Lee Radziwill

Caroline Lee Bouvier
Lee Radziwill (left) in India, 1962
Born	(1933-03-03) March 3, 1933 Southampton, New York
Occupation(s)	actress, public relations executive, interior decorator
Spouse(s)	Michael Temple Canfield (m. 1953–1959; annulled) Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł (m. 1959–1974; divorced) Herbert Ross (m. 1988–2001; divorced)
Children	Anthony Stanislas Albert Radziwill Anna Christina Radziwill
Parent(s)	John Vernou Bouvier III Janet Norton Lee
Relatives	Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (sister) Janet Jennings Auchincloss (half-sister)

Caroline Lee Bouvier (born March 3, 1933), is an American socialite, public relations executive, interior decorator, and former actress. She is the younger sister of the late First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy. Her niece Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is named after her. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1996.

Early life and ancestry

Born in Southampton, New York, Caroline Lee Bouvier, called Lee after her maternal grandfather James T. Lee, was the younger daughter of Stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and socialite Janet Norton Lee.

Marriages and children

Radziwill has been married three times. Her first marriage, in April 1953, was to Michael Temple Canfield, a publishing executive who had been adopted as an infant by the American publisher Cass Canfield. He was the son of notorious socialite Kiki Preston. It was rumoured that his biological father was Prince George, Duke of Kent, a member of the British Royal Family; if so, then Canfield would be a first cousin of the present Queen. They divorced in 1959, and the marriage was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in November 1962.

Her second marriage, on March 19, 1959, was to the Polish prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł, who divorced his second wife, the former Grace Maria Kolin, and received a Roman Catholic annulment of his first marriage to marry the former Mrs. Canfield. (His second marriage had never been acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church, so no annulment was necessary.) He died in 1976.

On September 23, 1988, Radziwill became the second wife of American film director and choreographer Herbert Ross. They divorced in 2001, shortly before his death.

In his book Nemesis, author Peter Evans has stated that Radziwill also had a long-standing affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and was privately bitterly disappointed when he married her elder sister.

Career and fame

In the 1960s, Radziwill attempted to forge a career as an actress. Her acting attempt was unsuccessful, but she did receive international publicity. Largely untrained, Radziwill received dismal reviews in the 1967 production of The Philadelphia Story, starring as spoiled Main Line heiress Tracy Lord. The play was staged at the Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago, and Radziwill's performance was widely panned. A year later, she appeared in a television adaptation of the Hollywood film Laura, which was also badly received. Radziwill discontinued her acting work.

She visited India and Pakistan along with her elder sister Jacqueline Kennedy (then First Lady of the United States) in March 1962.

Radziwill received favorable coverage from the wine-and-cheese press for her personal style in the 1960s and 1970s. The two English homes, a townhouse in London, and a manor house called Turville Grange in Turville, that she shared with her second husband, were decorated by Italian stage designer Renzo Mongiardino and were greatly admired and frequently photographed by Cecil Beaton and Horst P. Horst. She herself worked briefly as an interior decorator, as well, in a style much influenced by her association with Mongiardino. Her clientele were the wealthy; she once decorated a house "for people who would not be there more than three days a year." She was seen in celebrity company, such as on the The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972, during which she accompanied Truman Capote.

She had a brief affair with the English comedian Peter Cook

For some years, Radziwill was a public relations executive for Giorgio Armani, the Italian fashion designer. She is also the author of Happy Times (Assouline, 2003), an autobiographical coffee-table book about her life.

Radziwill received the Légion d'honneur from the French government in 2008. It was presented to her at the home of Bernard-Henri Lévy and Arielle Dombasle in Paris.

Lee Radziwill's Paris and Manhattan apartments were featured in the April 2009 issue of Elle Décor magazine. She was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013.

Interviewed fellow celebrity Sofia Coppola for a June 2013 article about the loss of privacy and Coppola's making of The Bling Ring.

References within popular culture

In 2006, a musical titled Grey Gardens opened on Broadway. In the musical, the characters of Lee and Jackie Bouvier appear as children visiting their aunt's home to attend the engagement party of their cousin "Little" Edie Beale. The musical centers on the lives of Radziwill's cousin Edith Bouvier Beale and aunt Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Clarke, Gerald (1988). Capote, A Biography (1st ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-241-12549-6.
• Evans, Peter (2004). Nemesis: The True Story. Regan Books. ISBN 978-0-06-058053-7 [0-06-058053-4].
• Magazine Paris Match July 6, 2008 page 16.