Leslie Goddard picked up a microphone and her accent changed to pure East Coast.
“I’m sick and tired of starring in everyone’s vacation movies,” Goddard told a group of seniors at Casa San Carlo in Northlake. “I hate that term, first lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.”
Wearing a pink jacket and skirt, pillbox hat and a double strand of pearls, Goddard imitated former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy for the next 45 minutes.
Goddard has been imitating historical women for ten years. Among them are Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Katherine Hepburn, a stewardess on the Titanic and Clara Barton. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater and then a doctorate in history. She worked in museums and ran one before starting her portrayals of historical women.
Goddard starts her re-enactment of Jacqueline Kennedy with dating then-Congressman John F. Kennedy, who she met at a dinner party in the early 1950s thanks to some matchmaking friends. Kennedy was running for senator. Jacqueline was working as an “inquiring photographer” for the Washington Times Herald newspaper, where she essentially did person-on-the-street questions and took photos.
“If you had a date with Marilyn Monroe, what would you talk about?” Goddard said.
Jacqueline was born the daughter of a Wall Street stockbroker and spent summers in Newport, Rhode Island. She married Kennedy in 1953, hoping for a “small elegant wedding.” Instead she found herself with 26 groomsmen and bridesmaids and 1,200 guests at the reception.
Her sister-in-law was married to Ted Kennedy, and Jacqueline went into the marriage with eyes open about her husband’s infidelities. In 1961 Kennedy became the 35th president and things really changed for Jacqueline.
“His family was walking on air,” Goddard said. “But to me it was frightening. To lose all your anonymity at the age of 31?”
Goddard related anecdotes from Jacqueline’s time in the White House, including being shown around the White House for the first time by then First Lady Eisenhower.
“It looked like it had been furnished by a discount furniture store during January clearance,” she said.
Goddard also recounts incidents such as meeting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, doing a TV program about the White House and the aftermath of the birth of her child Patrick, who lived only three days. Then Goddard relates Jacqueline’s perspective on their trip to Texas in November 1963.
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“It was a political fence-mending trip,” Goddard said. “I went, even though I hated every minute.”
In Dallas, an aide to Kennedy requested that her and the president look and wave in opposite directions. She was doing just that when she heard something that sounded like a car backfiring.
“I heard Gov. Connelly saying ‘No, No, No,'” Goddard said. “Jack had this puzzled look in his face. I didn’t see any blood. He put his hands up and slumped into my lap.”
Jacqueline accompanied her husband to Parkland Hospital and insisted on going into the operating room, where she found at least 40 people plus a priest administering extreme unction.
Goddard ended her re-enactment with Jacqueline’s move back to New York with her children John and Caroline. Removing the pillbox hat and wig, Goddard closed her session by dropping the accent and taking questions.