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WORK TITLE: Once Upon a Time
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PERSONAL
Married Thomas Beller; children: two.
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CAREER
Writer. Previously, worked for Miramax as a script reader and for Sotheby’s Auction House.
WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including Vogue, London Guardian, and Travel + Leisure.
SIDELIGHTS
Elizabeth Beller is a writer based in New York City and New Orleans, LA. She has contributed to to publications, including Vogue, London Guardian, and Travel + Leisure. Previously, Beller worked for the film studio, Miramax, as a script reader and for Sotheby’s Auction House.
In 2024, Beller released her first book, Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. In it, she chronicles the life of John Kennedy, Jr.’s wife, which was cut tragically short in 1999. Beller begins with Bessette-Kennedy’s childhood in White Plains. She attended high school in wealthy Greenwich, CT and went on to study education at Boston University. After graduating, Bessette-Kennedy began working at the Calvin Klein boutique in Boston. She subsequently moved to New York, where she continued to work for the fashion brand, eventually moving from the sales floor to its public relations department. It was at the Calvin Klein headquarters in 1992 that she had her fateful first meeting with John Kennedy, Jr. The dated briefly before a scathing letter from a friend led Kennedy to break up with her. The two rekindled their romance two years later, after the death of Kennedy’s mother. Though they were observed having dramatic fights, they moved forward with their relationship, marrying in 1996. They were hounded by the paparazzi throughout their relationship, which led to tensions between them. Despite their troubled relationship, the couple and Bessette-Kennedy’s sister, Lauren, all decided to fly together to Cape Cod to attend Kennedy’s sister’s wedding, but the plane went down in bad weather, killing all three on board.
According to Louis Bayard, contributor to the International New York Times, Beller “[squeezed] bright memories from dozens of Bessette-Kennedy’s friends, acquaintances and family members,” including quotes from multiple sources about her subject. A Kirkus Reviews critic described the book as “a sensitive portrait of a misunderstood public figure.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
International New York Times, May 29, 2024, Louis Bayard, Who Was Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Really?,” review of Once Upon a Time.
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2024, review of Once Upon a Time.
Washington Post Online, May 20, 2024, Roxanne Roberts, “A Dewy-Eyed Look at the Life and Death of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy,” review of Once Upon a Time.
Elizabeth Beller is a writer and journalist specializing in culture, art, and travel with more than fifteen years of experience as a book and story editor. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Vogue, and Travel + Leisure, among other outlets. Before turning to writing and editing, she spent two years as a script reader for Miramax, followed by twelve years in the art world at Sotheby’s Auction House. She splits her time between New York and New Orleans with her husband, writer Thomas Beller, and their two children.
Byline: Roxanne Roberts
In 1996, Sotheby's auctioned more than 5,500 items from the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had died two years earlier. The winning bids shattered all presale estimates: A monogrammed silver tape measure went for $48,875, a faux-pearl necklace for $211,500. The four-day total topped an astonishing $34 million. "Most of the items were not exceptional works of art or craftsmanship, nor were they even from the White House era," Elizabeth Beller writes in a new book. "They were all Jackie."
The enduring romance and glamour of Camelot cannot be overstated. The Kennedys were the closest this country gets to a royal family, and Jackie's beloved son Çö handsome, playful, adored Çö was America's crown prince and most eligible bachelor. When John Jr. married Carolyn Bessette a few months after the auction, the fashion publicist was transformed into an international celebrity overnight.
They were a beautiful couple. She was a tall, elegant blonde with a cool reserve that complemented his effortless charm. Many people believed that one day John Jr. would become president, and she would be first lady. That dream ended tragically when John, Carolyn and her sister died in a plane crash in the summer of 1999.
Now, 25 years later, Beller has written a biography, "Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy." The writer, who never met Carolyn, very much wants her subject to be remembered as extraordinary in her own right, not as an ordinary young woman pulled into the Kennedy orbit. To underscore her point, the book opens with an author's note: Beller says she wants to defend the "slanderous" rumors that Carolyn was shallow, difficult and manipulative, characterizations she attributes to a "dysfunctional culture," the anti-feminist patriarchy and the media. Her decision to write this book "was not so much a choice as a compulsion."
