What were some of JFK's most scandalous affairs?
The women John F. Kennedy is rumored to have had affairs with
President Kennedy is rumored to have had a string of affairs with a number of women despite being married to Jackie for ten years.
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, is said to have had various affairs throughout his ten-year marriage to Jackie Kennedy. Below, a look at his rumored mistresses.
JFK'S affairs were believed to be numerous throughout his ten-year marriage to Jackie Kennedy and he even stands accused of using his special assistant Dave Powers to line up willing women.
“If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache,” John F. Kennedy used to tell most people who would listen, according to the NY Post.
Here’s a look at some of the most well-known women John F. Kennedy is rumored to have had affairs with:
Marilyn Monroe
Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe is probably the most talked-about of all of Kennedy’s possible affairs. She was named as one of Kennedy's mistresses by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in his book “The Dark Side of Camelot.”
Having met at a dinner party held in his honor in New York at the beginning of 1962, Kennedy invited Monroe to a weekend in Bing Crosby's house in Palm Springs the following month, where they were not joined by his wife Jackie.
This weekend is said to have been the extent of the affair but that didn’t mean Monroe didn’t want it to continue, allegedly seeing herself becoming Jack’s second First lady and even calling Jackie Kennedy to tell her so.
According to “These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie,” the First Lady replied, “Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great . . . and you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibilities of the first lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems.”
The mental health of Monroe had long been a cause of concern for the President until she mysteriously took an overdose in 1962, aged 36.
Mimi Alford
White House intern Mimi Alford claimed an 18-month relationship with JFK in her 2012 memoir “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair With John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath.”
Alford said JFK was never “looking for a relationship to replace his marriage” but she was just a few days into her new job at the White House when the President seduced her for the first time.
Just 19 years old at the time, Alford claims that after coming across JFK in the pool earlier in the day, he invited her for drinks and a private tour of the White House before he finally made his move in what he ironically referred to as “Mrs. Kennedy’s Room.”
Blaze Starr
The celebrated stripper told People magazine in 1989 that she had a brief affair with Kennedy before he became President which she’d hoped to continue once he was elected. The famed burlesque dancer is said to have been disappointed when the Cuban Missile Crisis got in the way of her dalliance with the President in the Lincoln Room.
The pair first met in 1954 when JFK, then a Congressman, would visit her Maryland strip club, Crossroads.
In an interview in 1989, Starr described Kennedy as “very quick and very wild,” adding “he knew exactly what he was doing with girls, so it didn’t take him long. No, that bad back didn’t faze him.”
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva claimed that her mother not only had an affair with Kennedy family patriarch Joe Kennedy, but also with his son Jack in the White House.
The German actress is said to have accepted an invitation to drinks with the President in September 1963 while she was in D.C performing a one-woman show. Then 60 years old, she is said to have claimed that Kennedy made a “clumsy pass” at her before remarking that they didn’t have much time before her show began in 30 minutes.
Dietrich is reported to have told her friend Gore Vidal that the encounter lasted 20 minutes before she was forced to wake Kennedy up to show her the way out of the White House. Kennedy’s main concern after the extramarital rendezvous? Whether Dietrich had also slept with his father, about which she is believed to have lied.
Pamela Turnure
First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s press secretary Pamela Turnure is also rumored to have had a quick romance with her boss’s husband, the alleged affair coming to light in the book “The Kennedy Half-Century” by Larry J. Sabato.
Turnure, who is said to have had a remarkable resemblance to Jackie, began a two-year affair with JFK in 1961 when she was aged 21. JFK is even believed to have encouraged his wife to hire her after she worked as his own secretary when he was a Senator.
Judith Campbell Exner
Judith Campbell Exner, who served as a conduit between JFK and mobster Sam Giancana, claimed she had an abortion after becoming pregnant with the President’s child, revealing details about their alleged affair in her 1977 memoir “My Story.” Jackie Kennedy is said to have been unsurprised by what the book revealed.
The alleged mafia moll Exner spoke again of her relationship with the president in a 1997 interview with Vanity Fair in which she revealed that she ended her two-year affair with Kennedy in early 1963. It is around this time she claims that she aborted his child.
Introduced to Kennedy via her ex Frank Sinatra, she ferried envelopes between the President and Sam Giancana, to whom she was also a mistress, including, she claims, alleged payoffs or instructions for vote-buying in elections and plans to kill Fidel Castro.
“Jack never in a million years thought he was doing anything that would hurt me, but that’s the way he conducted himself; the Kennedys have their own set of rules,” she said.
