Kennedy, Sex & Prostitutes

By David Rosen

While living in Springfield, IL, during 1837–1839, Abraham Lincoln wrote a poem called “On Seduction” that reads in part:

Whatever Spiteful fools may Say / Each jealous, ranting yelper —

No woman ever played the whore / Unless She had a man to help her.

Presidents are among the men who have long been helpers. Their sexual predilections bespeak the sexual culture of the nation.

Before John Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, his numerous sexual affairs were a wink-and-a-nod public secret, widely known but discretely hidden by the White House press corp. After his murder, JFK’s dalliances, both consensual and commercial, became fodder for gossip columnists and others, artfully turned into a celebrity sensation, morphing from scandal into presidential lore.

After Kennedy’s assassination, his sexual liaisons became the stuff of myth. It was revealed that he had affairs with movie stars Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Tierney and Angie Dickinson; Inga Arvad, a Danish journalist; the stripper, Blaze Starr; Gunilla von Post, a Swedish socialite; Judith Exner Campbell, mistress to mob boss Sam Giancana; Mary Pinchot Meyer, wife of a CIA operative; Helen Chavchavadze, a college classmate of Jackie’s sister, Lee Bouviea; Pamela Turnure, Jackie’s press secretary; White House secretaries Priscilla Weir and Jill Cowan, who were fondly referred to as “Fiddle” and “Faddle”; and Mimi Beardsley Alford, a 19-year-old White…