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The Kennedy Curse, Part 6
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Let's talk about Nikki's favorite Kennedy: Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy. She was a badass who blazed her own trail. But was her untimely death due to a curse or family hubris?
Check out our YouTube channel, Fixate Today: Grey Matters
Sources (there's a lot):
Books: The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Katie Clifford Larson, The First Kennedys: The Humber Roots of an American Dynasty by Neal Thompson, After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the Present by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills, Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Media: Grey Gardens (1975 documentary), JFK (1991 film), Thirteen Days (2000 film), Murder in Greenwich (2002 television film), Bobby (2006 film), Grey Gardens (2006 musical), Grey Gardens (2009 film), Parkland (2013 film), 11.23.63 (2016 series), Jackie (2016 film), Chappaquiddick (2017 film), Cover-Up (2018 podcast), The RFK Tapes (2018 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episodes 400-405: JFK (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Relaxed Fit: Marilyn Monroe & The President’s Aspirin (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Side Stories: The Bullet in the Backseat (2023 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 366: Lobotomy Crimes (2024 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode 1046: The Miseducation of Ed Larsen - JFK & Government Conspiracies (2025 podcast), United States of Kennedy (2025 podcast), Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder (2025 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 456: Family Curses (2026 podcast), Love Story (2026 series)
Websites: historyhit.com, Scientific America, CNN, PBS, CBS News, BBC, Autistic Self Advocacy Center, InStyle, Best Buddies International, All Things Interesting, USA Today, Today in Civil Liberties, Cambridge Dictionary, Kennedys and King, RJP Books, New York Post, Boston Magazine, Time, The Moth, Vanity Fair, Voices Center for Resilience, Reddit, Washington Association of Black Journalists, NPR, The Ringer, The Daily Express, The Harvard Crimson, Wikipedia
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Backgrounds
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I have ADHD. Joy is autistic and we are letting our hyperfixations fly.
Focus on the Kennedy Curse and Kathleen Kennedy
00:00:08
Speaker
Today we are fixating on the Kennedy curse.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. I'm so happy you're back joining us for our series on the Kennedy family.
Who was Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy?
00:00:27
Speaker
Today, we are talking about the fourth-born Kennedy child of Joe and Rose and the second-born daughter, Kathleen Kennedy.
00:00:36
Speaker
She would be the second child from the family to die young just four years after the death of her older brother, Joe Jr., Just as a reminder of the birth order of Joe and Rose's children, it's Joe Jr., John, aka Jack, Rosemary, Kathleen, aka Kick, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, aka Bobby, Jean, and Edward, aka Ted.
00:01:02
Speaker
We have already talked about Rose and Joe, their courtship and marriage, and in the last couple episodes, we talked about Rosemary.
Kick's Social Life and Education in the UK
00:01:10
Speaker
So today we're going to talk about Kathleen Kennedy. As always for this series, the sources are listed in the show notes because there are simply too many.
00:01:20
Speaker
Kathleen was born on February 20th, 1920. As I said, she was the fourth child and second daughter of Joe and Rose. She went by the nickname Kick for her high spirited personality, her vivaciousness, and just being full of life. She was really funny and just so incredibly charming.
00:01:38
Speaker
She was Joe's favorite daughter, and Joy found this quote that is just, I think, so sweet. Joe once said, quote, all of my ducks are swans but kick was especially special
00:01:54
Speaker
Kick, Joe Jr., and Jack were called the golden trio or the three. They were all intelligent, confident, and good-looking. You'll notice Rosemary, who fell between Jack and Kick, was not included in that cohort of oldest children.
00:02:11
Speaker
Jack and Kick were incredibly close. They were basically like twins. Some even called them psychological twins for how similar they were in personality. Kick received the same education as her brothers, despite the Kennedy daughters not being raised to go into politics.
00:02:26
Speaker
And Joy pointed out that despite them not all being raised to go into politics, all of the Kennedy kids were raised to be exceptional, even if they weren't being groomed specifically for politics.
Kick's Rise in British Society and Relationships
00:02:37
Speaker
Joe and Rose made sure that their children were worldly, well-read, and always sent to the best schools.
