Revealation by a Brothel Madame

High-class Paris brothel owner Madame Claude reveals all about A-list clients including JFK (who wanted a Jackie lookalike 'but hot')

By Dan Bloom and Annabel Fenwick Elliott 17:35 08 Aug 2014, updated 11:06 09 Aug 2014

High-class Paris brothel owner Madame Claude reveals all about A-list clients including JFK (who wanted a Jackie lookalike 'but hot')

• Madame Claude employed hundreds of call girls for stars in 1960s Paris
• Her clients were said to include Marlon Brando and Muammar Gaddafi
• Jackie Kennedy's first and second husbands both allegedly 'johns'
• The eccentric brothel madam claimed to have spent time imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War

France's most famous brothel madam claimed John F Kennedy asked her for a prostitute who looked like his wife Jackie - 'but hot'.

The former President joins a host of famous names said to have visited Madame Claude, the infamous owner of a high-class escort ring who employed hundreds of women in 1960s Paris.

Claude, now 91 and living in France, specialized in procuring call girls - whom she referred to as her 'swans' - for the rich and famous, servicing everyone from the actors Rex Harrison and Marlon Brando to the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

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Sensational claims: France's most famous brothel madam was allegedly approached by former U.S. President John F Kennedy (left) who wanted a lookalike of his first wife Jackie, the fashion and style icon (right) - 'but hot'

Sensational claims: France's most famous brothel madam was allegedly approached by former U.S. President John F Kennedy (left) who wanted a lookalike of his first wife Jackie, the fashion and style icon (right) - 'but hot'

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Surprising: It comes despite Jackie, nee Bouvier, being one of the most enduring fashion icons of her age

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Surprising: It comes despite Jackie, nee Bouvier, being one of the most enduring fashion icons of her age

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Famous: Pictured during her self-imposed exile in Los Angeles in 1985, Madame Claude was a cult figure

Acclaimed biographer William Stadiem, who penned the famous book on Marilyn Monroe, persuaded Madame Claude to co-author a tell-all book in the 1980s. Although it was never published, he has now has opened up about Claude and her roster of powerful clients.

Despite Jacqueline Kennedy being venerated as one of history's most elegant women, the explosive claims do not just involve her first husband.

Her second husband, the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, was also said to have visited Claude, along with his former lover Maria Callas; 'showing up with depraved requests that made Claude blush.'

'There was John Kennedy requesting a Jackie look-alike "but hot",' Mr Stadiem wrote in Vanity Fair, describing Claude as being 'tiny, blonde, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.'

'There was Marc Chagall giving the girls priceless sketches of their nude selves, Gianni Agnelli taking a post-orgy group to Mass, the Shah and his gifts of jewels.

'There were such disparate bedfellows on the client list as Moshe Dayan and Muammar Qaddafi, Marlon Brando and Rex Harrison.'

The final glimpses of JFK: story by those saw him in final hours

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Iconic: Jacqueline and her first husband formed one of the most recognisable couples in U.S. history

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Second husband: Aristotle Onassis pictured (right) after his marriage to Jackie (left) in August 1968

Mr Stadiem also reveals that the C.I.A. once hired Claude's women to keep up morale during the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, which aimed to end U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

'There are two things that people will always pay for, food and sex. I wasn't any good at cooking'

One of Claude's former loyal clients during the 50s and 60s was London's then-Spectator columnist Taki Theodoracopulos, who pointed out that 'going to a hooker' wasn't frowned upon in the days 'before the pill.'

Claude is said to have chosen mainly tall, stunning, 'failed actresses and models' - many of them Christian Dior couture models -  and favored foreign girls, especially Scandinavians.

The brothel madam is quoted as saying: 'There are two things that people will always pay for, food and sex. I wasn't any good at cooking.'

