The Inside Story of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s George Magazine

The Inside Story of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s George Magazine

In the '90s, John F. Kennedy Jr. founded and edited a revolutionary magazine called George, which covered politics like it was pop culture. Was it folly—or a glimpse of the Trumpian future?

John F. Kennedy Jr. stared out his window overlooking the Hudson River, past the piles of proofs, magazines, Knicks ticket stubs, and take-out containers on his desk. He cracked the faintest smile, as one colleague remembers. It was the summer of 1996; he was the editor of a magazine named George, which was less than a year old and still finding its way; and an idea for the September cover had just occurred to him: Madonna dressed as his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
 He asked his assistant, RoseMarie Terenzio, for a notepad so that he could dash off a note to Madonna with the request, while Matt Berman, George's creative director, sketched what they hoped would become the cover. Shot by avant-garde fashion photographer Nick Knight, the image would be disguised in such a way that, upon first glance, the reader would think the subject was indeed the editor’s mother, before taking a closer look to realize it was Madonna. Making the cover even more provocative was the fact that Kennedy was rumored to have dated Madonna before starting the magazine.

Unfortunately, the pop star—perhaps one of the few people more famous than Kennedy at that time—shot him down. "Dear Johnny Boy," she began in her handwritten fax (which appears in Terenzio’s book, Fairy Tale Interrupted), "Thanks for asking me to be your mother but I’m afraid I could never do her justice. My eyebrows aren’t thick enough, for one."

With Madonna out, the September cover took a decidedly different turn—instead of referencing his mom, Kennedy chose to nod at another well-known woman in his dad’s life: Marilyn Monroe.

Drew Barrymore was posed in a nude-colored cocktail dress and platinum wig, with a mole perfectly placed on her left cheek. The idea came from George’s executive editor, Elizabeth Mitchell, who suggested it as a fiftieth-birthday tribute to President Bill Clinton. The reference: In May 1962, in front of fifteen thousand people during a Democratic-party fundraiser at Madison Square Garden, Monroe had famously serenaded Kennedy’s father ten days before his forty-fifth birthday with a breathy, seductive "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." The subtext to the song, of course, is that the president and the actress were rumored to have had an affair.

That photograph might seem a strange choice for a man who adored his mother—even stranger than asking Madonna to impersonate her—but the thing was, according to Mitchell, Kennedy never believed anything had happened between his dad and Monroe. "He just thought it was sort of tweaking the expectations of the public," she says all these years later.

An irreverent play on politics and pop culture with a dash of Kennedy intrigue, the Barrymore/Monroe cover accurately sums up George, the magazine Kennedy launched in September 1995. His concept, in today’s terms at least, seems relatively straightforward: "a lifestyle magazine with politics at its core." Back then, however, George was revolutionary; there had never been anything quite like it. Nor had there ever been a magazine editor quite like John F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer by training. Perhaps predictably, media critics sneered, lampooning him as aimless and unqualified, his idea frivolous. Esquire called the magazine "the riskiest venture of a pampered life indelibly marked by tragedy." Newsweek: "Kennedy has been able to live without real responsibility, as a bit of a slob, considerate to his (many) women, not quite sure what he wants to do, looking forward to . . . the Frisbee game in the park. . . . Now, apparently, he’s ready to grow up." The Los Angeles Times asked: "Is John Kennedy Jr.’s George making American politics sexy? Or is the magazine just dumbing it down more?

"But Kennedy’s instincts were right: In the twenty years since his death, politics and pop culture have become so intertwined that candidates now spend nearly as much time courting voters on late-night shows as they do on the Sunday talk circuit. Politicians are covered as if they were celebrities, while celebrities seek out a voice on politics. The current president is largely a product of reality television, and his predecessor recently signed a production deal with Netflix. Oprah Winfrey has been seriously touted as a potential presidential candidate, as have—somewhat less seriously—The Rock and Mark Cuban. As the son of the thirty-fifth president and an elegant First Lady–turned–book editor, Kennedy was uniquely positioned to both cover and promote the marriage of politics and pop culture—because he lived it

Some of the people close to him whom I spoke with believe George was Kennedy’s first step toward his own eventual run for office. His plan, they say, was to build it up as a successful magazine that could survive without his star power so that he could one day step into politics. But he ran out of time. On July 16, 1999, less than four years after the first issue, the aircraft Kennedy was flying plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing him; his wife, Carolyn Bessette; and her sister Lauren Bessette. Just eighteen months later, George folded.

Beyond the personal tragedy was a professional one: Kennedy had worked hard to build a fiercely loyal team; an exciting, buzzy brand; and a new way to think about politics. But the personal and professional were hard to separate. It was the Kennedy name that persuaded publishers, advertisers, and readers to take a chance on him, but at the same time, it was his family’s legacy that complicated his role as an editor and led to conflicts both inside and outside the magazine.

“John died before his time,” says Frank Lalli, the editor who replaced Kennedy (and who controversially put Donald Trump on the cover in 2000). “And this magazine died before its time.”

***********

After Kennedy graduated from NYU School of Law in 1989, he worked as an assistant district attorney.

After graduating from Brown University, in 1983, and New York University School of Law, in 1989, President John F. Kennedy’s second child worked as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan from 1989 to 1993. It was President Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, including his saxophone performance on The Arsenio Hall Show, that inspired Kennedy to create a political magazine focused more on personalities than on policy.

He brought up the idea over dinner with his friend Michael Berman, who was running the Manhattan public-relations firm PR/NY. Berman was on board. Their first step was attending a two-day seminar in 1993 called “Starting Your Own Magazine,” hosted at a New York Hilton. During one of the sessions, an instructor told the class, “You can successfully launch a magazine in just about anything except for religion and politics.” But Kennedy already had his mind made up.

Keith Kelly, then a reporter for Folio magazine and now a media columnist at the New York Post, got wind of the famous attendee at the conference. When Kelly arrived, he saw someone who looked like Kennedy standing at the front of the class helping the instructor fix a projector. That can’t be John-John, he thought. But when he approached the man later in the day, he realized it was indeed him.

“Hey, John, are you going to start your own magazine?” Kelly asked.

Kennedy demurred. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Kelly pressed: “If you ever do, could you let me know first?”

Kennedy and Berman continued working on the project sporadically into spring 1994, when Kennedy set up a secret shop in Berman’s office, coming in every day to strategize. After a few months, Berman announced to his team he was selling his firm and going into business with Kennedy. The two men brought on Berman’s former employee RoseMarie Terenzio as their assistant, and they got to work on the new project.

.” Media reporter Keith Kelly spotted Kennedy at a two-day seminar in 1993 called “Starting Your Own Magazine

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