An ‘American’ Story : PBS’ ‘The Kennedys’ focuses on the family’s history, presidential goals

As if books, documentaries, feature and TV movies haven’t done enough treatments of the Kennedy family, along comes the two-part “The Kennedys,” kicking off the fifth season of PBS’ “The American Experience.”

Executive producer Elizabeth Deane fears most viewers will be asking: Why devote another four hours retelling the same old story?

“I had a similar question when the idea came along,” said Deane, who also produced “The American Experience’s” “Nixon,” which replays this week.

But Deane’s feelings toward the project changed when she and her staff began work on “The Kennedys” in early 1991. “It began to take shape in the early research,” Deane said. “We thought with ‘The Kennedys’ it would be better to look at the family’s reach for the presidency rather than Jack’s presidency, which has been done so much. The Kennedy story is so encrusted with myth and ghosts and legend and dark and light, that you are confronted with that at the beginning and have to sift through it and find the story.”

“The Kennedys” features rare stills and film footage and interviews with more than 80 people, including former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, Pamela Churchill Harriman, former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and Judith Campbell Exner, who talks about her love affair with John F. Kennedy.

Sen. Edward Kennedy and two of Robert Kennedy’s children, Joseph P. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy Jr., also add their insight into the family history.

“The Kennedys” covers a lot of old material, including JFK’s extramarital affairs (though it barely touches on his relationship with Marilyn Monroe), and explores Ted Kennedy’s tragic accident at Chappaquidick and his unsuccessful 1980 presidential bid. But the centerpiece of “The Kennedys” is patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy.

The documentary follows his rise on Wall Street in the 1920s, which made him the richest Irish-American at the time, his marriage to Rose Fitzgerald, his years as a Hollywood film producer, his love affair with film queen Gloria Swanson and his ambassadorship to England in the 1930s.

Kennedy’s dreams of becoming the first Catholic President evaporated when he embarrassed himself as ambassador by insisting the United States stay out of World War II. Undaunted, Kennedy drove his four sons--Joe Jr., John, Robert and Edward--to set their sights on the White House.

Deane said she and her staff were surprised that Joe Sr.’s story had not been told before.

“We all thought there will have been other films made about Joe Kennedy that will include interviews from people now dead,” she said. “We couldn’t find any.”

One of the documentary’s many revelations is Kennedy’s relationship with his nine children. Rose Kennedy, Deane said, “is often featured, particularly in more recent years, as the starring parent. One of the most interesting discoveries was that she was often away (on trips) and that Joe was in many ways the heart of the family. I think he was a stern father, but deeply involved in his children’s lives.”

Deane found Kennedy an interesting, complex character. “There is no question he was a tough, rough man in the world of business, but he had this other side and that makes his fate all the more poignant,” Deane said.

His fate was spending his later years in a wheelchair, unable to speak after suffering a stroke soon after JFK’s inauguration in 1961.

“He had one son as president, another (Robert) as attorney general and was moving Ted toward the Senate,” Deane said. “He had a lot and yet he lived on to see it all come apart in a condition which he could not shape the events like he had before. When all of us on the staff began to understand the story and when we saw that footage that ends the first night when he is in the wheelchair, it is like, why do another Kennedy story? Well, why do Shakespeare again? Why do Greek tragedy again?”

In fact, Deane likens the Kennedy saga to a Greek tragedy. Kennedy’s money and power, she said, “bought him almost everything and then he lived to lose it,” including the death of four of his children--Joe Jr., Kathleen, John and Robert.

Kennedy never got over the death of Joe Jr., who was killed on a bombing mission in Europe during World War II. He was grooming his eldest son for the White House. Kathleen also died in a plane crash.

One of the most poignant moments in the documentary is rare footage of JFK tipping his top hat in respect to his father during the inaugural parade.

“That is a Kennedy story that you read about in books,” Deane said. “It is a miraculous moment in the film. However you feel about these people and this family, that relationship and that salute from the son to the father is an important moment.”

“The Kennedys” airs Sunday-Monday at 7 p.m. on KVCR and 8 p.m. on KCET and KPBS .

“Nixon” airs Thursday at 8 p.m. on KCET, KVCR and KPBS.