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Arresting: The claims about the lovers of Jacqueline are revealed in the new edition of Vanity Fair

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Arresting: The claims about the lovers of Jacqueline are revealed in the new edition of Vanity Fair

The article investigates the fascinating journey of Madame Claude, born Fernande Grudet in 1923, and how she allegedly turned from a convent-raised resistance agent in the Second World War - who spent a stint at a German Nazi concentration camp, and apparently has the 'camp number tattoo' to prove it - to the head of France's biggest prostitute ring.

Many of the elaborate claims Claude made about her past, however, have been labeled as 'lies' and 'fantasy' by various sources who knew her.

'She reduced the entire world to rich men wanting sex and poor women wanting money'

Ironically given the X-rated nature of Claude's career, the eccentric character - mother to one daughter -  claimed to have 'hated sex,' and was of the opinion that people over 40 'shouldn't have it.' She was, however, a huge fan of plastic surgery, having had everything but her breasts 'done.'

Having made herself a small fortune with her prostitution ring, Claude was forced to flee France for Los Angeles in 1977 when French authorities began hounding her over alleged tax evasion.

Though she continued working as a madam in the U.S., Claude was described as being 'totally alone and adrift' there. She lived in a small apartment in West Hollywood 'filled with wardrobes full of glamorous French clothes no one would ever wear in LA.'

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Infamous: Madame Claude after her return to France

During her time in Los Angeles, Claude once attempted to enlist legendary actress and author Joan Collins as one of her 'swans.' In Ms Collins' 1997 memoir Second Act, she described Claude's proposition.

'Your husbands don't have to know, and I believe you could make enough money to buy yourself a few little extra baubles,' Claude allegedly said.

Some of the associates Mr Stadiem spoke with were decidedly scathing when describing Claude.

In one account, Françoise Fabian - the actress who played Claude in the 1977 film of her exploits - said she 'was like a slave driver on a plantation in the American South', who pushed the women who worked for her into debt.

Another account, from former-Hollywood based journalist Dany Jucaud was as follows: 'She was vicious... She reduced the entire world to rich men wanting sex and poor women wanting money.'

Eventually, Claude returned to her home country of France, endured a short jail term, and now lives a life shielded from the world.

Life of a Wife of an Assassin

My husband did NOT kill JFK: Lee Harvey Oswald’s reclusive widow,who 'lives in fear of being killed by the Secret Service' and has turned down $3m to talk about the JFK assassination ahead of the 50-year anniversary, is convinced he was not the assassin… and believes her phone is still being bugged on 50th anniversary of his death

• Marina Oswald Porter, a 72-year-old grandmother has lived with her second husband Ken in Rockwall, Texas since the mid-Seventies
• The Russian-born former pharmacology student met Oswald in Minsk in 1961 after he defected to the Soviet Union
• He brought her back with him to America and the couple had two daughters before his arrest for the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963
• She initially believed he was guilty of the shooting, but subsequently changed her mind after reading the many conspiracy theories
• Eighty per cent of American citizens are sceptical about the official version of events of Kennedy's assassination
• She has two daughters by Oswald and a son with her second husband
• The assassin's ring sold to an anonymous Texas bidder on October 24 for $108,000 - Mrs Porter will keep the proceeds

By Lizzie Parry
PUBLISHED: 10:46 GMT, 2 November 2013 | UPDATED: 11:58 GMT, 2 November 2013

Fifty years after her husband became one of the most reviled men in American history Marina Porter has revealed she is convinced Lee Harvey Oswald was not responsible for killing President John F Kennedy.
Half a century after a gunshot rang out and rendered her a widow with two young children to care for, the now 72-year-old has seen in public, stepping out to shop in Walmart.
Since her husband - a Soviet defector - was named the man responsible for assassinating JFK, Russian-born Marina has lived a quiet life behind closed doors, hiding away from suspicious eyes.

