(16 may 2006/23 september 2010)

Long, long ago, back in the dark ages before US Weekly, the movie magazines reigned supreme. A special breed of tabloid that the film studios cunningly created in the 1920s as a publicity tool,  the movie mags spent their first 40 years offering puff pieces on everyone’s favorite stars. But, because it is often hard to make money being nice, in the late 1950s, the tone of their coverage took a salacious turn and veered towards the tantalizing cocktail of glamorous lives, naughty headlines and provocative photographs that beckons to us from newstands to this very day.

Tabloids, as a genre, engender little loyalty, so the industry has always depended upon newsstand sales to an extraordinary extent. To this end, movie magazine editors rushed to find celebrities who exercised broad appeal and would hold the public’s interest over long periods of time. Three months was considered an eternity. Thirty years had never before been done.

Much as popcorn kept movie theaters afloat after the advent of television, so Jackie Kennedy salvaged the movie magazines. She never starred in a movie but she featured in the movie magazines to such an extent that  in 1962, Variety enthusiastically hailed her as the “world’s top box office femme.” The prevailing editorial policy of all of the 40+ movie magazines then became this: to regularly feature the First Lady alongside “any lady or gentleman of the screen and television who misbehaved.”

Among the ladies and gentlemen misbehaving at the time, Liz Taylor was queen bee. Thus, despite the absence of any legitimate connection, Liz and her then-husband Richard Burton would become Jackie’s “magazine relatives.” Ultimately, the Jackie-Burton-Liz tabloid triangle pervaded the national consciousness to such an extent that it created among magazine readers a Pavlovian response to the three principle players. According to sociologist Irving Schulman:

If new photographs worthy of inclusion at deadline were not to be had, art directors arranged jigsaw cutouts for Jackie-Burton-Liz, and in a very short time indeed a national conditioned response was established. Purchasers who saw a photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy would think immediately of Elizabeth Taylor and what she was doing; conversely a photograph of [ . . . ] Elizabeth Taylor would conjure up an image of Mrs. Kennedy.

The Jackie-Liz connection would become so integrated into the popular culture that in the Hollywood treatment of the Jackie story, The Greek Tycoon, the lead female character was named “Liz.”

In the beginning, particularly during the Kennedy administration, the movie magazine coverage remained somewhat circumspect. The couples served as simple foils for one another; the Burtons’ racy exploits emphasized the Kennedys’ elegance while Jack and Jackie’s élan exaggerated Burton and Liz’s decadence. In the fall of 1963,  the question of the Kennedys’ “Marriage & Taste” versus the Burtons’ “Passion & Waste” was of such critical social import that  Photoplay gave it major coverage.

In retrospect, it is not surprising that this circumspection ceased with the death of JFK. As Jackie marched into single womanhood, the tabloids switched course and focused on the remaining threesome- cropping cover photos and manipulating gossip to suggest romantic intrigues, clandestine meetings, and unorthodox sexual proclivities. Richard Burton and Jackie Kennedy may never have held hands, but thanks to clever editors and decoupage, on countless magazine covers they did.

The tabloids intentions here were completely pure: they sought to unite “Jackie” with the Burtons because “It would truly be a new, fun, fun world for Jackie– for the Burtons are fun, fun people.” And, really, who didn’t want Jackie to have fun?

Editors could not have created more different and more profitable characters to mash-up. Women loved to hate “Liz,” an actress who seemed constantly on the brink of personal disaster; they simply loved Mrs. Kennedy. In the words of pop-philosopher Wayne Koestenbaum, “Liz was trash; Jackie was royalty.” It was the perfect mix.

In the American consciousness, Jackie and Liz presented two entirely different versions of femininity in practice. What this translated into was Jackie being the woman everyone should aspire to be and Liz being the woman no woman would want to become (never mind that Liz seemed to always be having a hell of a lot more fun).

This dichotomy is nowhere more vividly exemplified than in the 1962 magazine, JACKIE and LIZ. The commemorative opens with a page that explains the editors’ reasons for comparing Jackie and Liz: “They shine in completely different constellations and exert a completely different emotional and moral effect upon us… To compare them [ . . . is] a way for us to examine the natures of the stars we create, and in the process discover something about ourselves.”

What we, the reader, should discover is clarified in a simple headline on the same page: “LIZ TAYLOR: A Warning To American Women; JACKIE KENNEDY: An Inspiration to American Youth.” Jackie was “WOMAN OF THE YEAR,” “Mistress of the Washington Merry Go-Round,” and “First in the Hearts of Her Countrymen.” She “KEEPS HER MAN HAPPY,” is “SURROUNDED BY LOVE” and only “Leaves Her Home For Service.”

In very stark contrast, “Liz” was the “SENSATION OF THE YEAR” and “STAR OF THE ROMAN SCANDALS.” “A Woman Without a Country” who was “Caught in the mad Marriage-Go-Round” and “SURROUNDED BY FEAR,” she faced “A THREATENING TOMORROW.”

