Jackie Kennedy and the billion dollar nude: 50 years since the first case of ‘revenge porn’

“Sometimes I have to undress to put on my bathing suit. My wife does the same thing,” commented an unperturbed Aristotle Onassis when journalists showed him a copy of the Italian magazine Playmen in December 1972. In that issue, his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, widow of President John F. Kennedy, appeared completely naked during her summer vacation on the private island of Skorpios (Greece). The Greek tycoon did not seem surprised or outraged by the unauthorized images of Jackie, then 43, as God had brought her into the world: sunbathing bikini-less, carefree, and without losing her graceful demeanor as a former student of Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut.

The reaction of the Americans was not the same. Bootleg copies of Playmen appeared in New York and Washington. Jackie’s photographs caused a stir and outrage in public opinion and a small earthquake in high political circles. A few months later, in February 1973, Screw magazine published the images in America. “Naked Jackie Kennedy!” was the front-page headline chosen by Al Goldstein, owner and publisher of the pornographic pamphlet. Inside there was a photo titled “Jackie Kennedy’s Billion-Dollar Bush,” a derogatory and misogynistic play on words that made reference to the former first lady of the United States and to the immense fortune of her husband, at that time estimated at $1 billion ($100 billion, about €91 billion, today).

It was not the first time that photographs of a celebrity like Jackie Kennedy without clothes were published. But the former first lady was not just any famous person. She was “America’s Widow,” the most photographed woman in the country, the holy grail of the paparazzi. Al Goldstein sold 144,000 copies of Screw in its first seven days and more than half a million in the following week. It was the most successful issue in the history of the publication, which closed in 2003 on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to pay its employees’ salaries. It was also a first and incipient case of revenge porn, a kind of sexual harassment that consists of disseminating intimate images without the consent of the person in them for the purpose of causing embarrassment.

According to American journalist Christopher Andersen, former editor of People magazine, Aristotle Onassis was behind the publication of the photos with the intention of harming his wife. In his book The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved, Andersen recounts that the shipowner bullied his wife, made fun of her, and used his contacts in the press to publicly humiliate her. Andersen claims that the Greek tycoon, tired of being scorned by her, orchestrated the clandestine operation by providing 10 photographers with detailed maps of Skorpios and timing plans of when Jackie would be on the beach.

That would explain how the photographer Settimio Garritano managed to get around the island’s security and be in the exact place, at the precise time, and on the precise day, to snap Jackie resting, reading, taking a nap, doing yoga, swimming, smoking, and sunbathing naked. “She knew she was being photographed on Skorpios. Why did she want to show herself? I never thought it would happen,” said the Italian paparazi years later. The photojournalist publicly acknowledged that an employee of Olympic Airways, Onassis’ airline, was the one who tipped him off about Kennedy’s stay on the island, and that a Skorpios worker revealed to him that the lady liked to sunbathe without clothes.

Garritano never confirmed if it was Onassis himself who was behind the leak, but he did admit that Alexander Onassis, the son of the shipping company owner, was aware of the existence of the photographic material. “I mentioned to him that there were some nude photographs of Jackie. He told me: ‘I want them to be published!’ He didn’t like Jackie, and neither did his sister Christina. He explained to me that if they were published, Ari would be furious and hopefully get rid of his new wife.”

The scoop violated Jackie’s privacy; she had not consented to these photos being taken. But she was not the only victim in this case of abuse. Her children, Caroline, 15, and John, 12, were bullied because of the photos. Shortly after the photos were published, Ari Onassis began planning his divorce. But the scandal coincided with the tragic death of his son Alexander, who died in a plane crash in January 1973. The mogul fell into depression and, according to publications at the time, he blamed his wife for the incident. The gossip columnists reported that he was superstitious and believed that she had brought “the tragedy of the kingdom of Camelot” with her.

Larry Flynt, founder of the pornographic magazine Hustler, republished the banned photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy in 1975. “I made the wisest investment of my life buying the Jackie Onassis nudes I published in the August 1975 issue. The rest is history. If the photographer had asked me for a million dollars, I would have paid him,” he wrote in his autobiography, Sex, Lies, and Politics.

But neither Flynt nor Goldstein nor Onassis managed to sink Jackie. The Greek millionaire died in 1975, without getting to sign his divorce from the former first lady. He left her a fortune of $26 million. After the shipowner’s death, she issued a statement saying, “Aristotle rescued me at a time when my life was shrouded in shadows… We had many beautiful experiences together… for which I will be forever grateful.” Widowed for the second time, she began working as an editor, publishing autobiographies of celebrities such as the dancer Gelsey Kirkland, the singer Carly Simon, and the fashion icon Diana Vreeland. She also began an affair with Maurice Tempelsman, a diamond dealer and financier who took over managing her fortune and quadrupled the $26 million Kennedy had inherited from Onassis.

Jackie escaped Ari Onassis’ scheming, but remained the holy grail of the paparazzi until her death in 1994. She won several battles in her war against the media, including the restraining order against Ron Galella, the photographer who became famous photographing and following her around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. According to a New York judge, President Kennedy’s widow was a victim of harassment. Her case made the friction between the freedom of the press and the right to privacy of celebrities visible for the first time. Jackie managed to set a precedent.

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