Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / The Book "Jackie - Public, Private, Secret"

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The Book "Jackie - Public, Private, Secret" · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Back for the third hour of the Morning Show with Freston Scott Show four thousand,
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  nine hundred and seventy one. Great to be with you this morning.
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  That's Grant Allen running the broadcast, and I am delighted to have with me.
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  As you well know, I love interviewing authors, and truth is far
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  more interesting to me than fiction. I don't do interviews with novelists. They're
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  fine, but I prefer to talk about true stories, real life people,
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  people that are people of history. And there's only a handful of people that
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  you know them by their first name. And the former first Lady of the
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  United States, Jackie, is a name that is well known to so many.
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  And joining me is the author Jay Randy tera Barelli. The book is
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  Jackie Public Private Secret. Randy, good morning, Welcome to the show.
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  How are you. I'm doing well, Preston, thank you. How are
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  you doing today? I'm doing great. When I look through your resume and
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  I see the volume, the sheer number of books you've written. You've written
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  a lot though about the Kennedy's and I'm just curious, when you start researching
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  a book about a person like Jackie who you personally knew, do you begin
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  with your own research or do you just kind of throw that all away and
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  start from scratch. You know, with this particular book, I had the
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  advantage of four previous Kennedy books to draw from in terms of research, and
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  I was able to go back over, you know, interviews with secret Service
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  agents and family members of Jackies who are no longer here and try to figure
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  out, you know, which of the stories that I had twenty years ago
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  that I did not use because it just didn't fit to the concept of the
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  book in question, which I could use now, Like which of those stories
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  would be relevant to a Jackie biography. And so that was very key to
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  my research. And then we did go out and find new people to talk
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  to. And you know, Jackie's been gone for twenty nine years, and
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  so a lot of people who are close friends of hers felt more comfortable opening
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  up now than they might have previously. So the book is really the culmination
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  of not only twenty five years of previous research, but you know, new
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  reporting as well. You know, the title of the book I think is
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  is revealing in that underneath you've got public and obviously we know the public persona,
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  but the secret side, I imagine that's what you're referring to with people
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  feeling more free. I decided in looking at this because this book is huge.
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  There's so much information in there that I learned for the first time.
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  Let's start by just briefly summarizing who Jacqueline Bouvier was. Well, you know
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  Jacqueline Bouvier, who you know, was raised in New York and um,
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  she was you know, schooled well. She had a domineering mother, a
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  doting father. Her mom married her second husband, Hugh Autanclos, when Jackie
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  was about thirteen, and then from that point she was raised by Hugh ochanclous
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  and her mother, Janet Ochanclaus in Newport. And she know, she she
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  went overseas as a young woman. She went to Europe several times. She
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  was well read, cultured, spoke many languages, and um, you know,
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  she was just a very unusual person. I mean she always she always
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  sort of had a real sense of her place in the world. And nobody
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  was quite like her. Nobody spoke like her, nobody expressed themselves like her.
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  She was just a very unique and very just a very interesting young woman.
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  By the time she met JFK, which was around nineteen fifty three.
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  How did those paths cross? Well, you know, at first JFK was
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  interested in Jackie's sister Lee. But you know, Janet the mother felt that
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  it was time to get Jackie settled, that Lee had more time to get
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  settled. And I say settled, I'm using in a quote settled because that
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  was, you know, sort of the way people looked at the future of
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  women back in the early nineteen fifties. If you weren't married, which means
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  settled by the time you were twenty one or twenty two, then all hope
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  was lost for you, right So, and so Lee was Lee was about
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  nineteen, and Janet felt she had more time, and so she urged Jackie
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  to, you know, move in on JFK and see if there was something
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  there for her. And there was. And unfortunately, if you really think
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  of about it, when I wrote about this chapter of Jackie's life in my
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  book, I called the chapter what if, because what if Janet the mom
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  had not interfered, and what if Lee had ended up with JFK? And
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  how different would Lee's life had been if she ended up, you know,
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  the married to a senator and then eventually a first lady so fate is an
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  interesting thing and also in the case of Lee Radswell, I would say frustrating
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  as well, two decades of doing morning drive radio differently doing it his way
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  like old Blue Eyes, except he has a little more hair The Morning Shoewood
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  Preston Scott Twelve Minutes Past the Hour author Randy tera Barelli, The Book.
