The Professionals

A REVEALING NEW BOOK, THE FABULOUS BOUVIER SISTERS, CHRONICLES THE POST-SWAN LIVES OF SOCIETY’S MOST FASCINATING SIBLINGS.

- Sam Kashner And Nancy Schoenberger

“For the first time, I really feel true to myself,” Lee Radziwill told Judy Klemesrud of the New York Times in a September 1974 interview. Since leaving her marriage to Prince Stanislaw Radziwill, Lee was experiencing a burst of creative activity. Besides going on tour with the Rolling Stones two years earlier, her involvement in documentaries by Jonas Mekas and the Maysles brothers, and trying to write a memoir, Lee had embarked on a television career. If Jackie was finally found, Lee refused to be lost.

Described by Klemesrud as a “society blueblood, ex-princess” and “little sister to one of the world’s most famous women,” Lee swept “into her bright red living room on Fifth Avenue…to talk about her latest endeavor: working.” Throughout the 1970s this was how she was often portrayed: a storm looking for a port. Pencil-thin, dressed in a white silk shirt and navy pants, Lee chain-smoked throughout the interview. When Klemesrud asked why someone of her background wanted to “become a working woman,” Lee answered in the parlance of the times:

“I’m obviously all for women’s lib, but…this is no classic case of women’s lib. The most important thing, I’ve found, is to be self-reliant. I just felt I was being true to myself by returning to New York and starting a life of my own. In London I found I was no longer able to contribute to anyone else’s life except my children’s, and they’re at an age now where they no longer need me very much.”