MERYL STREEP AND KICK KENNEDY WITH BIOGRAPHERS MICHAEL SCHULMAN & BARBARA LEAMIN

the hella cancer change show airs wednesday at three p.m. eastern the podcast o is available online at Hali cancer Jane dot com alright thank you so much thank you thank you I when they called my name I had this feeling i could hear half of America going on no oh come I wyd her again you know but whatever not whatever Wow well what a talent wow what a career meryl streep one of a kind today on the Haluk ascertain show we explore the extraordinary miss meryl streep with michael showman the author of a beautifully written new biography her again becoming meryl streep and we take a look with author barbara leeming at the short but important life of kick kennedy the subject of her new best-selling biography kick kennedy the termed life and tragic death of the favorite kennedy daughter will be back with my guests in a minute but first welcome i am your host a leak answer Jane the Haluk a surgeon show was brought to you today by audible.com a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment get a free audiobook and 30 day trial today by visiting my website at Hali caster Jane calm and clicking on the audible com icon for your free book hey what's more fun better free book and while you're there explore our ads and support the show with a click on the links we want to welcome our new partner our favorite store the finest and offering gourmet foods Dean & Deluca and remember the Haluk ascertain choke is always available online at Hali caster Jane calm and a host of venues including stitcher com spreaker calm tunein radio itunes blogtalkradio soundcloud the I Heart Radio Network and at our newest home on google play music when you don't go to geico.com car insurance can seem intense like break up R&B and tense geico makes it easy just go to geico.com any time to update or check your policy without all the extra drama in the first thoroughly researched biography of actress Meryl Streep her again becoming Meryl Streep with the narrative thrust of a novel biographer Michael Schulman peels back the curtain behind the greatest actress of her generation granting us an intimate look into the formative years that shape Streep into the icon she is today Schulman a contributor and arts editor at The New Yorker delivers a brilliant read as dazzling as one of the performances of the iconic actress about which he writes let's talk Michael let me tell you before we get on to the subject of her again Meryl Streep that the first nine pages of your book as I told you off air and listen to me i love this so much i'm doing it on air absolutely phenomenal this book is worth every penny it is so beautifully written it's just well thank you amazing and I want to start our conversation with that applause not many biographies are as engaging as this one so question his Meryl Streep read the book I don't know you know I she didn't give me an interview for the book but I sent her copy through her publicist a couple weeks ago I haven't heard anything and I don't really expect to know when I have to live with that somewhere alone a lot I've a feeling you're going to hear something listen only someone who thoroughly admires this subject to write the book that you've written and you got to tell me were you in love with her before you started this I mean what what got you here by Merrill so my route 2 marrow was it's a bit funny so of course I have always admired her as an actress above her work I love many of her movies but a couple years ago I got really interested in her acceptance speeches that award shows you know they're all so funny she has this way now kind of undercutting herself which I read about in the book you know like she at the Emmy she would say there are some days I myself I'm overrated I think I'm overrated but not today for the way the book gets got its title her again is from the Academy Awards in 2012 when she said when they called my name who was like I could hear half of America going her again but whatever and so I sort of i started memorizing these acceptance speeches i was i thought they were so great and and that's kind of have my fixation started with her but then as I was contemplating the book I started to think well first of all there aren't a lot of great books out there about Meryl Streep and cheese you know one of the preeminent talents of our time but what really made it click for me was deciding that it wouldn't be a kind of soup to nuts biography called you know Meryl Streep in American life I really wanted to tell a story and the story that I came up with was her origins you know her coming-of-age as a young woman in the 1970s and so it really focuses on who she was in her 20s for she was famous and asked the question you know what what were the forces that shaped her and how did she become this greatest living actress figure who that she's been for you know the past 30 years yeah and I think that's part of what's a fascinating and that's the part that I think got me so engaged because it really is such an insight into who this woman is Wow I mean and we're going to talk about that in a minute now she didn't contribute to the project let's get that straight correct that's right all right but you did enormous amounts of research think you found people talk to me about that progress of the project oh it was so much fun it was like a huge scavenger hunt I will say I you know I contacted her early on and just kind of let her know what I was up to and what I'm about you know and she did me the great favor of kind of interfering you know she as far as I know she didn't tell anyone to stay away from me she kind of just left me to my own devices so I interviewed more than 80 people for the book friends classmates teachers directors co-stars a couple ex-boyfriends even and that was so much fun you know i love the scavenger hunt of it but actually what I really loved even more than that was going to archives all over the country and digging in and finding old letter she had written to pee oh that were now you know deep in some archive in Texas or Cleveland or wherever you know I really I really searched and sound stuff that was just so great and so for a kind of nerd like me you know researching there was there's nothing more exciting than finding some you know yellowed old piece of paper somewhere that gives you a real insight into who she was at this particular time in place you brought it up the nerd tell us about you who are you Michael to my gripping here in Manhattan where I am right now and I'm a big feeder lover I always have been and I cover theater for The New Yorker magazine so a big part of my interest in this part of merrells life was her theater career which she hasn't done much on stage since really the early 80s when she got same as a movie actress so just kind of combined a lot of my interests also I went to Yale as an undergrad and when I was there I did I directed plays and including a christopher durang play and so I always knew about this legendary time and the Yale School of Drama and the 70s when Meryl and sigourney weaver and Krista rang and Wendy Wasserstein were there all at the same time and so I always wanted to explore that and sort of see that history is kind of like one of those Paris in the 20s moments where a lot of these people were all these talents were converging at the same place in the same time so i guess i'm talking about Marilyn and more than me but we're getting it inside into you too I mean that I think it is helpful to know how much of your