LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 October Rare Books & Manuscripts #675  / 

30497

John F. Kennedy Autograph Statement Signed

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:3,500.00 USD Estimated At:7,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
John F. Kennedy Autograph Statement Signed
<B>John F. Kennedy Autograph Statement Signed</B></I> <B>“<I>John Kennedy/April 8th</B></I>”</B></I> in pencil, two pages, 8.5” x 11”, front and verso. No place, April 8, 1960. In full, “<I>I talked today with Bobby Baker. He informed me that three weeks ago an attorney he knew named Mickey Wiener from Newark (?) Hudson Co. called him. Wiener states that if Sen. Johnson would give him 150,000 to the wife of 'a well known movie actor' (Baker did not know her name or who the actor was), she would file an affidavit that she had had an affair with me. Baker said he thought it was blackmail, and did not inform Johnson of the matter. He did tell Joe Alsop that he was concerned about an attempt at blackmail of me but did not go into the details.</B></I>” Bobby Baker was the Senate Majority secretary and a protégé of Lyndon Johnson who had not as yet announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Joe Alsop was a syndicated Washington political columnist. Signed to the left of Kennedy's signature, also in pencil: “<I>Pierre Salinger/Apl 8, 1960.</B></I>” Present is a 9.25” x 4” white business-size envelope. It is torn open at one end. The flap is sealed with drops of red wax. Beneath the wax is the following, in ink: “<I>Sealed by/Pierre Salinger/Apl 11, 1960/Witnessed by</B></I>” to which Salinger's personal secretary has signed “<I>Lenore Ostrow 4-11-60.</B></I>" The letter is lightly singed between the second and third lines on the second page from the hot sealing wax.<BR><BR> From <I>The Kennedy Men: 1901-1963</B></I> by Laurence Leamer (HarperCollins, 2002): “Jack had a serious personal matter on his hands during the crucial West Virginia primary. His personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, put in her private files a handwritten, two-page letter dated April 8, 1960. Three days later his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, who has no memory of this incident, sealed the letter while being witnessed by his assistant.” The text of this letter follows. Leamer continues, “In his sexual adventures, Jack had begun a descent into provinces he once would never have visited. He had indeed seen a woman who was married to 'a well known movie actor.' She was Alicia Darr, the former wife of the French actor Edmund Purdom. Darr had apparently first met Jack in 1951, when, according to FBI reports, she was running a 'house of prostitution' in Boston. Darr moved to New York City, where, the FBI said, she rendered the same services but with the highest class of client. Darr made the transition from whore to mistress to wife of a movie star. Her marriage failed, however, and in the spring of 1960, Darr was in such financial trouble that she had been jailed for cashing bad checks, according to European papers. Clark Clifford, a powerful Washington lawyer and lobbyist, recalled that in the spring of 1960 he had been asked by Jack to deal with a matter so serious that 'public knowledge could have blown the Kennedy nomination out of the water.' If this was indeed the matter, whatever Clifford may have done to end this threat, there is no evidence that Darr blackmailed Jack.” According to Seymour Hersh in <I>The Dark Side of Camelot</B></I> (Little Brown and Company, 1997), Clifford told him, in interview for his book, that he “handled the incident until it got 'to the point where I could turn it over to the Old Man Joe Kennedy .' Clifford refused to say more about the matter, but did note that he made it a practice to have nothing to do with cash payoffs to women. 'When it got into this area, I was never involved.'”<BR><BR>On April 5, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy won the Wisconsin presidential primary. After campaigning in Indiana April 7th and 8th, Kennedy returned to Washington in time to cast his vote on Friday evening, April 8, 1960, in favor of a Civil Rights bill. He may have handwritten and signed this statement that evening in Washington. Why didn't Bobby Baker tell his boss, Lyndon Johnson, about the attempted blackmail? Why didn't Joe Alsop mention it in his column? Were the Republicans contacted about Alicia Darr after Kennedy won the nomination? Perhaps the most politically explosive Kennedy document ever to be offered at public auction!<BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Books & Catalogs (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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