00:02:44
Speaker
Kick was as competitive as her brothers, athletic, optimistic, and charming. She attracted many suitors, including her brother's friends, much to their chagrin. Kick thrived when her father was serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. She had a big social life and a lot of friends and really made her way in British society. She was simply put the star.
00:03:07
Speaker
Joe Jr. wasn't in the same social circles and Jack was quiet and studious. Her charisma really opened the doors for her brothers. And Joy really knows a lot more about kind of the British society and the hierarchy and aristocracy. So she pointed out that Like, an unpretentious American would be irksome to people in upper British society normally, but the Brits really found her endearing and charming.
00:03:36
Speaker
She could get away with saying things and acting in ways that would be unseemly in high society, which actually in turn made those around her loosen
Kick's Career and Controversial Choices
00:03:44
Speaker
up too. She even dated David Rockefeller, grandson of Standard Oil Company founder and one of the wealthiest Americans at the time, John D. Rockefeller.
00:03:54
Speaker
The English media declared her the, quote, debutante of 1938. So i I ended up looking a little into this, like Joy asked how typical it was for an American to be debuted in the UK.
00:04:10
Speaker
And it ah but from what I found, it looked like Americans would be presented to society in this way in Britain, but it was unusual for an American to be so celebrated.
00:04:21
Speaker
When she passed the test from the aristocracy, she was welcomed with opened arms. She was educated at Queen's College in London. With the onset of World War ii when her family fled, she fought to stay, but Jo insisted she return home in 1939. Joy pointed out that she had already met her future husband, Billy, by this time, which could possibly be one of the reasons she fought so hard to stay. Back in the U.S., she went to school and volunteered for the American Red Cross.
00:04:53
Speaker
In 1941, she left college and began working as a research assistant for Frank Waldrop, the executive editor of the Washington Times-Herald. She worked with journalist Inga Arvad and eventually got her own column where she reviewed movies and plays.
00:05:10
Speaker
Inga's story is super interesting, and I might have accidentally sparked another fixation, but there is just simply no time. We have over 30 Kennedy episodes to get through. We can't talk about Inga, but we'll talk about her a little bit. Inga was a Danish-American journalist. She was actually a guest of Adolf Hitler's at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and she dated Jack in 1941 to 1942. There was speculation during World War II that she was a Nazi spy, because she was both a guest of Hitler's and then later went on to date a Kennedy. But the U.S. took this speculation seriously and investigated and actually found no evidence of her doing anything nefarious as like a Nazi spy or anything like that.
Challenges to Family Norms and Marriage to Billy Cavendish
00:05:55
Speaker
While she was working there, Kick started dating the star feature writer, John White. Kick said... Joe required the kids to call him anytime they started dating someone new so he could run checks on them. But she didn't with John, and it was kind of a sign that she was starting to get out of her father's control.
00:06:15
Speaker
The relationship was short-lived because she desperately wanted to return to the UK. Let's talk about how Kick had some very different views from her father, her family really, but especially her father, about World War II and things that were going on. She had completely differing views and ideals. She believed that Hitler needed to be defeated and not negotiated with and certainly not admired. So remember, Joe was a staunch isolationist, and he even championed many of Hitler's extremist views.
00:06:47
Speaker
And it took a lot of guts for her to be so vocal about her opposition of Hitler and really going against her father. Another source of tension for Kik and her father especially was that, like most dads, her father expected that she would remain virginal until marriage, and she pretty openly questioned why her brothers and father had different expectations.
00:07:12
Speaker
Later, she would eventually date a married man and didn't understand why her brothers and father weren't as scorned as she was for their many extramarital affairs. she called out the sexual double standard in her family.
00:07:26
Speaker
Her brothers and father were granted sexual freedom while she would be disowned for falling in love. Joe would go so far as to actually leave out pornographic magazines for his sons. Joy wondered if the magazines were left out like just on the coffee table with like the Time magazine and Town and Country.
00:07:43
Speaker
So while this was going on, Kick and her sisters were expected to remain just completely, i guess, unaware of sex, period. Rose would eventually disown Kick, despite Kick always standing up for her mother about Joe's affairs.