background in some ways coincides with her having been at Yale also an understanding the dynamic of that particular school and what it has done for so much Wendy Wasserstein god bless it right is she ready oh I mean so many people came out of that bad era and and you knew about it let's talk I also it was it's a New York story and as a New Yorker I just I really could feel it sort of in a tactile where you know talking about right Becca in the 1970s and you know I grew up here in the 80s and I kind of just remember that ceiling of dirty old New York City which I love well I grew up in New Jersey so I'm a Jersey girl so I got that partner for a story but I've to tell you a little secret when people know this about me my fans but I opened the first theater and tried haha how do you like that oh my gosh the garage theatre me and Robert pace and a bunch of pinch you remember who Michael Shurtleff was he was before your time but he was the casting director actually found Dustin Hoffman and made him the star that he was that's amazing yeah so I have that whole background too so you know names come up like De Niro and all this I'm like going on my god the look what's happened since those days oh my word it's bad you know it's a great era in New York really talents were there you know Merrill's friends there were you know John Lithgow and Mandy Patinkin and Mary Beth hurt and you know Pacino was doing you know downtown theater and people were just around and they were young and they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff it was a great time in Manhattan have to tell you it was just it was a phenomenal time i'm glad that i have those in my memories mary-louise Meryl Streep Wow right Wow who all her fam all the women in her family were married what ya love that part and that's kind of us going to be something I want to talk to you about in a minute but her story is out of a moth turn to a butterfly the way that you tell it it's like a metamorphosis now let's start with that early life the girl from suburban New Jersey bernardsville good parents happy family life nice brothers good school talk yeah she had a very classic 1950s suburban sort of situation when she was growing up solidly middle-class backyard you know two parents three kids nice public school that they all went to you know and there was something that you know I didn't expect that I think people sometimes wrongly assume that she's patrician I think just because she looks that way but she was really you know the sort of middle-class gal and in terms of her metamorphoses I I found that so interesting you know she was a little girl she was sort of a bully kind of a bossy tomboy almost and she didn't really care about how she looked she had these great cat eye glasses that made her look like a middle-aged secretary and she didn't really care about how she appeared to others until she abruptly did when she entered high school and sort of went through adolescence suddenly started fixating on appealing to boys and the way she has recalled this time in her life is so fascinating because she says that basically she came up with this character that she decided to play the first character she ever really played which was that of a conformist all-american popular high school girl in the mid 60s so she studied women in in magazines like 17 and vogue and and glamour and cosmo and she dyed her hair and straightened her hair every night and joined the cheerleading squad and started dating handsome you know football players in the football team basically she just pursued with every ounce of her being this goal of being a kind of blandly pretty popular cheerleader and by the end of high school she was elected homecoming queen by her peers which was basically like being you know winning Best Actress of her high school you know she just pulled it off so well because even then she had an incredible talent for mimicry and for studying a character and then becoming it only her world was just so small she didn't really know how to apply that gift except to try to be as middle of the road as she could but I find fascinating that somebody of that age would have that kind of thinking going on in their head and the power and control to contrive themselves that way it didn't that amaze you yeah I mean to some extent we all do that in high school we all but not not not side who were going to again become that person and that we often feel like we're sort of faking a little bitter playing a role I think was different about her is that she was so innately talented at it that she could that she could do it and also I think part of it was that she was so driven you know partly by insecurity she you know she doesn't have conventional good looks of course she is incredibly beautiful and is so has these striking features that helped make her a star like her nose in her cheekbones you know they're sort of like Betty Davis's eyes they're slightly accentuated but you know at the time she looked around who the movie stars were that era like Audrey Hepburn or Ann Margaret or Jane Fonda and they all has to have these perfectly symmetrical features and I think she never thought she could be someone like a movie star and it was her insecurities about her looks that really drove her throughout high school to pursue this character this idea of who she wanted to be until she was able to go to Vassar and kind of develop a more authentic sense of self I'm going to talk about her singing too because she did do that and actually studied with somebody rather famous talk to us about that yeah so as a adolescent she was very interested in singing she got up and performed in this Christmas corral and shocked everyone because she has gorgeous voices coloratura and so her parents started her on lessons with a woman named Estelle Liebling in New York City who was a renowned opera teacher and she was a later famous for being the teacher of Beverly Sills the great opera star whose lessons were right after Meryl and she was this sort of old kind of link to all Europe you know she had this incredible reputation and and young marrow was with studying with her sort of dreaming of being an opera singer at the Philharmonic let's talk faster the one thing of her college years and we could even say Yale but what do you think she got the most out of that that propelled her career forward her her drive forward her what she was going to become her faster years I found so interesting you know as as I said she had been living in this very small kind of shallow high school suburban world and then when she got to Vassar first of all it was an all-female school when she got there and I think that had a really liberating effect on her she didn't have to primp herself for boys all the time she she had a kind of intellectual awakening where she was suddenly reading James Joyce and you know listening to music and not washing her hair for two weeks at a time and she able to really become had informed deep friendships with other women her classmates whereas before they had all been you know jockeying and competing for you know the attentions of the football players their high school so I think it just really kind of relaxed her and allowed her to figure out who she really was and part of that was acting and in nineteen sixty 69 she was cast by her drama teacher at Vassar as miss drew in the the strindberg plane miss julia which is a very complicated serious role and all she had ever done was you know playing Marion the librarian and other kind of high school musical parts and it was