The Kennedys of Massachusetts (1990): Rise of a Political Dynasty
Despite being a democratic nation, American politics has had numerous political dynasties, from the Adams family around the time of its founding, to the Roosevelts of the turn of the last century, to the Bushes and Clintons of today. However, none have captured the public imagination as much as the Kennedys, although only one member has achieved the nation’s highest office. Despite this intense scrutiny, most people’s knowledge of the Kennedys is largely restricted to those members of the family who were active during the 1960’s and after, particularly those who achieved high political office, such as President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and long-time Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy.
The 1990 miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts, based on part of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and directed by prolific television director Lamont Johnson, takes the focus back a generation, beginning when Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (William Petersen) first sees Rose Fitzgerald (Annette O’Toole—Lana Lang in Superman III (1983), Ma Kent in Smallville) at the swearing-in of her father, John F. Fitzgerald (Charles Durning), as mayor of Boston in 1906. However, the mayor does not approve of the relationship they strike up after reencountering each other on vacation at Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Partially to curry favor with the church during a corruption trial over his awarding contracts to his friends, he sends Rose to Blumenthal Convent in Holland, rather than letting her attend the “hotbed of female socialist ferment” Wellesley College. Joe attends Harvard, works as Massachusetts bank examiner, and becomes “youngest bank president” before Rose finally marries him.
The first episode ends and second episode begins by charting Joe Kennedy’s ventures in the motion picture business after he buys Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) and moves his family, which now includes six of his and Roses’ eventual seven children, to New York (over Rose’s objections). Among these are John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy (Christina Nikitas), who contracts scarlet fever, and Rose Marie “Rosemary” (Jennifer Walsh), whom they discover has a mental handicap.
Joe has an affair with actress Gloria Swanson (Madolyn Smith)—now most famous for her later role in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950)—and hires Erich von Stroheim (Olek Krupa), Austrian director of Greed (1924), to make her next picture, Queen Kelly. However, Swanson clashes with Stroheim, who makes unusual suggestions such as using real flies for scenes set in Africa, and demands Joe visit her while his father P. J. Kennedy (Pat Hingle—Commissioner Gordon in four Batman movies) is hospitalized with liver disease, causing Joe to miss his own father’s funeral.
After getting out of the movie business, Joe sets his sights on politics, cultivating a friendship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Josef Sommer) which eventually leads to his appointment as ambassador to the United Kingdom. As ambassador, he favours Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s (Richard Clarke) appeasement policy towards Adolf Hitler and rejects the attempts of King George VI (Sullivan Brown) to formalise the US-UK alliance. As Germany’s aggression increases, from annexing the Sudetenland to invading Poland, Joe and the State Department grow increasingly out of step, and Joe loses popularity in England, eventually returning to the United States.
The eldest Kennedy children begin to make names for themselves during Joe’s time as ambassador, however, with British newspapers naming Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy (Tracy Pollan—wife of Michael J. Fox) the “most exciting debutante of 1938.” Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (Campbell Scott—Richard Parker in the Amazing Spider-Man movies) serves as a Massachusetts delegate to the Democratic National Convention, pledged to Roosevelt’s opponent James Farley. Jack (now played by Wings star Steven Weber) turns his thesis “Appeasement in Munich” into a book, Why England Slept, which becomes a bestseller. After Joe claims to reporters in an interview that “Democracy is finished in England. It may be finished here,” John Fitzgerald tells Joe he has finally cut his own throat with his tongue.
The final episode of the series opens with Pearl Harbor and the “Day of Infamy” speech. Due to the deteriorating mental condition and increasing violence of Rosemary (now played by Deirdre Lovejoy), Joe consults a doctor who recommends a prefrontal lobotomy. Joe has Rosemary undergo the procedure without informing Rose, who is on vacation in South America. The lobotomy leaves Rosemary unable to walk or speak; Joe has her institutionalized and does not allow Rose to see her.
John serves in the Navy; the PT-109 incident is mentioned but not shown. Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., despite having flown his required number of missions as a naval aviator, volunteers for Operation Aphrodite/Anvil, an early drone warfare experiment, with explosives-laden bombers being flown by remote control after the pilots bail out. However, the explosives detonate prematurely, killing Joe Jr. and the other pilot, Lt. Wilford John Willy. Kathleen, working as a Red Cross volunteer in England, marries Billy Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington (Michael Cumpsty), whom she met during Joe Sr.’s time as ambassador; Rose is distraught that her daughter is being married to an Anglican in a civil service, considering it “no marriage at all, not in the eyes of God.” She accepts Kathleen back into the family with some awkwardness when she returns to America, but they soon receive word Billy has been killed fighting in Belgium.
After the war’s end, Joe transfers his hopes that Joe Jr. would enter politics onto John. John runs for Congress, the seat being easier to win because incumbent representative James Curley opted to run for his fourth term as Mayor of Boston. Jack takes to politics well, and is assisted by Rose, who speaks to fellow Gold Star Mothers. Despite one of his opponents, Women’s Army Corps veteran Major Catherine Falvey (Dossy Peabody) accusing him of being a “carpetbagger…trying to buy the election with his father’s money,” John easily wins both primary and general elections.
