Lee Radziwill

Lee Radziwiłł
Princess Radziwiłł
Radziwiłł (left) and Krishna Hutheesing in India, 1962
Born Caroline Lee Bouvier
(1933-03-03) March 3, 1933
Southampton, New York, U.S.
Spouse(s)
Michael Temple Canfield
(m. 1953; ann. 1962)


Herbert Ross
(m. 1988; div. 2001)
Issue
Prince Anthony Stanislaw Albert Radziwiłł
Princess Anna Christina Radziwiłł-Arancio
Father John Vernou Bouvier III
Mother Janet Norton Lee
Occupation Actress, public-relations executive, interior decorator

Caroline Lee Radziwiłł (née Bouvier, formerly Bouvier Canfield and Ross; Polish pronunciation: [ra'd͡͡ʑivʲiww]; born March 3, 1933), formerly Princess Caroline Lee Radziwiłł,[1] is an American socialite, public-relations executive, and interior decorator. 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 has married and divorced three times, the marriage to third husband Herbert Ross ending in divorce shortly before his death in 2001.[2]

Early life and ancestry

Caroline Lee Bouvier was born in Southampton, New York to stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and socialite Janet Norton Lee.[3]

Marriages and children

Radziwiłł has been married three times. Her first marriage, in April 1953, was to Michael Temple Canfield, a publishing executive. They divorced in 1959, and the marriage was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in November 1962.[4]

Her second marriage, on March 19, 1959, was to the Polish aristocrat Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł, who divorced his second wife, the former Grace Maria Kolin,[5] and received a Roman Catholic annulment of his first marriage to re-marry (his second marriage had never been acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church, so no annulment was necessary).[4] Upon her marriage she became Her Serene Highness Princess Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł.[6][7][8] They had two children, Prince Anthony and Princess Christina.[9] Their marriage ended in divorce in 1974.[10]

On September 23, 1988, Radziwiłł became the second wife of American film director and choreographer Herbert Ross.[11] They divorced shortly before his death, and she returned to using Radziwiłł, her children's name.

Career and fame

In the 1960s, Radziwiłł attempted to forge a career as an actress. Her acting attempt was unsuccessful if highly publicized. She 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 Radziwiłł's performance was widely panned. A year later, she appeared in a television adaptation of the Hollywood film Laura, which was also badly received.[12] Radziwiłł 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.

A London townhouse and a manor Turville Grange in Turville that she shared with her second husband, both of which had been decorated by Italian stage designer Renzo Mongiardino, were greatly admired and frequently photographed by Cecil Beaton and Horst P. Horst. She herself worked briefly as an interior decorator 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".[13] She frequented celebrity company, including travelling with the Rolling Stones during The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972,[14] during which she was accompanied by Truman Capote.

For some years, Radziwiłł was a public relations executive for Giorgio Armani, the Italian fashion designer.

She received the Légion d'honneur from the French government in 2008.

Her Paris and Manhattan apartments were featured in the April 2009 issue of Elle Décor magazine. Radziwiłł was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1996.[15][16] She was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013.[17]

She was interviewed by director Sofia Coppola in February 2013 about her life as part of Radziwell's cover story for T: The New York Times Style Magazine as well as about Coppola's film The Bling Ring and the loss of privacy.[18]

In 1973, Radziwiłł hired documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles to work on a film about the Bouvier family. At the outset, the brothers filmed two eccentric and reclusive members of the extended family: Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale ("Big Edie") and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie"), who were Radziwiłł's aunt and cousin, respectively. The Beales lived in a rambling, decaying home in East Hampton, New York and were supported by other members of the family.

Radziwiłł's original film project was not completed, and Radziwiłł kept the footage that had been shot of the Beales. However, the Maysles brothers were fascinated by the strange life the two women led, and after raising funds for film and equipment on their own they returned and filmed 70 more hours of footage with Big Edie and Little Edie. The resulting film, titled Grey Gardens (1976) after the name of the Beales' home, is widely considered a masterpiece of the documentary genre. It was later adapted as a 2006 musical of the same name, in which the characters Lee and Jackie Bouvier appear as visiting children in retrospect. An HBO television movie based upon the Grey Gardens story appeared in 2009, and featured both Radziwiłł and her sister Jackie both as children and as adults who later assisted their aunt and cousin to refurbish their dilapidated, condemned home.

Titles and styles

  • 3 March 1933 – April 1953: Miss Caroline Lee Bouvier
  • April 1953 – 19 March 1959: Mrs Michael Temple Canfield
  • 19 March 1959 – 1974: Her Serene Highness The Princess Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł
  • 1974 – 23 September 1988: Princess Caroline Lee Radziwiłł
  • 23 September 1988 – 2001: Mrs Herbert Ross
  • 2001 – present: Mrs Caroline Lee Radziwiłł

References

Notes

  1. ↑ "Princess Lee Radziwill Opens Up About Her Sister Jackie Kennedy and JFK". April 27, 2016.
  2. ↑ "Obituaries: Herbert Ross". Los Angeles Times. 10 October 2001. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  3. ↑ "Janet Lee Auchincloss Morris, 81". Janet Lee Auchincloss Morris, a leading member of society in Newport, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C., and the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
  4. 1 2 "Roman Catholics: The Law's Delay". Time. February 28, 1964. Retrieved September 4, 2009.
  5. ↑ Lundy, Darryl, ed. "Grace Maria Kolin". ThePeerage.com, September 28, 2010
  6. ↑ "A less known American 'Princess': Lee Radziwill - History of Royal Women". December 3, 2016.
  7. ↑ "Lee Radziwill Is Ready to Part With Her Glamorous Paris Home". August 10, 2017.
  8. ↑ "The Bouvier Sisters: 12 Things You May Not Know About Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill".
  9. ↑ Haslam, Nicky (7 February 2013). "The Real Lee Radziwill". The New York Times T magazine. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  10. ↑ "For Princess Lee Radziwill, It's the End of a Marriage" People, July 29, 1974
  11. ↑ "Lee Bouvier Radziwill Weds Herbert Ross, Film Director". The New York Times. September 24, 1988. Retrieved June 21, 2007.
  12. ↑ Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pages 388–389.
  13. ↑ New York Magazine, "The Decorating Establishment" February 12, 1979.
  14. ↑ Keys, Bobby. Every Night's a Saturday Night (Counterpoint, 2012) page 159
  15. ↑ VF Staff (1996). "World's Best Dressed Women". Vanity Fair: The International Hall of Fame: Women. Archived from the original on July 12, 2013. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  16. ↑ Ultimate Style: The Best of the Best Dressed List. 2004. p. 160. ISBN 2 84323 513 8.
  17. ↑ Cartner-Morley, Jess; Mirren, Helen; Huffington, Arianna; Amos, Valerie (March 28, 2013). "The 50 best-dressed over 50s". The Guardian. London.
  18. ↑ Radziwell, Lee (June 9, 2013). "In Praise of Privacy". The New York Times Style Magazine. Retrieved June 10, 2013.

Bibliography

  • Clarke, Gerald (1988). Capote, A Biography (1st ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-241-12549-6.
  • Dubois, Diana (1995). In Her Sister's Shadow: An Intimate Biography of Lee Radziwill (1st ed.). New York: Little Brown & Co. ISBN 978-0316187534.
  • 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.
  • Radziwill, Lee (2003). Happy Times. New York: Assouline. ISBN 978-1-614-28054-5.
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