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Jack and Jackie Kennedy Get Married in Newport, RI

It had all the appearance of a happy family event, but the wedding of Jack and Jackie Kennedy was fraught with tension.

Clockwise from left: Robert F. Kennedy, Patricia Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Edward M. Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, Jack and Jackie. (Photo: Kennedy Presidential Library)

Jackie’s dream wedding, but an extravaganza scripted by the groom’s father. Joe Kennedy intended to introduce a future president and his bride to the world.

They married on September 12, 1953, when Jack had served in the U.S. senate for all of eight months. Cardinal Richard Cushing officiated at the wedding ceremony held in St. Mary’s Church in Newport, R.I.

Here comes the bride

As the social event of the season, it attracted Hollywood celebrities and Washington political power brokers. Jackie wanted a small wedding, but 700 people attended the ceremony. More than 1,200 attended the reception that followed at her family home, Hammersmith Farm.

She may have known the wedding wouldn’t go her way when she didn’t get to pick out her engagement ring. Joe Kennedy did. She didn’t like the ring, a large emerald and diamond, and later had it redesigned.

Laser-beam Eyes

Jackie also hated her wedding dress. She thought it was too high fashion. It accentuated her flat chest, she would later say, and made her look like a lampshade.

John Vermou Bouvier

Worst of all, Jackie wanted her father, John Vernou ‘Black Jack’ Bouvier, to give her away. Her mother, Janet Auchincloss, had a different plan. She excluded Bouvier, her ex-husband, from the pre-wedding parties and told him he wasn’t welcome at the reception. Then she secretly assigned Michael Canfield, her son-in-law, to make sure Bouvier got so drunk before the wedding he couldn’t attend.

The plan worked, and Jackie walked down the aisle with her stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss.

Wedding of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, 12 September 1953. St. Mary’s Church, Newport, Rhode Island.

A close friend saw a photograph of her entering the church on the arm of her stepfather (see it here). The friend pointed to her calm face and said,

…this is a look of absolute fury…When you saw this look on her face, this set jaw and those laser-beam eyes, the best thing you could do was to run … fast … and in the opposite direction.

One of the Kennedy family’s greatest fears, however, that Joseph Kennedy’s former mistress Gloria Swanson would crash the event, did not materialize.

If you enjoyed this story about how Jack and Jackie Kennedy got married, you may want to read how Jackie Kennedy first met her sister-in-law, Ethel Kennedy, here. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Jack Bouvier By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38213603. All others from the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston.

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Rose Kennedy, An Old-Fashioned Girl (Sort Of)

Rose Kennedy didn’t drink and she didn’t smoke. She told people who offered her a drink or a cigarette, “Well, I am just an old-fashioned girl. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I have a lot of children.”

She and her husband, Joseph P. Kennedy, had nine. One served as president of the United States. Three became U.S. senators. Two of her sons were assassinated, one was killed in World War II. One of her daughters died in a plane crash. Another was mentally disabled.

Rose Kennedy knew triumph and tragedy, and she accepted that.

Rose Kennedy

She was born Rose Fitzgerald on July 22, 1890, in the North End of Boston, one of six children born to John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Mary Josephine Hannon. Her father served as Boston mayor and as a congressman. Though she yearned to attend Wellesley College, her father wouldn’t let her. She did study at a convent school in the Netherlands and at the New England Conservatory of Music before attending Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, which didn’t offer degrees. Her father made up for his refusal to send her to Wellesley by taking her on a tour of Europe when she was 18.

Rose Kennedy traveled widely throughout her life. She spoke several languages fluently and was interested in fashion and the arts. In those respects she resembled her famous daughter-in-law, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. And both married powerful, ambitious, unfaithful men.

Frustration

Rose found motherhood frustrating. She wrote,

I used to say, ‘Why did I spend time learning to read Goethe or Voltaire if I have to spend my life telling children why they should drink their milk or why they should only eat one piece of candy each day and then after meals.’ But then I thought raising a family is a new challenge and I am going to meet it.

