32. She Became A New York “Swan”
After the tragedy, Lee and Prince Stanislaw posted up in an iconic Fifth Avenue residence and started living the life most New Yorkers can only dream about. While in this heady atmosphere, Lee met the urbane writer Truman Capote and became one of his notorious “Swans,” the group of uber elegant women he kept around himself at all times. Sadly, this influence wasn’t a good one.
33. A Writer Was In Love With Her
Truman Capote quickly became obsessed with Lee, once saying, “I can’t think of any woman more feminine than Lee Radziwill—not even Audrey Hepburn". According to Lee herself, the author was thoroughly in love with her, and he even started trying to turn the East Coast socialite into a star of the stage. It ended in disaster.
34. She Tried To Become A Star
In no time flat, Capote convinced Lee that she should star in an upcoming stage production of The Philadelphia Story. There was, however, an enormous hurdle. Lee’s husband Prince Stanislaw despised the idea, and thought his wife’s pursuit of stardom was tasteless and tawdry. Well, she probably should have listened to her husband.
35. She Had A Humiliating Opening Night
When the curtains swung on Lee’s opening night in The Philadelphia Story, it seemed like everything went wrong in an instant. First, her sister Jackie never showed up, possibly out of (you guessed it) jealousy, and Lee was so nervous and trembling that she could barely hold onto a prop piece of paper. Unsurprisingly, the critics’ reviews were horrific—and there’s an even darker side to this story.
36. She Had A Secret Frenemy
Lee’s own friends believed that Truman Capote’s attention toward her wasn’t completely pure and altruistic. Fashion designer Ralph Rucci claimed that Capote actually secretly wanted Lee’s acting dreams to crash and burn, saying, “I think he was in love with her, totally in love with her. And because he couldn’t psychologically handle that, he had to hurt her, which is so twisted and unfortunate". But before Capote could fully realize his “plan,” Lee had a rude awakening.
37. Her Husband Gave Her A Brutal Ultimatum
In 1944, Lee starred in a panned remake of Otto Preminger’s classic noir Laura, and this was the final straw. No longer willing to watch his wife make a fool of herself, Lee’s husband Prince Stanislaw threatened to keep her children from her if she continued on with her Hollywood pipe dream. That was the end of that…but as always with Lee Radziwill’s life, another twist was coming.
38. Her Sister Betrayed Her
In 1968, Lee’s sister Jackie dealt her the coldest betrayal yet. That autumn, she married Lee’s old, bullish lover Aristotle Onassis. Even worse, she never even told Lee about their engagement, and the princess had to find out about it from Onassis instead. On the surface, Lee’s reaction was all high-society manners, and she released a statement professing her happiness at the union. In private, however, nothing could be further from the truth.
A Woman Named Jackie (1991), NBC
39. She Was Falling Apart
Behind bedroom doors, Jackie's decision devastated Lee. She reportedly called up her frenemy Truman Capote and wailed through the phone, “How could she do this to me?” In many ways, it was the last blow their relationship ever sustained, and the sisters never recovered any true semblance of intimacy after that. If anything, they only grew more dysfunctional.
40. She Started A Romance With A Bad Boy
Still licking her wounds from Jackie’s treachery, Lee threw herself into a new tryst, this time with her husband’s friend Peter Beard. Beard, who was half photographer, half adventurer, introduced Lee to a whole new kind of social circle. Soon, Lee was lounging around in Andy Warhol’s Factory and inviting Mick Jagger to her Montauk home. And this high-speed life came with some very high stakes.
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41. She Went Through A Nasty Divorce
In 1974, Lee’s fairy tale came to a crushing end. Her affair with Peter Beard was the nail in the coffin of her marriage to Prince Stanislaw, and the “royal” couple filed for divorce. While Lee seemed impassive about the split, Stanislaw was completely heartbroken at the loss of his wife. Unfortunately, that heartache took its toll.
42. Her Prince Suffered A Tragedy
In 1976, just two years after his split from Lee, Prince Stanislaw suffered a fatal heart attack while attending a weekend shindig in England. At the time, he was only 62 years old and Lee herself was barely into her 40s. Obviously, the loss was enormous for Lee…and that was before she discovered the shocking contents of Stanislaw’s estate.
43. Her Children Got Nothing
In the aftermath of Prince Stanislaw’s end, the executors of his will revealed the sour truth. He was on the verge of bankruptcy, and had absolutely no money left from his once impressive inheritance. This also meant that Lee’s children with Stanislaw got approximately zero cents from their dearly departed dad. Ouch.
44. She Found A New Man
By her mid-40s, Lee had mostly gotten over her disappointments and romantic upheavals. Indeed, she was ready to settle down again, this time with her new fiancé, the West-coast hotelier Newton Cope. Finally, things were looking bright and rosy in Lee’s future—which is how you know it was all about to unravel in a spectacular manner.
45. She Was Afraid Of Her Sister
Although Cope and Lee had a loving, solid companionship, there was one constant issue between them: Lee’s big sister Jackie. The sisters, though emotionally distant, lived near each other, and Cope balked at how much Jackie controlled Lee’s life. He once spat out to her after a dinner party at Jackie’s, “Why the heck are you so afraid of your sister?” Turns out, Lee probably should have been more afraid.
A Woman Named Jackie (1991), NBC
46. She Had A Broken Engagement
Just as Lee was happily planning her wedding to Cope, it came crashing down around her. Practically on the eve of their wedding, Cope called the whole thing off, ending what might have been the society marriage of the year. After all that, what would make a man turn tail and run? Well, Cope’s rumored reason was a doozy.
47. Her Sister Was Conniving
According to Cope himself, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was directly responsible for his broken engagement. As the wedding ramped up, Jackie’s lawyer called the groom-to-be and advised him to sign a whopping prenuptial contract before tying the knot with Lee. The notion immediately disgusted Cope, as did Jackie’s “conniving,” so he dropped Lee like a hot potato. Thanks, sis.
48. She Went Through An Immense Loss
Though Lee eventually did marry again, to Footloose director Herbert Ross in 1988, the later years of her life were maybe even more tragic than her early ones. In 1994, she received gut-wrenching news. Jackie got lymphatic cancer and was dead within months. For all their issues, Lee deeply mourned Jackie’s passing, and reportedly sobbed uncontrollably at her sister’s bedside.
Yet just as with her late husband Prince Stanislaw, Lee could never have been prepared for the horrific revelations of Jackie’s will.
49. Her Sister Left Her A Disturbing Gift
When Jackie passed, she was a very rich woman, and she made sure to take care of her children and friends, leaving them various gifts, bequests, and mementos. There was, however, one glaring omission on her list of benefactors. Lee herself got zilch. As Jackie said, she didn’t want to help Lee because “I have already done so during my lifetime".
That’s right, Jackie didn’t pass on a single trinket to her sister. Of course, maybe she had a good reason for this…
50. She May Have Slept With Her Sister’s Husband
According to one of Jackie’s biographers, the former First Lady had a clear and justified vendetta against her little sister. That’s because—get this—Lee may have had an affair with John F. Kennedy right behind Jackie’s back. In which case, the whole “marry Aristotle Onassis and cut her completely out of my will” thing makes a whole lot more sense.
51. She Passed In Style
Eventually, even the lives of American Royalty calm down. Besides her divorce from Herbert Ross in 2001, Lee Radziwill lived out the rest of her years in relative quiet. When she passed in 2019 at the ripe old age of 85, she did it like a true East coast socialite, spending her final moments in her apartment on the Upper East Side in New York.
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