Original subtitles

They escaped

famine and death in Ireland

to begin a new life in Boston, Massachusetts.

A life of wealth, privilege, and power.

My fellow citizens of the world...

From Irish peasantry

to American royalty...

These are the Kennedys.

Their relationships with each other

have impacted both America and the world.

With triumph and glory

comes scandal...

and tragedy.

Something has happened here.

From one generation to the next -

The Kennedys are more than a family.

They are the great American dynasty.

America's new ambassador to Britain,

Joseph P. Kennedy,

faces a battery of cameras and cameramen

as he's about to depart for St. James' Court.

When President Roosevelt

sends Joseph P. Kennedy in 1938 across the Atlantic

to be the Ambassador to the United Kingdom,

he was a star, a celebrity.

He had run a studio in Hollywood,

and he was already a success in business and politics.

He was among the top twenty richest men in America.

It was big news.

The rise of Joseph Kennedy

is as remarkable

as it is seemingly unstoppable.

Joe Kennedy came from an Irish family

and they worked their way from the bottom to the top.

They were outsiders.

His grandparents came

during the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s to Boston.

So, the family is just two generations removed

from the peasantry of Ireland.

Mr. Joseph Kennedy,

the American Ambassador,

left for Buckingham Palace

to present his credentials to the King.

Having an Irish Catholic

in that job

it was just like the perfect victory

in the struggle of my grandfather

to feel accepted.

And as for me, I'm delighted to be here.

You cannot underestimate

Joseph Kennedy's ambition in 1938.

My grandfather had

ambitions, right, to be President himself.

And what do you think

he finds all England interested in?

What about the family Mr. Kennedy?

Joseph and Rose Kennedy

have nine children.

From the oldest, Joseph Junior...

to the youngest, Ted.

The Kennedys

aren't just any family -

they're a family on a mission.

Kennedys to the left of him,

Kennedys to the right of him

so England's cameramen work overtime

to picture America's new ambassador to Britain

with his nine children.

They lined up

before the newsreel cameras...

With him come Joseph Jr.

Aged 22, and John aged 21.

Smiled...

everybody had something to say.

This is my first trip to Europe and I'm very excited.

I couldn't even sleep last night.

There's all these quotes

from newspapers saying

'Got eleven ambassadors

for the price of one' or something.

Pets Corner at the London Zoo

is opened by the masters Kennedy

who quickly get on sympathetic terms

with the animals.

So, the whole family

was accepted with a lot of buzz.

The Kennedys understand

before any other American family

the role of glamor.

And until now, glamor is something

that's really the province of Hollywood.

The Kennedys pull it over

into the province of politics

really for the first time in a modern way

and as a result

everybody is in love with this family.

The Kennedy family

really represented America on the rise.

An immigrant country,

where anybody could get ahead

if they were smart enough,

if they were ambitious enough -

People would look at the Kennedys

and they would see the American dream.

There's a moment

when Joe and Rose, his beautiful wife,

are at Windsor Castle with the King and Queen

and Joe says

'Rose, we've come a hell of a long way from East Boston'.

Joseph Kennedy grew up in a Boston

in which Protestant patricians

looked down on the Irish.

So, he was constantly

fighting those prejudices, aware of those prejudices.

Our family were immigrants,

and my grandmother used to tell stories

about how she would pass signs as a little girl,

saying, 'No Irish need apply.'

And you should never underestimate

the 'I'll show you' motive in history.

Joe Kennedy's insecurity

about being an Irish Catholic

fed his drive and his ambition,

and he was going to prove to people

that he was as good as they thought that he wasn't.

Joe was

a marvelous, a master businessman,

dealmaker, stock manipulator.

My mother, in honor of his birthday,

made this wonderful flag of a bear,

because he was the bear of Wall Street.

He shorted Wall Street, you know.

He was such a force.

He's a rogue, he's a little dodgy.

Cut!

He's a bit of a bad boy

and he's terrifically successful.

Cut!

Joseph Kennedy tells his children,

and tells Rose, over and over, and over again,

'I am making all this money,

'so my children don't have to,

so, my boys and my girls can go into public service.'

Thank you very much for asking me to speak.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

is an astute matriarch

and equally as ambitious for her children.

Rose Kennedy

had an extraordinarily-refined political mind,

which is not surprising.

