(8 of 10)
For old Joe Kennedy the family prospects were looking up after some grim years. Not only were the boys doing all that would be expected, but the tribe was picking up some attractive new in-laws:
¶ Robert Sargent Shriver, 44, is a Maryland aristocrat, a Yaleman and a former Newsweek assistant editor. In 1946 Joe Kennedy asked him to look over some diaries young Joe had written during the Spanish revolution and appraise them for posterity. "Sarge" Shriver's candid verdict was negative, but he impressed Joe and stayed on the family payroll, met and married Eunice while she was doing social work in Washington. Shriver runs Jack Kennedy's Midwestern political headquarters, has ambitions for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Illinois.
¶ Stephen Edward Smith, 32, heir of a Manhattan tugboat-barge fortune, married Jean, youngest daughter of the clan, soon found himself beguiled into duty as the administrative officer of Jack's Washington GHQ. Although his grandfather, William E. Cleary, served three terms in Congress as a Democrat, Steve disclaims any political longings.
¶ Peter Lawford, 36, the film and TV star, who met Patricia Kennedy at a cocktail party given by Eunice in Chicago in 1952, brought her back from a world tour with a long-distance proposal from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Lawford, the only Protestant in the tribe, at first drew thunderbolts from Joe Kennedy ("The only thing I would hate worse than an actor as a son-in-law is an English actor"), but a peace treaty has been signed. The Lawfords live in the Santa Monica home of the late Louis B. Mayer and are members in good standing of another, lesser clan—the Hollywood social swarm that buzzes around Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
By all odds, the postwar prize of Clan Kennedy is Jack's wife (and the mother of his 2½-year-old daughter Caroline), the former Jacqueline Bouvier, 30. A limpid beauty who would have excited Goya into mixing his rose madder, Jackie Kennedy is the quintessence of cultured, luminous young womanhood. Since breaking an ankle at a family touch football game and losing a baby after the 1956 convention, she has made her own determined amendments to the tribal laws, restricted her campaigning to such niceties as wowing the Louisiana Cajuns with a speech in Sorbonne French, and entertaining politicians at her Georgetown home with fine food, vintage wine and sparkling conversation. She accompanies Jack to Sunday Mass at nearby Holy Trinity Church when he is in town.* If her husband reaches the White House, Jackie Kennedy will be the most exquisite First Lady since Frances Cleveland.