00:08:00
Speaker
Kick and her siblings would actually joke about their father's affairs, but really, truly, it deeply hurt and embarrassed all of them. Let's talk about William Cavendish.
00:08:11
Speaker
In 1943, Kick signed up to work in a Red Cross center in England. During the war, she found more independence from her family and their staunch Catholicism.
00:08:23
Speaker
She began seeing William Cavendish, Marquess of Harrington. He was known to his friends as Billy Harrington. He was the heir apparent of the 10th Duke of Devonshire.
00:08:36
Speaker
Now, like I said before, Joy knows the ins and outs of this country. Duke and land ownership and all those things way better than I do. So I'm hoping if she's got things to add, she'll add her two cents in throughout the episode. But just know I tried to understand it and it didn't stick.
00:08:55
Speaker
Kick and Billy had met and become friends during Joe's ambassadorship. Billy was quite the opposite of Kick. He was much more quiet and reserved. Billy's family was close to the British royal family, and Joy had read somewhere that there was talk of Billy being matched with Queen Elizabeth, who was, of course, princess at the time.
00:09:14
Speaker
Rose Kennedy was so crazy against this relationship. A marriage between Billy and Kick would break Roman Catholic law.
00:09:25
Speaker
Their children, I mean Billy and Kick's children, would be raised in the Church of England, not the Catholic Church. because of his rank in society, and because of his ties to the British Anglican Church.
00:09:39
Speaker
Rose said that other Catholic girls in the United States would see Kick marrying somebody outside of their faith, and they'd be influenced to do the same. Kick had probably rather naively hoped that Billy would convert, and they'd raise their children Catholic.
00:09:55
Speaker
But in this kind of naive thought, she was ignoring hundreds of years of history. I'm not going to get into the entire Reformation, but I'll give a little like super high level quicko explanation. But during the Reformation in the 16th century, Protestant King Henry VIII initiated a huge confiscation of land in the UK that was owned by the Catholic Church. This drastically changed land ownership and wealth distribution in Ireland, Wales, and England. So that was the split of like the Protestant and the Catholic Church.
00:10:31
Speaker
I can assure you, you can find so much more information in places that's not me right now. Billy, of course, refused to do this. Their children were not going to be raised Catholic.
00:10:41
Speaker
But they were in love, so they moved forward with the wedding. Now, some say she wasn't really in love with him. they She seemed incredibly fond of him. She really liked him.
00:10:51
Speaker
But she could have been using the marriage as a route to becoming equal to the political and businessmen in her life. Her brother Jack disputed this, recognizing that Kick was marrying the love of her life. But even today, some still wonder that if this is the case. I mean, truly, she was very, very smart, and she wanted to be a member of the British aristocracy.
00:11:14
Speaker
On April 29, 1944, Billy and Kick sent a cable to the Kennedy home, saying that they figured something out and would be wed in a civil ceremony.
00:11:24
Speaker
Now, I love that. Nothing sounds more like two kids eloping than like, we figured it out, we're good, we're getting married. Sorry, mom and dad, XOXO.
Widowhood and Continued Family Struggles
00:11:33
Speaker
Rose saw this as a mortal sin, but Joe kind of admired her gumption.
00:11:39
Speaker
The family had some concerns about a civil ceremony negatively impacting... wait for it, Joe Jr.'s future political career. Not Kix life, not anything else.
00:11:51
Speaker
Joe actually attempted to meet with the Pope via a cardinal he knew in New York to ask the Catholic Church to bless the Union. Joe and Pope Pius XII actually had a relationship.
00:12:04
Speaker
Joe represented the U.S. at Pope Pius' coronation And Pope Pius actually gave Ted his first communion. Their friendship, relationship, whatever it was, is quite complicated. The Pope knew Joe was doing things that went against the Catholic Church, and he also very well likely knew how Joe was leveraging his connections to the Vatican for his son's political careers.
00:12:27
Speaker
As the wedding approached, Rose ignored every mention of it, with Kix's sister Eunice and brother Bobby siding with her. But Jack, If you'll keep in mind, he's the closest sibling to Kik.
00:12:40
Speaker
Made fun of Eunice and Bobby for this, and and their mother, to Kik when they were talking about everything. Rose told reporters that she was ill and would not be able to attend the wedding, and in fact, she checked herself into a hospital for a week-long routine checkup right at the time of the wedding.
