Christopher Andersen’s allegation that John F. Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn had an affair while he was courting Jaqueline Onassis has not been echoed by other biographers, whether they be Kennedy’s or Hepburn’s. Per Vanity Fair, at the time Anderson says she was cavorting with the future president, Hepburn had just left a relationship with James Hanson, whom she had been engaged to before calling off the wedding due to their incompatible lifestyles. She went on to marry fellow actor Mel Ferrer in 1954. It’s in between those two serious romances that she allegedly had her affair with then-Senator Kennedy.
Anderson’s brief account of their relationship is built on anonymous sources and second-hand accounts. Kennedy’s secretary, Mary Gallagher, went on record as seeing Hepburn in his Senate office and said she impressed everyone who saw her. One person claimed that Hepburn “out-Jackied Jackie” but was not prepared to share their name. However, they did tell Anderson that while Hepburn’s personality was fairly close to her screen persona, “she also had this very sexy, very naughty side that the public never saw.”
Read Related Also: Opening Statements: Yoga Teacher Kaitlin Armstrong Uses Fitness App to Find & Murder Boyfriend’s Professional Cyclist Love Interest
Keeping their affair a secret supposedly turned up the heat for both Kennedy and Hepburn, but anything more than an affair wasn’t in the cards. As an ambitious politician of his era, Kennedy couldn’t afford to marry a foreign-born woman or an entertainer, and as a scion of a Catholic family, he couldn’t marry someone outside the church. In Anderson’s telling, after Kennedy proposed to Onassis, Hepburn entered an affair with her “Sabrina” co-star Bill Holden before becoming involved with Ferrer.