In September 1947, Jack visits Kathleen in the Kennedys’ ancestral homeland of County Waterford, Ireland, and learns that she is in a romance with Earl Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam (Thomas Gibson), who is planning to divorce his wife. John tells his father about the relationship when Joe visits his office in the Capitol, and Joe warns that Rose would not accept the Earl if he had “a halo and scars on his hands.” He is proven right, as Rose threatens to disown Kathleen if she marries Fitzwilliam; Kathleen angrily responds with a denouncement of her mother’s religiosity. While flying to Paris to meet Joe in 1948, Kathleen and Earl Fitzwilliam are killed when a storm causes their plane to crash.
At the wedding reception of Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy (Randle Mell; he is played by Casey Affleck as a teenager) in 1950, John Fitzgerald tells Jack that he’s proud his grandson bears his name; Fitzgerald dies several months later. Joe convinces Jack to run for President on Thanksgiving, 1956. John wins the Democratic nomination and runs against Richard Nixon. Nixon carries more states, but Kennedy narrowly wins the popular vote and broadly claims the electoral vote, winning the election. On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as president of the United States and delivers his inaugural address. Rather than foregrounding the speech, this series focusses on Joe and Rose’s reaction, with dialogue from earlier in the show representing their reminiscences of the road that led them to this point.
The Kennedys spends less time on the actual politics of the various Kennedys than it does on family drama, but some interesting facets of the Kennedys early role in American history are at least hinted at. One notable point is that, although the Kennedys were always affiliated with the Democratic Party, this often had more to do with social networks than with actual ideological similarity. Joe Sr., with his background in finance and his sometimes reactionary opinions, was basically a conservative, but believed that the New Deal was necessary to combat the Great Depression and therefore supported Roosevelt. His relationship with Roosevelt helped him ascend to national politics, but the two men were in near-total disagreement about the right response to Hitler. Joe Sr., who held antisemitic opinions himself, expressed “understanding” of Hitler’s position. Joe Jr. toured Germany in 1934 and afterwards expressed admiration for the Nazi’s eugenics policies, saying that they had “passed the sterilization law which I think is a great thing. I don’t know how the Church feels about it, but it will do away with many of the disgusting specimens of men which inhabit this earth.” After the war, Joe Sr. supported Richard Nixon and anti-Communist blowhard Joseph McCarthy, whom Robert even worked for briefly. John F. Kennedy described his father as being to “the right of Herbert Hoover.” JFK strongly disagreed with many of his father’s opinions, including appeasement of Hitler, although he argued an interestingly nuanced point in “Appeasement at Munich” and Why England Slept, claiming that appeasement had obviously failed to prevent war but was an effective delaying tactic. In light of the large ideological differences between Joe Jr. and John, the Kennedys may not have become the standard-bearers of the Democratic Party in the 1960’s (and to some extent for decades after) if Joe Jr. had survived—or the Democratic Party itself may have become radically different.
A major theme throughout the series is the influence of Catholicism on the Kennedy family. Rose’s desire to attend Wellesley was sacrificed by her father for the sake of church support. Although she did attend Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, an institution which did not award degrees when she studied there, she described not attending Wellesley as her “greatest regret.” She also became dissatisfied with being confined to her role as homemaker; at one point, several years into her marriage, she tried to move back in with her parents, although her father convinced her to return to her husband and children. She later asks Joe for separate bedrooms, while hinting that she always knew of his affairs. However, her time in the convent seems to have solidified in her an extremely rigid religious worldview, which would hurt her relationship with Kathleen due to her daughter’s continual desire to marry Protestant Englishmen. We can only speculate how history may have been different if Rose had received a higher-quality college education and hadn’t been pushed to become so intolerantly fundamentalist.
The Kennedys has some distinct narrative similarities to another American immigrant epic, the Godfather saga. Perhaps the Irish clan’s rise inspired Mario Puzo, consciously or subconsciously; they certainly inspired Coppola in his film adaptations. Joe Sr.’s rise to fortune in the early 20th century through banking, the stock market, films, and liquor imports (some may call it bootlegging) occurs during roughly the same period as the rise of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) as depicted in the past segments of The Godfather Part II (1974). The Corleones also lose their more stereotypically macho heir apparent, Sonny (James Caan), leading to the more intellectual second son, Michael (Al Pacino), recently returned from military service in World War II, taking on his father’s hopes and rising to power. In the case of the Kennedys, it was probably better for the nation that the more liberal and probably smarter John, rather than the “second edition of his father” Joe Jr., ascended to high office. There is also some thematic similarity in the Kennedys not being fully accepted into the highest tier of society, from Joe not being allowed into the most exclusive social gatherings and clubs (such as the Porcellian Club) at Harvard to the attacks on John F. Kennedy over his Catholicism. (The Corleones have the extra disadvantage of being criminals). Nevertheless, through some combination of shrewd financial skills, schmoozing, and political horse-trading, Joe managed to pave the way for one of his sons to “go all the way” to reach the presidency.