Lee Radziwill Was More Than the First Lady’s Sister

Lee Radziwill was known as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ sister, but she had a fascinating life on her own. Now, her style and sharp wit are on full display in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Amongst her social set onscreen, she’s one of the most vocally angry towards Truman Capote after his explosive short story appeared in Esquire. She had an exciting social circle that included Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and Rudolf Nureyev. Here’s what you need to know about the woman considered by many to be the most beautiful and stylish of her generation.

Jackie and Lee with their dog in 1935.

She had a privileged childhood.

Caroline Lee Bouvier was born in New York City in 1933. She always went by her middle name. Her father John Vernou Bouvier III was a stockbroker and her mother Janet Lee was a socialite.

Jackie and Lee were born three and a half years apart. They grew up in a duplex within the tony building 740 Park Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side and spent the summers in East Hampton, according to Vanity Fair. John and Janet divorced when the girls were young.

Lee believed her father preferred her sister. In her book Happy Times, she said he “favored Jackie…. That was very clear to me, but I didn’t resent it, because I understood he had reason to … she was not only named after him … but she actually looked almost exactly like him, which was a source of great pride to my father.”

Vanity Fair reports that after her divorce, Lee’s mother married Hugh Auchincloss and moved with her daughters to his Northen Virginia estate. Lee loved the home, later telling The New York Times, “To arrive there, as a child … was just a fairy tale.”

Lee attended Sarah Lawrence College for three semesters and later worked for Diana Vreeland at Harper’s BAZAAR.

The sisters in 1961.

Her relationship with her sister was difficult.

While the sisters spent significant time together, it was often rumored that their relationship was a complicated one. “Lee was so jealous of Jackie she could hardly speak,” Laurence Leamer, who wrote the book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era, told People. “If your older sister is the first lady of the United States, maybe you might be a little bit jealous. … But she was just consumed with jealousy.”

She was close to Jackie while she was in the White House. She traveled on a trip to London with the President and went with her sister on an official trip to India and Pakistan in 1962, according to the Associated Press. Lee was also played a role in Jackie’s celebrated sense of style, helping her select pieces for trips. “She had to travel a lot and liked to have me with her,” Lee wrote in Happy Times. “Apart from mutual affection, I think our strongest bond was a shared sense of humor.”

Lee in 1976.

She married three times.

In 1953, she married to Michael Canfield, who worked in publishing. During the marriage the pair lived in London, where he worked for the American ambassador. The marriage was later annulled. Her second husband was Stanislas Radziwill, a Polish prince with whom she had her children Anthony and Anna Christina. They divorced in 1974. She was later married to Herbert Ross, who directed Steel Magnolias, but they divorced shortly before his death in 2001.

The sisters in Italy in 1970.

Lee was unhappy with her sister’s second marriage.

Lee knew Aristotle Onassis before Jackie married him in 1968 and she was rumored to be involved with him, according to Vanity Fair. She was believed to be dating him in 1963, when she traveled with President Kennedy on a European trip that stopped in England, Italy, Germany, and Ireland.

In August of 1963, while Jackie was mourning the loss of her newborn son, she spent time on Onassis’ yacht. She married him years later, shortly after Robert Kennedy was killed.

Lee in New York City in 1972.

She was close to Truman Capote.

After Jackie moved to New York following the president’s assassination, Lee moved into a home nearby. She became friends with Capote and, on his advice, appeared in a theater production of The Philadelphia Story. She received poor reviews. Truman helped her get cast in a TV movie he wrote for ABC that aired in 1968.

Lee died in 2019 from natural causes, her daughter confirmed to The New York Times. She was 85 years old.