Nothing quite says "sibling rivalry" like sleeping with your presidential brother-in-law — just ask Jackie Kennedy and her sister-slash-enemy, Princess Lee Radziwill.
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00:00Nothing quite says sibling rivalry like sleeping with your presidential brother-in-law.
00:04Just ask Jackie Kennedy and her sister-slash-enemy, Princess Leigh Radziwill.
00:09The relationship between Jackie Kennedy and Leigh Radziwill had a lot of ups and downs
00:12over the years, to say the least.
00:14They started out as the Bouvier sisters, the daughters of Janet Leigh Bouvier and Jack
00:18Vernu Bouvier.
00:20Jackie was born on July 28, 1929, making her the elder of the two sisters.
00:25Leigh, born Caroline Leigh, followed four years later on March 3, 1933.
00:30The sisters lived a life of luxury, spending their early days living in the family's Manhattan
00:34apartment or relaxing at their family's estate on Long Island.
00:38While the Bouviers seemed to be quite wealthy, Jack Bouvier had endured some financial losses
00:42during the stock market crash of 1929.
00:45Jack and Janet's marriage started to disintegrate under the strain.
00:48The pair separated in 1936 and finalized their divorce in 1940.
00:52Some of the tension between Jackie and Leigh may have started early on.
00:56Leigh believed their father favored Jackie, and only felt worse as Jackie so excelled
01:00at school.
01:01Jackie, meanwhile, felt that their mother preferred Leigh over her.
01:04Eventually, the girl's mother remarried, tying the knot with Hugh D. Auchincloss, a successful
01:09investment banker.
01:10The Bouvier sisters then spent time at Auchincloss' mansion in Virginia and summered in Newport,
01:15Rhode Island, where he had a large estate called Hammersmith Farm.
01:19Both sisters attended the elite Miss Porters School in Connecticut, but they took very
01:23different paths after graduation.
01:24I always hated school, but I really hated Miss Porters.
01:28Jackie, the more academically accomplished of the two, attended Vassar College for her
01:33first two years of school.
01:34She then went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne for her junior year.
01:37When Leigh graduated high school, she went to Paris with Jackie.
01:41The two spent the summer of 1951 traipsing around Europe.
01:44Through their family's numerous connections, the sisters received introductions to diplomats
01:48and other members of high society.
01:50This journey together may have been the closest the two would ever be in their adult lives,
01:54and before long, their sibling rivalry resurfaced.
01:57Jackie went to Washington, D.C. after Paris, and Leigh tried college life for three semesters
02:02before dropping out of Sarah Lawrence.
02:04Jackie finished her degree at George Washington University in 1951 and worked for The Washington
02:09Times-Herald while Leigh put her savvy fashion sense to work as an assistant to Diana Freeland
02:14of Harper's Bazaar.
02:15In 1953, Leigh married Michael Canfield, the adopted son of the publisher of Harper & Row.
02:20Two months after Leigh's wedding, however, Jackie stole the spotlight with news of her
02:24own engagement to none other than John F. Kennedy.
02:27Jack was the most unselfconscious person I've ever seen.
02:31Jackie married Kennedy in September 1953.
02:33They quickly became a Washington power couple as her husband's fortunes rose in the Democratic
02:37Party.
02:38At the same time, Leigh's marriage began to fizzle out, and she and Canfield soon separated.
02:43In the aftermath, Leigh married Stanisław Radziwiłł, an exiled Polish prince.
02:48Despite whatever social cachet she thought she achieved with her marriage, Leigh was
02:52soon eclipsed once more by her older sister, whose husband had become President of the
02:56United States.
02:57Leigh and her husband visited the White House on several occasions as guests of the Kennedys,
03:01and she even helped Jackie develop her iconic style.
03:04Leigh often traveled with Jackie, and she notably accompanied Jackie on her official
03:08visit to India and Pakistan in 1962.
03:11But not everything was rosy between the two sisters.
03:13During her second marriage, Leigh engaged in several extramarital affairs, and one of
03:18her alleged paramours was her own brother-in-law, John F. Kennedy.
03:21Leigh reportedly told other people about her tryst with Kennedy, and this news may have
03:25gotten back to Jackie.
03:27President Kennedy wasn't the only man the sisters may have clashed over, either.
03:30Leigh also got involved with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and she was quite
03:34taken with him.
03:35Leigh later asked Onassis to invite Jackie on his yacht so that she could recuperate
03:39after the death of her son, Patrick, who had died barely more than a day after he was
03:43born in 1963.
03:45After the assassination of her husband, Jackie found solace with Onassis again, and a relationship
03:50eventually developed between the two.
03:52The pair wed in 1968, which couldn't have helped with the tension between Jackie and
03:56Leigh.
03:57But some sources indicate that Leigh actually supported Jackie's relationship with Onassis.
04:01The financial rift between Jackie and Leigh widened after Onassis' death in 1975.
04:07Jackie received $20 million from his considerable estate, plus an additional $6 million to cover
04:12related taxes, although the couple had been in divorce proceedings at the time of his
04:16death.
04:17Jackie managed to parlay that money into a $150 million fortune.
04:21Perhaps the most revealing insight about the rift between Jackie and Leigh surfaced after
04:25Jackie's death in 1994.
04:27In her will, Jackie left Leigh absolutely nothing.
04:30Jackie gave Leigh's two children $500,000 each, but she intentionally excluded her sister.
04:36Jackie knew that Leigh had struggled financially over the years, and she explicitly stated
04:40in her will that she had omitted her sister on purpose because she had provided for her
04:43during her lifetime.
04:45Jackie's will marked the final act in a deeply complicated sisterly relationship, one that
04:50was defined as much by animosity as it was by love.
04:53Without memory, there's no life, and that's the way I'd feel.