Latest news with #MarilynMonroe


Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Leaked: Jackie Kennedy's phone call to JFK about Marilyn Monroe... this could change his reputation as a womanizer forever
That President John F Kennedy had a torrid affair with Marilyn Monroe before passing her on to his little brother Bobby is the rather seedy stuff of Camelot legend. But now a respected Kennedy historian has made the bombshell claim that the storied affair between JFK and the actress was a figment of a fragile Marilyn's fevered imagination.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
On This Day, July 19: Sainthia, India, train collision kills dozens
July 19 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1848, "bloomers," a radical departure in women's clothing, were introduced to the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. They were named after Amelia Jenks Bloomer. In 1911, Pennsylvania became the first U.S. state to pass laws censoring movies. In 1943, U.S. planes bombed key railway, steel factory and airport targets in Rome, killing thousands of civilians as part of World War II. In 1946, Marilyn Monroe was given her first screen test at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios. Even without sound, the test was enough to earn Monroe her first contract. She divorced her first husband, James Dougherty, he told UPI, because of a no-marriage clause in the contract. In 1969, John Fairfax of Britain arrived at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to become the first person to row across the Atlantic alone. In 1989, a crippled DC-10 jetliner crash-landed in a cornfield in Sioux City, Iowa. One-hundred-eighty-five of the 296 people aboard survived. In 1991, boxer Mike Tyson raped a contestant in the Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis. He pleaded not guilty to the charge, but was convicted in 1992. In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced its "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy toward homosexuals in the U.S. military. The policy was lifted in 2011. In 1996, the Summer Olympics opened in Atlanta with a record 197 countries taking part. In 1997, the IRA declared a cease-fire in its long war to force Britain out of Northern Ireland. In 2005, U.S. Appeals Court Judge John Roberts was nominated by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing Sandra Day O'Connor, who resigned. After the death of William Rehnquist, Roberts' nomination was changed to make him chief justice. In 2010, a speeding express train slammed into the rear of a train preparing to leave a West Bengal station in India, killing more than 60 people and injuring about 100 others. In 2012, the U.S. Defense Department said military personnel would be permitted to march in uniform in a San Diego Gay Pride Parade. In 2018, Israel passed a law declaring the country a Jewish nation-state, giving only Jewish people self-determination. A month later, tens of thousands protested the controversial law in Tel Aviv, calling it a form of apartheid. In 2024, an error caused by a CrowdStrike cybersecurity software update crippled emergency services, air travel, television and public infrastructure worldwide. Solve the daily Crossword


New York Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Iconic Waldorf-Astoria brings back Big Apple's ‘grand hotel' style — here's what guests can expect
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel's September reopening, five years later than first planned, will be well worth the long wait. The magnificently restored, reborn Waldorf-Astoria brings back the Big Apple's 'grand hotel' style, with glorious public spaces open to everyone and worthy of the inn's iconic legacy. New York City's great hotel lobbies fell one by one over the decades. Even the Plaza's once-spectacular entrance is a shadow of its old self. Advertisement 8 The magnificently restored, reborn Waldorf-Astoria brings back the Big Apple's 'grand hotel' style, with glorious public spaces open to everyone and worthy of the inn's iconic legacy. Waldorf Astoria New York The Waldorf's public portion, on the other hand, is so large, I almost forgot that more than half of the building was converted to condo apartments. (The inn's 1,400 guest rooms were pared down to 375, although they're much larger than the old ones). The Waldorf hosted the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and global royalty. It was a key art of the city's celebration fabric for nearly a century. Advertisement But after it closed in 2017, relaunching it fell far behind schedule due to construction issues, COVID-19 and an unexpected change in Chinese ownership. The many delays that The Post first reported will be forgotten when visitors have their first look at the ground floor opening this week, before the first room guests arrive on Sept. 1. 