the first serious place she'd ever seen much less been the star of and am very sophisticated part and I think emotionally it kind of just opened her up and completely stunned her how she was able to connect with this character who was a 19th century Swedish aristocrat you know mistress of the house I think that totally stunned her but she wouldn't have gotten there she hadn't had these experiences of being kind of intellectually opened up and and really had had had not had this experience of transcending the kind of gender roles of suburbia so is that it is that the moment when she says whoops I know what I'm gonna do well I don't think that she I mean she knew that she loved it but she didn't yet know for sure that it was something she could pursue professionally actually even through Yale Drama School for much of her time in drama school she was can be an environmental lawyer or something you know she she was honestly I think it took her a long time to be commenced that yes this is what you can do for a living but she did know that artistically it clicked with her so let's let's let's go to Manhattan let's go to joseph papp talk to me well Joseph Papp I'm not sure everyone knows this is a legend absolute in in the theater world he was the founder of the Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park and in the 70s in New York City he was just the man you know you know he was running like three different theaters he had this whole empire this downtown theater empire and he plucked Meryl Streep from obscurity months after she left Yale Drama School and put her in a Broadway show and then gave her the lead in shakespeare in the park that summer and she just had she found a real mentor in him you know it was a really really important relationship that I explored a lot because I love joseph papp I mean he's just a complete you know he's like one of these great new york personalities and her first year in New York City was incredible you know she was Justin back-to-back barber shows he got a Tony nomination she was starring and chicken in the park I mean no one knew who she was and yet she was suddenly everywhere and it just it really established her for the New York theater audience right away and it's supposed to be harder than that but I do you know right you want to just kick her because it was seemed so apparently easy i would have talked about something before we go a little bit further in terms of her career but i want to talk about her in this respect she makes me think I look at her and I can't just watch her on-screen I have to think about her when I'm watching her on-screen because she does something something bubbles up out of that woman that doesn't bubble up out of a whole lot of actors even even actors who had wonderful terrific careers she's somehow different he was across my Monday I want to hear what you had to say about it it's sort of like I know there's it there's a distance about her a bridge a wall between her and you a secret maybe that she holds do something vague about her but at the same time something steely about her I wondered if that's how you see her hmm that's a great way of putting it I think there is a kind of mystique about her there something that you know will never quite get to the bottom of her and that makes her characters ring interesting they they make you want to lean in a little bit and pay attention you know she never really puts off puts over one simple emotion there's always a little bit of another emotion you know coloring it her just her sense of nuance about things runs so deep I don't think she can ever do anything just the easy way it's funny one of the roles that she says that she was bad at was this movie called it's a little-known movie called still of the night from the early 80s and she was cast in it's a murder mystery and she was cast as kind of a Hitchcock blonde femme fatale and she is just she's just not right for that you know it should have been faid done away or something she just doesn't she sort of allergic to these kind of female archetypes and really studiously avoided them throughout her movie career I guess except for this one time and and and you can see why she's not she's not quite comfortable doing that and I think it's because of that that you know she she found this way of starring in these you know really female driven complicated movies like out of Africa and Sophie's Choice she just can't stand to new anything that's not quite as as complicated as as those she's a character actor who's in your car that's what it is I mean an editor character trapped in a leading lady's body exactly has the incredible beauty that allowed movie producers to make her star their movies but inside she feels like she can just be anyone you know she can play a you know an old lady or you know Holocaust survivor or a you know a sort of zombie Hollywood diva like in death becomes her I mean she just has you know she she has the shape shape shifting soul but it's in a package that kind of allowed her to become you know a leading actress let's let's go to this because we think we know so much about her we know nothing about her you uncover so much talk to me about John Cazale is that how it was earlier oh yes John Cazale I mean he's incredible tell us who i was first for those who might not know that we could just give his major role and i think everybody did it was also Fredo Corleone a from the Godfather me again that's how most people know him he was an incredible character actor from that generation of Pacino and De Niro and all of them and one great thing to know about him is that he was in five movie in his career all of them were nominated for Best Picture but none of them got him his own Oscar nomination and you know he was just he was so peculiar you know he has this extreme sort of look with his high and you know her seeding hairline and this throbbing vein going down his forehead he was cute and he had this kind of childlike wonder about everything you know I I heard stories from his friends about how he would stay up all night tuning of his color TV and and stuff like that so and he was like that with characters he you know he had nicknamed 20 questions because he would just endlessly interrogate directors about about his characters so he was just such an unusual sort of eccentric guy and a brilliant actor who always had this knack for for playing kind of weaklings or or you know Fredo is you know no one comes out of the Godfather thinking oh wow Fredo he sort of the guy who's always passed over always looked over the loser yeah the loser he laid he plays sort of weakness and insecurity and um petulance in his movies and he was so good at it but you know he was never the hero he was never the De Niro character that you that people kind of latch on to finish and so talk to me about the relationship that he had oh yeah like that part so yeah great actor who had already achieved this this this success in movies like The Godfather in dog day afternoon and he met Marilyn 1976 when they were cast in the Shakespeare in the Park production of measure for measure together and they just had this intense immediate passionate connection and fell in love they were just madly in love it was what we would now call a showmance you know the two the two stars the play falling in love and they moved in together in John's loft in Tribeca sort of before it was commonly being called Rebecca and it was such a strange relationship you know I mean she's someone who's beautiful and and always recognized as as talented and