Oh, Jackie! What Next? : They’ve Got Big Plans for Those Pricey Buys
With an air of almost impossible casualness, Juan Pablo Molyneux surveyed his New York studio. The sterling silver tape measure from Tiffany & Co. once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis “is around here somewhere,” the architect / designer said. “I think it’s in a drawer, or wait, maybe it’s over there on one of my drafting tables.”
Acting on behalf of a nameless, inordinately rich client from San Francisco, Molyneux paid $48,875 for the 29-foot tape measure, monogrammed “J.B.K.” for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. To celebrate its acquisition, much like a sacred relic, Molyneux passed the tape measure around at a dinner party so all his guests could touch it. Eventually, Molyneux said, when the restoration of his San Francisco client’s 24-room home is complete, the gleaming bibelot will end up atop some books in the library.
“Sort of a casual thing,” the decorator stressed. “It won’t be in a Lucite box saying ‘Jackie O’s Tape’ or some such thing.”
He hardly seemed anxious about it, but in his own way he was confronting this important question: After you’ve paid way too much for a dubious slice of American history, what do you do with it?
The little measuring device is so tiny that Molyneux could take it home immediately, making him among the more fortunate of the buyers who paid $34 million to snap up every last one of 5,914 personal items at Sotheby’s Jackie O shopping frenzy in April. Shipping delays were common, and in some cases, annoying. Nearly two months after the auction, Los Angeles attorney Ronald Palmieri still awaited delivery of his $5,000 Wedgwood dinner plates. Louisville real estate doyenne Kaye Bowles-Durnell, co-publisher with her husband, Jerry, of Pizza Today magazine, waited almost that long for the Eugene Berman architectural print and Louis XV mirror she bought for a total of about $25,000.
Egregiously inflated prices accounted for part of the delay, since insurance companies had to grapple with how to value such objects.
In St. Louis, decorator James Jamieson was utterly unfazed--and, frankly, rather amused--by the prices Jackie Onassis’ castoffs produced. Jamieson paid “I don’t know, $25,000, or whatever it was” for a 19th century Chinoiserie table that he readily agreed was spectacularly nonutilitarian.
“What do you do with it?” Jamieson said. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Is it attractive? No. Is it fabulous? No. Is it worth $25,000? “Only if you’ve got more dollars than sense.”
Jamieson’s raison d’acheter, that owning a sliver of Camelot was a worthwhile end itself, was echoed by many purchasers--even those who immediately began contemplating the resale of their new acquisitions, or those who altruistically contemplated passing their Jackie O merchandise on to a favorite charity.
In the case of New York dental clinic emperor Dr. Jules Lane, who commands a retinue of 250 dentists, you hang it over the fireplace in your bedroom in Great Neck, Long Island. Very nice, since “it” is Elaine de Kooning’s charcoal sketch of former President John F. Kennedy. Very ironic, since Lane is a staunch Republican who can think of many people other than a dead Democratic president who should occupy the display space of honor in his boudoir.
“An Eisenhower, I would be delighted,” Lane said.
But Lane’s wife fancied the de Kooning sketch, “and whatever she wants, I get her,” Lane reported. Truth be told, Lane felt lucky to make off with the $101,500 portrait. Imagine if his wife had coveted something like the tattered old footstool that sold for “what was it? $30,000? $40,000? And it’s worth nothing,” Lane snorted. (In fact, Lane revealed, soon after the auction he was offered $30,000 more than he paid for the sketch.)
Fellow New Yorker Marvin Shanken, the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine, felt just as strongly about his new cigar humidor. Half a million dollars (OK, $574,000, to be precise) for a walnut canister to house prize stogies? No problem! Especially since this particular tobacco container was presented to President Kennedy in 1961 by comedian Milton Berle.
A special high-security container is under construction for the humidor, which will reside in a corporate conference room surrounded by Shanken’s collection of cigar-themed posters from the turn of the century. No need for an identifying plaque on it, said Shanken’s colleague Niki Singer: “It already has one” from Berle to Kennedy.
Likewise, the 40.42-carat diamond ring bought by Heinz Food Group Chairman Anthony O’Reilly for his wife, Chrys, requires little labeling. Not too many women sport diamonds that double as automobile headlamps. O’Reilly paid $2.6 million for the Lesotho diamond presented to Jacqueline Kennedy by then-fiance Aristotle Onassis; its estimated value was $600,000.
An aide to O’Reilly said she understood her boss had presented the ring to his wife. It was hard not to detect a wistful note as she added: “But I haven’t seen it yet.”
At his office in Culver City, Norman Pattiz, chairman of the Westwood One radio group, was eagerly awaiting delivery of a 19th century pier table that once sat in the White House. Pattiz said the table was destined for his front hallway, where people would see it and--when appropriate--hear about its historic background. More than likely, Pattiz said he and wife Mary would place on it an original edition of John Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” they also bought.
Friends and family should be able to leaf through the pages and feel the idealistic glow of the Kennedy era--a defining moment for the country, Pattiz observed, “and for me as well.”
If and when they complete the trek across the country, attorney Palmieri knows right where to put his new dinner plates: on his dining room table, where he often hosts swank gatherings. Palmieri’s secretary, Joe Kim, said he was certain the Onassis plates would look swell mixed with Palmieri’s broad assortment of fine china, including “some wonderful stuff” from Eva Gabor’s collection.
In Chicago, meanwhile, Helyn Goldenberg expressed high hopes for the future life of John F. Kennedy’s old putter. Goldenberg, a senior vice president at Sotheby’s, said her husband, Ralph, and his business partner Christopher Hehmeyer spent $63,000 to buy the dented, chipped golf club that recently arrived from New York, lovingly wrapped in the same kind of padding used to protect a fine piece of sculpture.
“We took it out,” Helyn Goldenberg recalled, “and you know how sometimes when you buy something you feel later like ‘why did I do this?’ Well, it was just the opposite. You put it in your hand and you felt something--well--something really wonderful. I mean, there were the scratch marks from when Kennedy used this putter. For a minute it was kind of magical.”
But now that they own the putter, Helyn Goldenberg said her husband and Hehmeyer have no intention of actually using it. Instead, the two futures traders from the Chicago Board of Trade have set about adapting a maxim from Kennedy himself.
Ask not what your putter can do for you, Goldenberg and Hehmeyer have decided, ask what your putter can do for your favorite charity--in this case, the Providence St. Mel High School in Chicago. It’s an unusual institution, Helyn Goldenberg said, a pilot school where students from many different avenues can pursue a variety of dreams. This fall, Providence St. Mel will hold its own auction, with the JFK putter as the centerpiece.
Organizers hope the benefit will bring in excess of $100,000--a royal ransom for any school these days. “We think Jackie and JFK would approve,” Helyn Goldenberg said.
