Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, the glamorous wife of the leader of the free world, who was shot and lay dying in her arms, was for 33 years almost certainly the most famous woman on Earth. Yet after 1964, she never wrote or spoke publicly about her 10-year marriage to John F. Kennedy, let alone the rest of her life. An avalanche of books, written without her cooperation or access to her papers, have reduced some of the mystery surrounding her but have inevitably left us with myths about Jackie Kennedy that are widely believed to this day.
1. She grew up an heiress.
Certainly she was born to a wealthy family and had a privileged upbringing. Her father, John V. Bouvier III, was an investment banking scion, and her mother, Janet Lee, was the daughter of a construction tycoon who built some of the most distinguished apartment houses on Park Avenue in New York. But her father lost most of his money in the Great Depression, her parents divorced bitterly, and she later said that when she was in boarding school, she was sometimes nervous that her father would not be able to pay her tuition bills.