gorgeous and he's like this weirdo I mean I sort of think of him as like Adam driver on girls no there's like kind of off yes but also weirdly sort of sexy you know their friends describe them to me is just like a couple where you you couldn't help just look at them as they were walking down the street together you know such a such an odd pairing of people but they had this incredible connection over acting they were both people who took acting more seriously than anything and very tragically John Cazale was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer after they were together for only a year and part of the reason why people don't know his name better is because he died at 42 and I really think if his career had gone on he'd be mentioned the same breath as Pacino and De Niro he's really that generation but what happened was he got very sick very quickly and mineral who is still quite young at that point you know 27 28 she threw aside everything to care for him and really really drew on all the strings she had to see him through and to try to get him better you know she was just there with him the whole time however even though she gave up a lot of work to be with him this was the reason why she took her first major movie role I was the deer hunter and so he was around the same time he had just gotten diagnosed with lung cancer Michael Camino was casting the deer hunter with Robert De Niro and they were scouting New York theater actors and had a role for John Cazale and they had a role for Meryl Streep who was you know kind of at that point known as John Cazale girlfriend and she wasn't very impressed with her part she thought the role was kind of like an on to new kind of token girl in a in a movie about men which which it is and I think not something she would normally have pursued but because this was a chance for her to be with John while he was getting sick she took the part and it wound up being her first Academy Award nomination unbelievable story and a couple of things I want to get to real quick before we are finished and that's limit let me ask you this he dies tragic she's devastated and yet what lesson six months later she marries the man who was still her husband right yeah don gummer this is one of the main reasons I wanted to explore this part of her life is because you know this incredible just the timeline of it John Cazale died March she marries don gummer in September it's six months where who what is happening what you know what happens it's almost like she was being pulled between these extreme emotions it's like a Meryl Streep movie you know it was so dramatic and in the middle of those six months she started making Kramer vs Kramer and Manhattan and starring in Taming of the Shrew in Central Park you know so it was this incredibly fertile creative time for her as well as being an unimaginably conflicted emotional time for her where she was both in extreme grief and completely infatuated with this new guy who she marries yeah I still married to and still Mara it must have seemed completely insane any insight into 22 what happened and why she was able to after going through something so traumatic fall in love and that quickly again I don't know if I could bounce back exit yeah it's really amazing I mean it really tells you something about her right I think part of it is that she found this Avenue toward stability at a time when her life just seemed so so horribly thrown off you know to have this great love and then lose it so quickly she then found this this man who with whom she she could have a family and a marriage and she always wanted to have children was really important to her I think she not only was she in love with him but she sort of found this way to make her life kind of hole again I also you know from what I could gather about her relationship with don gummer it was really a sort of relationship of equals they were both you know they were both talented at different things which i think is a very healthy way to have a relationship yeah I don't know if we said the heat that he's a sculptor he's a sculptor and he you know he worked with you know she is you know materials like you know a sheet rock and you know wood and steel and he would make these things and he was very good at looking at objects and geometry and she of course is good at looking at people and and behavior so I kind of think that their marriages about two people who are sort of insightful and and brilliant at different things that kind of complement each other it's very different from the Gazelle relationship which is two actors who you know have this intense focus on the same kind of art form yeah and I don't know when I was I was reading the book that i was going looking at pictures and i was thinking to myself one is the love of a girl and one of the love of a woman hmm you know and you and you can see when you see her with him today I mean he is her rock you can tell she leans on him she could go into the Academy Awards I don't think it's something that makes her happy that's just doesn't seem like her style to a question right before we conclude of all you learned about her number one what's the most surprising surprising well one of the things was that was it with how much she was shaped by second wave feminism I didn't expect this to be a big part of the book at all but it became absolutely crucial to it you know we know now she has she's very vocal she you know she sent a letter to every US Congress person telling them to revive the Equal Rights Amendment she gives speeches at the women of the world conference stuff like that what I really uncovered that that surprised and really pleased me because it was interesting to explore with how much he was a product of the age of ms magazine and Gloria Steinem and consciousness-raising groups and how how important that was to have what she saw for her career and um and why she was so successful in the way she was so I think I think giving her her due as a young feminist of the 1970s was a surprise that I really welcomed you know one thing that I was discovered in life is that sometimes it's better to leave your icons where they are in your mind you know as we know them and if you dig too deeply into anyone's life I don't have to tell you you're going to discover that even the biggest star is floor flawed in some way or another that's my opinion but what did you find most disappointing about Streep in this long journey into her life you lead mm-hmm that's a good question well part of it was that even when she was becoming first becoming famous she complained a lot about celebrity you know she every magazine profile I'd read of her from 1979 she would just complain and complain complain why do I have to keep talking to these magazines you know why do I have to spend my private time with you reporter and I started getting kind of irritated with her for that it's fair enough I think she's now sort of hit this balance where she can you know she can deal with celebrity in all of its trappings but as a as a 29 year old I found it a little bit insufferable how she would complain and complain i'm playing about being on the cover of magazines and things you know just just embrace it you know it's happening so yeah I think I I kind of dinged her for that in the book because it strikes me as a tad just disingenuous but I think that she's evolved and she never pursued Fame for fame sake and I but I think at least now she's kind of learned to live with it and kind of poke fun of it in a way that she didn't then Meryl