Jackie was brains behind the ‘Camelot’ presidency
In this Jan. 20, 1961 file photo, President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy attend one of five inaugural balls in Washington, DC. “JFK: Fact and Fable,” examines the role the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis played in shaping Kennedy’s public persona. [AP/NEWSIS]
Quite a bit, according to a new documentary, “JFK: Fact and Fable.” The film examines the role she played in reshaping the modern presidency by popularizing the Camelot image.
One little-known factoid: Jackie O. was behind the modern look of Air Force One. She persuaded the government to paint “United States of America” on the plane.
The stylish first lady, who died in 1994, also redecorated the Oval Office, giving it an elegant yet homey new feel by adding couches and easy chairs and unsealing the fireplace.
And she created the manicured Rose Garden on the grounds of the White House as it’s known today.
“Jackie Kennedy is responsible for creating the Kennedy legacy,” says Noah Morowitz, the film’s executive producer. She devoted much of her life, he says, to “making him into the great president he so badly wanted to be.”
“While she’s long been regarded as a cultural and style trendsetter, her historical influence actually runs far deeper,” Morowitz says.
“JFK: Fact and Fable,” which premieres Friday on CuriosityStream, a nonfiction streaming platform, also explores how she set to work preserving and orchestrating the 35th president’s legacy within days of his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Step one was her insistence that JFK’s funeral replicate America’s farewell to Abraham Lincoln - a dictate that seemed designed to forever link the two slain presidents in the nation’s conscience.
The film combines archive footage and stills of JFK and his young family with commentary by historian and author Thurston Clarke and Larry Sabato, a Kennedy biographer who directs the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
The film’s tagline sounds audacious - “The JFK we remember is the one Jackie created” - but it covers ground well-documented by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston. AP
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)