JFK and Jackie: Celebrity President and First Lady

In January, 1961, when the newly-minted President and his First Lady emerged from the White House, they ushered in a new era in Washington, which would later become known as the “The Age of Camelot.” The public’s fascination with Jackie Kennedy began during the presidential campaign of 1959 and 1960, when the growing influence of televised news coverage placed Jack and Jackie in nearly every American household.

While less than 20 percent of households owned a single television in 1950, by the beginning of the next decade, nearly 90 percent of American homes contained one or more TVs, elevating the First Couple to role model status regarding what American families could look like.

Jackie Goes Global

The couple’s appeal extended well beyond the United States, particularly Jackie’s, who became an international celebrity when she accompanied the president to Europe.

“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.”

JFK

Back at home, due to the broad reach of television news reporting, the Kennedys projected the image of a thriving all-American family, and while Jackie was well aware of her husband’s long-standing reputation as a womanizer—even before she married him—the couple projected a squeaky clean aura with the American public. The image would hold throughout his shortened presidency and life, despite his many rumored affairs, and the fact that his entire life had been plagued by illnesses and a debilitating degenerative spinal condition, which required him to wear a back brace, along with a six-inch-wide elastic bandage wrapped around his upper legs and lower torso.

The First Family in Camelot

Television cameras followed the First Couple during their frequent escapes from the pressures of Washington, when the iconic duo invited close friends to relax near the President’s Hyannis Port family compound on Cape Cod. Many historians believe that John Kennedy’s appeal before the American people was a combination of dashing good looks—a subtle blending of style and substance—combined with an oratory panache rarely achieved by sitting presidents before or since his administration.

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

President Kennedy’s Inauguration speech

In the final months of JFK’s life, the president had finally achieved what poet Robert Frost had urged him to do during Kennedy’s January 1961 inauguration, which was to marry poetry to power, forever cementing the days of Camelot into the fabric of American history.

The television camera became JFK’s ticket to national stardom, which he used to his favor in the first generation of televised politics. As for the origins of Kennedy’s enduring mystique, it was Jackie Kennedy, who, a week after her husband’s assassination, compared their time in the White House as Camelot.