. But I spoke to many around him, including close friends and employers, first one, then many more, and his letter seemed to confirm my spider-sense that he'd allowed those conversations to happen.
'Though despite my lengthy legal training I can hardly pose as a dispassionate critic of your piece,' the letter continued, 'I thought your article was fair and for the most part accurate. I think you dealt fairly with those that chose to talk with you and, from what trickled down to me, you conducted yourself with considerable professional integrity throughout the process. Small compliments these, but certainly unique to my own experience. My only discomfort arose from your shocking thoroughness.'
If John were alive today, I expect he wouldn't feel the same way about Murphy's caricature-esque production.
Based upon a book with the fairytale title Once Upon a Time, Love Story is a product of the Ryan Murphy TV-show factory. Murphy's oeuvre ranges from clever, entertaining fictional fare like American Horror Story and Glee to tabloid trash-fests like The People vs OJ Simpson, Feud: Bette and Joan, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and Halston.
I admit to watching Murphy's film a clef Hollywood and the docu-drama Halston for their gutter appeal. The first, fueled with steamy gay sex, and the second, high on cocaine, betrayed Murphy's oscillating attraction-repulsion to outré scenes.
The story that inspired the 1989 profile was a frenzied public appearance on behalf of a family charity at Bloomingdale's in fall 1988. The then 28-year-old was appalled by the mass hysteria he inspired. (JFK Jr pictured in 1989)
My wife framed the letter he wrote me (pictured). It still hangs over my desk
Even though a similar dynamic is at play in Ryan's telling — with its underlying tension between the glamorous and the tawdry — JFK Jr's true story is not merely a tale of surfaces, of fashion and film, of drugs and desire, or of the compulsive relationship between his exhibitionism and our voyeurism. It also has real world resonance.
John's George magazine (where I was briefly an editor, albeit after his death) was a prescient production: Kennedy foresaw that the fusion of government and entertainment — and of policy and personality — born during his father's presidency would overwhelm American politics.
Who knows if, had he lived, he would have done something to counter the toxicity that has since poisoned America's body politic?
After writing my stories on the man who friends said wanted to be just John, not JFK Jr (yeah, fat chance), I chatted with him once more, asking to feature him in a book on the Baby Boom. He politely declined, saying he hadn't yet accomplished enough to be included.
He never got a chance to.
So, sorry, Ryan Murphy. You may win some Emmys, and with your fat Netflix and Disney deals, you clearly have more money than me. But something tells me Daryl Hannah's New York Times op-ed bashing Love Story as fantasy won't hang over your desk to make you smile.
I prefer my JFK Jr — the real one — to yours.
Michael Gross is a long-time book author and magazine editor, whose new book Treasured Island: The Story of St. Barth... and Its Barbarians, Billionaires, and Beauties will be released in June.
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