LEE RADZIWILL

'Caroline Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwiłł Ross' (born March 3, 1933 in Southampton, New York) is an American socialite, public relations executive, and former actress, best known as 'Lee Radziwill'. She is the younger sister of the late former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Contents

Parents

Marriages

Career attempts and fame

Relationships

References

References within popular culture

Parents

Caroline Lee Bouvier, called Lee after her maternal grandfather James T. Lee, was the daughter of John Vernou Bouvier III and Janet Norton Lee Bouvier Auchincloss Morris. Janet Lee Auchincloss Morris, 81

Marriages

She has been married three times. Her first marriage, in April 1953, was to Michael Temple Canfield, a publishing executive who was rumored to be an illegitimate son of Prince George, Duke of Kent and the American banking heiress Kiki Preston; he had been adopted as an infant by the American publisher Cass Canfield. They divorced in 1959, and the marriage was later annulled.
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, to marry the former Mrs. Canfield. Five months after the wedding, the couple had a son, Anthony Radziwill, and a year after that, a daughter, Anna Christina Radziwill. They divorced on March 3, 1974. Anthony Radziwill died of cancer at the age of 40 on August 10, 1999, just one month after the death of his cousin John F. Kennedy, Jr. and JFK Jr.'s wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren, in a plane crash near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Five years later, Lee Radzwill became engaged to California hotel magnate Newton Cope, but the marriage was called off five minutes before the wedding ceremony was to begin.
On September 23, 1988, she became the second wife of American film director and choreographer Herbert Ross; they divorced in 2001, shortly before his death. ^[1]
Radziwill is also reported to have been romantically involved with Aristotle Onassis before his marriage to her sister, and to have battled alcoholism.

Career attempts and fame

In the 1960s, Radziwill attempted to forge a career as an actress. It was not a success though it received international publicity. Largely untrained, she appeared to 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 did no further acting work.
Lee Radziwill received a great deal of favorable coverage for her personal style in the 1960s and 1970s. The two English homes she shared with her second husband were decorated by Italian stage designer Renzo Mongiardino and were greatly admired and frequently published. She herself worked briefly as an interior decorator as well in a style much influenced by her association with Mongiardino. She was seen in celebrity company, such as on the 1972 American tour of The Rolling Stones.

Relationships

For some years, Lee Radziwill has been a public relations executive for Giorgio Armani, the Italian fashion designer. She also is the author of ''Happy Times'' (Assouline, 2003), a lavish coffee-table book about the stylish life that she and her sister led in their heyday.

References

1. Lee Bouvier Radziwill Weds Herbert Ross, Film Director

References within popular culture

In 2006, a musical entitled Grey Gardens opened on Broadway. In the musical, the character of Lee Bouvier appears as a child visiting her aunt's home along with her sister Jackie for 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.