00:12:56
Speaker
The couple married on May 6, 1944.
00:13:00
Speaker
In the U.S., Rose made public appearances wearing a black veil like she was at a funeral. Joy brought up that this would, like, totally Streisand affect everything and bring so much more attention to the situation. Like, she was acting like a complete wackadoo, thinking that it would make people not talk about it?
00:13:19
Speaker
i don't know. After they got married, Kick was no longer allowed to take communion as she was considered to be living in sin, according to the church. She had some hope that Joe would be able to clear things up with the Vatican, and eventually Rose would come to accept the union, but still, she tried to do everything
Affair and Family Tensions
00:13:38
Speaker
she could to stop it.
00:13:39
Speaker
Joe Jr. actually became Kick's closest ally in the whole kerfuffle. Joe Jr. defied his mother by helping make wedding arrangements and even walked Kick down the aisle, and they really, really got very close during this time.
00:13:53
Speaker
However, tragedy struck, and five weeks after the wedding, Billy left to fight in the war. He was a major in the 5th Battalion of the Coldstream Guards.
00:14:04
Speaker
And on September 9th, 1944, Billy was killed by a sniper in Belgium. Kick was on a trip in New York City with her dad when Joe received a phone call about Billy's death. He was the one to tell Kick.
00:14:18
Speaker
Joe called Kick's friends to be there with her as her parents and her siblings tried to avoid the subject of the loss of her husband. Typical m MO of the family throughout their history to avoid their feelings.
00:14:32
Speaker
Upon becoming a widow, Kick's title became Kathleen, Dowager Marchioness of Harrington. a dowager is a a widow who holds property or title. This is all joy. I know absolutely nothing of this. I didn't even know dowager was a word until we talked last week.
00:14:49
Speaker
Back in London, the memorial service was held. And rumors spread that Rose was happy that Billy and her oldest child, Joe Jr., had died so close together.
00:15:00
Speaker
We'll talk about this next week. Rose said that Billy died because of Kick's sin. This drove Kick closer to Billy's family, who comforted and loved her. Joe's way of consoling Kick was to encourage her to write a book about this period in her life and by sending her so, so many gifts. This is very similar to what Rose would later do with Rosemary when she was in Wisconsin.
00:15:23
Speaker
Now, i actually think Kick's book about this time in her life would have been so fascinating, but of course that that didn't happen. Just about two years after the loss of her husband, Kick met Peter Fitzwilliam in June 1946.
00:15:39
Speaker
He actually looked like Joe, and his personality was more like her father and very unlike Billy. Peter was 10 years older than Kick and was married to a woman who was struggling with alcoholism.
00:15:51
Speaker
The married couple regularly cheated on one another. Just another way that Peter had similarities to these Kennedy men, he had actually abandoned his wife on their honeymoon to meet with another woman, and then she was blamed through their whole marriage for making his life harder when she started to cope with the affairs through drinking.
00:16:11
Speaker
Keep that in mind when we start talking about some of the Kennedy spouses later on. Kick and Peter began an affair. Kick really at this time started behaving more recklessly and taking bigger risks.
00:16:23
Speaker
To her family, it seemed like she was deliberately trying to destroy everything she had created for herself, and this would go along with the tendency for some of the Kennedys to engage in incredibly self-destructive behavior.
00:16:36
Speaker
She could have also been trying to cause the rest of her family some shame for how they had treated her when Billy was still alive. But she wanted to marry Peter, no matter the consequences.
00:16:47
Speaker
When Peter's divorce was final, Kick told her family about her upcoming marriage— And this infuriated Rose, who called the potential wedding sacrilegious.
00:17:01
Speaker
Rose said that she would disown Kick and leave Joe if he didn't do the same, saying that she would be dead to both of them. This actually ended up pushing Kick closer to her father. In one massive, huge, explosive fight, Rose wore Kick down, demanding that she put in writing that she would not marry Peter. She did this just to kind of appease her mother and end the fight.