I know no women who would welcome a threatening tomorrow. Life is hard enough as it is.

In JACKIE and LIZ, Jackie was lifted up as a shining paragon of virtue and good. To gossip columnist Fanny Hurst, her place in people’s affections was a barometer of the national well-being. So long as we all loved Jackie, the world would be ok.

In contrast, through “unsavory Taylor-Burton headlines, the shabby stories of shabby lies, of multiple marriages, infidelities, divorces, broken homes, displaced children,” Liz- heaven help her- had “steered her sex toboggan down a dangerous run.” A message that was, no doubt, not lost on readers whose own marriages might be lacking “the fire of passion” and women who might be tempted to follow Liz’s less traditionally feminine example by steering their own toboggans along her perilous path. Let there be no doubt, “Roman Scandals” were not welcome here.

Collectively, the tabloid narrative implies a sexual rivalry between the two women. When Jackie, allegedly rankled by Liz’s affair on the Cleopatra set, didn’t attend the movie’s Washington premier, TV Radio Mirror rushed to declare it: THE DAY JACKIE ‘SLAPPED’ LIZ! In the article, prudish Jackie frowns upon Liz’s amorous exploits and Liz’s doings appear spectacularly more whorish when on parade before Jackie’s puritanical restraint. Yes, Liz’s indiscretions were startling by contemporary standards, but she appears downright depraved beside Jackie’s sanctity.

In later years, all this would change.  With“Jackie’s” slide toward Greek decadance, the rivalry would continue to dominate newsstands but the headlines would grow increasingly sexual and provocative: AMERICA’S TWO FALLEN QUEENS; ONE NIGHT WITH JACKIE’S HUSBAND MAKES LIZ’ DREAM COME TRUE; THE NIGHT ONASSIS TURNED TO LIZ; JACKIE DISGRACED AS ARI BOOZES IT UP WITH LIZ IN PUBLIC BAR; TWO DESPERATE WOMEN GAMBLE ALL; LIZ’ PREMARITAL HONEYMOON PLANS INVOLVE JACKIE’S HUSBAND!

Jackie’s very appearance in the movie magazines suggested a massive shift from their original function as an advertising vehicle for motion picture stars. Both Liz and Jackie were exaggerated icons, however, Liz, an actress, was in fact selling a product– herself and her movies. Because Jackie had nothing to hawk, her life itself was turned into a movie for the public’s entertainment. By the early-1960s, it was playing out on newsstands all across the country.

In time, the differences in the unique relationships readers developed with both women would become more apparent. Liz’s connection to the public derived from total revelation. In Life the Movie, film and culture commentator Neal Gabler succinctly catalogs Liz’s shifting societal role:

Taylor’s early appeal as a life performer was her willingness to expose her private sexuality, first with [Eddie] Fisher and then with [Richard] Burton, and to provide a voyeuristic charge for those who read about her. Her later appeal, when she was no longer a sex symbol, was her willingness to expose her dysfunctions as melodramatic entertainment: her ballooning weight and subsequent diets, her drug problems, her vexed marriages and romances, her various illnesses.

In contrast, Jackie’s audience was tantalized by what she withheld. Her adamant refusal to reveal herself or her private life created a vast expanse of ignorance, which proved fertile ground for wildly speculative assertions and implausible fantasies. Because Jackie refused to participate in the tabloid pageant, the magazines reached out to readers—inviting them to select a wedding dress for Jackie’s remarriage, to suggest a hairstyle, and to pass judgment upon her hem lengths. In a manner eerily evocative of American Idol, the movie magazines fostered the public’s sense of interactivity in Mrs. Kennedy’s life. After her remarriage in 1968, Motion Picture even invited readers to vote to “BACK JACKIE,” as if their support would have a real effect upon the new Mrs. Onassis.

In American culture, Jackie acted as a tabula rasa, onto which everyone from little girls to frustrated housewives could project their fantasies of glamour and romance. As an Onassis acquaintance once said: “Jackie was nothing; an ordinary American woman with average tastes and some money. She was a creation of the American imagination.” Yet, within the tabloid culture, Jackie heralded a new age, in which “an ordinary housewife writ large” could become a star. And as that great arbiter of celebrity- and friend of both Jackie and Liz- Andy Warhol once said, “More than anything people just want stars.”

© faith e.

