That’s when Bobby Kennedy stepped in and yanked Gore’s arm away from Jackie. Gore had knelt down to talk with Jackie, and when he got up, he put his hand on Jackie’s shoulder. Gore then entered the Blue Room where he found Jackie Kennedy sitting in a chair.
And when it comes to the arts, Gore said he didn’t believe in government interference. Gore said he never joined the council that Jack entered Gore’s name as a favor. At the first White House party, Lem “attacked” Gore, asking why he didn’t attend any of the council’s meetings. In 1961, JFK had placed Vidal’s name on the Council on the Arts. Pitt wonderfully details an incident that’s been revisited over the years. And when JFK was an adult, Lem was better than a trained nurse when it came to attending Jack. Vidal thinks the Billings-Kennedy bond solidified because Lem helped raise Jack’s spirits when he was a sick boy. Lem was of a generation that would just miss identifying with the Stonewall Riots: Instead of having a gay epiphany, Lem became a confirmed bachelor, likely to remain so. In “Jack and Lem,” Pitt traces their friendship through the years and also does a commendable job chronicling the rise of homosexual culture through the decades. Their 20-year friendship was about loyalty and not letting fame or success wreck their bond. Littell met Kennedy when they were both freshmen at Brown University. The heartfelt book will never win Littell a literary award, but it does contain an inherent quality about friendships among the Kennedy men by the way, Littell isn’t gay. “Jack and Lem” reminded me of another book about the Kennedy mystique: “The Men We Became: My Friendship with John F. Billings never had an official role in the Kennedy administration, but Jack gave him his own room at the White House. As Kennedy’s political career took off, Billings had a sacred position in the circle a position of trust. Lem eventually entered the most intimate circle of the Kennedy family. While the friendship may have had a lopsided quality, it was still a solid friendship and one that endured. And while convalescing at a hospital in Rochester, Jack wrote to Lem in a letter dated, June, 27, 1934, “Please don’t write to me on toilet paper anymore. Back in the day, boys who wanted to hook up with other boys would exchange notes written on toilet paper (so the evidence would be easy to digest). Since the word “gay” was hardly used in the 1930s, Lem tried to drop a hint. Sometimes Jack bitched Lem out one letter saying, “Of all the cheap shit I have ever gotten, this is about the cheapest.”Īnd in between those lines is young teenage passion: Lem lusted after Jack, and Jack knew it. From 1933 to 1946, Billings and JFK exchanged letters, with Jack often antagonizing Lem in the correspondence. Pitts had some great source material to work with. And while Jack was a notorious tightwad, he was always generous when it came to Lem. The inseparable twosome had a Mutt-and-Jeff quality: Lem was taller, kind of geeky and Protestant, and Lem’s father had just died when Lem met Jack Jack was handsome, charismatic and from a super-rich huge Irish-Catholic family. With “Jack and Lem,” Pitts has indeed turned over a new stone.īillings and Kennedy met in 1933 while working on the yearbook staff at Choate School For Boys in Wallingford, Conn. A name he kept stumbling across was Lem Billings, who was identified as John Kennedy’s longtime best friend. And in 2003, when Pitts decided to write another volume about JFK, he knew he had to unearth something new. It’s obvious that biographer David Pitts respects and finds the Kennedy legacy fascinating. And so many books have already been written, could there possibly be room for one more? When those bullets fired across Dealey Plaza on Nov. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship,” by David Pitts. Kusner Life+Style Editor Biographer traces untold tale of Camelot’s queer knightĪFFECTION WITHOUT SEX: Lem Billings, left, and JFK, Hyannis Port, 1955.
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