She came from a political family

and her father was the mayor of Boston.

You want me to talk?

Where do I... I talk in here?

The dinner table

was always as much about current events

as it was about food.

They had to be able to explain

what was going on in the world

and they had to be able to do it in an articulate way.

I kid you not,

my grandmother Rose would have famous quotations

pinned to her sweaters,

and if the conversation ever lagged,

she'd start memorizing her famous quotations

because she said, "You never know.

"Somebody might ask to give you a speech,

and you'd have to say something appropriate."

Rose Kennedy is deeply religious,

they are one of the most prominent Catholic families,

they go to the Pope's coronation,

most of that is coming from Rose.

She trained her children

how to be good Catholics

and she trained her sons to be leaders,

her daughters to raise lots of Catholic children.

Joe Kennedy was phenomenally ambitious

to be rich.

He'd achieved that.

He has a beautiful family.

And he's America's representative

to the Court of St. James.

But he wanted to be President of the United States.

As war clouds gather over Europe,

a shadow is cast

over Joseph P. Kennedy's dreams.

What's clear,

is that Joseph P. Kennedy

ends up on the wrong side of history,

in a dramatic way...

I've been asked

by the newspapermen this afternoon

what the chances were of appeasement.

I said I didn't know what they were.

But they certainly were worth trying.

As America's ambassador in London,

Joseph Kennedy is desperate to prevent war

between Great Britain and Nazi Germany.

He's concerned that if the British go to war

the United States will go to war.

He believes that war is ruinous to a country's finances.

Joe Kennedy talked about

how the best role for America was to remain neutral

and the best role in terms of the Nazis

was to appease them, work with them

and somehow not have to go to war against them.

He believed

that he could make a deal with Hitler

and that Hitler was a rational politician

and statesman.

And in this he was very, very, very wrong.

He never saw

the moral challenge that Hitler posed.

I have to tell you now;

this country is at war with Germany.

Once war broke out,

Ambassador Kennedy wailed, 'it's the end of everything!'

Kennedy is convinced

the Hitler war machine is unstoppable.

England will simply be devoured.

Almost as soon as Britain goes to war,

Joe decides

that he's going to send the children home.

The US Liner Washington brings home

the biggest group of refugees.

Among returning notables

are Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy and children.

My wife and I

have given nine hostages to fortune.

Our children and your children

are more important

than anything else in the world.

Joseph is called a coward

for his decision to send his family home.

For his opposition to the war,

he is branded a Nazi sympathizer.

Roosevelt privately called Kennedy a Fascist.

Once Britain was in war,

fighting back

and Joe was still trying to appease,

he was too outspoken

and he was called back to Washington.

President Roosevelt did not want to appease,

Roosevelt wanted to fight.

And the last thing that FDR needed

was an appeaser as Ambassador to Great Britain.

I've nothing to say until I've seen the President.

So, he was finished.

Joseph Kennedy

goes from being a legitimate powerbroker

in the United States,

and a player in international politics,

to being a pariah.

When he crashed and burned

as ambassador to Great Britain,

that not only cost him his job,

it cost him his notion

that he could become president

and almost from the moment he realized

that he couldn't do it,

the aspiration was his kids would do it.

Joseph passes his ambitions

on to Joe Junior,

Kathleen - known as Kick -

and Jack.

He calls them his "golden trio."

His eldest son, Joe Junior,

was not only handsome but also athletically gifted,

he was the heir apparent.

Joe Junior's father and mother believed

that he would be the one

to carry the standard for the family.

His younger son Jack

is overshadowed by Joe Junior

in his father's mind,

but I think having a bit lower expectation

gave Jack a chance to be himself.

It gave him a kind of freedom to be a kid

in a way that I think would have been tougher

for Joe Junior.

Jack and Kathleen were the closest,

they were both trouble makers.

They were both fun,

mischievous,

and they had each other's backs.

She was very popular among boys

and it was because she was vivacious

and she was charming and she was funny.

She spoke back and she had opinions

and she did sort of stand out.

As America enters the war,

Joseph seizes an opportunity

to restore the Kennedy name.

Once the United States was in war,

he was smart enough to know there was no stopping them,

they were going to go in.

That was the patriotic thing to do.

Sure enough Joe Kennedy helped them.