It's fair to wonder if compulsion is the best starting point. A great biography is intimate but honest, compassionate but unflinching. Sigmund Freud believed that biographers were susceptible to transference Çö romanticizing and sanitizing the narrative in response to unconscious fantasies. At the very least, Beller stumbled into the classic rookie mistake: She fell in love with her subject and so could never see her objectively.
The result is an effusive, almost worshipful portrait of a modern-day princess, stripped of agency or nuance. In Beller's telling, Carolyn is stunning, caring, brilliant, hilarious and passionate but surrounded and hounded by people who are jealous or simply cruel. Beller interviewed dozens of people Çö although not the Bessette or Kennedy inner circle, despite her efforts Çö and the memories are overwhelmingly positive. It's not surprising that friends want to protect Carolyn's legacy and diminish her flaws, but the book is a paean to a doomed goddess instead of a reflective examination of a woman thrust into a life she was unprepared for and ill-equipped to survive.
Carolyn's star rose quickly. After graduating from Boston University in 1988 Çö a semester late because she was busy promoting local nightclubs Çö she landed a job as a saleswoman for Calvin Klein's boutique in Boston. Soon she moved to Klein's headquarters in New York. She was originally assigned to VIP clients and then became a public relations executive and a darling in Manhattan's fashion and club scene.
In passage after passage, Carolyn is described as a muse, a mentor, dazzling yet unpretentious. Beller praises her subject as a "super empath" Çö someone exceptionally sensitive to the feelings of others. Never mind the friends who saw her throwing herself at her friends' boyfriends. "It was a move at odds with her usually nurturing persona," writes Beller, "but not necessarily with the fragility beneath the gentleness."
Call it insecurity, call it vanity, call it a cry for help. Or don't. Carolyn bragged that no man had ever dumped her. Beller argues that "it stands to reason" that Carolyn would have trouble trusting men because her parents had divorced when she was 8, and she was estranged from her father. (An armchair psychologist might call that unfair to her doting stepfather and to every daughter of divorce who doesn't try to use friends' boyfriends to soothe her ego.)
The problem, of course, is that this version of Carolyn has no flaws Çö or that any faults are uncharacteristic, or justified because of the actions of other people. This strips Carolyn of the capacity for self-awareness, maturity and growth, making everything that happened next a tragedy outside her control.
Myth has it that Carolyn and John met while jogging in Central Park. Beller writes that the two were introduced when he came into Calvin Klein's headquarters in 1992, and they began a brief, turbulent romance. John broke up with her after receiving a letter from a friend claiming that she was a "user, partier, that she was out for fame and fortune." Carolyn was down but not out: "She also knew, deep down, that this would not be the end," a friend told Beller. "John was a prize and Carolyn had her eye on the ball." Another said Carolyn wanted an "important life," and she thought she could have that with John.
They renewed the romance in earnest two years later Çö shortly after Jackie died Çö and picked up where they left off: two people addicted to each other and the drama they constantly brought to the relationship. When he was an hour late for a dinner date, she threw a glass of wine in his face and stormed out. By early 1996, engaged and living together, the two were filmed having a huge fight in Washington Square Park. The tabloids had a field day; it was a massive embarrassment for John, who had just launched George magazine, and a realization for Carolyn that the spotlight was never turning off.
Whatever doubts they had were pushed aside: Their wedding in September Çö pulled off in secret Çö was a sensational fairy tale, complete with one of the most romantic photos in history. The groom was 35, the bride 30.
But two people can be deeply in love and wrong for each other. John, born into a rarefied world of suffocating fame and fortune, was earnest, loving, spoiled, careless, struggling with ADHD and dyslexia, and sensitive to any intellectual slight. He was accustomed to a world eager to give him whatever he wanted. Beller may describe Carolyn as generous, funny and thoughtful, but her heroine also comes across as spoiled, headstrong and insecure. Her insistence on living her life as she wished Çö including a husband who was an equal partner Çö was at odds with the man and history she married.
One of the many unexplored questions in this book is the naivetȨ on both John's and Carolyn's part about what was likely to happen when they married. They believed that the media interest would die after the wedding; it intensified. "John and Carolyn were woefully under-managed for their outsize life," a friend of John's told Beller. "They needed aides-de-camp. They needed security. And they should probably have moved away from that building." But the couple continued to live in John's downtown loft Çö with no doorman and one exit Çö where photographers could catch them coming and going.
