Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir, Clint Hil [large ebook reader TXT] 📗

from the flight. One of the first things you learn as an agent is to eat whenever you have the chance, and use the bathroom whenever the opportunity presents itself. There were plenty of days you’d go for ten or twelve hours without a chance to do either, and a bag of peanuts often became lunch or dinner.

When I arrived at the villa, Benno and Nicole Graziani were there, and everybody was sitting around drinking coffee, laughing, and telling stories. It was nice to see Mrs. Kennedy so relaxed, among friends and family with whom she didn’t have to put up any pretense. The group had decided to go to the beach that morning, so we called the police to let them know the plan. Police boats would patrol the coast, and both uniformed and plainclothes officers would be scattered around the area.

We piled everybody into the umbrella-topped beach cars and headed down the steep, curvy streets to the seaside town of Amalfi, where we would then take a boat to the Conca dei Marini. The children loved the miniature cars and everybody was laughing and kidding around.

We had arranged to have a boat available for waterskiing, sightseeing, and just getting from one point to another. This boat was not your average rental boat, however. It was a Riva—a sleek Italian-made Chris-Craft type boat about twenty-four feet in length that had a highly varnished mahogany hull and an extremely powerful engine. The boat was named Pretexte and came with its own operator, who was on standby for the duration of our stay. He spoke very little English, but we managed to communicate in a sort of charades-type system in which I tried to act out what it was we wanted to do, and he would respond by nodding his head and rattling off in Italian. Somehow it worked.

By the time we got the beach cars down to Amalfi, word had gotten out, and there was a line of photographers waiting on the pier. Their cameras were snapping away as they called out, “Jackie! Jackie! Look here! Over here! Smile Jackie!”

It felt like we were being surrounded by a swarm of locusts.

“Just ignore them,” Mrs. Kennedy whispered to Caroline. “They’ll tire of us soon enough.”

I knew better. Jacqueline Kennedy had become an international star—more popular than Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, and Grace Kelly all put together—and these photographers knew that a picture of the First Lady of the United States of America in a bathing suit was worth big money. The question was, how to get them to stop? Obviously the “rules” set out by the police weren’t working.

When Mrs. Kennedy emerged from the beach house in a dark green one-piece bathing suit with a low-cut back, the photographers went crazy. Some were snapping pictures from balconies in villas perched above the bay, while others were hazardously zipping around in motorboats trying to get a different angle. Benno Graziani, Mrs. Kennedy, and Lee were wading in the water with the three young children trying their best to ignore the circus-like scene that was getting worse by the minute. Benno wasn’t taking any pictures, but his mere presence was creating a problem.

Agent Paul Rundle had been trying to resolve the situation with the police and the photographers, and he had learned that the other photographers felt that Graziani had exclusive access to Mrs. Kennedy, which was unfair to the rest of them. They refused to back off. So Rundle and I came up with an idea. What if we got Mrs. Kennedy to give them ten minutes of photos if they would agree to back off and leave her alone after that? The photographers thought that sounded reasonable. Now I had to get Mrs. Kennedy to go for the idea.

I waded into the water to Mrs. Kennedy, who was pushing Caroline and Tony around on a raft. Her hair was pinned up in the back, with her long bangs hanging wispily in front of her eyes.

As soon as she saw me, she said, “Oh Mr. Hill, these photographers are horrible. Can’t you do something about them?”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. Apparently they are upset that Benno has almost unlimited access to you, while they are restricted to distant shots. They’ve agreed to stop this aggressive behavior, and promise to give you some privacy if you will just pose for one good photo in your bathing suit.”

“Do you really think they’ll do as they say with just one photo session?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I will tell them that one session is what they get and then they must withdraw and quit harassing you. If they don’t comply, we will make their lives miserable.”

“Oh Mr. Hill, can’t you make their lives miserable without me having to pose?” she asked.

I knew this was asking a lot of her, and was so outside of her comfort zone, but there didn’t seem to be an alternative, other than have her spend the entire holiday inside the villa.

“I think in all fairness, Mrs. Kennedy, you have to give them something or the harassment will only continue to get worse and worse.”

This still didn’t satisfy her. She looked at me pleadingly.

“Can’t you just round them all up and have them sent away somewhere?”

I wanted to laugh, but she was dead serious.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Kennedy, they have a right to be here, too, because it’s public property.”

Remembering President Kennedy’s instructions to me, I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled about seeing his wife posing for the cameras in her bathing suit, but the alternative was that someone was going to get a shot of Mrs. Kennedy in an awkward position, and that would be even more embarrassing and potentially humiliating.

“All right, if you think it will work, I’ll allow a brief photo session.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy,” I said. “I’ll arrange it and we’ll try to just get it over with.”

A short while later, Mrs. Kennedy posed on the landing area just below the beach house,