(19 may 2008)

this friday, it will have been 14 years since seventh grade oline sat in mrs. watson’s science class in a pair of white shorts and a green shirt—freezing because the AC was on high and it was a bit too early for said white shorts—straining to hear anderson cooper’s mournful channel one report on the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis over the gaggle of sunflowers-scented blathering cheerleaders at the back of the room.

try as i might, deafO that i was and am, i couldn’t hear a word. i could only sit and watch the photos flicker past, a lifetime condensed into an eleven minute montage.

i knew nothing about her beyond what had been captured in a two-paragraph blurb on a badly xeroxed women’s history month handout distributed in mrs. pavlick’s english class the year before. so i knew she was on par with florence nightingale and madame curie. but these gals, with their ruffled blouses and bunsen burners, seemed at home on badly xeroxed handouts. jackie’s feathered bouffant and onassis earrings bespoke a modernity uncharacteristic of historical heroines. she seemed epochs away.

i paid her no attention at the time. she meant nothing to me then.

actually, that’s kind of a lie. because this was back when i went to bed at 8:30 every night and woke up early enough to crawl into my parents’ bed and watch the headline news hollywood minute at the bottom of the half hour and eight minutes of the real news at the top. so i heard things. i knew she was sick.

and i knew who she was. i’d been playing with tom tierney paper dolls since i was old enough to wield my mum’s manicure scissors and the kennedys were the apex of the presidential families series. so i knew caroline kennedydoll had a pony named macaroni, that JFKdoll had by far the best underwear of the presidents, and somehow i discerned that jackiedoll would’ve dumped JFKdoll and pursued teddy roosevelt’s scandalously younger son kermit, the dreamboat of the presidential paper dolls.

but this was not reality. it was a world in which jackie could party with rhett butler and lady di. so we’re going to ignore that whole history because it isn’t really history.

dolls don’t count.

so my real introduction to jackie was that soundless channel one report. that night, a riveting tribute on hard copy with more pictures set to an off-the-wall remix of copland and ravel further piqued my interest. jackie smoking while pregnant. jackie in pink chanel. jackie at funerals. jackie in jeans. she seemed such a renegade, in much the manner of drew barrymore or dr. quinn. i vividly remember the jarring transition between the somber hard copy closing credits to the beverly hills: 90210 season four finale. the loss of david silver’s virginity seemed so trivial now jackie was dead. two days later, TIME magazine’s tribute landed in our mailbox and i sat on the front lawn—reclining against my bookbag, feet propped up on the collie of my childhood—devouring it.

within a matter of four days, i had met my jackie—and this makes sense of so much—through a silent movie, magazines and tabloid tv.

with her typically impeccable timing, mrs. onassis expired just as the eaton family became antique-crazed. suddenly car trips that, in the months before, had been interminably dull, punctuated by stops at road-side stores filled with other people’s discarded pee-wee herman dolls, became treasure hunts. places like chattanooga and danville rivaled alibaba’s cave.

the magazine madness began, simply enough, with LIFE magazine. this was back in the days before al gore invented the internet. later, i would be armed with vast bibliographies and spreadsheets and photographic archives and ebay. then i was winging it. i was trixie belden on the hunt for what my dear macabre family dubbed “the jackie mausoleum.”

early in that summer of 1994, LIFE was kind of enough to feature all their jackie covers on the back of their special edition. hunched over it with a magnifying glass pilfered from my father’s desk, i eventually made out all 16 dates. this triumph of deciphering insanely small type left me elated. it felt titanic. in reality, it was terribly small.

it’s hard to realize the scope of something until you’re in it. really really in it. like, mired for years and years and years. there were 16 covers of LIFE. that seemed a reasonable pursuit. a hobby containable in a lone grocery bag. it didn’t seem obsessive. it didn’t seem like an interest that would prompt future boyfriends to grimace in embarrassment and make movers cringe in horror. 16 was a reasonable number.

this is probably how those women wind up with 87 cats. i didn’t see it coming. things just spiraled out of control after the first dozen…

to strut my math skills a moment, imagine this: in the american, english language mainstream tabloid press alone—thus, excluding every publication produced everywhere else in the world, “respectable” mainstream u.s. mags like LIFE, LOOK, mccall’s, and also the tabloid-sized fringe tabloids like the enquirer—there were approximately 40 movie magazines circulating in any given month during the ’60s and ’70s. during every month in those 20 years, jackie would cover on at least half.

4,800 issues. at 30 cents an issue, give or take 750,000 copies sold of each, during her heyday—in movie magazine sales alone—she brought in $1 billion.

$54 million per annum.

which is interesting because it’s freaking unbelievable.

so my hobby has wound up a math problem. who saw that coming?

everything works out in the end. i believe this. the magazines i bought in the summer of 1994 meant nothing beyond pretty pictures. i never dreamed they’d have a use. much less that i’d spend the majority of 2004 poring over them as though their stories contained the key to finding Christ. i could never have imagined i would wind up discovering entire publishing empires built upon a literary playtime that didn’t deviate too very far from my paperdoll world in which jackiedoll went to the movies with greta garbo and had a fling with errol flynn. you just don’t think of these things in the beginning.

i don’t know where all this started. but that’s a lie. it started in mrs. watson’s 7th grade science class as i sat there straining to hear anderson cooper’s mournful channel one report over the gaggle of blathering cheerleaders at the back of the room. but i don’t know why it stuck with me or why it mattered. or why it still matters. i just know she does.