She put a little better spin on motherhood in her 1974 autobiography, Times to Remember, she wrote:

I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and a duty, but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it….. What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?

Joe Kennedy

Rose courted Joe Kennedy for seven years because her father disapproved of him. He had good reason: Joe liked women, both inside and especially outside marriage. He had a two-year affair with film star Gloria Swanson, which he didn’t try to hide from Rose.

Some historians claim Rose Kennedy didn’t mind her husband’s serial adultery because of the wealth and status the marriage brought to her. Joe brought her to a pinnacle of social success when President Franklin D. Roosevelt named him ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in England. The large, attractive Kennedy family made a huge splash in London.

But evidence suggests Joe’s philandering bothered her. When pregnant with her fourth child, she returned home to her parents. Her father told her she could not get a divorce. So she took solace in the Roman Catholic Church and in heavy medication.

In 1951, Pope Pius XII granted her the rank of Papal countess, the sixth American woman to receive the honor.

Her devotion did not impress her daughter-in-law. Jackie Kennedy said she’d rather say a rosary that read a book.

Rose Kennedy with her husband and grandchildren. President
Kennedy holds the Coke in the foreground.

Tragedies

The 1940s brought three tragedies into the life of Rose Kennedy. Her third child, daughter Rosemary, acted out and seemed duller than her bright, active siblings. Joe, without telling his wife, had Rosemary lobotomized. The operation failed, leaving her with severe mental disabilities, and Joe shunted her off to a sanitarium in Wisconsin.

Then in 1944, her eldest son Joseph was killed in action when his plane blew up on an Allied mission during World War II. Her daughter Kathleen died in a plane crash four years later.

The 1950s brought no more tragedy, but then in 1963 an assassin killed her second son, President John F. Kennedy. Then in 1968, her third son Robert suffered the same fate.

Last Years

Her husband had suffered a stroke in 1961, which confined him to a wheelchair and deprived him of the power of speech. He died in 1969.

Rose remained active with charity work and took daily swims outside her home on Cape Cod. The image of the stoic, grief-stricken mother walking on a windswept beach took hold in the public imagination.

So did the frequent gatherings of the Kennedy clan — she had 29 grandchildren — at the family compound in Hyannisport. She remained especially close to her youngest son, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Rose Kennedy died Jan. 22, 1995 in Hyannis, Mass.

Photo of Rose Kennedy a detail from “President Kennedy with his mother crop” by Abbie Rowe. “The Kennedy Family” by Richard Sears. Both from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. With thanks to ‘Finding Her Way in the Clan,’ by Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, May 13, 2007. This story was updated in 2022.

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JFK Born In Brookline, May 29, 1917

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy came into the world, his family was not yet wealthy and glamorous, and it hadn’t yet been plagued by tragedy. All that would befall the Kennedys by the time the world knew the boy by his initials, JFK.

Rose Kennedy and her children, circa 1922. L-R: Rose Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy (seated in foreground), John F. Kennedy, and Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Bachrach Studios photograph in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

His mother was the daughter of a former Boston mayor and future congressman.

And his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose wife’s uncle Teddy Roosevelt had served as president of the United States eight years earlier.

When Fortune magazine in 1957 published its first list of the richest people in the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy was in the top 20. He had held high government posts by then, and John F. Kennedy would be well on his way to becoming the 35th president of the United States.

JFK

John F. Kennedy was born in a bed by a window in a three-story frame house at 83 Beals St. in Brookline, Mass., on the afternoon of May 29, 1917.

JFK birthplace

His mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, said the bed was next to the window so the doctor could have good light.

His father bought the house in 1914 before he married Rose. He was an up-and-coming businessman who chose the house because it had plenty of space for kids to play in. The house was close to good schools, shops at Coolidge Corner and a trolley. Joe Kennedy didn’t own a car when he bought the house.

By the time Jack was born, his 28-year-old father owned a Model T and drove it to his job as assistant general manager of the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass. It was at the shipyard that he met Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy. Roosevelt later appointed Joe Kennedy as chair of the SEC and as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Rose Kennedy

Rose Kennedy was a 26-year-old housewife, the daughter of former Boston Mayor John Francis ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald. In 1917, Honey Fitz had been out of the mayor’s office for three years, but he would serve briefly in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1919. Later he ran unsuccessfully for the U. S. Senate and for governor of Massachusetts.