Marina Oswald Porter, widow of Lee Harvey Oswald who assassinated JFK, told a press conference in 1977: 'I believe that Lee acted alone in this murder and shot the President , ironically a man whom he respected and admired'. She now no longer believes he killed the president

Gripped by fear and facing accusations from those who believe she was a co-conspirator in a KGB plot, the grandmother has lived in Rockwall, Texas since the mid-1970s with her second husband Kenneth Porter and three children.
But as the 50th anniversary of the tragedy approaches the now 72-year-old has emerged from her inconspicuous life.
Mrs Porter, is said to be struggling through a life blighted by illness, made worse by the impending 50th anniversary and the inevitable media frenzy which will ensue.

Immediately after the assassination the then mother-of-two told the Warren Commission investigating the assassination that she thought her 24-year-old husband was guilty of shooting the president.
But as the 50th anniversary looms, sources have revealed, the mother-of-three has, after reading 40,000 books and conspiracy theories about the shooting, she has changed her mind.
She now believes, along with the majority of American citizens, that a more complex cover up led to the shooting of the beloved president.
Close friend and documentary film maker Keya Morgan, said she now believes her husband was set up to take the fall for conspirators in the CIA and Mafia.
The 72-year-old is said to be convinced her phones are still tapped by the Secret Service and lives in fear of being targeted and killed by spooks herself.

Marina Oswald weeps as she views the body of her husband and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before burial on November 25, 1963. She is holding her 22-month-old daughter June

Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina, and his daughter June Lee, when they lived in Minsk in the USSR, shortly before they moved to the U.S.

Mr Morgan told the Daily Mirror: 'She has spent half a century fearing for her own life.
'The anniversary is a constant reminder of what happened. Her life now is like a terrifying episode of the Twilight Zone, where every day she is forced to answer the same question about the most traumatic moment of her life.
'She is terrified of what might happen to her if she allowed herself to be thrust back into the limelight.'
He said he fears the 50th anniversary bandwagon is seriously damaging her health - causing her to develop an immune deficiency disorder from the stress.
Marina, a Russian immigrant to the U.S., was living apart from Oswald when he shot dead President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
The night before the assassination she remembers him bringing his rifle to her home and putting it in the garage. The next day, she noticed it was gone.
Due to her relationship with Oswald, Marina found herself the focus of intense scrutiny, so has spent many years hidden away in the small town, where a sign at the end of her driveway warns to 'Keep Out'.
Two years after the JFK assassination, Marina married Kenneth Porter and they moved to Texas around ten years later. The family settled in Rockwall just 20 miles from Dallas.

Assassin's ring: A wedding band worn by Lee Harvey Oswald until just hours before he killed President John F. Kennedy was sold at auction this month for $108,000

She has two daughters by Oswald - June and Rachel - who confirmed to the National Enquirer that Marina does believe their father was innocent of the shooting and just a patsy for the Mafia and CIA. The Porters also have a son called Mark.
The 72-year-old Mrs Porter has changed her mind about Oswald's guilt, according to the report, after reading books and watching documentaries on the assassination which has been mired in conspiracy theories for decades.
Mr Morgan, told the Enquirer: 'She certainly doesn't believe the official story - she always told me Lee Harvey Oswald loved President Kennedy.

Banded together: Oswald is pictured wearing his wedding band as he and wife Marina leave Belarus in the early sixties for America. It sold for $108,000 at auction earlier this month

'Marina says she remembers the day the Kennedys' premature baby Patrick died (August 7, 1963) and she found Lee sobbing.'
Despite her change of heart over Oswald, Mrs Porter's neighbors in Rockwall told the National Enquirer that she is a much-loved member of the local community.
Fred McCurley, who lives nearby, told the Enquirer: 'She and Ken are good people, the  best neighbors you could ever have.'
In July, Mrs Porter announced that she putting his wedding ring up for auction as she breaks the final ties to what she describes as the 'worst day of my life'.
She had given the band up to be auctioned in New Hampshire after it was returned to her following 50 years lost in an attorney's folder of legal papers from the trial.
The ring sold to an anonymous Texas bidder on October 24 for $108,000.
It is accompanied by a fascinating letter written by Mrs Porter which gives the background to the historical object. 