Streep holds the record for the most academy award nominations of any actor having been nominated 19 times since her first nomination in nineteen 79 for her performance in the deer hunter she is won three Academy Awards she is the most nominated performer in Golden Globe Awards history she is 18 in total Meryl Streep has amassed and amazing 409 nominations 17 runner ups and a hundred and fifty seven awards for more about Meryl Streep read Michael Shulman's her again becoming Meryl Streep by way of Harper an imprint of HarperCollins and be sure to visit Michael Shulman's website at Michael hyphen Schulman com you were listening to the heli cancer change show my guests today are Michael Shuman author of her again becoming Meryl Streep and Barbara leeming author of kick Kennedy the charm life and tragic death of the favorite kennedy daughter will be back in a minute stay with us record better audio anywhere motive digital microphones from sure easy to use options like the MV 88 plug directly into your phone or computer and include a free app create studio quality sound for podcasts music and videos visit sure calm to learn more hi this is Hallie caster chain are you enjoying the show I hope so and I hope that you'll tell your friends about it and help us grow our family how can you help that's easy share the link to the show with your friends or my shows player and I would love it even more if you'd recommend they visit my website at Hali casert Jane dot com I look forward to seeing all of you there in her new book kick Kennedy the charmed life and tragic death of the favorite Kennedy daughter author Barbra leeming tells the story of Kathleen kick Kennedy second daughter of Joe and Rose Kennedy the high-spirited and dynamic young woman as ambitious and eager for power as her brother Jack who had become the 35th President of the United States full of determination and with her best asset her engaging personality kick Kennedy would defy her controlling parents and do the unthinkable Mary out of her faith Protestant Billy hartington eldest son and heir to the duke of devonshire but as too many Kennedy stories go kicks triumph would turn into tragedy but what a life she led in her brief sojourn on earth a tale that might have been lost forever a story of love and war of politics and changing expectations socially and economically kick story takes place at a pivotal point in history and can only be told by the author of three new york times bestsellers including her most recent book jacqueline bouvier kennedy onassis barbara leeming let's talk Barbara this really is some story which I don't think a lot of people know and yet this woman who lives such a brief life had a pivotal role in world history her name was kick Kennedy give us a little background of who kick was and by the way how did she get the name kick well it's very strange book for an author to write because I've spent my whole life writing books about people that everybody knew immediately this is who they are but kit Kennedy is somebody gets us a poo who is it if the simplest answer is that she was President Kennedy's favorite sister and the reason that we don't know very much about her is the fact that she died in a plane crash when she was just 28 years old and as a result very much has been forgotten in history but what was fascinating for me and I started doing this book because I read a biography of President Kennedy a number of years ago and I was hearing an enormous amount about kick obviously all the way through that and one of the people said to me early on was if somebody was a friend of both jacks and n kicks that kick was Jack Kennedy's psychological twin and I think what she meant by that and what I certainly mean by it is that they were tremendously alike in the sense that both of them were wildly ambitious both of them were desperately hungry for power and wanted to be people of influence but both of them had the same problem because in the Kennedy family old Joe Kennedy taught the kids one big lesson and that is that they were supposed to think of themselves as a unit and that meant that they were supposed to think of themselves as Kennedy's not as individuals now for Jack who had an enormous ego this turned out not to be such an enormous problem because he satisfied his needs his ego needs by fighting to become the top Kennedy and he did that because in the family Joe Kennedy jr. the his older brother was always the father's favorite and one that the father was saying was some day going to be President of the United States and all and Jack was the sort of screwed up younger brother he was probably not going to live long enough to be anything because he was so sickly and yet secretly behind the scenes Jack was absolutely convinced as was kick she was his sole supporter that Jack was really the smart one and the ambitious one and the one who could do it and he did manage to completely aust the older brother before the older brother was killed in the war and he was killed in the war and it was an enormous enormous enormously unexpected thing in the family and all the later stories that we hear about Jack Kennedy never wanted to be President it was only because his brother died and he picked up the flag I mean that's all just garbage it's not true but Jack had solved his ego problem by this struggle but for kick a girl in the Kennedy family was never going to be top Kennedy no matter what she did and she was certainly her father's favorite I mean no question she was a favorite of everybody but she couldn't find any way to get an identity in her own right and so I think she understood fairly early she was going to have to find it someplace else but how you do that if you're in a family that's got this tremendous mythos himself she needed something that was equally overwhelming and strangely enough she found that in the most unlikely place in the British aristocracy because in 1938 Joe Kennedy was made the US ambassador to the courtesan James in London and the kids went with him and kick went with him and at the age of 18 she did something very very very unexpected she saw her opening to be a star in a world you would never expect to find a Kennedy and so the result is that mean this story that I've written is not a typical Kennedy story at all instead what it is is kick story takes us into a whole other world that of the most closed part of the British aristocracy what I call the aristocratic cousin hood and it takes us into that world at a moment of tumultuous change when that world is in the process of losing its political power forever and it's an enormously important moment in history and so strangely enough this little girl this 18 year old girl takes us in and gives us a way to write a really really big piece of history if you're looking for Hyannisport you aren't gonna find no no no but you find something so much more delicious in one sense because we don't know it yes that's exactly it it's a world that's normally so closed I mean the world of the aristocratic cousin hood the kick enters is a world in which cousins marry cousins for Dino for centuries generation and as a result Outsiders don't get in they don't know what's going on and of course I had this very very strange thing happened to me because I started out not knowing you know not knowing anybody here I was I went England to research President Kennedy's connection to England and over the course of more than 15 years I spent inside this world both both the world of the Kennedys as it connects to this but also in the world of the British