Rose Kennedy recorded details about her children — their births, illnesses and shoe sizes — on notecards she kept in a wooden box. When her second son was born, she wrote,

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Born Brookline, Mass. (83 Beals Street) May 29, 1917

Soon nicknamed Jack, he shared a room with his older brother Joseph, Jr., during the years the family lived in the 83 Beals St. house. He was often ill, hospitalized with scarlet fever – then a life-threatening illness – when he was three.

John F. Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy, 1919. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Before he was 11 years old he suffered from scarlet fever, chicken pox, mumps, whooping cough, German measles and chronic bronchitis. His family joked a mosquito took a risk by biting Jack — with his blood, the mosquito was sure to die.

Upward Mobility

Joe Kenned, stung by anti-Irish prejudice, had vowed he’d make a million dollars by the time he was 35. He did.

When Jack Kennedy was three, the Kennedys moved to a larger house in Brookline a few blocks away to accommodate the growing family. Eventually the family would have nine children, five girls and four boys.

The Kennedy family spent summers at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod. The children were encouraged to compete with each other swimming, sailing and playing touch football. Years later, Jack brought his girlfriend, Jacqueline Bouvier, to Hyannis Port to meet the family. She was horrified. So were his sisters who, unlike Jackie, raced around the compound in old tennis clothes and sneakers.

Jackie compared her reception to a sorority hazing, called the sisters ‘the rah-rah girls’ and told her own sister ‘they fall over each other like a pack of gorillas.’

The Kennedy Children, 1928 (L-R) Jean, Bobby, Patricia, Eunice, Kathleen, Rosemary, Jack, Joe Jr. Hyannisport, 1928. Photograph in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

President Kennedy

John F. Kennedy grew up to become president of the United States, but not before his family suffered one tragedy after another.

A botched lobotomy left his older sister Rosemary with the mental capacity of a toddler. His older brother Joe was killed in World War II. Sister Kathleen died in a plane crash.

A Kennedy press conference. Photo courtesy JFK Library, taken by Abbie Rowe.

An assassin killed John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, and another murdered his younger brother Robert less than five years later.

The Kennedy family repurchased the John F. Kennedy birthplace in 1966 and donated it to the National Park Service.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Jackie O, Frigid Couples and Secession in Today’s History Highlights – 8.21.2013

Before she was Jackie Onassis, she was Jackie Kennedy, of course. But before that she was just Jackie Bouvier. And while Jackie aficionados may know the story, others will be surprised to know that Connecticut was near and dear to her in her childhood and adult life, according to the Connecticut Historical Society. Two highlights include her years at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington (Today’s Flashback Photo, from the Connecticut Historical Society) and her christening of the USS Lafayette in Groton. Connecticut celebrity biographer Christopher Andersen, whose latest book details Jackie’s last year with husband Jack and mines her life for stories of amphetamine use and details of her husband’s affair with Marilyn Monroe. Is there more to learn about those topics? Apparently so.

The charms of mill life are recalled in the Exeter Historical Society’s blog about the Exeter Manufacturing Company mill erected in 1829. In the 1800s, the place was dark in the winter and blazing hot in summer, with temperatures reaching above 100 degrees. The workers, mostly women and children, put in 12-plus-hour days. The place was a swamp of toxic chemicals. As millwork evolved in the 1900s, things didn’t improve much. Finally, in 1966 when the Deering-Milliken company bought the plant away from the local Kent family, things started to improve, with air conditioning, a lunch room and better wages. In 1981, Nike took a brief turn in running the plant before it converted finally over to housing.