Air Cadet Joseph P Kennedy Junior

reports for preliminary training...

Joe Kennedy was the oldest son

and therefore the most beholden to please Dad.

And Joe Kennedy wanted Joe Junior

to be President of the United States.

Now it is a front seat

in America's defense for a young man

who saw what happened over there.

Unlike Joe, Jack was not dutiful,

he had a little bit of a rebellious streak,

gallivanting around, chasing girls.

He was also sick a lot.

When Jack is two years old

he contracts Scarlet Fever

and he is basically sick for the rest of his life:

fallen arches, bad knees, chronic colds.

You name it, he had it.

Jack gets an office job

in the navy intelligence service

because Jack is disabled

in any number of ways.

It is during that office job

that he takes up with a woman.

She's a Danish journalist

called Inga Arvad.

They have this very intense affair

and the problem was that the FBI

were recording some of these romantic sessions.

Inga Arvad was a great beauty,

but she was allegedly a German spy

and that made it a bit awkward.

Jack Kennedy is in naval intelligence.

Is Nazi Intelligence trying to take advantage

of the Kennedys to learn secrets?

The FBI decides to let Joseph Kennedy know

what Jack was up to with Inga Arvad.

He thought that,

in his son's best interests

it was important for him to go to a war zone,

to wind this thing up.

Realizing Jack's womanizing

could further damage the family name,

Joseph intervenes

to get him posted to the South Pacific.

With Joe Junior training as a bomber pilot,

two of his "golden trio" are now in the line of fire.

Joe and Rose raised their children

with the sense that they were superhuman,

invulnerable, golden children.

And they felt that nothing was ever

going to happen to them.

But the Kennedys

are harboring a painful family secret.

From a young age,

Rosemary, the eldest Kennedy daughter,

was a bit slow.

She was diagnosed

with a learning disability

at the age of about six or seven.

It's the moment when

as a debutante she is presented at court,

and this year that thrill was experienced

by Miss Rosemary Kennedy,

daughter of the American Ambassador.

Her mother decides

that she should have time at home with tutors

to help teach her how try to keep up

with the other children in a way that's very modern.

The standard practice

was that they would be sent to an institution.

And Grandpa and Grandma said, we're not going to do that,

we're going to keep Rosemary at home,

we're going to raise her with her other siblings.

As she hit puberty,

Rosemary goes to being somebody

who is quite uncontrollable,

there are sexual urges...

and she is found with men.

She's so vulnerable.

It would be very easy for men to take advantage of her.

Mr Kennedy, in particular,

was afraid she would get pregnant

or she'd get a disease

and what were they to do.

They had tried together,

to find every conceivable cure

for Rosemary.

None of them worked.

Joe Kennedy

read about this brand-new procedure

called the pre-frontal lobotomy.

Only done on people

with the most serious physical and mental conditions.

Never on somebody like Rosemary.

Joe was convinced

Rosemary's lobotomy would somehow fix things

and then miraculously she would become

a perfect Kennedy like all the other Kennedys.

In the Kennedy Family,

Joe made the serious decisions.

And Rose let him do that.

And so,

without consulting Rosemary's mother...

or Rosemary herself,

he decides that this is the procedure

that she should have done.

The surgeon

gives the patient a local.

And then begins to cut into the prefrontal lobe.

The surgeon asks the patient to sing,

and the surgeon continues cutting

as long as the patient sings.

Rosemary is a very dutiful daughter.

And she sings and she sings and she sings.

And when she stops singing,

she has the mental age of a five-year-old.

By the end of the procedure

she has basically lost the ability to talk

and it's, it's clear that this has gone terribly wrong.

And Rosemary is then institutionalized

from 1941 until she passes, in 2005.

I think that experience

of having a sister

who suffered from intellectual disabilities,

ended up having a ripple effect

on our family

and years later my Aunt Eunice played a critical role

in recognizing the rights of people

who have intellectual disabilities.

This is the first tragedy

to befall the Kennedy family.

Rose is overwhelmed

by what happened to their daughter.

But also overwhelmed

by the fact that her second son, Jack,

who is physically very weak,

enlists for what is probably

the most physically difficult job in the Navy.

He is in charge of PT-109,

which is a small patrol torpedo boat

in the Pacific theater.

