Love letters that chronicle the love affair of then Senator JFK and Swedish beauty Gunilla Von Post go on sale at auction today starting at $25,000. Kennedy and Von Post met on the French Riviera when he was a senator engaged to be married to Jackie and she was 21. The 2 danced the night away.
Both returned to their normal lives but kept up a steamy correspondence. JFK planned a cruise that involved Ms. Von Post but injured his back and was out of commission for several months. Not surprisingly, the affair lasted after Kennedy was married to Jackie. According to the New York Daily News:
The pair met on the French Riviera in the summer of 1953. At the time, he was 36, 15 years her senior. In a letter from June 28, 1954, just after he was married, Kennedy wrote to von Post “I might get a boat and sail around the Mediterranean for two weeks – with you as crew.”
Those plans went south when Kennedy injured his back. Kennedy wrote to von Post when he was recuperating in Manhattan.
“I am still in the hospital after two months. I was terribly disappointed that at the last moment I was not able to come to Europe, especially when you were going to be in Paris and we could have had such a good time … ”
He wrote that he was going to see her without fail if she wasn’t “all settled down” by then.
In the same letter, he writes at the end: “Is there any chance you will be coming to the U.S.?”
The now 78-year-old Post first revealed the affair in a 1997 book. She also gave an interview to ABC News’ 20/20 that year, describing how her heart went “boom boom boom boom” when she was with Kennedy.
“I was very happy to hear from him, but I said ‘he’s a married man,'” she told “20/20.”
The very next year, however, the two got together again in an old castle in Sweden.
“I borrowed him for a week, a beautiful week that no one can take away from me,” she told “20/20.”
Kennedy’s final letter to von Post is dated August, 1955. In it, he waxes wistful about the affair.
“I just got word today – that my wife and sister are coming here. It will all be complicated the way I feel now – my Swedish Flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun and look and the Ocean and think of Gunilla … All Love, Jack.”
The letters are expected to bring in more than $100,000. Meanwhile, it is hard to keep with with the picadillos of JFK. Was the press ignorant of his infidelities and womanizing or did they know and just keep quiet? What would motivate the press to keep quiet about something like this and the many, many other instances of our former president being a horn dog?
I am not sure I will ever understand this powerful family. At a time when people’s moral behavior was much more carefully scrutinized than it is today, a senator, soon to be president has affair after affair. Today, in an almost anything goes society, one little affair such as this one can ruin one’s political career. The irony does not escape me. I don’t think Kennedy could ever be elected today because he appeared to have been a sexual predator. He would be going to sexual addiction rehab right along with a certain famous golfer.
She “borrowed” him? LOL! That’s rich.
But then again, so were they. So I guess it’s all right.
How funny, Pinko.
Do you think, knowing what we know now, that he could be elected today?
I grew up in Charlottesville and there were some Kennedy connections there because of the University. I occassionally hob-nobbed with the muckety mucks and I always heard that Jackie had a lover in Georgetown and that the secret service was very …secret. I sure hope she did. Also the Kenndy brothers philandering was spoken of often.
I doubt he would be elected today, MH.
What was it like, hanging out with rich people? I don’t think I know any of those ha ha!
We used to take a ferry out to Martha’s Vinyard and get Jackie’s house pointed out to us all the time. I wonder if the house is still in the family.
I did not realize Jackie had her own house. Wouldn’t Caroline have inherited it?
I can’t remember if it was an Onasis house or a Kennedy house or both at one point. Would have to look it up as well as who inherited it.
JFK seemed to have a woman in every port. He was charming but geez…..
How embarrassing for his children who never really knew him.
I wonder how much money this woman will finally make off those love letters. It doesn’t sound like she needs the money but who knows.
Ugh, I’m so sick of the whole tawdry Kennedy lot.
I find some of them more endearing as time passes. Have you heard about that series/film that the creator of 24 is making about the Kennedy boys? It is very controversial and very tawdry. Those interviewed on the subject say there is nothing true about the footage they have seen. It is supposed to air on the history channel.
I thought that the history channel dealt with fact.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/the-kennedys-a-political_b_464820.html
There was one person who knew all about these things right up until 1963. His name was J. Edgar Hoover. Ever wonder why Bobby Kennedy couldn’t manage to get the old fellow retired? From what I’ve read, there was a back-scratching understanding between Hoover and family patriarch Joe Kennedy about keeping these things quiet. In fact, Hoover’s people once discovered that young Navy officer Jack was keeping company with a German girl who was strongly suspected of being an Axis spy. Hoover warned Joe Kennedy about it, and Joe convinced the big boys in Washington to transfer Jack quietly and without fuss to the Pacific theater — where Jack nearly died and became a war hero in the same incident.