As Ryan Murphy’s ‘Love Story’ series gets set to mythologise the lives of John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, we examine the continued fascination with the Irish-American power players
Actors Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon who star as John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette in Love Story. Photo: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Twenty-five years had passed since the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963 when Wendy Northcross became executive director of the Greater Hyannis Chamber of Commerce on Cape Cod. Her office was within earshot of the front desk of the peninsula’s visitor centre, and she couldn’t believe how many requests came in daily about the Kennedy clan – whose Hyannis Port compound was just minutes from the office.
“I asked the front desk staff to keep hashmarks on a piece of paper every time they got a question related to the Kennedys,” she says. “After one year, we had over 50,000 hashmarks. In 1989, I was stunned.”