(6 of 7)
Kennedy could be affable and accessible, then capricious and enraged--all before lunch. "He was a little insensitive," says a former staff member. "It was his signature project, so he reserved the right to change anything around at the last minute." Bent on proving himself a serious person, he failed to take advice from more seasoned magazine people. "Sometimes he wouldn't see things that had the potential to make a very bad article." The product suffered, turnover was high, and ultimately the magazine ran into financial trouble.
But staff members there will never forget his flair as a manager. Kennedy often wore shorts and a baseball cap to work and brought his dog Friday to the office. He furnished his corner office, which was on the same floor as the rest of the magazine, modestly. "It felt like a college newspaper," says the former staffer. "We were once on deadline, feverishly trying to get the magazine out, and he walked in and said, 'Let's go to the park and play touch football.' People were appalled, but they appreciated a gesture he made in the fall of 1996, when the staff was again putting an issue to bed. Kennedy decided they needed to unwind: he called the Yankees front office and procured 41 skybox passes to a World Series game. No one complained that time."
While Kennedy was making something of George, his personal life was undergoing enormous upheavals. In 1994, his mother had succumbed to cancer, robbing him of the single most important person in his life. He issued a note-perfect statement to the press, grieved deeply and permanently, but got through it. It helped that he had fallen in love with Carolyn Bessette, an exquisitely sophisticated Calvin Klein public relations executive. As the relationship deepened and moved toward marriage, they realized that some serious press management was required. They leaked word that they were breaking up--and quietly made preparations for a secret wedding, with their 40 closest friends and family, on Cumberland Island, just off the Georgia coast. The tabloids rented boats and choppers and mounted invasions through a mangrove swamp, but they arrived too late to wreck the wedding. Jackie would have approved.
By then, Kennedy's dealings with the media had become deeply ritualized. "He was very nice to our reporters, extremely nice," says National Enquirer editor Steve Coz. "He always had a witty remark. We put in an offer that we'd love to do an at-home with him and Carolyn. His assistant called us back and said he told her to tell us he couldn't do the at-home that night because he and Carolyn were off to the fights."