Everything the newlyweds did in public was scrutinized: They were the undisputed stars at any gala they attended. Carolyn was hailed one of the most fashionable women in the world. But a ski trip to Bozeman, Mont., also made headlines when she wore boots with four-inch heels and the locals laughed at her. Beller attributes it to "jealousy or just plain cattiness Çö it was the age-old tradition of women turning on women." So, not just the patriarchy.
Carolyn quit her job to be available for her husband, then found herself bored and resentful of all the people and things that demanded his time. She blamed the paparazzi for her unhappiness Çö and Beller concurs. John grew up with photographers and had a cordial relationship; Carolyn was never reconciled to the constant presence of cameras or the request for one smile. "No!" she told a Kennedy family friend. "I hate those bastards. I'd rather just scream and curse at them." It became a vicious cycle Çö she was angry, the photos were angry, and Carolyn once even spat at a photographer. Perhaps had she lived longer she would have learned Çö like Princess Diana Çö to leverage her fame for good.
Maybe Carolyn was clinically depressed, but Beller doesn't explore the question of mental health and the pressures of being a celebrity. She does say, near the end of the book, that Carolyn was prescribed antidepressants, and that by the spring of 1999 the marriage was in shambles and the couple were in counseling. "She was pretty angry," said a longtime friend of the couple's. "But, at a certain point, you have to slow down and ask yourself, 'Do I want to be in constant outrage?' Because you can't grow in that state."
John confided in friends that his wife refused to have sex with him and that he believed she was doing drugs. The persistent rumors that Carolyn had a problem with cocaine are left largely unexamined. Beller repeatedly says Carolyn never touched the stuff; she quotes one friend who says she "barely drank wine." In the same vein, Carolyn's alleged affairs are dismissed as mere friendships. John, on the other hand, may have been unfaithful, but his "infidelity came from pain."
In July 1999, John persuaded Carolyn to accompany him to his cousin's wedding at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod. Her sister Lauren, who had brokered a reconciliation of sorts, flew along in John's small plane with a planned drop-off on Martha's Vineyard. The plane went down shortly after dark off the Massachusetts coast; there were no survivors.
In her epilogue, Beller asks whether any woman who married JFK Jr. would have elicited this obsession and tells herself no Çö Carolyn was "fascinating, intriguing, exasperating Ǫ a revelation." For the rest of us, she is a cautionary tale, and this book a lesson in the perils of celebrity worship.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The Washington Post
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"A dewy-eyed look at the life and death of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy." Washingtonpost.com, 20 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A794530701/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b376930f. Accessed 24 Aug. 2024.
QUOTED: "squeezing bright memories from dozens of Bessette-Kennedy's friends, acquaintances and family members."
Byline: Louis Bayard
In "Once Upon a Time," Elizabeth Beller examines the life and death of the woman who was best known for marrying John F. Kennedy Jr.
ONCE UPON A TIME: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, by Elizabeth Beller
One of the many reasons to wish that Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were alive and well is that, without too much urging, she might have formed a sorority with Meghan Markle. They could have talked about what it's like to be a woman thrust into a brutal family dynasty and a Hobbesian press ecosystem. Maybe they would have exchanged tips for dodging paparazzi. Maybe, over enough drinks, they would have asked each other if their husbands were worth all the trouble.
Sadly, we can only come at Bessette-Kennedy now through intermediaries. And none of them could be more ardent in their mission than Elizabeth Beller, whose unironically titled biography, "Once Upon a Time," aims to make John F. Kennedy Jr.'s wife the princess she was meant to be. Squeezing bright memories from dozens of Bessette-Kennedy's friends, acquaintances and family members, Beller lays down a yellow-brick road from her subject's middle-class White Plains childhood to her tony Greenwich adolescence to her convivial semesters at Boston University to her V.I.P. sales job at Calvin Klein in New York.
Beller is there, too, when America's most famous bachelor wandered in for a fitting. Boy and girl, helpless in their beauty, gazed upon each other. Boy asked for girl's number. There followed "a haze of sultry dinners, dancing and walks." But John F. Kennedy Jr. was in no hurry to settle down. He was on-and-off-dating a temperamental Hollywood actress, and even when he and Bessette-Kennedy did become an item, he didn't introduce her to his mother, who then died before he could.