Previous life: Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina and their daughter June Lee in 1962

Fateful day: A snapshot taken of the moment JFK was shot in the head in 1963 while driving through Dallas, Texas

President and Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at Dallas Love Field a few hours before he was killed by a sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald

A small section reads: 'At this time of my life, I don’t wish to have Lee’s ring in my possession because symbolicly [sic] I want to let go of my past that is connecting with Nov. 22, 1963.'
Mrs Porter will keep the proceeds from the sale. In the letter she writes that the ring, which has a tiny engraving of a hammer and sickle, was bought by Oswald in Minsk in 1961 shortly before the couple returned to the U.S.
The ring was left on the couple's bedside table when Oswald set out to kill the President.
Oswald was himself later shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby while in police custody.
She had refused to speak publicly as the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination approaches. 
The wedding band was discovered in 2004 stuck in a manila folder at a Forth Worth law firm.
It was among the papers of Forrest Markward, a lawyer who represented Mrs Porter following the Kennedy assassination.
After several years of legal tussles, the ring was returned by post to Mrs Porter in an envelope marked 'Treasury Department Secret Service'.

Doomed: President Kennedy delivers a speech at a rally in Fort Worth, Texas several hours before his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963

Marina Oswald, pictured with her two daughters in the Rachel and June Lee shortly after her husband shot and killed JFK

Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in downtown Dallas.
Oswald then fatally shot Officer J.D. Tippit and was arrested at the Texas Theatre in the city. 
The 50th anniversary has been gaining attention in recent months as everyone from museum curators to musicians have embarked on projects to remember the event.
The city of Dallas will hold a commemoration November 22 in Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy's motorcade was passing as shots rang out.

Mrs Oswald Porter has refused to speak publicly about the grim anniversary - despite being offered massive sums to take part in television features.

Every day reporters try to contact her to talk to her about her first husband and, although she is not well off, she is terrified of being thrust back into the limelight - no matter the incentive.
Her main concern these days is her family, particularly her two daughters who have avoided the long shadow of their father to lead successful lives and start their own families.

Killing: Oswald is seen here being led through Dallas Police Station after being arrested on suspicion of assassinating President John F Kennedy. He was later shot and killed himself by Jack Ruby

Evidence: Marina Oswald Porter with her husband Ken Porter in 1968 at court in Texas in connection with the trial of her ex-husband Lee Harvey Oswald
Astonishingly, these are the first images of reclusive Marina Oswald in 25 years.

Guarded: These are the first new pictures of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald widow Marina in 25 years

Marina Oswald, now Marina Oswald Porter, was seen shopping at a Walmart near her home in rural Texas

The former Mrs Oswald remarried just two years after her husband was shot dead while in police custody

Russian-born Marina is now a 72-year-old, and has lived for the past 25 years as a virtual recluse

Marina was with her was second husband, former drag racer Kenneth Porter, 75, whom she married less than two years after her late husband was himself shot dead in full view of the world's media

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DID OSWALD ACT ALONE?

It is widely believed that Oswald shot three bullets from his rifle. One missed entirely, a second hit Kennedy and passed through Governor Connally, the third was the fatal shot to the President.
Through FBI testing it was established the gun could be fired by an experienced shooter three times within five to eight seconds.
But in Governor Connally's own words: 'There were either two or three people involved, or more, in this — or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle.'
The politician's wife believed that her husband was hit by a bullet that was separate from the two that hit Kennedy.
In the Zapruder film, the JFK's head appears to move backwards after the last, fatal shot, an indication to some that a bullet was fired from the front.
There have been witness statements that two men were seen on top of a grassy knoll to the west of the Texas School Book Depository before the shooting.