8 A view of the lobby in 2014. AP 8 The Waldorf will reopen in September, five years later than planned. Waldorf Astoria New York Advertisement The new Waldorf-Astoria, an Art Deco icon of New York City since 1931, is a sight to behold. Its landmarked lobby and Peacock Alley lounge between Park and Lexington avenues never looked so beautifully burnished since I first saw them a half-century ago. Two gorgeous new restaurants, a magnificent marble floor and a welcoming porte-cochere entrance on East 49th Street elevate the Waldorf to a higher realm than the faded, tourist-trampled inn of the recent past. Fears that 19th Century murals and other interior details would be lost turned out to be baseless. All were meticulously restored by project architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and interior designers Pierre-Yves Rochon and Jean-Louis Deniot under the watchful eyes of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. 8 Newly renovated Peacock Alley lounge between Park and Lexington avenues. Waldorf Astoria New York Advertisement 8 Hotel guests in 2014. AP The famous floor mosaic 'Wheel of Life' near the Park Avenue entrance is so perfectly restored, it looks as France's Louis Rigal assembled its 148,000 pieces this year rather than in 1931. Much of the vast ground floor was reconfigured to improve sightlines. The check-in counter that forced Peacock Alley revelers to stare at piles of luggage was relocated. Gone are old lounges such as notoriously tacky — and sometimes scandalous — Sir Harry's Bar. Peacock Alley's walls in dark maple and black marble columns are magically lighter on the eyes than previous blue panels. The Waldorf clock, commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1893, was cleaned and polished to look new. 8 Cole Porter's Steinway piano in Peacock Alley. Waldorf Astoria New York Composer Cole Porter lived at the Waldorf, where he composed Broadway hits like 'Anything Goes.' His Steinway piano reposes serenely in the lobby where waitstaff sport outfits by designer Nicholas Oakwell — with silver silk blazers and waistcoats for women, three-piece check suits for men. The restaurants are a special pride of hotel managing director Luigi Romaniello. Lex Yard, a plush, two-level affair helmed by Gramercy chef Michael Anthony, opens on a limited basis for dinner tonight. Japanese cafe Yoshoku will open in stages as well. The Peacock Alley bar's cocktail menu was devised by Jeff Bell of downtown Please Don't Tell fame. Advertisement 8 Lex Yard, a plush, two-level affair helmed by Gramercy chef Michael Anthony. Waldorf Astoria New York 8 Park Avenue Junior Suite bed Waldorf Astoria New York There'll be live music, Romaniello said — 'nothing intrusive, maybe jazz.' I hope he sticks to that. Peacock Alley's enchanting surroundings don't need a cabaret to transport guests to heaven.


The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘He didn't think he was a good man': new book reveals unseen portrait of JFK
J Randy Taraborrelli has already written five books on the Kennedy family but his sixth, JFK: Public, Private, Secret, is his first that's directly about John F Kennedy, 35th US president from 1961 until his assassination in Dallas two years later. 'I have been writing about the Kennedys from Jackie's perspective for 25 years,' Taraborrelli said, referring to Jacqueline Kennedy, the first lady who lived for another 30 years after he was shot, a figure of worldwide fascination. Taraborrelli's first book about the Kennedys 'was Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot, and that was in 2000. And then I did After Camelot, which was a lot about Jackie and her marriage to [Aristotle] Onassis,' the Greek shipping tycoon, 'Camelot' the name given to the Kennedys' apparently charmed circle, in reference to the legendary court of King Arthur. 'I also did Jackie, Janet and Lee, which was about Jackie and her mom [Janet Auchincloss] and her sister [Lee Radziwill]. Two years ago, I did Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, which was Jackie, cradle to grave. When that was successful, I thought, 'It's time to tell JFK's side of the story.'' Evidently, Kennedy books sell. So do books by Taraborrelli, whose subjects have also included Diana Ross, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Cher and Elizabeth Taylor. For JFK, he turned to the vast Kennedy archives but also his own extensive interviews, looked at anew, and new sources including Monroe's publicist, Patricia Newcomb, now 95, and Janet Des Rosiers Fontaine, once secretary and girlfriend to JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, now 100 years old. Readers 'know what they're going to get when they read one of my books,' Taraborrelli said. 'It's not going to be … a blow-by-blow of every moment in JFK's political history. I wanted to do more of a human portrait, something people can [use to] really sort of understand this man and like him or hate him, at least.' Taraborrelli's central theme is JFK's treatment of women. 