The PT boat is a new type of craft

to carry torpedoes

to strike the enemy below the belt.

Jack has a terrible, terrible back.

And to serve in a PT boat is only going

to exacerbate every problem that he's got.

Jack Kennedy's PT boat

was on patrol

on a moonless dark night.

So, they don't see

this giant Japanese ship

coming straight at them.

It basically slices JFK's boat in half.

Jack is thrown to the bulkhead

injuring his back.

Two of his crew are gone,

and they are surrounded by burning in the water.

Those back at the base

presume the worst.

They presume that there are no survivors

and they hold

a religious service, a mass,

for Kennedy and his crew.

Joe Kennedy gets a telegram

that his son is missing and just sits on the news.

He doesn't tell his family.

He doesn't want to scare them.

When tragedy struck the Kennedy family,

Joe senior didn't share it with other members,

like his wife, the mother of his children.

And so, he lives with this kind of private agony,

wondering whether his second son is dead.

His boat cut in half

by a Japanese destroyer in the South Pacific,

26-year-old Lieutenant John Fitzgerald Kennedy

is missing in action.

Kennedy said, "I'm the skipper.

We're going to have to swim".

And they say, "But Skipper,

it's miles to the nearest island."

One of his men is wounded

and Jack, this skinny little guy,

tows a man

much bigger for miles.

They swam for hours.

They found an island,

but this was Japanese-occupied territory.

Two Solomon Islands natives

found them and said, "Well, we will try to help you",

but they didn't speak very good English.

So, Kennedy took a coconut

and using his knife he writes out a message

that says "11 alive, native knows position,

need small boat, Kennedy".

The coconut reaches allied lines

and Kennedy and his crew are rescued.

The point of PT-109 is,

it was not regarded by John F. Kennedy

or anyone in the vicinity of that combat zone

as any act of heroism.

It was a disaster.

Jack should have been court-martialed

because he allowed his boat

to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Joseph Kennedy sees an opportunity

to turn disaster into triumph.

Joe Kennedy was still politically connected

and immediately intervened,

and it was only through

a carefully managed investigation,

Joe Kennedy was overseeing it,

making sure that the story came out right,

that it became this great, you know,

heroic myth of, of JFK saving his crew.

Warner Brothers

bring to the screen,

one of the most important adventures ever filmed.

It became a book

and, years later, a movie.

It was a certification of leadership,

it was a certification of courage,

and it became central to the story of Jack Kennedy.

The young man I play is a fellow from Boston,

his name - Lieutenant John F. Kennedy.

Jack Kennedy

becomes the military hero,

the kind of selfless man.

And it's an important part

of this narrative that's being crafted around him.

Joe Junior is jealous.

His little brother is a hero and Joe Junior is not.

It was extremely difficult for Joe Jr.

He'd always been

the oldest brother, the golden boy.

There's a banquet for Jack in Boston,

and afterwards Joe came home and wept

and said, "I'll show them."

And so came that early April morning

for a final inspection,

they trained long and hard for these ships.

You're on your way, Joe.

This is it.

Joe Junior leaves

to join the allies in Europe,

seizing his opportunity to be a Kennedy hero.

Whether you were British or American,

the ultimate in being the dashing war hero

was being a pilot,

and that's what Joe did

and took on the scariest of missions

which was flying a liberator bomber

going after the greatest threat to the western alliance

which was German U-boats.

Kick also joins the war effort,

volunteering for the American Red Cross in England.

Kathleen Kennedy was a charming girl

who wowed the boys

and met one of the richest

and most socially prestigious,

the oldest son of the Duke of Devonshire.

He was London's most eligible bachelor,

he was heir to the Chatsworth Estate.

He was a catch.

Duty calls from lovely Chatsworth,

seat of the ducal Devonshire.

One would think that Joe and Rose

would be completely thrilled

that their daughter had risen to these dizzying heights,

but unfortunately Billy was suitable

in every way except for one,

he wasn't Roman Catholic.

There is a complex of feelings,

Joseph Kennedy saw her romance

as a sense that the Kennedys had arrived.

However, what's so interesting

is that Rose didn't share the same sense of success.

For her, Kick's romance

threatened her sense of identity

and her sense of the family's identity.

Kick becomes the first

of the Kennedy children to marry,

but the union is not blessed by her parents.

