The Secret History

Lordy, will we never be rid of memoirs from everybody who had tangential contact with the New Frontier? Now, Mimi Beardsley Alford - outed by Robert Dalleck as the 20 year-old White House intern who had an affair with JFK - is getting a seven figure advance to tell her story. Uh, is there something else we need to know? Paramour of Kennedy is Writing a Book

Mimi Beardsley Alford, a retired New York church administrator who had an affair with John F. Kennedy while she was an intern in the White House, is breaking a silence of more than 40 years to tell her story in a memoir to be published by Random House.

Ms. Alford’s secret was initially divulged six years ago when a biography of Kennedy was published with portions from a 1964 oral history that described the president’s 18-month sexual affair with a young intern named Mimi Beardsley. The Daily News tracked her down and discovered that she was Marion Fahnestock, who was divorced, working for the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and living in Manhattan. At the time, she gave a short statement confirming that she was “involved in a sexual relationship” with Kennedy from June 1962 to November 1963.

Honey, JFK was sleeping with a lot of girls back then, including mafia molls, Hollywood starlets, half the White House secretarial pool, Marlene Dietrich (admittedly this is a dubiuous self-report), and sometimes his own wife. As I recall from the Dalleck excerpt I read, your affair mostly consisted of you being shuttled around by the Secret Service (sometimes cowering under a blanket). You got anything else?

According to Mr. Reiter, Ms. Alford is not writing a tell-all memoir. “She’s just not that type of person, where she’s going to spill her guts about intimate stuff for the whole country to see,” Mr. Reiter said. “The story has three acts to it: before the White House, during the White House, and then the really powerful part is what happens afterwards. What’s the impact on your family life, your marriage, knowing that this happened to you in your early life and you have chosen to keep it a secret.”

You mean we're not even going to get any first-rate pillow talk out of this??

All cattiness aside, there may be something of interest here. Alford, nee' Mimi Beardsley, came from a more sophisticated background than many of JFK's other lovers (her name alone should be a clue to her essential waspiness). She attended the same private school as Jackie Kennedy, and later married a wealthy investment banker. And, she came of age when a young woman could go to college, but couldn't realistically compete with men for prestigious White House jobs. Still, like a Versailles courtesan, she could still use her femininity to gain (very) temporary access to power. No doubt, Vanity Fair is already preparing for the interview with her.