aristocracy because these people see themselves as trustees of history so if you get in they want you to do it right and it was an extraordinary adventure doing it because the key players in kick story most of them were still alive when I began the book there gone now but they were still alive and I had the opportunity over the course of writing both the biography of President Kennedy had met a book about Winston Churchill of getting to know these people in their world and talking to them in very very very intimate ways about what was going on in kicks life in their life in these years so it's a very strange strange experience both for me and certainly I'm sure much striker for kick I can imagine okay two questions really quickly how did you get the name kick haha the name kick is one of the mysteries there are 27 different stories the one that I think probably is closest but it may not be right is one that one of their friends told me very early on which was that it had just to do with the fact that she was so alive and she had so much vitality and that's of course what all the English people said about her and that this this name got attached or somebody else said it might be something that you know they think that when the kids were little they couldn't pronounce her name Kathleen and it somehow became kick somebody else told me it had to do with her kicking like a horse I think it basically is just that once you've heard people talk about her it's her life force that you think about it somehow the name kick really really works for that absolutely and another thing about her that I thought was so interesting I mean you describe her not as a pretty girl because she's not she that certainly doesn't she's talking she didn't get the looks of the brothers got that's for sure but she certainly made up in that with spirit and she did that whole world by storm I mean they just embrace I'm a gave her a little test to begin with and you guys need to read the book to a very funny little story in the book about how she ended her way through it all and got in even though they tested her but what a personality I want to go in a rose because Rose surprises me in this book now I'm of a generation that I kind of remember her by the time I remember her she's already old and kind of in her dotage but but she's a she's a tough mama talk to me yeah yeah Rose in the end kicks relationship is one of the saddest this is an eight handkerchief story I mean it poor poor kick I mean she has everything he loses everything but her relationship with her mother I think was something that I really tried very very hard to understand because Rose Kennedy obviously did not have an easy life by any stretch of the imagination and what was interesting to me was when I began to understand that in their family life he could always been her mother's protect her she was religious like her mother she'd been sent to convent schools and stuff but the reason she was her mother's protector was that the father was the worst womanizer that mean he makes Jack look like it like nothing and not only was he a womanizer but the women were paraded in front of poor rose and before kick went to England one of one of their friends told me a story which I think maybe explains exactly how how important kick was to roast they were having lunch one afternoon at Hyannis and all the kids were sitting at the table and Rose was there and Joe arrived with his mistress of the moment and sat her down at the table with his wife in the kids and the boys of course did nothing they just SAT there like whoa what's wrong with that isn't that my study it was a pic who was then just a very young teenager who stood up and said effectively you know Dottie you cannot do this to mommy you can she kept this woman can't be here with mommy and not only did she dare to do that with Joe who is a tough guy but he took it from her and that was the kind of thing she always did she protected her mother when Jack and Joe would laugh at the mother because the mother was treated like a clown by the by the boys and the family and she was a very very sad person I mean I came to feel eventually that for Rose her religion I mean sure of course she believed it but it was the thing that kept her alive it was the thing that protected her against Joe against the position that she had in the world it allowed her to deny the horrors that wouldn't really made up her life and so when kick went to England and became as you said that yeah absolute star of this group not because she was a beautiful girl but because she was unlike any of the other girls in this world I mean those girls when she arrived in 1938 and I was talking to the girls and they were never incur in their 80s but I remember them saying to me you can imagine how boring we were because we've been either up in Scotland or in the country someplace in in the family castle and we hadn't been around any boys except our brothers and when suddenly at the age of 18 we were being brought down to London which they all were in the spring to what was effectively a marriage market they were being brought down with chaperones with their mothers watching them like hawks completely unused to any kind of social life and expected to find a husband fast and find a suitable husband among their cousins and the boys were very different because the boys were were all interested in ideas that even I think more than that in 1938 those boys as Andrew Devon sure the duke of devonshire he and his wife debo who effectively inherited the life kick would have had and some of your listeners may know debo Devon sure better as the last of the famous Mitford sisters she and Andrew who became the Duke were I mean I couldn't have done the book without them and and they you know both said to me Andrew particularly Andrew said you know the boys in this period like Andrew himself expected to die they did not agree with their parents who said world war is going to be avoided at all costs they thought it was coming they knew Hitler was coming and they did not expect to live through that and so the boys were first of all tremendously involved in every bit of politics that was going on but they were also wild they were incredibly wild and they were always in terrible car crashes because they had lots of money and these incredible sports cars that they drive back and forth between London and a party in Cambridge or Oxford where they were going to school they were drinking so much champagne you know they couldn't see straight and into that world came these innocent little girls who didn't want to hear anything about any of this who only want to talk if they want to talk at all about the dresses that they were going to wear and kick walked in and she had been Jack's mascot in America and as it happened what Jack was interested in was exactly the same things that these boys were interested in he was completely absorbed in British history and culture and politics and he talked about it in front of his younger sister and she had listened and she was interested and so when she arrived in England and the boys are standing there talking politics and they expect kicked to walk off with their cousins no no she doesn't she stays and she takes part even if she makes an idiot of herself she doesn't care she's completely relaxed with them she can laugh at herself but most of all she likes talking about the same things that they're doing and that was just enormously enormously enormously appealing for her but also as you said there's another very big trick about