It’s always sad when love grows cold. Maine Public Radio recently spotlighted the story of the “frozen lovers of Maine.” It’s the footnote to the tale of the three-masted schooner Anne Maguire, which wrecked just 150 yards from Portland Light on Christmas Eve, 1886. As the crew began abandoning the boat, three people were left behind to spend the frigid night trying to survive and hoping the boat wouldn’t completely break apart on the rocks. In the morning, the last crewmember was able to get ashore, and when he was brought into the lighthouse keeper’s house, he told of two remaining passengers on the vessel. When rescuers made it to the boat, they found the young couple on the deck, locked in an embrace and covered in ice. The story, however, didn’t end there.

Meanwhile in Vermont, the spirit of revolution remains strong. The people of the Green Mountain state, who during colonial times vacillated between wanting to be French, British or independent, are shopping around again for a flag. Late last year, the American Prospect reports, the Legislature hosted a group at the Statehouse in Montpelier petitioning to have the state jump ship from the union. The secessionist movement is only the latest in the long history of Vermont rabble-rousing, which this time includes a rowdy mix of isolationists, gun-rights advocates, and various agitators of all stripes. Obviously, the union is in no danger from the Vermont secessionists, but the history of the free-thinking state does make for interesting reading.

Today’s Flashback Photo…

Jackie Bouvier with a friend at Miss Porter’s School (Connecticut Historical Society)

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Classic Movies Shot in New England, 13 Award-Winners

Hundreds of filmmakers have come to New England since the turn of the last century and some have shot classic movies here.

It isn’t just because autumn leaves and church steeples make the perfect backdrop for classic movies. New England’s history and literary tradition provide rich material for stories and characters set against quaint fishing villages, gritty mill cities, Gilded Age resorts and Ivy League campuses.

New England’s Classic Movies

Familiar New England themes appear again and again in film. The theme of the salty sea captain fighting a sea monster inspired classic movies from Moby Dick through Jaws to The Perfect Storm. Family secrets inspired Eugene O’Neill’s fictional Ah Wilderness in 1906 as well as the true story of a suspected murder in Reversal of Fortune in 1990. And haunted New England was a favorite theme long before Stephen King arrived on the scene.

New England characters populate many classic movies shot in the region. They include the Boston Brahmin, the rustic Yankee, the stalwart fisherman, the town gossip and the outsider struggling to assimilate.

Characters from New England literature also populate many classic movies. Filmmakers first shot Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in New England in 1909 and remade it four times as a feature film, three as a television production. But because it’s literary doesn’t make it good; Demi Moore starred as Hester Prynne in the 1995 remake of Scarlet Letter. It bombed at the box office and earned seven Golden Raspberries including “Worst Remake or Sequel.”

Here is a baker’s dozen of classic movies shot on location in all six states.

Boomerang

When a murderer takes the life of a kindly priest on a street corner, a prosecutor fights to prove the accused man innocent. The true story of Boomerang actually took place in Bridgeport, Conn., but the filmmakers couldn’t get permission to film there.

Elia Kazan, who directed many classic movies, shot the 1947 film in Stamford, Conn., instead.

He directed an all-star cast including Dana Andrews, Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt and Karl Malden. Playwright Arthur Miller appeared uncredited as a suspect in the police lineup.

Boomerang received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Kazan also won Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Homer Cummings, the real-life prosecutor who inspired the film, served as U.S. attorney general under Franklin Roosevelt.

Boomerang, filmed in Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire.

The Boston Strangler

This true-crime film about the serial killer who terrorized the Boston area from 1962-64 starred Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda. As shooting was set to begin in 1968, the man believed to be the Strangler — Albert DeSalvo –escaped from the mental institution where he was held. DeSalvo was captured 33 hours later. Ed Brooke was elected U.S. senator after coordinating the hunt for the killer. “The Boston Strangler” was filmed in Boston, Cambridge and Malden. It received Eddie, Edgar and Oscar nominations. DeSalvo died in prison (where he made choker necklaces for sale) in 1973. His family is still trying to exonerate him.

The Boston Strangler was mostly shot in Boston.

