Spiegel Stuff: Inside Sinatra’s Mob Ties; the Kennedy Family Dynamic; the Girl Code at Miss Porter’s

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Almost every man that actor and socialite Libby Holman touched died violently. Actor Clifton Webb called her "the black angel of death," and director Nicholas Ray said she possessed the opposite of the Midas touch: "What would you call it? The cobra's sting?"

In this week's VF archive digest, we dig into the mysteries surrounding Holman, the dynamic between JFK and his brother, and more.

Two Sons, One Destiny

While Joseph P. Kennedy relentlessly groomed Joe junior, his sterling firstborn, for the White House, his frail and "sloppy" second son, Jack, learned to draw on the best of his father's love and—with some brief help from a psychologist—shield himself from the control that went with it. That struggle may have been the making of the future president. Mining the hundreds of Kennedy-family letters that have just become public, Cari Beauchamp reveals the complicated dynamic between the young JFK, his formidable brother, and their tycoon father as it played itself out in the arenas of women, politics, and World War II.

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The Notorious Libby Holman

Libby Holman, the consummate torch singer, self-styled "smart old witch," and femme fatale, never understood why almost every man she touched died violently. Jon Bradshaw unravels the mysteries behind what Gore Vidal called "that dark woman, and darker legend, Libby Holman, who was like no one else we survivors ever knew."

R E A D M O R E »

Sinatra and the Mob

Reports of his Mafia connections followed Frank Sinatra for decades, while he dodged congressional investigations, sued newspapers, and hid the fact that his family came from the same tiny Sicilian town as notorious crime boss Lucky Luciano. In an excerpt from their biography, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan reveal the extent of Sinatra's Mob ties, including the death threats that got him cast in From Here to Eternity and his orgy-filled trip to Havana at the time Luciano ordered the killing of Bugsy Siegel—and modern Las Vegas was born.

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Trail of Guilt

For nearly a quarter-century after 15-year-old Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club in the exclusive Greenwich, Connecticut enclave of Belle Haven, police were stymied. Years later, Michael Skakel, son of a wealthy neighbor and nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was indicted for murder. Dominick Dunne charted his fateful involvement with the case: a rumor heard at the William Kennedy Smith trial, a growing friendship with Martha's mother, shocking revelations by two informants—and a town that still may hold secrets about a girl's violent death.

R E A D M O R E »

The Code of Miss Porter's

Last fall, at Miss Porter's School, in Farmington, Connecticut—attended by generations of debutantes and heiresses, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Barbara Hutton—a student named Tatum Bass confessed to cheating, and was later expelled. Bass's parents claim the school allowed their daughter to be so bullied by a group of girls, "the Oprichniki," that she was driven to cheat. Talking to students, alumnae, and the headmistress, Evgenia Peretz discovers that Bass violated a deeper, unspoken code as well.

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Reuters: U.S.

Saturday, October 5, 2024

Inside Sinatra’s Mob Ties; the Kennedy Family Dynamic; the Girl Code at Miss Porter’s

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