'We've always looked at JFK as this unconscionable cheating husband,' he said. 'I wanted to maybe not defend him as much as explain him, try to get into his head and tell his side of the story. This book is really a companion to Jackie: Public, Private, Secret. When you read them both, you really get a full picture of that marriage.' It's a sympathetic picture. Taraborrelli's JFK is a relentless adulterer but one who came to some realization of his weakness, through the painful consequences of his behavior, through a belatedly deepening connection to his wife, and through the trials of office. Taraborrelli said: 'The thing about JFK is that as unconscionable as his actions were, he still had a conscience, which made it even more difficult for him, because if you have no conscience, then you can just be a crappy person and you're OK with it. It's when you have a conscience that it causes problems for you internally.' JFK's behavior has certainly caused problems for his reputation. As Taraborrelli was writing, Maureen Callahan published Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, a lacerating account, ceding nothing to the trappings of glamor and power. Taraborrelli did not read it: 'If it had come out at a different time, I might have. But when books start coming out while I'm working on a book, I don't even want to know what's in them, because I don't want to inadvertently repeat the same material or be in some way influenced. 'I also made a decision early on with JFK that I did not want [the book] to be a compendium of all of his affairs … an A-through-Z list of every woman he ever slept with, because these women, many of them have written books of their own, and many of them have been interviewed for books. Their stories have been told. 'I wanted to find women that made a difference, like Joan Lundberg actually made a difference in his life. Judith Exner made a difference, though I don't believe anything she ever said about anything. She was there, you know. Mary Meyer made a difference. Marilyn Monroe makes a difference, historically if not personally.' Whether JFK had an affair with Monroe is part of a conspiracy-laced legacy fueled by Kennedy's policies and presidency, his proximity to organized crime (in part through Exner, also involved with a Chicago mobster), and his assassination, all of it fuel for a thriving publishing industry of labyrinthine what-ifs. Taraborrelli says he has no wish to join it. He deals with the assassination in a few final pages, pointedly ignoring old questions: did killer Lee Harvey Oswald act alone, what did the CIA know. Releases of government files came and went. Taraborrelli stayed focused on his man. He thinks there was no Monroe affair – chiefly, though Jackie expressed concern, because no evidence exists. But Taraborrelli does say JFK had a previously unknown affair with Lundberg, a Californian air hostess, in the 1950s, when he was an ambitious senator from Massachusetts. It ended for Lundberg with Kennedy paying for an abortion. Taraborrelli said: 'JFK met Joan when he was on the outs with his family. Jackie had a stillbirth in 1956 and JFK did not return from a vacation to be with his wife. It took him a week to get back. And when he got back, everybody in the family, both sides of the family, wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, Jackie's mom was so upset that she made him sleep in the servants' quarters over the garage. 'And so he went to Los Angeles, and he met [Lundberg], and she didn't know anything about him, other than that he was a famous senator, but she didn't know him personally, and she didn't know anybody in his life. And he was able to open up to her honestly and use her as sort of a pseudo-therapist to try to work out some of his issues. And he was trying to grapple with how could he have done this to his wife?' As Callahan shows, Kennedy men doing unconscionable things to women has never been rare. JFK's nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is now US health secretary, after extensive coverage of his philandering and its tragic consequences. Of JFK, Taraborrelli said: 'At one point, Joan said to him, 'I think that you're a good person.' And he said, 'No, I'm really not.' He did not even think he was a good man. He said he felt like he was stuck in himself and he couldn't figure out a way to get out.' Nor could Kennedy's sister, Rosemary, who endured developmental difficulties and whose father arranged in 1941 'for brain surgery that went terribly wrong, turned her into an invalid, and then he institutionalized her and told the family they needed to forget she existed, and they all did, but JFK held this shame that he let this happen to the sister he loved. 