it because she's no beauty but part of the thing you know you do ask yourself with these people why do they want the granddaughter of a Boston saloonkeeper I mean that's a little odd it's not what you think if somebody's going to inherit a palace it's not not what you think you're going to put in there but I think it's exactly what they wanted because particularly the two families the two great Protestant families that keep God involved with the Cavendishes and the sizzles they had a particularly the Cecil's I guess they had a tradition of when they intermarried for too long and the bloodline started to weaken they would marry outside something that would give them literally red blood for their blue blood and renew the line and when they saw kick and they saw how aggressive she was and how competitive she was and how unstoppable she was they recognized oh this isn't really this is this is the red blood we need and if it happened nicely enough kick had fallen in love with the most eligible bachelor in England at that point a boy called Billy hartington who was the heir to the duke of devonshire and it was simply the most eligible bachelor in Britain he at one point and thought out as possible is a husband for the woman who became Queen Elizabeth her Princess Elizabeth and Billy fell madly in love with kick but you then have the Protestant Catholic thing which brings us back to Rose because this is going to break roses heart for her daughter Oh it'll be wonderful for daughter becomes a duchess but not a Protestant touches so what is she going to do and Billy's family is equally hysterical and so then you have this terrible terrible struggle to see how they can possibly marry and they do eventually after six years they marry but it's against all odds they think when you realize how hard kick fought and its really kick fighting to get to Billy when he realized that I think there's one thing when I think about it that I think well I understand it completely imagine being an 18 year old girl who has the most attractive boy in London the richest boy at London madly in love with her and he takes her to see where they're going to live together at the age of 18 their main house and that is chatsworth which is the palace of the debenture dukes it's the main house of theirs and an 18 year old girl coming over the bridge and a little river in front of this golden palace it couldn't possibly believe she was living in real life the windows of Chatsworth are framed in 18 karat gold and so when you come over this beautiful little stone bridge over the river and the Sun catches the light on the window frames the palace literally glitters in the Sun it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life and I remember the first time that I went there I said to myself what must have been like at 18 but to come here in love for the first time in your life with somebody who's in love with you and he says you're going to be my Duchess and we're going to do wonderful things together you fight for that and she did fight for it and she eventually got him but at the cost of breaking her mother's heart talked about her father on in all of this because she really was her father's daughter yes as long as I mean in terms yes that's that's really perceptive because she did she had all that drive that Joe had but she had a kind of sweetness that I think he was utterly lacking but he was very important for her because kicked had lived her whole life and continued to live it believing that daddy could fix anything that anything she wanted daddy would fix for her and when Billy hartington said to kick in 1944 after they've been in love for six years and she finally gotten back to him and he said to her kick you have to understand that if we are going to marry it's you who has to compromise your religion I can't do it the children that we have have to be raised as Anglican and I want you to remain you know a Catholic for yourself but your children cannot be and this is an in you know obviously in those days this was not acceptable to the Catholic Church and the reason Billy said this was at that point they had eight mistakes i think it was in units covers thousands and thousands and thousands of acres and one of the duties of the Duke of Devonshire was to appoint the vicar the minister in each of the parishes in the in the various estates and his Billy said to kick what am I going to do with my children if they're little Roman Catholics and they're going to be appointing the Anglican vicar I mean that you just can't do that it doesn't work we can't do it and I think the kick understood that and I think they'd kick eventually found a way to morally take in and accept what Billy was asking her to do without feeling that she was doing wrong because I think by that time the code of honor and Duty that was so intrinsic to Billy hartington Billy hartington was a very good person I mean when you mean good you think of Billy he was really a good good good person and I think that his code of honor and Duty had come to be kind of substitute for kick to the values that she had found in religion but they were not enough for her mother and so when she said that she was going to marry Billy her mother went wild and did everything she could to stop it the kid eventually went ahead with it but for months after she had married Billy Billy was killed at the front and Belgium and everything that she had sacrificed for him seemed to be gone including the relationship with her mother even though her mother was saying she accepted it was not he'll kick was home she had flown home to the United States in August of 44 because her brother Joe had been killed and she went thinking you know I have to comfort my parents and when she was there word came that her husband has been killed and she felt very strongly that her mother saw that as God's retribution for having married this boy and kick couldn't handle that and kick got on a plane and went back to Billy's family in England and to her friends because I think by then Billy's family had really and particularly Billy's mother had become the kind of mother that everybody dreams of having and there she could mourn but then she was left with the thing I'm a girl what am I going to do with the rest of my life what happens where do I belong and that's a tremendous tremendous tremendous question you know what do you do and her relationship with her mother is tortured from then all right now and I hear me tragedy in this family yeah right and you know whenever we talk about it we talk about it in terms of the boys you know they lost Joe they lost uh everybody really right okay here a bottom line but she is her father's daughter who was the next person she gets involved with a gambler that that's the problem and that's and it is too close to the father and the only have a few min in 1945 it when the war was over the British aristocracy it's like I think maybe the easiest way to think about it is it's the last chapter of Downton Abbey except it's real I mean the loss of aristocratic power that had begun in the First World War finishes off in 45 and Winston Churchill is thrown from office and the society in England changes forever people are not coming back to be servants in the Great Houses it's different it's just not going to happen but for kick it wasn't just that she'd lost boy that she dreamt of but she had lost this possibility of being a powerful person and she wanted that and what happened within two years she met somebody who she thought could no matter what had happened