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Lot 140
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Jackie Kennedy Writes Truman Capote and Frederic March After President’s Assassination
Jackie Kennedy Writes Truman Capote and Frederic March After President’s Assassination
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Description:

Kennedy Jacqueline

 

Jackie Kennedy Writes Friends After President’s Assassination

 

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, typed draft letters with endorsements, to Frederic March and to Truman Capote, both July 9, 1964. 2 pp., 8" x 10.5". On black-bordered stationery.

 

Just months after her husband President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by her side, Jacqueline Kennedy writes to writer Truman Capote and actor Frederic March on black-bordered mourning stationery. These typed drafts were replaced by more personal handwritten notes, as Kennedy herself notes on them, and these drafts were filed by her personal secretary and childhood friend Nancy Tuckerman.

 

Plans for a Kennedy Presidential Library began to take shape in December 1963, just weeks after the President’s death. A private, non-profit corporation received a charter in Massachusetts on December 5, to construct and equip the library in Massachusetts. The corporation raised more than $20.8 million for both the construction of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and the creation and endowment of an Institute at Harvard for the study of politics and political affairs. The main Kennedy Library building designed by I. M. Pei was completed and dedicated in October 1979.

 

On June 16, 1964, Frederic March provided a reading at a private reception and dinner to honor former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and to thank trustees of the proposed Kennedy Library that resided in the New York area. President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson made a six-hour trip to attend the dinner of 200 invited guests at the St. Regis Hotel. Each guest received a leather-bound copy of The Burden and the Glory, a book about John F. Kennedy’s second and third years in office edited by Allan Nevins.

 

Excerpts


[To Capote]
“I do appreciate—and more than I can say—your letter expressing various thoughts and ideas for the Literary Archives Department of the Library.... It was the President’s hope that a Library be built some day, and I shall not rest until we reach the realization of his goal. I do thank you for wanting to be of help.”[Endorsement by Kennedy:] Wrote by hand.
[Endorsement by Tuckerman:] File this / N.T.

 

[To March]
“I am at a loss for words to thank you and your wife for making the evening at the St. Regis the great success that it was. In the past weeks I have received many letters—from people who attended the dinner—and each one mentioned how touched and moved they were by your readings. In searching through photographs taken at the White House, I found the enclosed, which I thought you might enjoy having. It is such a small token for all my appreciation, but I do hope it will be a pleasant reminder to you of a happy occasion with the President.”
[Endorsement by Kennedy:] Wrote by hand.
[Endorsement by Tuckerman:] File / N.T.

 


Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) was born in New York to stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and socialite Janet Norton Lee, and raised as a Catholic. She attended Vassar College, spent a year in France, and transferred to George Washington University, from which she graduated in 1951 with a degree in French literature. She met Congressman John F. Kennedy in 1952 at a dinner party, and they married in September 1953. She suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and gave birth to a stillborn daughter in August 1956. She later gave birth to three children by John F. Kennedy, but the third lived only two days. As First Lady of the United States, she restored the White House. By her husband’s side when he was assassinated in Dallas, Jacqueline Kennedy spent the next year in mourning. After the assassination of her brother-in-law in June 1968, she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in October 1968. He died in 1975, and she returned to the United States.

 

Frederic March (1897-1975) was born in Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began a career as a banker but then began working as an “extra” in movies in New York City. He appeared on Broadway in 1926 and received a contract from Paramount Pictures by 1929. He married actress Florence Eldridge in 1927, and they adopted two children. After receiving three Oscar nominations and winning one, he returned to Broadway in 1937. Thereafter, he worked both on film and on stage. He is the only actor other than Helen Hayes to win both two Oscars and two Tony Awards. In February 1959, he read the Gettysburg Address to a joint session of Congress on the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Throughout his life, March supported the Democratic Party. In 1963, he hosted "A Tribute to John F. Kennedy from the Arts", which was broadcast on television two days after Kennedy’s assassination.

 

Truman Capote (1924-1984) was born in New Orleans and grew up with relatives in Alabama, where he was a childhood friend of novelist Harper Lee. He began writing short stories as a child and began publishing them in the mid-1940s. He published his first novel in 1948 and wrote for Broadway and films before releasing Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories in 1958. His novel In Cold Blood was inspired by the murder of a family in Kansas. Capote was openly homosexual and partnered for most of his life with another writer. He traveled in a wide array of social circles and became friends with Lee Radziwill, the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy. He did not write another novel after In Cold Blood but continued to write screenplays and essays. He spent much time in drug rehabilitation clinics, but his alcohol and drug habits led to his death at age 59.

 

Nancy Ludlow Tuckerman (1928-2018) was born in New York City and met Jackie Bouvier at the Chapin School when they were 8 or 9 years old. They were later roommates at Miss Porter’s Boarding School in Connecticut, and Tuckerman was a bridesmaid in Bouvier’s wedding to John F. Kennedy in 1953. When Kennedy was elected President, Tuckerman became the White House Social Secretary. After the President’s assassination, Tuckerman was responsible for responding to thousands of letters of condolence that arrived at the White House. She remained personal secretary to Jackie Kennedy until Kennedy’s death in 1994.

 


This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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