John Fitzgerald Kennedy, circa 1961. Photo Library Of Congress/Getty Images.
Washington may have been the first. Lincoln emancipated the slaves. FDR had the New Deal. But John F. Kennedy, with his youth, telegenic looks, soignée, trendsetting wife and Rat Pack connections, was America’s first pop president. From his triumphant televised debate with a pale, shifty-eyed Richard Nixon to his shocking assassination, no president has captivated the imagination of the entertainment industry quite like JFK. In honour of the 42nd anniversary of his death, here’s a few of our favourite Kennedy-related pop culture artifacts.
From the 1967 film Camelot. Photo Warner Bros/Getty Images.
Camelot
Loosely based on the legend of
King Arthur, Lerner and Loewe’s
musical Camelot premiered
on Broadway in December 1960. After
its sluggish start, the show became
an overnight hit after it was revealed
that the original cast album was
a favourite of John and Jackie
Kennedy. Feeding the myth of the
fairy-tale Kennedy administration,
the musical’s eponymous hit song
became the unofficial theme of
the White House. JFK’s favourite
lyrics were: “Don’t let it be forgot
/ That once there was a spot / For
one brief, shining moment that
/ was known as Camelot.” The musical
was turned into a feature film
in 1967.
“Happy
Birthday, Mr. President”
In a dress so tight, she had
to forego her bra and panties, Marilyn
Monroe cooed birthday greetings to her
lover, JFK, on May 19, 1962 at
New York’s Madison Square Garden, surprising
him afterwards with the gift of
an engraved
gold Rolex. A few months later, Monroe
was found dead of a drug overdose.
Rumours persist that the doomed actress
was killed because of her relationship
with Kennedy and fears of high-ranking officials
that a scandal could topple the
presidency.
The Manchurian Candidate
John Frankenheimer’s 1962 thriller about
a former Korean War POW turned
political assassin due to Communist
brainwashing is inextricably
linked to Kennedy’s assassination. Not
only did it touch on contemporary
issues like Cold War paranoia,
but Kennedy himself, a friend of
star Frank Sinatra, championed
the film when United Artists aired concerns
that it was too controversial to
release. It was long — and falsely — rumoured
that the film was pulled from circulation following
JFK’s death. It’s even been conjectured the
film was one of the triggers that
led Lee Harvey Oswald to kill the
president.
First Family, featuring Vaughn Meader. Courtesy Cadence Records.
Vaughn Meader
For one year, comedian Vaughn
Meader was the biggest name in entertainment.
Capable of an uncanny JFK impression,
Meader’s debut comedy album, 1962’s The
First Family — a
gentle send-up of the popular Kennedys — was a hit, selling seven and a half
million copies within a few months of its release.
Overnight, Meader became a star,
appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show and
selling out clubs in Las Vegas. And then, well…
just a year after The First Family came
out, Kennedy was assassinated.
Within a week of his death, all copies of the
album were pulled from stores and Meader’s
upcoming performances were cancelled. Kennedy’s
death all but destroyed the comedian’s career.
Meader’s spirit lives on in Showbiz,
a new
novel by Toronto writer (and Arts Online
contributor) Jason Anderson.
Andy Warhol’s Jackie series
Pop artist Andy Warhol, best-known for his
immortalization of the Campbell’s Tomato Soup
can and prediction that “in the future, everyone
will be famous for 15 minutes,” was inspired
to create a series of works about the First Lady
after seeing news photos of her following the
assassination. From 1963 to 1968, he captured
Jackie Kennedy in a series of affecting paintings
and screen prints that follow her from glamorous
socialite to grieving
widow. Warhol, of course, was also famous
for his rendition of another of Kennedy’s women: Marilyn
Monroe.
Abraham, Martin and John
Bronx-born Dion
DiMucci had several hits in the 1950s
and 1960s as a solo singer and
with the doo-wop group the Belmonts,
including A
Teenager in Love. But a heroin addiction
stalled his career for several
years. By 1968, he kicked the
habit and found God, returning with
the mild folkie hymn Abraham,
Martin and John,
a civil-rights era tribute to
Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther
King Jr. and John F. Kennedy:
“Didn't you love the things that
they stood for? / Didn't they try to find
some good for you and me?”
Dead
Kennedys
The San Francisco hardcore band
may have tastelessly named itself after the
fatally cursed political family, but tastelessness
was the whole point. Formed in 1978 by lead
vocalist Jello Biafra, the Dead
Kennedys combined punk music with radical
politics to become one of the most
notorious US bands of the 1980s. California
Über Alles,
a scathing criticism of then-governor
Jerry Brown, was the band’s first
single. In 1985, the band was charged under
California’s obscenity laws for a sexually
explicit poster included with its Frankenchrist album.
The lengthy ensuing court case
contributed to the band’s eventual demise.
Oliver Stone’s JFK
Stone’s conspiracy-theory magnum opus stars
Kevin Costner as a New Orleans district attorney
who believes the Warren Commission’s account
of Kennedy’s assassination is a lie. Bloated,
paranoid but somehow compulsively watchable,
the three-hour, $40-million JFK is
the best-known piece of film about Kennedy’s
death since the Zapruder footage.
Mayor Joseph Fitzpatrick Fitzgerald
Fitzhenry Quimby
With his Boston accent and Irish Catholic
name, the mayor of The
Simpsons’ fictional Springfield could be
a long-lost Kennedy cousin. A notorious
womanizer, embezzler and self-aggrandizer,
the mayor is the cartoon series’
straw-man politician. Quimby is committed
to the high-tech industry (investing
$100 billion to build a satellite-based defence
system that can also descramble porn)
and favours increased immigration from Russia,
the Philippines and all other major stripper-producing
nations. In a health-care stump speech, he promised
that "with
enough will, we can end crabs in
our lifetime."
George Magazine
Founded in 1995, George was the brainchild of JFK’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr. Melding politics and celebrity — the first cover featured Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington — the magazine never managed to capture enough of a readership to stay afloat; it didn’t survive Kennedy’s premature death. The magazine may have just been ahead of its time. TV shows like The West Wing, Commander-In-Chief and The Daily Show, as well as hipster Beltway blogger Wonkette, all owe a debt to George’s popularization of Washington politics.
Page turner: A New York University student looks at the September 1999 issue of George magazine, the last one edited by founder John F. Kennedy, Jr. Photo Henny Ray Abrams/AFP/Getty Images.
Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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