EPILOGUE

Many people found themselves surprised by how affected they were by the news that Peter Lawford was dead. Still another symbol of the seemingly simpler, happier times epitomized by the MGM musical was gone, and for many the world was a poorer place because of it. Patty was amazed by the deluge of telegrams, cards, and letters that poured in “from every corner of the world.” President Reagan sent condolences, as did other heads of state. Patty remembered thinking, “It was as though the world had lost a beloved friend . . . even though his time as a star had long since passed.”

Senator Edward Kennedy issued a tribute: “The death of Peter Lawford is a special loss to all of us in the Kennedy family, and my heart goes out to his children, Christopher, Sydney, Victoria, and Robin. We take comfort from the fact that we know he will also be missed by all of the people who enjoyed his many roles in films and on television. He was a dedicated and creative actor as well as a loving father and loyal friend to all of us, especially in the challenging days of the New Frontier.”

Peter was cremated on Christmas Day, and the following evening a small group of family and friends attended a closely guarded funeral at Westwood Village Mortuary. In a cold, driving rain, Patty, Milt, the four Lawford children, Caroline Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Jr., Bill Asher, and several more of Peter’s longtime friends heard him eulogized by both a Catholic and an Episcopalian priest.

After the thirty-minute service, which included the playing of John Lennon’s “Love,” Peter’s ashes were entombed in a double crypt fifty yards from Marilyn Monroe’s.

EVEN IN DEATH THERE was little dignity for Peter Lawford. Newspapers reported that the probate of his estate revealed that he had died heavily in debt and without major assets. Claims against the estate, all of which went unpaid, included one from Hugh Hefner for ten thousand dollars that he had lent Peter in August 1982. It was to have been repaid with the proceeds from the sale of Peter’s projected memoirs. Hefner was the only one of Peter’s friends to make a claim on his estate for the repayment of a loan.

In 1988, much news was made when it came to light that Peter’s funeral expenses had never been paid. Westwood Village Mortuary, under new management, had warned Patty that they might have to remove Peter’s ashes from his crypt unless the account was settled. Patty told the press that she had never had the money to pay the bills (which amounted to around seven thousand dollars), and that even when she told Peter’s children that their father’s ashes might be evicted from the memorial park, they had refused to pay the bills.

Others tell a different story. As Patty’s attorney, Marcus Wasson, recalled: “I was under the impression that Patty did have the money to pay the funeral expenses after Peter died.” Indeed, within a few months of his death she had received a fifty-thousand-dollar lump-sum payment from his Screen Actors Guild pension. Still, the bills were not paid.

When the story became public, Patty painted the Kennedys — and specifically Peter’s children — as the villains of the piece. She told reporters: “It’s terrible. Their father was always good to them.” The family issued a statement: “The children only recently learned of the existence of financial problems in connection with their father’s funeral expenses and they have taken care of all such obligations. The children’s primary concern has always been that their father’s remains rest in peace, and they loved him.”

The children didn’t pay the expenses; before they would agree to do so they insisted that Patty relinquish control of the crypt. She decided that she “had had it with the Kennedy family,” and — although the mortuary had not pressed the issue — she told Peter’s children that she was proceeding with the removal of his ashes and planned to scatter them at sea. They assented to her wishes and agreed to pay the $430 fee for the disinterment (Victoria sent the mortuary a check).

On May 25, 1988, cemetery workers pried open the front of crypt C-3, swept away the dust and cobwebs, and handed Patty the urn containing Peter’s ashes. She had made a deal with — as she put it — “my friends at the National Enquirer,” giving the tabloid exclusive picture rights in exchange for a limousine to take her to Marina del Rey, and a boat from which to scatter Peter’s ashes into the Pacific.

Newspapers around the country told the story of Peter Lawfords last great indignity — his eviction from his final resting place. “I think it’s terrible,” the stories quoted Patty as saying. “I never wanted him to be removed, but the children took a walk. I was tired of all the nonsense. I didn’t care if the children cared or not. I was doing what had to be done — what was best for Peter and his memory.”

The final paragraph of the report in the Los Angeles Times on the occasion reflected the assumption of many that the entire sorry episode was a publicity stunt: “Mrs. Lawford, 30, arrived at the cemetery in a black limousine, accompanied by a professional photographer. She said her book on Lawford will be out this summer.”

INTENSELY PRIVATE, Peter Lawford’s children have kept low profiles most of their lives. Only Christopher, fifty-five as of this writing, embarked on a career that put him in the public spotlight. He became an actor and had a solid if unspectacular career, appearing on the soap operas All My Children and General Hospital and a number of other TV shows and movies. He was arrested in 1980 for heroin possession, but was never prosecuted on the charge, and his battle with drugs was behind him two years after he graduated from Boston College Law School in 1983. He went on to gain a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology. He married his longtime girlfriend, Jeannie Olsson, a month before Peter’s death and had three children. The couple were divorced in 2000 and Chris remarried to Lana Antonava, from whom he is now also divorced.

Sydney and Peter McKelvy now have four sons, Peter, born in 1985, Christopher, born in 1987, Patrick born in 1989 and Anthony, born in 1992. Victoria is a television coordinator for Very Special Arts, a nonprofit affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington that sponsors programs for the disabled. She was married in June 1987 to Robert Pender, an attorney with a Washington law firm. They have three daughters, Alexandra, born in 1988, Caroline, born in 1990, and Victoria, born in 1993.

Robin Lawford, fifty, in 2011, is unmarried as of this writing. She has worked as a stage manager for Off-Broadway productions in New York and is now involved in the Kennedy family’s efforts on behalf of retarded children. She is also a marine biologist doing field work in New York.

Patricia Kennedy Lawford died on September 17, 2006, at the age of eighty-two.

PETER HAD SAT WITH Jean MacDonald on a seawall in Hawaii and sobbed, afraid that he had nothing to offer his children, that the Kennedys would overshadow him in their estimation at every turn. In many ways, of course, he was right. But no matter how much the Kennedys achieved, and no matter how badly his own life and career foundered, Peter would never lose the adulation of his children.

In March 1980, twenty-four-year-old Sydney wrote Peter a letter from Palm Beach, where she was staying with her mother and sister Robin at the Kennedy compound. She told her father that although she was working in her uncle Ted Kennedy’s presidential campaign, it wasn’t her relationship to the senator that impressed people when she was introduced to them — it was the fact that she was Peter Lawford’s daughter. When they hear that, she said, “people almost pass out!”

Sydney added that she was enclosing the address of a young man who was eager to receive an autographed picture of Peter and asked her father to oblige him. Then she concluded, “Don’t be surprised if a million more [such requests] come in. You’re really loved and admired by so many people, Daddy. It makes me feel so proud.”