This will be the first movie review on this blog and it will likely be the only movie review that will ever be seen on these pages.  The movie is a TV mini-series called The Kennedys.   I found it on “On Demand”.   It can also be found on a cable network, REELZ. 

The portrayal of the Kennedys was surprisingly honest.  I wasn’t certain what to expect initially but I found the series to be excellent.   Greg Kinnear was made to look very much like Jack Kennedy.   Katie Holmes was equally well cast as Jackie Kennedy and Barry Pepper as Robert Kennedy. 

Joe Kennedy was defined as the narcissistic and controlling son of a bitch that he really was.  He was portrayed as having had presidential ambitions in the mid 30’s that were destroyed when Roosevelt brought him back from Europe as Ambassador to England.  He had shown sympathy to Hitler’s quest to unite the Germans of the Sudetenland with Germany and he supported Chamberlain’s program of appeasement.  When he lost his chance at the presidency he groomed his oldest son Joe to enter politics.   This was Joe’s ambition as well.  In fact, Joe Jr. was so ardent in his quest to someday be president that he died in an attempt to become a hero and win an award equal to that his brother earned after he led the surviving crew of PT 109 to safety.  The story emphasized Joe’s insensitivity toward his wife by the affair he conducted with his secretary right under her nose,   He passed this penchant for infidelity onto his sons.  The movie further explored his deal making that included his use of Frank Sinatra as an avenue to reach Sam Giancana to deliver Chicago to John in 1960.  It then portrayed a bitter Giancana after Robert Kennedy used his position as Attorney General to make a strike at organized crime.  Giancana believed he had a deal with the Kennedys and Papa Joe made it clear to Sinatra that he had no right to make any deals with Giancana on behalf of the Kennedys.  Despite his wife’s strong religious faith it was made clear that Joe had no similar relationship with God and in fact, upon the death of his oldest son he made it clear that he had no more respect for his wife’s faith than he did for his wife.    

Jack Kennedy was portrayed as the womanizing man that he was.  The movie fully recognized the pain he endured that led him to a life marred by the use of drugs.  It identified the prescription medications that he indulged in and how that pain led him to Dr. Feelgood as he was referenced who obviously shot him up with some kind of illegal narcotic.  Jack was initially portrayed as a man unwilling to enter politics believing that politics was not a career he had initially sought but one instead that his father bullied him into entering.  Jack’s weakness as Commander-in-Chief during the Bay of Pigs was emphasized as was his weakness when later challenged by Nikita Krushchev as the Berlin Wall was being built.  His sexual liaison with the girlfriend of Sam Giancana was referenced and the use that J Edgar Hoover made of that liaison to effectively blackmail both Jack and Bobby was noted.  The movie deals with the racial crisis that was a large part of 1962 including the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi.  The sixth episode dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis and it gave a far more believable presentation of what likely happened in those critical days between the US and the Soviets than any other account I ever saw before.  I never believed the account that was given in the movie 13 Days because I believe it overdramatized a confrontation between Bobby Kennedy and the Soviet Ambassador suggesting that the younger Kennedy drove the ambassador to sweat bullets for fear that we were prepared to go to war.  The account I saw in The Kennedys spoke of the agreement between the Soviets and Kennedy by which Kennedy would pull missiles from Turkey six months after the crisis.  This was always rumored but also denied that there was any relationship between that act and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Nevertheless, most learned persons believed there to be a relationship and apparently so did the producers of this show.       

Jackie was portrayed initially as a strong woman who was prepared to divorce her husband in 1953 but who stayed with him for reasons that were not made clear to us except that it was as a result of her conversation with Papa Joe and the knowledge that a divorce would end Jack’s opportunity to later be president.  Perhaps she wanted to be First Lady.   Joe offered Jackie money.  She asked if he thought everyone could be bought.  He responded that he knew of no exceptions.  She then told him she could not be bought.  Yet, she stayed.  She apparently learned to live with Jack’s infidelity but once he won the 1960 election she made it clear that she would not accept the humiliation related to his infidelity in front of the American people.  When it continued she took the children and left temporarily but the danger associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis brought her back.  Her protective attitude toward her children was well noted.  Her attempts to raise her children while meeting her obligations as First Lady were identified to the point that she suffered from exhaustion.  Something I personally did not know is that Dr. Feelgood also treated Jackie for this exhaustion.  Apparently Dr. Feelgood was not a doctor at all and when Jack discovered that he was also treating Jackie he convinced her to stop seeing him.  This portrayal of Jackie was completely believable as it has often been said that Jackie later married Aristotle Onassis to enable her to escape the reach of the Kennedys and thus protect her children from the Kennedy influence.      

Rose Kennedy was portrayed as the matriarch of the family and tremendously religious.  Her job was to hold her family together regardless of her husband’s obvious infidelity.  I found her weak and worse than sympathetic.  She was pitiful in her willingness to allow her husband to carry on an affair with his secretary with his demonstrations of affection right in front of Rose.   

Bobby was portrayed by Barry Pepper as someone who lacked tact and was downright abusive in the way he spoke to everyone except his father.  His relationship with his father was pathetic.  He apparently did not want to be Attorney General.  He wanted to open a practice in Boston, not become AG.  But he became AG because Papa Joe told John to make him AG.  Because of the accuracy of other portrayals, I must believe this was also correct.  It is unfortunate that so many people voted for Jack Kennedy under the assumption he was his own man.  He certainly was not in 1960 or 1961.      

The story deals with the tragedy surrounding Rosemary and her diminished mental capacity, her institutionalization and Papa Joe’s order for a lobotomy without the knowledge of Rose to control his daughter’s behavior.  The procedure turned her into a purely vegetative state.  Ironically, the story does not even mention Teddy Kennedy or his diminished mental capacity.   But the series would have to have gone on for forty or more additional episodes to have included the damage he did to this nation.

The final two episodes deal with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. 

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy  Was it one man acting alone?

Who had motives?  

Certainly Sam Giancana had a motive.  The Kennedys came after him despite the assistance he gave Kennedy in the 1960 election.   Plus, Jack was messing around with Giancana’s girl friend.  Who better than Giancana to arrange for one Jack Ruby to kill Lee Harvey Oswald as he emerged from the Dallas Jail inside the parking garage?

Castro had a motive.  Both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis provided him motive.  It was also mentioned that Kennedy had tried to assassinate Castro with the understanding that if he failed, he could end up in Castro's gun sight. 

The Cuban exiles had motive.  Kennedy had refused air support that cost many of their friends their lives.    

Lyndon Johnson had a motive.  He hated the Kennedys and the Kennedys did not like or respect him.  Kennedy had denied Johnson the presidency in 1960 and it was all too evident that Johnson would not be on a Kennedy ticket in 1964.  Kennedy no longer needed Johnson the way he needed Johnson to carry Texas and other southern states in 1960.