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All the president's women

All the president's women: Virgin interns. Prostitutes. White House pool sex sessions. 50 years after the murder of JFK, the jaw-dropping truth of the betrayal of Jackie

• British author Sarah Bradford updates her biography of Jacqueline Kennedy
• Reveals JFK's affairs including swimming pool frolics with two secretaries
• He 'said': 'I get a migraine headache if I don't get a strange piece of a** daily'
• People thought wife Jackie didn't mind infidelities as she showed no signs

By Sarah Bradford
PUBLISHED: 21:00 GMT, 19 October 2013 | UPDATED: 13:01 GMT, 20 October 2013
 

It is half a century since Lee Harvey Oswald aimed his rifle through a sixth-floor window  of the Texas School Book Depository and fired a shot which would echo round the world. In the days following John Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, his widow Jackie's grace and dignity defined her  in the eyes of millions around the world. At JFK's funeral, where she held the hands of their two small children, she became an icon, burdened until the day she died with the dreams and expectations  of millions of strangers.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, British author Sarah Bradford has updated her acclaimed biography of Jacqueline Kennedy and sheds new light on her complex relationship with the sexually voracious JFK and her sometimes waspish views of the major world figures she rubbed shoulders with...

Rare time off together: JFK and Jackie sailing off Rhode Island in 1962

It was Jackie's state visit to Paris in 1961 that made her an international superstar. She was, as one reporter put it, 'news 24 hours a day'. The fashion journal Women's Wear Daily could have been re-christened What Jackie Wears Daily.
The 'Jackie look' was a regular selling point on Seventh Avenue. Even behind the Iron Curtain a Leningrad fashion magazine carried advertisements for 'Jackie look' clothes, and the Polish magazine Swait wrote that she had 'entered the group of a few women in the world who set the style and tone of their epoch'.

It was at this point that Kennedy's Chief of Protocol, the worldly Angier Biddle Duke, told his future wife, Robin, 'The deck has shifted'. Indeed, the balance of power had tilted subtly towards Jackie, both in the eyes of her husband (which was all important to her) and the Kennedy entourage. If Jack was the Sun King, Jackie was by now most definitely America's Queen.
Gore Vidal recalls that Jackie had said: 'I never saw Jack until we got to the White House. He was always away and gone.'
Vidal added: 'I don't even think he thought anything about her until he began to see pictures of her in the paper, this glamorous woman who happened to be married to him. 

Beach boy: JFK in 1962, surrounded by admirers after a swim at Santa Monica

'And he started calling her "the sex symbol" - as in "Will you tell the sex symbol lunch is ready?".
He found that pretty funny and I think it awakened his interest.'
However, their relationship remained complex.
Jack was becoming like Jackie's idealised father 'Black' Jack Bouvier - the dashing womaniser who still came home to envelop his family with love. The birth of JFK's children had awakened a strong paternal streak in him, But he would not, and could not, give up his sexual habits; nor did he feel the least bit guilty about them.
As Jackie's sister Lee Radziwill was to tell Cecil Beaton in June 1968: 'Jack used to play around and I knew exactly what he was up to and would tell him so. And he'd have absolutely no guilty conscience. He said, "I love her deeply and have done everything for her. I've no feeling of letting her down because I've put her foremost in everything".'

Jackie's sister Lee Radziwill (top) was to tell Cecil Beaton (bottom) in June 1968: 'Jack used to play around and I knew exactly what he was up to and would tell him so. And he'd have absolutely no guilty conscience'

Jack had anticipated that the Presidency would limit his sexual adventures but, instead, high office meant that he could have virtually any woman he wanted and Jackie's frequent absences gave him plenty of opportunity.
Secret Service logs show that Jackie spent a great deal more time away from the White House than at the White House. She spent almost all the steamy summer months out of Washington and, even when she was there, regularly left on Friday afternoon for their rented Virginia horse farm Glen Ora, or to go to the Kennedy family seat at Hyannis Port in Cape Cod, and did not return until Monday or later.
Jack never left the White House until Saturday.
Jackie was a rebel and a free spirit at heart, and the White House seemed claustrophobic.
Furthermore, she could close her eyes to what Jack was up to when she was not with him.
'It's amazing - he used to do it in front of her,' said a well-known New York debutante several years younger than Jackie.
'In New York a great friend, one  of his ex-girls, organised an after-theatre party. He had obviously said to her, "Can you get me a bunch of young nice girls?"'