The Trouble With Harry

Just about all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films are classic movies, and The Trouble With Harry is no exception. The trouble with Harry in the film is that he was dead. Hitchcock’s 1955 dark comedy starring John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine was filmed in Morrisville, Barre and Craftsbury Commons. The crew arrived in Craftsbury on September 27, 1954 to film outdoor shots of fall foliage. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any, so they glued leaves on trees. It was nominated for three awards, including BAFTA, Directors’ Guild and Satellite for “Outstanding Classic DVD” in 2005.

Jerry Mathers in The Trouble With Harry, filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont.

The Stepford Wives

A 1975 take on the theme of haunted New England, the film takes place in the fictional Connecticut town of Stepford. Johanna Eberhart moves there with her family and soon discovers a sinister truth behind the perfect behavior of the town’s housewives — they’re robots.

Bryan Forbes shot the film in Connecticut, including Redding, Fairfield, Westport, Weston, Darien (at the Goodwives Shopping Center) and Norwalk at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion.) Katharine Ross, who stars as Johanna, won the 1976 Golden Scroll Best Actress award.

Stepford Wives enjoyed moderate success at first, but evolved into a cult classic over time.

The Stepford Wives, filmed at the Goodwives Shopping Center in Darien, Conn.

Lost Boundaries

This 1949 drama fictionalized the true story of Albert Johnson, a light-skinned African-American doctor. Johnson passes for white in a small northern New Hampshire town.

Starring Mel Ferrer and Beatrice Pearson, director Alfred Werker shot Lost Boundaries in Kennebunkport, Me. (church scene), York (Nubble Light) and Portsmouth, N.H.

In one scene, the doctor takes a Coast Guard boat from Portsmouth to the Isles of Shoals, six nautical miles away. He lands in York, however, quite farther away.

The film won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949.

Lost Boundaries, fimed in Portsouth, New Hampshire.

Jaws

Jaws was the first of the summer classic movies released in thousands of theaters and advertised heavily. The 1975 blockbuster featured a simple premise — the hunt for a man-eating shark that terrorized beachgoers.

The most successful film in box office history at the time, it set a precedent. Director Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws mostly in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard.

It won many awards, including three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound. In 2001, Congress voted to include it in the National Film Archive as “culturally significant.”

The author, Peter Benchley, later felt guilty about unfairly maligning the Great White Shark, a creature generally uninterested in eating human beings.

Jaws, filmed in Menemsha, belongs to the pantheon of classic movies shot in New England.

The Great Gatsby

This 1974 film starring Robert Redford as self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby featured the Newport, R.I., mansion Rosecliff as his home. Another mansion, the Vanderbilt’s Marble House, provided interior scenes.

The original Long Island mansion that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write the novel fell to the wrecking ball in 2011. Stanford White designed Rosecliff in 1902 for Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs.

The Great Gatsby also featured Hammsersmith Farm, another famous Newport property where Sen. John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier.

The Great Gatsby, which also starred Mia Farrow, received two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Music.

Robert Redford in the Great Gatsby, filmed in Newport, Rhode Island.

Peyton Place

New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious’ best selling book Peyton Place inspired the 1957 movie of the same name. It starred Lana Turner and Hope Lange.

Director Mark Robson shot the film mostly in Camden, Maine, with some exteriors filmed in the Maine towns of Belfast and Rockland, Gilmanton, N.H., and Lake Placid, N.Y.

Peyton Place employed as many as 500 local residents as extras. Most of them donated their earnings — $10 or so — for a new hospital.

The film premiered in Camden two days before everyone else saw it. Peyton Place didn’t do well at the box office for the first four months. Then, Lana Turner’s daughter killed her mother’s mobster lover, Johnny Stompanato. It then became the second-highest grossing film of 1958.

Peyton Place received nine Oscar nominations, including four for supporting performances.

A scene from Peyton Place shot in Camden, Maine.

Love Story

Love Story, the highest grossing film of 1970, was a romantic tragedy based on the wildly popular novel of the same name. It starred Ryan O’Neal as the preppy Harvard student Oliver Barrett IV. Ali MacGraw played the working-class Italian “Cliffie” doomed to an early death.

The American Film Institute placed Love Story in its pantheon of classic movies, calling it one of the most romantic films of all time. Production at Harvard caused such damage to the campus that the university denied future requests to film there.