Kick's Tragic Death and Legacy
00:17:25
Speaker
She knew she didn't get disowned the first time she disobeyed. She wouldn't this time either. The family housekeeper, Ilona, overheard the dramatic fight and she pulled Kick aside and told her not to listen to her mother.
00:17:38
Speaker
But Kick had never intended to listen to her mother. On May 13th and 14th, 1948, Kick and Peter planned a trip to Cannes with plans to stop in Paris to visit her father, who was visiting at the time. The plan was an attempt for Peter to try to win Joe over.
00:17:56
Speaker
On May 13th, they boarded a small plane with pilot Peter Townshend. The weather looked iffy, but they would be able to stay ahead of it if they stuck to a tight flight schedule.
00:18:07
Speaker
When they landed in Paris, Townshend told Kick and Peter to return to the plane immediately after lunch with Joe. They had to take off before a thunderstorm was scheduled to cross their path at 5 Of course, Kick and Peter were late and Townshend did not want to take off. All commercial flights in the area had been grounded due to weather, so Kick and Peter begged him to leave anyway, and they successfully wore him down.
00:18:33
Speaker
The plane took off at 3.30 p.m. and crashed just three hours later. The group likely knew that they were not going to survive 20 minutes before the crash.
00:18:44
Speaker
It was a terrifying and violent crash. This crash is eerily similar to John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash in 1999. It's likely that the pilot got disoriented due to the weather.
00:18:58
Speaker
This brings up the question of, you know, the thing of is it a family curse versus another instance of the Kennedy hubris resulting in catastrophe. A person without the name Kennedy would not have been able to convince a pilot to fly in dangerous conditions. Joe would be the only member of the Kennedy family who attended the funeral.
00:19:19
Speaker
He was truly grieving, but he knew he couldn't allow the news of Kik's affair to embarrass the family, so he needed to control the media narrative. He told the media that she had been with Peter due to a chance encounter with him and his wife, and they shared a flight.
00:19:35
Speaker
Though her attitude would soften over the years, Rose believed that Kick died while in active sin and was in purgatory. Joy wondered if Rose was perhaps envious of Kick, not because of her freedom and gumption in making choices for herself, but because of how much Joe loved Kick.
00:19:52
Speaker
Joe respected Kick's rebelliousness, while Joe took Kick's rebellion as an offense against her. At this time, Jack would have a really heavy conversation with the family housekeeper, Ilona.
00:20:04
Speaker
Again, this is the housekeeper that spoke to Kik. It seems like she just kind of helped all the kids maybe quietly deal with feelings and she reassured them and things like that. She seemed really important to the kids. But they talked about losing Kik.
00:20:18
Speaker
They left the conversation saying that they would never speak of Kik again. In fact, Kik would be known in presidential literature as, quote, the sister who died in a plane crash.
00:20:28
Speaker
The Kennedys didn't make arrangements to have her body sent home. The Cavendish family had her buried in their family plot. Kik would become emblematic of the Kennedy curse, which would whitewash her true personality out of the family history.
00:20:44
Speaker
She was truly a feminist, especially at that time. She was courageous for standing up to her mother, her faith, and her country for love, not just once but twice. Despite this, she was still a victim of her and her family's own hubris and entitlement.
00:20:59
Speaker
She had that feeling that we'll see so many members of the Kennedys have of nothing ever bad could happen to them. They haven't experienced any negative feelings.
Reflection on Kick's Life and Tease for Next Episode
00:21:11
Speaker
consequences yet for some of their rash decisions and reckless choices. That what won't happen this time.
00:21:16
Speaker
That is one of those themes that we'll see over and over and over again through this series. Well, everyone, that is the episode about Kick. I have to say, i think Kick is my favorite Kennedy.
00:21:28
Speaker
I've loved learning about her. And I know there are a couple of books coming out or have recently come out about her. So check those out. Goes into so much more. She's just a cool lady. She knew what she wanted. She seemed like she was confident in herself and who she was and could speak her mind. And I just, I really, really loved learning about her.
00:21:48
Speaker
Next week, we will go to the top of the sibling order and we will talk about Joe Jr., who also suffered a tragic, unnecessary death as well.
00:22:02
Speaker
So thank you guys so much for joining us and we will talk again next week.