Jackie, wife of US President Kennedy

'I was invited and another great friend of mine was asked. The two of us were riveted so we both went. There were about four or five other friends, single girls we knew also. One by one, each of us was told, "The President would like to speak to you", and we were led over for about ten minutes.
'I wasn't as enamoured of him as other people were. I didn't think he was this great sex symbol. But what fascinated us all was that Jackie was sitting there and he actually said, ''I'll take that one."'
'I know exactly who won. She shall be nameless. This was a very shy, divine girl, Very pretty, very tall. The next time I saw Jackie was when they asked me to a party at the White House. It was the last party before he was killed.
'She was waltzing around, and he would dance with a girl for five  minutes and then they would disappear up in the lift and then they'd be back in 20 minutes. We just sat there watching, my friend and I.
'I was astounded. And Jackie paid no attention.
'Life with Kennedy must have been total hell because he never stopped, none of those [Kennedy] boys do. And they have to have every woman in the room.
'I remember when Kennedy was assassinated - I had this tiny flat just off Fifth Avenue and 80th Street. And the day after he was killed and everybody was watching the funeral I had four what you'd call ''widows'' in my tiny sitting room - all married - because they couldn't cry their eyes out in front of their husbands, all of whom thought they had been the only one.
'I swear to you, and this is absolutely true, at this point it was more chic not to have slept with the  President than to have slept with him. Every time Jackie walked into a room she must have known that half the women there had slept with him.
'One of the ''widows'' who was in my apartment talked about it the whole time to anyone who would  listen. She was snuck into the White House in the boot of a car, and  she was taken down to the swimming pool and he would join her for a swim.

Around the time Jackie visited Paris in 1961 and gained fame, Jack was starting to resemble her idealised father 'Black' Jack Bouvier (top) - the dashing womaniser who came home to envelop his family with love

'Then there was the famous Angie Dickinson who used to go up and down in the lift at the Carlyle Hotel, you know, at the back, the service lift. And there was Marilyn Monroe. What I couldn't understand about all these women was that they must have known that they were the lollipop for the day and who wants to be used as a lollipop?'
People thought that Jackie did not mind Jack's infidelities because she showed no signs of doing so.
Indeed, the President's notorious swimming-pool frolics with the two secretaries known as 'Fiddle' and 'Faddle' did not worry her, but his sleeping with her friends and women in her circle, did.
As Robin Biddle Duke, who married Angie in May 1962, said: 'She had a lot of reasons to be fragile and to feel fragile because it hurts.
'She marries Jack and he is the love of her life and he really does like, you know, fiddling around with other girls. I felt very sorry for her because public humiliation is devastating. Everybody knew that Jack was naughty. I mean, it was something that wasn't talked about but I think this woman was put through a very great deal.
'I think she loved JFK and she always thought he loved her. In his way he did, but his love had certain reservations and hers was total.

Famous Angie Dickinson (bottom) 'went up and down in the lift at the Carlyle Hotel'. And there was Marilyn Monroe