'In the book, you realize that if he was able to disassociate himself from his own sister, who he loved, then how was he to feel about a baby Jackie had that died, who he didn't know? It's like he didn't have empathy. Jackie realized that, so she found Rosemary, the sister [JFK] had not seen in 15 years, and she encouraged him to go to and reconnect with his sister, because she knew he could not be a fully realized man, holding this dark secret and feeling ashamed. 'And so that was another building block. And then when their son Patrick died [living less than two days in August 1963] that was another building block.' As Taraborrelli sees it, such experiences helped bring 'Kennedy out of himself' on the brink of his death, 'turn[ing] him into a different man, a man with good character … and so in this book, you see JFK take accountability for his mistakes. He says, 'The way that I was was painful, and by painful, I mean shameful.' 'He also takes accountability as a president when the Bay of Pigs [the 1961 invasion of Cuba], for instance, is a disaster. It was something he inherited from [President Dwight D] Eisenhower but he didn't blame the other administration, 'I have to clean up that guy's mess,' all that stuff. JFK went to the American people and said, 'I'm the president. This is my responsibility. I did this, and I'm sorry.' And guess what? His approval rating went up to 85%, because people want a president who takes accountability. 'But he had to become a man who could take accountability first, and he did. That's a great story, and I think it's a really hopeful story to tell, especially in these days when we question what is leadership and what do we expect from our leaders.' JFK: Public, Private, Secret is out now

Elle
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
This Low-Key, Affordable Sneaker Is About to Have Its Biggest Comeback Yet
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. If you need any further proof that the '80s are back in a big way, look no further than the runways. Yuppies, power suits, and oversized accessories are all enjoying a renewed moment in the mainstream. Luxury fashion is once again experimenting with indulgence, and styling stood out as a huge factor across recent collections (especially as men's fashion week becomes an increasingly popular event). Amid the excess, one simple sneaker, which has ebbed and flowed in popularity over the past 100-plus years, is finding its way back into the limelight: Keds. The biggest hint as to the shoe's revival? The rise of the ultra-minimalist sneaker. The silhouette feels like a natural progression of the already trending ballet styles seen across brands like Puma and Louis Vuitton. Not to mention the Nike Air Rift, which is finally getting the funky footwear appreciation it deserves. Even high-fashion circles are not immune: Michael Rider's debut for Celine was filled with low-key leather footwear. Seeing his relaxed contemporary-dance-like shoes pad down the runway with beautifully crafted jackets and wide-legged tailored trousers felt simultaneously modern and nostalgic—an increasingly common aesthetic combination given designers' current penchant for re-editioned accessories and '80s styling. Gone are the days of circa-2018 chunky dad sneakers that were too heavy to pack in your suitcase for fear of an overweight luggage fee. With the simple sneaker renaissance, there's no doubt we're about to see Keds return to embody the sense of high-low dressing and ultimate sartorial ease that defined its 20th-century heyday. Birthed in 1916, the canvas and rubber shoe initially gained popularity as one of the first pairs of athletic sneakers; however, its stylish appeal quickly escalated as it graced the feet of stars including Marilyn Monroe in Clash by Night (1952) and Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road (1967). Yoko Ono even wore Keds as a part of her bridal ensemble for her nuptials with John Lennon. Jennifer Grey famously sported them in Dirty Dancing, further catapulting the shoe into stardom and permanently associating the silhouette with that carefree '80s prep-meets-aerobics-workout look. Cut to the 21st century, and the sneaker experienced its first renaissance as the brand continued to tap into celebrity power, partnering with The O.C.'s Mischa Barton as the face of its mid-2000s campaigns. Some celebrities and former spokespeople, like Lana Del Rey, never stopped wearing them either. (Perhaps that's why her style has always remained so relatable to her fans.) Of course, Keds aren't the only 2000s It item to begin to trickle back into the mainstream. Following recent celebrity co-signs, including Charli XCX at Glastonbury and Timothée Chalamet in New York City, McQueen skull scarves are bringing nostalgia back in all the right ways. Not to mention that, also on the Celine runway, a new version of the Phantom bag made a reappearance. Although, in comparison to these other accessories, the shoe can point to nearly a century of style longevity—the ultimate proof that the fashion tides always come back around.