The Wildest Kennedy Sister Who Became a "Dollar Princess": Kick Kennedy

Описание: This documentary explores how Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy defied her Catholic mother Rose Kennedy to marry Protestant aristocrat Billy Cavendish in 1944, was widowed by German sniper four months later, then died in 1948 plane crash with married lover Earl Fitzwilliam while seeking father's blessing, leading the Kennedy family to suppress her story for decades to protect JFK's political career.

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Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy lived twenty-eight years that encompassed more love, loss, and defiance than most experience in a full lifetime, yet her story was deliberately buried by America's most famous political dynasty.

Born February 20, 1920, in the same Brookline bedroom as brother Jack, she was the fourth child of Joseph Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, growing up under Rose's institutional discipline and Joe Sr.'s ferocious competitive ambition.

The Kennedy family moved to London in 1938 when Joe Sr. became Ambassador to Britain, where eighteen-year-old Kick was named "Debutante of 1938" and captivated British society with her American informality and magnetic charm.

At a Buckingham Palace garden party in July 1938, she met William "Billy" Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, heir to the Duke of Devonshire and one of England's most anti-Catholic aristocratic families.

The Cavendish fortune was built on Henry VIII's dissolution of monasteries, and the family had helped install Protestant William of Orange during the 1688 Glorious Revolution that cemented Protestant supremacy in England.

Despite the religious obstacles, Kick and Billy fell deeply in love, but Rose Kennedy was horrified that her daughter might marry a Protestant while the Cavendishes were equally dismayed by a Catholic match.

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Joe Sr. sent his family home, forcing nineteen-year-old Kick to leave Billy despite her desperate pleas to stay in wartime London.

She worked as a journalist at the Washington Times-Herald from 1941-1943, developing progressive views that challenged her parents' rigid conservatism before returning to London with the Red Cross in June 1943.

Billy proposed in late 1943, leading to agonizing religious negotiations that resulted in a compromise: sons would be raised Protestant to preserve the dukedom succession, daughters would be raised Catholic.

On May 6, 1944, they married in a ten-minute civil ceremony at Caxton Hall Register Office, with Kick wearing a pink crepe dress bought with clothing ration coupons and only brother Joe Jr. attending from the Kennedy family.

Rose Kennedy refused to attend, claiming illness, while staying hospitalized in Boston and believing her daughter's soul was damned for marrying outside the Catholic Church.

The couple had five precious weeks together before Billy deployed to Normandy on June 13, 1944, one week after D-Day, as a Major in the Coldstream Guards.

Tragedy struck twice within a month: Joe Jr. was killed August 12, 1944, when his plane exploded during a secret mission against German V-1 launch sites, followed by Billy's death September 9, 1944, from a German sniper's bullet while leading troops in Belgium.

Now styled as Kathleen, Dowager Marchioness of Hartington, she chose to remain in England, beloved by the Cavendish family who had accepted her completely unlike her own mother.

In 1946, she met Peter Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, a married man she compared to Rhett Butler, creating an impossible situation since Catholic doctrine forbade marrying a divorced man.

Rose Kennedy threatened to cut Kick off from the entire family if she married Fitzwilliam, leading to a four-day battle at Kick's London home where Rose demanded she return to America immediately.

On May 13, 1948, Kick and Fitzwilliam were flying to meet Joe Sr. in Paris when their plane crashed in a thunderstorm near Saint-Bauzile, France, killing all four aboard instantly.

Rose Kennedy refused to attend her daughter's funeral, while Jack said he would come but couldn't face the journey, leaving Joe Sr. as the sole family member at her burial.

The Cavendish family buried her at Edensor churchyard near Chatsworth with the epitaph "Joy she gave; joy she has found," while the Kennedys held their own separate memorial service.

The Kennedy family deliberately suppressed Kick's story for decades due to the scandalous circumstances of her death with a married lover, protecting JFK's political ambitions at the cost of erasing their most rebellious daughter.

JFK finally visited her grave in June 1963 during his last international trip as president, fifteen years after being too devastated to attend her funeral.

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