At first glance they couldn't have been more different. Jackie, the pristine American princess born into East Coast high society, who glided effortlessly into marriage with multi-millionaire's son Senator John F. Kennedy, and then into the White House as First Lady. And Marilyn, the bleached blonde bombshell from the wrong side of the tracks, illegitimate daughter of a mother who went insane and a father she never knew, with a sexual radiance so white hot that it catapulted her from pleasuring aging Hollywood tycoons, on to the silver screen and into immortality.
Yet while researching my novel, The Secret Letters of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy, I discovered that, like many wives and mistresses who share the same man, in reality Marilyn and Jackie were sisters under the sheets. It became clear to me that Marilyn was Jackie's equal and that her illicit affair with Kennedy was significant.
For years, that affair has been painted as brief, fumbling -- a one-night stand which might, mainly because of Kennedy's fascination with Marilyn's dizzying status as America's reigning sex goddess, have only temporarily transcended his usual hit-and-run amorous encounters.
But their liaison was far from brief. The future President met the actress in 1951, at the house of Marilyn's agent and Jack's friend, Charles Feldman. Kennedy was an up-and-coming senator, a bachelor playboy whose political campaign was funded by his father's vast fortune. Marilyn was on the brink of stardom. Their affair was to last 11 years, ending with one final meeting in Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel just hours after Marilyn had sung "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" in such an erotically charged way that the columnist Dorothy Kilgallen noted: "It seemed like Marilyn was making love to the President in front of 40 million Americans."
If their affair lasted for 11 years, it was also far from superficial, as a cache of letters from Kennedy to Marilyn, now in the possession of Marilyn's heirs, attests. Monroe was Kennedy's long-term mistress, a serious rival to his wife.
Yet below the surface, Marilyn and Jackie shared many similarities. Growing up, they both adored Gone With the Wind, worshipped the Empress Josephine and idolised Clark Gable -- Marilyn kissing his picture goodnight as a child, fantasizing that he was her father, and Jackie insisting that her own father, Jack Bouvier, was Gable's double. Both women retained whispery, baby-doll voices as adults, often playing "Daddy's girl" with the men in their lives.
Even when she was in her late 50s, Jackie simulated a little-girl quality around Maurice Templesman, the last man in her life. And Marilyn actually addressed her third husband, Arthur Miller, as "Daddy." Both had difficulties conceiving a child. They shared a love of salacious gossip. According to Truman Capote, Jackie was set on discovering what a mutual friend was like in bed. Capote was also Marilyn's confidant of choice, revealing to him how she witnessed Errol Flynn playing You Are my Sunshine on the piano with his penis.
The misfits
Naturally, their jetset lifestyles rocketed Marilyn and Jackie into the same orbit. When Jackie met Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gabor gave her skin-care advice. Marilyn met Zsa Zsa in less felicitous circumstances, on the set of All About Eve, in which she starred with George Sanders -- with Gabor, his then wife, ever present. Zsa Zsa's reasons were clear. She later recalls George telling her, "The doorbell rings and there stands Marilyn in a beautiful sable coat. I asked her what she wanted and she opened the coat. Marilyn was stark naked underneath. Who am I not to make love to a woman like that?"
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