My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy

My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy is a 1969 memoir by Mary Barelli Gallagher. Gallagher worked as a secretary for John F. Kennedy during his first term as Senator for Massachusetts, for Janet Norton Lee Auchincloss, and for First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis before and during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy.[1] The memoir was generally negatively critically received.

Memoir

Mary Barelli Gallagher served as Jacqueline Kennedy's secretary from 1957 to 1964. She wrote My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy about her time working for Kennedy and it was published in 1969 by the David McKay Company. Frances Spatz Leighton worked with Gallagher for six months to condense her 700 page memoir into a 396 page book. The New York Times called the book "a worm's-eye view of history commercially packaged by a backstairs ghost." The reviewer continued to note that Gallagher provided "the venom" and "details" to Leighton, who "blended them together with the precision of a hack." They concluded that the book offered no "fresh insights" and attempted to engage in character assassination and was made "to make a buck and settle scores."[2][3]

A reviewer for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called the book "depressing" and wrote that it had "colorless" style with "a few moving scenes."[4] In a review titled "Hell hath no fury like a secretary", James Brady gave the book a very negative review, beginning by writing that "no gentleman could have written such a book and no lady would have," and concluding that "There's a good book to be written about Jacqueline Bouvine Kennedy Onassis. But this isn't it."[5]

References
  1. Gallagher, Mary Barelli; Leighton, Frances Leighton (Jul 1969). ""My Boss Jackie Kennedy"". Ladies' Home Journal. 86 (7): 60–68.
  2. Bender, Marylin (1969-09-07). "My Life With Jacqueline Kennedy; By Mary Barelli Gallagher". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  3. "Frances Spatz Leighton, 87; writer chronicled D.C. lives". Los Angeles Times. 2007-04-21. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  4. "In the Shadow of JBK". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 1969-09-14. p. 30. Retrieved 2020-12-12 – via Newspapers.com .
  5. Brady, James. "Hell Hath No Fury Like A Secretary" (PDF).
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