'Deep down Jack Kennedy would probably have liked to have been as good a husband to Jackie as he was a father to Caroline and John and in his own way he tried. When asked by a friend why he played around, he replied seriously: I can't help it.'
He shocked the eminently respectable, self-controlled British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, by  confessing to him that if he didn't have sex at least once a day, he had a headache.
To the far less respectable Bobby Baker, secretary to the Senate Democrats and provider of favours for senators, he said, according to Baker, 'I get a migraine headache if I don't get a strange piece of a** every day.'
To Jack, easily bored in this as in everything else, variety was the spice of life: he not only liked different women but three-in-a-bed sessions, sometimes with hookers. According to the Secret Service logs, appointments with women were made through Jack's old friend and closest personal aide, Dave Powers, whose name appeared in the official record. When Teddy Kennedy was being publicly unfaithful, Jackie told his disconsolate wife Joan, 'All Kennedy men are like that.'
'He just couldn't resist a girl with a little bit of Social Register in her background,' recalled one of JFK's young lovers, Marion 'Mimi' Beardsley. She was a tall, slender and beautiful 19-year-old at Jackie's old  school, Miss Porter's, Farmington, when she wrote to the White House requesting an interview with Jackie for her college newspaper.
A year later, Mimi was invited to join the White House staff as an intern. Within days she was introduced to the President over cocktails. 'Would you like a tour of the residence, Mimi?' he asked and proceeded to the bedroom he shared with Jackie where, without apparent compunction, he took the 20-year-old's virginity on Jackie's bed.
'The midday swim in the overheated pool was an inviolable part of his routine, and so it became part  of my routine as well,' Mimi wrote.
'I would swim with the President at noon or near the end of the work  day, race back to my desk, and  then wait for a call to come upstairs in the evening.
'The governing factor behind these calls... was the presence - or, more accurately, the absence, of Mrs Kennedy in the White House.'

Marion 'Mimi' Beardsley, the White House intern who lost her virginity to JFK on Jackie's bed

Like other people who knew JFK, Mimi talked of his 'genius at compartmentalising' his life, placing Jackie on a pedestal to keep her  apart from all the other women in  his life.
Jackie, however, kept hoping he would calm down, as she confessed to her friend Adlai Stevenson. 'I don't care how many girls [Jack sleeps with] as long as I know he knows  it's wrong and I think he does now,' she said.
The death (at two days old) of his youngest son, Patrick, in August 1963 was an unbearable blow for Jack.
Mimi wrote: 'I had never seen real grief until I saw the President  when he returned to the White House while Mrs Kennedy recovered for a few more days in hospital. He invited me upstairs and we sat outside on  the balcony in the soft summer evening air.
'There was a stack of condolence letters on the floor next to his chair, and he picked each one up and read it aloud to me.
'Some were from friends, others from strangers, but they were all heartfelt and deeply moving. Occasionally, tears rolling down his cheeks, he would write something on one of the letters . . . but mostly he just read them and cried.'
America's Queen: The Life Of  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, by Sarah Bradford, is published on  October 31 by Penguin, priced £14.99.

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How the Queen took 'revenge'

The plan for the Kennedys' London visit in June 1961 had been cooked up when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan visited the White House two months earlier.
In order not to offend French President Charles de Gaulle -  who was suspicious of the Anglo-American relationship - the official reason for the visit was the christening of Jackie's niece Anna Christina Radziwill. Macmillan was to give an informal luncheon and the Queen a dinner at the Palace.
Jack and Jackie had been asked beforehand by the Palace whom they would like to be invited. Jackie proposed the child's parents - her sister Lee and her husband Stanislaw Radziwill, a London-based Polish prince.
She also proposed Princess Margaret, whom she wanted to meet, and Princess Marina,  whom Jack remembered from his father's days in the US Embassy in London.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh with President John F Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline

Initially the Palace wanted to veto the Radziwills because they were both divorcees. After an intervention - presumably by Macmillan - they relented.
But Jackie joked: 'The Queen had her revenge. No Margaret, no Marina, no one except every Commonwealth minister of agriculture they could find. The Queen was pretty heavy going.'
Jackie thought the Queen 'resented' her - in all probability she was intimidated by Mrs Kennedy's famous sophistication - and that Prince Philip was  'nice but nervous'.
'The Queen was human only once,' Jackie said. She had been telling Her Majesty about the Kennedy state visit to Canada and the rigours of being on view at all hours. Jackie recalled: 'The Queen looked rather conspiratorial and said, ''One gets crafty after a while and learns how to save oneself.'' 
Then the Queen said: 'You like pictures?'
And she marched Jackie down a long gallery, stopping at a Van Dyck to say: 'That's a good horse.'