to society give her what she thought she'd have with billion a man called Peter Wentworth Fitzwilliam the eighth Earl Fitzwilliam Peter Fitzwilliam was richer than Billy he had a much bigger house than Billy had he was also unfortunately married he was a drunk he was a womanizer and he was the worst person that could possibly have gotten involved with and she thought he was the most wonderful man in the world and no matter how many of her friends went to her and said kick you don't understand who peter is we may like him he's tremendously appealing but this is not for you she kept saying the same thing over and over oh you don't know Peter like I know Peter and as all of her friends said to me afterwards you know this this was going very bad places not only because Peter was not person you picked for a husband but in addition to that I think this is we get back to the religion and two rows even though when she finally told rose and it was very hard for Rose threatened her and said you know if you go through with this marriage you will not only never see me again you will never see any of your siblings the family is gone to you and I don't know whether she could have enforced that or not but it was made kick hysterical but I think in addition to that what Billy's sister Elizabeth told me and I think then Elizabeth adored kick and actually went with kick to America to give her moral support to tell her parents that she was going to marry Fitzwilliam even though Elizabeth thought it was a disastrous idea she would do anything for her sister-in-law and Elizabeth said to me you know you have to understand that when can't married Billy she did not think she was doing anything wrong in terms of her religion she believed that it was right and that it was good with this William she was suddenly put in the position of that woman at the table and hyannis for she was sitting there as the mistress in front of this man's wife she was doing the one thing that she couldn't reconcile with her own Catholic beliefs which was getting herself involved with a married man and as Elizabeth said to me I think it was all going to be much too much for kick it was just not something she could have handled and I I think in a sense that's right and I think that's part of the reason for her desperation at the end of her life because the last thing that she did was to go off in a plane with Peter Fitzwilliam to ask her father to put a fix in with with the Vatican to somehow find a way that they could marry and that it would be morally okay with the church but before they met with the father they were going off for a weekend together and they stopped over in Paris very briefly when had lunch by the time they came back to the airport and Peter had a private plane for the trip and the pilot said we can't take off there's a terrible storm coming and Peter Fitzwilliam who is a commando during the war and who had hubris up the kazoo said we will take off we're going anyway we're getting the plane and fly asst and the pilot said I'm not going to do it and Peter said we are going to do it and they went and they took off and they crashed into the side of a mountain and both of them both he and kick work instantly and that enjo the father had to be the one to identify the body oh my god I mean you know the tragedy it goes on it's relentless one question I must ask you and that is how did Rose reconcile all this having lost reality I can tell you the answer to that it's a very very strange answer Rose never reconcile it with kick in her life she did not come to the funeral she did not bury her daughter Billy's mother buried her daughter Joe came to the thing that grows did not but not only to Billy's mother Barry kick but she buried her in a Catholic ceremony this is the great Protestant family in England and she did whatever was right for kick and also to make things easier for Rose she thought and kick is buried now in a little village graveyard overlooking Chatsworth what happened with Rose though was that Billy's mother mouth sure which was her nickname mouth sure reached out to Rose and somehow or other established a friendship with her that adored for the rest of roses life and I remember Andrew saying to me that when Bobby Kennedy was killed his mother said Andrew get in the plane and go to Rose Andrew Andrew went flew over to America was on the train with Rosen SAT there with rose in the car when as the train was taking Bobby's body giving the family's respect it was Mouser who somehow made it possible for rose to I think sadly enough almost pretend that it had to happen or to reconcile herself in some way to it Andrew believed that she was reconciled through her religion and and I think maybe you know he would know better than then I I would be certainly their mother their mother was the one who was responsible for making it as easy as possible for Rose who had done something you know there couldn't be changed then it's a I mean your heart breaks for her too I mean it's somebody trapped in a horrible situation absolutely I want to we only have like 30 seconds maybe a minute I can squeeze in here but I want to ask you this because I think we really do have to talk about this this story is unbelievably compelling and I tell everybody read it cuz oh my gosh it's better than Downton Abbey but above and beyond that story what she leaves as a legacy this young woman who died at 28 in a plane crash another plane crash Kennedy family is the influence she actually had on Jack she opened doors for him that later would would make it possible for him to do so much of his foreign policy I just want you to report on that yeah that's correct and that is her legacy and it's extraordinary what Jack Kennedy believed to be the greatest achievement of his presidency was the agreement that he made in the summer of nineteen sixty-three with the Soviets for a limited test ban treaty nuclear test ban treaty and that was what Jack thought was the achievement of his presidency and he said himself and it is absolutely true that without Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the ambassador to the US from Britain David Ormsby core this would never have happened David or C gore and Harold Macmillan would never have had that relationship with Jack if it were not for kicked they were her legacy because Harold Macmillan was Billy's uncle and David Ormsby core was Billy's cousin and had been raised as his brother and it was kick who passed on that family relationship of the Devonshire's which is the Dougal family to Jack Kennedy and changed his presidency in ways that are absolutely essential to understanding the man who Jack wanted to be kick made it possible i think in death for Jack to have that tremendous moment of being the man he wanted to be in the last week's literally of his life it's an astonishing legacy I've been speaking with Barbara leeming the author of kick Kennedy the charmed life and tragic death of the favorite Kennedy daughter by way of thomas dunne books for more information on the book visit WWE us Macmillan com kick Kennedy Barbara leeming and on facebook the authors page is Barbara dot leaving one record better audio anywhere motive digital microphones from sure easy-to-use options like the MV 88 plug directly into your phone or computer and include a free app create studio quality sound for podcasts music and videos visit sure calm to learn more how much do to that likes to change our production with death penalty associate producer to dance pro music by 20 without jams is it sound like a chain