Their Georgia wedding was lovely, but the marriage was troubled. John's energies were drawn away by the launch of George, his doomed magazine. His gregarious wife was a prisoner in her own home, thanks to an unhinged tabloid press. "If I don't leave the house before 8 a.m.," she told a friend, "they're waiting for me. Every morning. They chase me down the street."
The couple grew distant. They got into arguments. They went to couples therapy. But "Once Upon a Time" wants us to know that, through it all, they were meant to be. "They would love hard and they would fight hard," one friend said, "but they were very much a couple."
"They were soul mates," Beller quotes George Plimpton as saying.
And through it all, apparently, Bessette-Kennedy never stopped being a golden girl. We're told over and again how gorgeous and elegant she was, how smart and funny and kind. She loved kids, dogs, cats, old people. She had "abundant gifts to share." She was "wild and vivid in a cautious and pale world." She was "a revelation."
The only remaining question: Why is this exercise in heroine worship emerging a full quarter-century after her death? Beller argues that Bessette-Kennedy's legacy until now has been shaped by men, and she probably means one man in particular. Edward Klein's 2003 pot-stirrer, "The Kennedy Curse," helped cement the tabloid image of her as a difficult cokehead who showed up two hours late to her own wedding, severed a nerve in her husband's wrist, fooled around with other men and, in one redolent phrase, snorted up with "a gaggle of gay fashionistas."
Beller rebuts each charge as it comes, but with all respect to her advocacy, she seems to be litigating a case that has long since been settled out of court or, more poignantly, forgotten. What lingers, I fear, for anyone tasked with remembering Bessette-Kennedy's name, is her haunting end: borne down in a Piper Saratoga six-seater piloted by her husband, with her sister at her side.
Ironic and fitting, then, that in recreating that fatal journey, Beller's prose sparks to life. "They were flying through a darkness akin to that of a sensory-deprivation chamber, surface and sky indistinguishable. Only when John began to make multiple turns, climbing then descending, turning and descending again, might the sisters have noticed that it had been 20 minutes since they had seen the nebulous mainland lights, glimmering yet opaque."
ONCE UPON A TIME: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy | By Elizabeth Beller | Gallery | 352 pp. | $29.99
PHOTO: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy died en route to his cousin's wedding, on July 16, 1999. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 International Herald Tribune
http://international.nytimes.com/
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Bayard, Louis. "Who Was Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Really?" International New York Times, 29 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A795529406/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dae00f42. Accessed 24 Aug. 2024.
QUOTED: "a sensitive portrait of a misunderstood public figure."
Beller, Elizabeth ONCE UPON A TIME Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (NonFiction None) $29.99 5, 21 ISBN: 9781982178963
The pursuit of an American princess.
Editor and arts journalist Beller makes her book debut with a sympathetic biography of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (1966-1999), the wife of John Kennedy Jr., who was killed with him when their small plane crashed in 1999. As soon as Carolyn appeared in the public eye, writes the author, she was unfairly demonized as icy and "bitchy," a characterization that Beller successfully refutes, drawing on much firsthand testimony. Because she was stunningly beautiful and a fashion icon, the media decided, "then she also must be a vapid clotheshorse." The author clearly admires the woman she portrays as possessing "an inimitably original, wildly engrossing brand of magnetism that held those around her spellbound." Throughout, she describes Carolyn's stunning outfits (and lipstick and hair color) in reverential detail. Aware that people were "primed to judge her" negatively because she was so beautiful, Carolyn "went out of her way to be kind," one friend attested, "and to make people comfortable." An education major in college, she loved children, but she loved fashion, too, and decided to pursue that field rather than teaching. Beller recounts Carolyn's successful career at Calvin Klein, where she first met John, who had come in for a menswear fitting. An on-again, off-again relationship culminated in their engagement, which incited a media frenzy; they married in September 1996, and "by January 1997, Carolyn could hardly do anything without intense scrutiny and its subsequent criticism." Feeling "pursued as prey," she refused to smile and wave. "What the tabloids often described as Carolyn's cold demeanor can now more accurately be understood as fear," writes the author. At the time of the crash, their marriage was strained, and Carolyn had descended into a "spiral of worry and anguish"; yet, Beller speculates, a thriving future lay ahead.
A sensitive portrait of a misunderstood public figure.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Beller, Elizabeth: ONCE UPON A TIME." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799332915/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=70086ead. Accessed 24 Aug. 2024.