The movie was also shot in Massachusetts at the frame house at 119 Oxford St. in Cambridge. There, MacGraw’s character utters the famous line, “Love means never having to say your sorry.” Love Story received nominations for seven Academy Awards, winning one for Best Music, Original Score.

Our Town

A 1940 adaptation of Thornton Wilder‘s play Our Town about family conflict in a small town, this classic movie was shot in Peterborough, N.H. It starred William Holden and Martha Scott.

The town served as the real model for the play, written by Wilder while in residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough. Wilder probably named the fictional town of Grovers Corners for Peterborough’s Grove Street. The film received six Academy Award nominations. See the full film here.

Captains Courageous

Spencer Tracy — in curls — played a Portuguese fisherman who rescues Harvey Cheyne, played by Freddie Bartholomew. Captains Courageous begins when Cheyne, a railroad magnate’s spoiled son, gets thrown overboard from an ocean liner.

The 1937 film adapted a book written by Rudyard Kipling in 1897 when he lived in Brattleboro, Vt.

Director Victor Fleming shot scenes in Gloucester, Mass., as well as in California with fish flown in from Alaska and Boston. Gloucester has also provided settings for quite a few classic movies, including Mutiny on the Bounty and The Perfect Storm.

The film received four Oscar nominations. Spencer Tracy won the first of two consecutive Best Actor awards for Captains Courageous; he won for Boys Town in 1938.

Spencer Tracy starred in many classic movies; Captains Courageous, with Freddy Bartholomew, was one of them.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Thomas Crown, a debonair bank executive, thinks he pulled off the perfect bank robbery in this 1968 crime drama.

Steve McQueen starred as Crown, while Faye Dunaway played the insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man.

Director Norman Jewison filmed The Thomas Crown Affair in a number of well-known (and still recognizable) Boston-area locations, including Beacon Hill, the North End, Cambridge Cemetery, the Tobin Bridge, the Allston-Brighton toll booth, Crane Beach in Ipswich and Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurant.

The second Harrison Gray Otis house, designed by Charles Bulfinch for a congressman, appeared as Crown’s house. The Thomas Crown Affair won an Oscar for Best Song, Windmills of Your Mind.

Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway on Crane Beach in Ipswich, Mass.

High Society

This 1956 musical remake of The Philadelphia Story starred Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly. Kelly, who starred in many classic movies, retired after making High Society to marry Prince Albert of Monaco.

Cole Porter wrote the score and Louis Armstrong appeared as himself. Sinatra and Kelly appear driving together in a scene along Ocean Boulevard in Newport, R.I.

Director Charles Walters filmed interiors at a Newport mansion later purchased by Sunny von Bulow. Prosecutors later accused her husband Claus von Bulow of murdering her in the mansion. That story then inspired another film in 1990, Reversal of Fortune.

High Society received nominations for two Oscars, Best Musical, Original Song, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra on the set of High Society.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also want to read about historic New England movie sets and six places New England films were shot.

Images: Menemsha by User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. Boston Strangler By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26732719. Our Town By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7159045. Love Story https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6778617.

This story about classic movies shot in New England was updated in 2022.

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Older Posts

bouvier

Jack and Jackie Kennedy Get Married in Newport, RI

Laser-beam Eyes

Rose Kennedy, An Old-Fashioned Girl (Sort Of)

Rose Kennedy

Frustration

Joe Kennedy

Tragedies

Last Years

JFK Born In Brookline, May 29, 1917

JFK

Rose Kennedy

Upward Mobility

President Kennedy

Jackie O, Frigid Couples and Secession in Today’s History Highlights – 8.21.2013

Today’s Flashback Photo…

Classic Movies Shot in New England, 13 Award-Winners

New England’s Classic Movies

Boomerang

The Boston Strangler

The Trouble With Harry

The Stepford Wives

Lost Boundaries

Jaws

The Great Gatsby

Peyton Place

Love Story

Our Town

Captains Courageous

The Thomas Crown Affair

High Society

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