5. The JFK-Monroe-RFK Love Triangle
John F. Kennedy’s affair with Marilyn Monroe was quite salacious in of itself, but its aftermath was even more so. After the president was done with the blond bombshell, he passed her on to his younger brother and the United States’ Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. RFK had cultivated an image of a devoted husband and happily married man, raising a large and steadily increasing family that would eventually number 11 children. He was viewed as the most family-oriented and straitlaced of the Kennedy brothers, so the contrast between that perception and an affair with the iconic sex symbol was kind of jarring.
Had the affair occurred in our era, Monroe’s unexpected death a few months later would have been nothing short of explosive. The coroner ruled Monroe’s 1962 death a probable suicide via barbiturates, but conspiracy theories abounded, alleging that JFK or RFK had been involved. The sudden death of a former mistress of the president, who then became the mistress of his brother, the Attorney General and the president’s right hand man? That is the kind of chum that gives rise to media feeding frenzies.