Lee Radziwill is unhappy about a book that details the sibling rivalry between her and Jacqueline Kennedy over men, money and their mother’s love.
“Lee doesn’t like her dirty laundry being aired and she feels betrayed by her cousins, who gave interviews to the author,” one friend told me.
According to “Jackie, Janet & Lee” by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Jackie was enraged in the 1980s when the women’s mother, Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss, helped down-on-her-luck Lee by giving her $750,000.
“Lee was bewildered as to why Jackie would even care . . . Jackie had millions in the bank. Why begrudge her sister this small amount?” the book says.
Jackie also felt Lee was selfish and didn’t spend time with their mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, even though Janet seemed to love Lee more.
Janet’s major-domo, Jonathan Tapper, told Taraborrelli: “Jackie was on the phone every single day, or at her mother’s home at Hammersmith Farm, always involved every step along the way in Janet’s care.
“But if that phone would ring and it would be Lee — maybe once a month if that much — oh my, Madam would light up! She would say it outright, ‘Lee is my favorite.’ ”
The sisters also competed for men, such as Aristotle Onassis, who had been seeing Lee before he turned his sights on the recently widowed first lady and married her.
Jackie never forgave Lee for not being with their mother when she died in 1989.
After Janet was gone, Jackie froze Lee out, having little to do with her. And when Jackie died in 1994, she had a big surprise for her younger sister. She left Lee no money in her will.