Her older brother Joe

is by her side on her wedding day

and no one else.

They could have been married at Chatsworth

with a thousand guests,

but instead they were married in a registry office

in what she described as a squalid affair.

In the summer of 1944,

the Kennedy family gathers at Hyannis Port

on the coast of Massachusetts,

but Joe Junior sends disappointing news.

His father and mother

expected him home any day now.

And then in July they get this strange letter

and he says, "I'm part of a special mission.

"But don't worry, it's not dangerous.

See you in September."

Joe Kennedy's already flown his 25 missions,

he could go home.

But he volunteers for extra duty.

He's going to fly in a bomber stuffed with explosives

towards a secret German weapon on the French coast.

He would set the fuse,

and then he would bail out of the plane,

along with his co-pilot, over the English Channel.

The plane would be set on remote, and it would attack

these super guns

that were being put in place by Hitler,

on the coast of France

and this was, in Joe Kennedy Junior's mind,

the way to be a hero.

He said, "In case I don't come back,

please tell my father I love him very much."

On August 13th, 1944,

the Kennedy family is home.

Bing Crosby is on the phonograph

singing 'I'll Be Seeing You.'

Joe Junior isn't there.

He's volunteered for a secret mission.

Rose sees two priests

draw up to the family home.

They say, "We're here to speak to Mr. Kennedy",

and she says, "He's napping.

Would you like to come in, have some tea?"

And they say, "No,

we have some very bad news about Joe."

They go upstairs,

they tell Joe the terrible news

that his beloved son has been killed in action.

Joe has to then come down

and tell the rest of the assembled clan

that Joe is dead.

He said, "There's no time for crying.

"We've got to get on with the living.

Kennedys don't cry."

And Jack says, "He wouldn't want us

"sitting here crying over him.

We're going to go sailing."

And that's what they did.

In Joe Kennedy's rage

over the death of his son,

he blamed FDR.

He said, "That son of a bitch Roosevelt got my son killed."

Obviously an outrageous statement,

but it shows the depth of pain that Joe felt.

After his death,

it was really JFK who had to step up

and there was actually a moment

where his father said, "Okay, you're next..."

Just after Joe Junior died,

Jack said to one of his friends,

"I can feel my father's breath on my neck."

After the war,

Joe Senior pressures Jack to launch his political career.

Jack really wasn't ready

for the role that he was about to take on.

First of all, he was young.

And second of all, all the attention up to that point

had been on grooming Joe.

But the Kennedys always find a way

to make their dreams come true.

And for Joe Kennedy Senior, in 1946,

his dream is to have Jack go to Congress.

The problem is that there is no seat open

to run for in Boston.

But there is one that's being held in the 11th district

by an infamous politician called James Michael Curley.

And Joe buys him off,

by retiring his debts and other favors,

and makes him go away

and run for mayor, opening the seat for Jack.

And Jack suddenly finds himself

out walking the streets,

shaking hands, kissing babies,

having to learn to be a politician.

From dawn to dusk Kennedy worked.

He began the day at factories at six in the morning

and he kept going

with meeting after meeting after meeting

'til late at night

when he would collapse

into the bathtub first

to ease the pain in his back.

Joe Kennedy is smart enough to know

that his profile is not good.

He was an appeaser.

He knows he needs to stay in the shadows,

in the background.

But, Joe has the money.

So, Joe provides the funds

to make Jack's career possible.

Reader's Digest featured John Kennedy

as a hero from the Pacific war.

His father saw to it

that this was given maximum publicity.

I think a hundred thousand copies

of the Reader's Digest article were purchased

by Joe Kennedy Senior to help campaign.

The father later said,

"For the amount of money I spent on that campaign,

I could have elected my chauffeur."

That standing of being a war hero

is something they know how to make very good use of.

Joe Kennedy's money absolutely helps,

but it's PT-109,

plus the family's energy,

plus the family's political contacts

that prove to be

a winning combination in 1946.

Jack Kennedy was elected

to the House of Representatives.

But Jack's exertions

on the campaign trail take a heavy toll.

He gets sick

and doctors determine that he has Addison's disease

which leads to a weak immune system,

making him susceptible to diseases, and infections.

