When Tom Wolfe harpooned Leonard Bernstein in his famous Sixties essay, he did it by quoting directly from those attending the infamous cocktail party Lenny gave for the Black Panthers. Wolfe had finagled an invite to the grand 5th Avenue Bernstein pad, and was taking notes throughout the evening. The end result was devastating. In fact, it killed radical chic once and for all. The rich and famous stopped giving dinners for cop killers and drug dealers and turned instead to philanthropy. Soon after, the great social climb began with a vengeance, John Fairchild’s nouvelle society was created and names like Steinberg, Kravis, Gutfreund, and so on became household ones by paying a hell of a lot of money for their seats at charity balls. But it was Tom Wolfe who slew the dragon of radical chic, started in California — where else? — by publicity-seeking rich lovies.
One of Tom’s quotes I treasure was the one that had art dealer Richard Feigen sweating and rather desperately following some big shot around asking, ‘How does one rent a Panther?’ Feigen, the Panthers and I go way back. When I lived in the Hotel du Cap during the summers of the 1950s and 1960s, Feigen would watch some pretty rich fellows drop by my cabana, people with names like Thyssen and Agnelli, so he hatched a plan. He offered me a job selling his art to people like that. Actually, I took it rather badly. Art dealers back then were considered spivs and conmen, so I told him to shove it. Years later, I went to Algeria and interviewed the top Panthers, including Eldridge Cleaver, who were under house arrest having fled America after killing a few cops. (‘Oh, man, what wouldn’t I give for a hamburger’ was the way Cleaver put it.) National Review made it a cover story and I was on my way.
Which brings me to the point of my story. Wolfe was present at the party and reported it accurately. I met the Panthers in Algiers, broke bread with them and reported likewise. Sure, both Tom and I knew how to slant a story and how to make Bernstein and the Panthers look ridiculous. But all we had to do was quote them — which makes it fair. What is very unfair is to hype the whole thing up. Which is what a hack writer by the name of Peter Evans did to Aristotle Socrates Onassis and made a fortune as a result. I have no way of knowing if Evans ever met Onassis but I doubt it. Ari knew a lot of people (actually, the other way round), and as he was always on the go and did not use muscle, anyone could approach him and then claim friendship.
Evans’s Nemesis was packed with conspiracy theories meant to sell the book. Onassis was long dead, hence unable to sue. The most outrageous theory was that Onassis helped organise and finance the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The book sold like hot cakes. Such are the joys of fame. Any hack can write rubbish and sell it to the great unread and laugh while spitting on one’s grave. Evans is such a bull artist he even thanks me in the acknowledgements, a bit too much really, as I don’t agree with a single thing he says about Onassis.
The irony is that Onassis and Bobby Kennedy got on fine and liked each other. Three months before his assassination, I was at a party given by Susan Stein in her Upper West Side flat, and saw the two of them sitting side by side having a hoot. Bobby was asking Ari openly but jokingly for funds, and Onassis had turned his pockets inside out claiming poverty. In reality, Ari and Jackie were making whoopee for years. Bobby asked them not to make it official until after the 1968 election, which they agreed to do, and broke the pledge after he was murdered in June 1968. Had Evans written that Onassis had paid Lee Harvey Oswald to murder JFK he would have been just as wrong as he was when he wrote the rubbish he did about the Golden Greek and Bobby.
Now a play based on the book has opened in Derby and it moves to the West End next month. Robert Lindsay, who plays Ari, is a great actor who was a terrific Fouquet in Power at the National Theatre. Lindsay is so gifted he’s bound to show some of the good side of Onassis, but he’ll be hard-pressed to do so because of the script. Martin Sherman, the playwright, has only the Evans book to go on. There are scenes that have Onassis saying that his son should not be nice because nice means weak, and so on: ‘I will not have a nice son.’ What garbage. Onassis was a ruined man after his only son was killed in an aeroplane accident in 1973, and died two short years later. I met Onassis in 1957, knew Alexander Onassis well, and also knew the Bouvier sisters, who became Kennedy Onassis and Radziwill in turn. I also knew Callas but not well. She and Ari stayed close until the end and she was never tortured by him, as claimed in that awful book. People live strange lives and are tortured by strange demons. Onassis liked his fame but he would have forsaken it if he had known what it would bring him after death.
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