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  Jackie is the author of over twenty biographies, most every one of them a
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  New York Times bestseller Randy the public private secret tagline here that actually came from
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  her, right, yeah, and it actually did you know? She was
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  having a conversation with John Carl Warnicky, who was the talented architect who designed
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  JFK's grave site memorial at Arlington Cemetery, and it was around the time of
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  her sixtieth birthday. She and John, who was known as Jack Warnicky,
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  had a relationship between the time of JFK's assassination and the time that Jackie married
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  Onassis, And when she was about sixty, John Warnicky asked her, you
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  know, what did she see in Onassis because she actually had left him for
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  Nassas. And Jackie's response to that question was, you know, oh,
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  Jack, you know me? I have three lives, a public, private,
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  and secret. And jaff Warnicky told me, you know that we all
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  obviously known with the public Jackie. The private Jackie is the Jackie that you
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  know, her friends and intimates know. But the secret Jackie was really hard
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  to discern. And he felt, and I agree, that the secret Jackie
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  had a lot to do with her her own family members, you know,
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  the people in her life. The Kennedy's loom so large in Jackie's life that
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  her family, the Bouviers in the Autin classes, were not given the kind
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  of attention or scrutiny that historians gave to the Kennedy's. So that's what I
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  tried to do with this book. I mean, I think it's really fascinating
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  that people don't even know that Jackie hadn't half sister that she cared deeply for,
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  whose name was Janet, and she had a half brother named Jamie.
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  She had a stepbrother named Yusha, and her mom Janet and her stepfather Hugh
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  were very very important to her. Her stepfather, Hugh gave her away at
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  both of her weddings, you know. So that's kind of what this book
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  is about. It's about sort of that secret life that Jackie had with people
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  that the public today really is still unfamiliar with prior to this book. You
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  mentioned her stepfather. They're walking her down the aisle at her wedding to JFK,
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  why does she look as though she's going to her own death sentence?
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  That's quite a picture, isn't it. Oh my goodness, I was struck
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  by how I mean, she seemed to be overwhelmed by what was going to
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  happen. Why. Well, the reason, Preston is that you know,
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  she loved her own father, jack Bouvier, And as I explained in this
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  book, and for the first time, you know the mom, her mom,
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  Janet, was determined that her present husband, Hugh often Claus, give
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  Jackie away. And so Janet, unfortunately I hate to say, but this
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  is the truth. And I got this from Janet's son, Jamie, and
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  that's Jackie's half brother. Janet orchestrated it that jack Jackie's father, who was
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  an alcoholic. She sent some people to his hotel to get him drunk so
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  that he would not be able to walk Jackie down the aisle. And Jackie
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  was so distressed by this, her stepfather walked her down the aisle instead,
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  and though Jackie loves you very much and had a wonderful relationship with him,
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  she really wanted her own dad to walk down the aisle, but her mom
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  arranged for this to not occur. It's really a dark story, and I
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  explained it in the book. But Dad explains that expression on Jackie's face in
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  that picture. Jay Randy Tera Barelli the book Jackie. Randy standby, We're
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  gonna come back. We've got another segment, folks. You can tell I
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  talked about the book yesterday. Now you know why I was talking about the
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  book because there's so much in it that is fascinating information that I never knew
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  anything about. I'd like to think I'm a pretty well read guy, but
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  there's some incredible background and context to the life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. We'll
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  talk more next in the Morning Show with Preston Scott w FLA at WFLA fam
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  dot com, on your phone with the iHeart Radio app and on hundreds of
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  devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox, and Sonos and I Hearts radio
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  station. Twenty one minutes after Randy Tera Belly Jackie Private Public Secret is the
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  book. It's the story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Randy You've mentioned and we
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  talked about it just briefly there in the break. You knew Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
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  I'm curious, did that make writing this book easier or more difficult?
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  Well, it's a good question, Preston. I have to say it made
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  it more difficult because I've written about people that I don't know. I've written
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  about Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe and you know, the people that I just
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  didn't know, well Elizabeth Taylor. But and that's fine and interesting. You
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  know, you don't have to know the person to write about the person.