At first, the doctors think

that Jack is going to die young,

but they're developing treatments at this time,

that can effectively keep Jack alive.

The family don't want Jack's illness

to become an open story.

So, in fact the story goes out to the press

that Jack's suffering from a recurring bout of malaria.

At just 30 years old,

Jack faces his own mortality.

He was a fatalist.

He talked about death a lot.

It didn't scare him,

but he had this sense that it was going to happen,

probably sooner rather than later.

And that certainly helped make him a young man in a hurry.

Joseph P. Kennedy

had predicted

that the best and the brightest

of his children's generation

would die in a war

and now this had happened,

not only to Joe Junior

but to Kick's beloved husband.

Kick had defied her family

to marry the love of her life, Billy Hartington,

only to lose him.

The heir to the Chatsworth Estate

was killed by a German sniper.

The timing was brutal,

they had only weeks together as a married couple

before he left

and to be widowed so young

was devastating.

I think Rose Kennedy

was very sad about that for Kathleen

but there had been terrible problems in the family

over that marriage

because Billy Hartington was Protestant.

And she must have a feeling

that Kathleen could come back to the United States

and back into the Church with full membership.

Rose prays that this would be

the saving grace for Kathleen.

But after Billy's death,

Kick decides to stay in England.

England's in her blood.

Kick at this time

is seriously considering a career in politics,

and becoming a member of parliament.

She's very politically engaged at this point

and then in just a few years

all of that just comes to an end.

In 1948, Kathleen tells her parents

that she's fallen in love a second time

with a British nobleman, an Anglican,

who is married and has a child.

And she tells her parents that as soon as

Peter Fitzwilliam's divorce is final,

that she will marry him.

Peter Fitzwilliam

was a bad boy.

He was into gambling,

he was into horse races, into women.

He was Protestant, and he was married.

To be involved with somebody like Peter Fitzwilliam

was the ultimate sin in Rose's eyes.

Rose says Kick will be marrying a divorced man

which will mean that it's not a valid marriage

in the eyes of the Catholic Church

and so she has to tell her beloved daughter

that she must disown her

if she goes through with the marriage.

She really genuinely believed

that her daughter's soul would go to hell.

I think it was clear to Kick

that there were no chances

getting her mother's approval

but she believed there was some margin with her dad.

Her father is coming over to Paris

on business in 1948.

And she makes an arrangement with him

that she and Peter Fitzwilliam will come meet him

and Kathleen's hope is that he will then

give his blessing to the marriage.

Before though, they have their meeting,

Kathleen and Peter decide that they will take

a mini holiday in the South of France

in the Riviera.

Fitzwilliam and Kick

decide to fly down.

The weather is terrible,

the pilot says, "We can't go, it's too dangerous."

But Fitzwilliam is a very reckless man

and he insists that they fly.

A terrible thunderstorm strikes

and they crash into a mountainside,

in the Rhone Valley.

The pilot, the co-pilot, Kick, and her fianc�

are all lost.

Joe Kennedy never sees his daughter again,

except in a casket.

Jack learns that his beloved sister 'Kick'

has died in France.

Jack Kennedy is a man who doesn't cry,

who rarely shows emotions.

But that day Jack Kennedy breaks down.

Jack is totally debilitated by grief

and he is supposed to organize family

to go to the funeral,

which is going to be held in England.

But, but he can't do it.

He got in a car to go to the airport,

fly to her funeral,

and didn't get on the plane.

Joe was informed,

and was the only family member

to show up at her funeral.

Rose called Kick's death divine retribution.

My wife and I have given nine hostages to fortune.

Joe Kennedy had lost his oldest son Joe Junior,

he'd lost his older daughter Rosemary

to a botched lobotomy that had ended her life

as far as the family was concerned.

And beloved Kick was gone too.

There is, woven through the Kennedys,

a sense of doom,

and by the late '40s,

only Jack remains of the golden trio.

The torch was passed to him.

His parents' ambitions were now his ambitions.

The burden of taking the dynasty forward

was his burden.

This season

on American Dynasties: the Kennedys...

You're never running against one Kennedy.

It's a full family affair.

We could see

a different world.

Confident and unafraid we must labour on...

They've made a lot more enemies than friends

and some of those enemies are truly dangerous.

With the Kennedys,

it's always tragedy and triumph mixed together.