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  But if you do have a history with the person, you kind of have
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  a sense that this person is looking down on you and thinking do you really
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  need to write that, right? You know, like really is that necessary?
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  You know? And so, but because Jackie was an editor at Double
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  Day, she completely understood that biographies have to be revealing. You know,
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  she edited Michael Jackson's autobiography at Double Day, and her biggest challenge with Michael
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  was getting him to open up. So she's she had a way of straddling
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  both worlds, you know, the world of celebrity of a woman who wants
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  to be private and the world of an editor who a woman who is urging
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  others to be open. And it's a really strange and interesting dischotomy about Jackie.
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  But she managed to do both, you know. And and so I
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  throughout the entire time I was writing this book, I would think about sitting
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  across from her and some of the things that she told me about books.
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  And you know, she said that if a biography doesn't have secrets, it's
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  not worth it's not worth reading. And that is such a stunning sort of
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  a commentary from a woman who spent most of her life, you know,
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  keeping her secrets. You know, I think she'd approved of this book,
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  and maybe in a begrudging way, but I do think she'd approved because there
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  are people in this book whose memories are shared in this book are people she
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  loved so much. You know, Jack Warnicky, somebody that you know,
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  though they only they were together for three years, he was still a close
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  friend of hers all the way up to her death. Um. And you
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  know, Jamie Autincloss, who's a major source in this book, was her
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  you know, half brother. Um. There there are people in this book
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  who shared memories with me that really cared about her, and she cared about
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  them, So I think that she she'd like to see what they what they
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  had to say. Did she ever weigh in on the assassination of the former
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  president, Did she ever suggest that maybe there were forces inside the government that
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  wanted him dead? She just did not, you know, she she did
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  not weigh in. Everybody else in her family did though, you know,
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  her mom, for instance, Janet Auchincloss, believed that Lyndon Johnson had something
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  to do with it, you know, and she really weren't about trying to
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  prove that for a couple of years. Janet Janet did. Janet actually had
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  friends of Lee Harvey Oswald to her home for dinner one night, much to
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  Jackie's dismay, as Janet was trying to dig into what happened to her son
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  in law. You know, she was the kind of person who was not
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  going to let this go until finally Jackie said, you know, mummy,
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  you must let this go. Right. So, there were people in the
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  family and on Jackie's side of his family, who very determined to get to
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  the bottom of this, such as her stepfather, Hugh Aukincloss, who also
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  did this an investigation, but in the end Jackie who just felt like none
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  of this is going to bring jack back. And you know she was already
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  suffering from such PTSD over having witnessed the murder. Absolutely the last thing she
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  wanted to do was continue to dwell on you know how it happened. Randy,
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  last question, and you've been very kind with your time. Thank you.
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  Without going into a specific which part of the life of Jackie provided the
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  most surprised to you. Was it Jacqueline Bouvier, was it the former First
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  Lady Jackie Kennedy, or was it Jackie Kennedy Onassis. The biggest surprise for
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  me would be the probably last fifteen years of Jackie's life, in which she
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  was the primary caregiver to her mother while her mother battled Alzheimer's. And that's
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  something that nobody knows about. That is a very private thing that that the
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  family went through, and I write about it in depth. It's about maybe
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  a third of the book, and I think it's such an important story and
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  I hope people read it because I think that this is something that many people
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  go through, and you really don't think that a woman like Jacqueline on Nassas
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  would have much in common with others, right, we kind of look at
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  her as sort of you know, it's such an iconic status that we don't
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  imagine that there's any way that we can relate. And then this way,
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  I think people will relate to her great, great, great visit. Thanks
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  so much for the time. I wish you the best on your book,
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  Randy, thank you, thank you all right, Jay, Randy terror Barelli
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  And the book is Jackie. I'm will be reading all of it. I've
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  read through quite a bit of it. I've just skimmed through each chapter and
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  there's so much in here that is historic. It gives such context to parts
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  of Jackie Kennedy's life that you never knew, and then context to the things
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  you did, and then of course the Onassis stage, but all of it
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  buttressed by her childhood. It's just fascinating. Twenty seven minutes after the hour,
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  here on The Morning Show with Preston Scott