Jacqueline Kennedy and Michael Jackson

More than 300,000 copies of Moonwalk hit bookstores in April. Michael's memoirs featured a brief introduction by Jackie ("What can one say about Michael Jackson?") and were dedicated to Fred Astaire.

In the end, Jackie was as curious as everyone else when it came to Michael's peculiar habits (masks, a single glove, makeup, plastic surgery, bizarre getups, a strange fondness for chimpanzees).

More particularly, she wondered aloud about his sexual preferences. Book designer J. C. Suares, who worked on Moonwalk and accompanied Jackie to meetings with Michael at Hayvenhurst, claimed Jackie "couldn't figure out what made him tick.

His house was kitschily furnished with paintings of clowns, kind of a La-La Land. She kept asking me if he was gay." Indeed, they would "get in the car and she'd say, *Well, do you think he likes girls?' She was really fascinated by his sexual orientation. She never quite figured it out."

Dealing with the chimerical Mr. Jackson, Jackie confided to a colleague, left her feeling like a "wreck." Nevertheless, she was game to do it again. "Is there anybody else you'd like me to try and get?" she asked Lisa Drew. "Because people do sometimes take my phone calls."

"Barbra Streisand," Drew answered without skipping beat.

Once again Jackie, who reportedly found Streisand's voice "grating," nevertheless flew out to Los Angeles to seduce the famously temperamental star over lunch.

It would be a year before Streisand called Jackie back to say she was not interested in doing a book. What she wanted, Jackie later said, was "the name of a good libel lawyer. I told her I didn't have one because I don't sue for libel."

Moonwalk reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It marked Jackie's biggest commercial success to date—and the beginning of a bizarre friendship between the former First Lady and the self-styled King of Pop. Soon, Michael was imitating Jackie's little-girl whisper and wearing sunglasses at night

He was fixated on her. Apparently he once asked Caroline out on a date so he could get close to Jackie. Weird.

Just how highly Michael thought of Jackie was evident right after the publication of Moonwalk. He confided to friends that he was ready to become a single father, and by 1991 was saying he was willing to pay up to $2 million for a surrogate mother to bear his child— by means of artificial insemination. The woman would have to, he stated at the time, combine the physical and intellectual traits of the three women he admired most besides his mother: Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jacqueline Onassis.

In July of 1992, Doubleday published Jackson's Dancing the Dream, a slim coffee-table book of poetry, photographs, and "reflections." As with Moonwalk, Jackie oversaw the project, although the actual editing was done by Shaye Areheart.

By this time Jackie, who now religiously practiced yoga and meditated between 7:00 and 7:30 each evening, was sharing health tips with her emotionally fragile author. She introduced Michael to Deepak Chopra, author of Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind, and in August 1992 Jackson brought Chopra along on the European leg of his 1992 world tour—along with one or two "special friends," the prepubescent boys of whom Jackson had grown especially fond.

The air of wide-eyed, breathless innocence Jackson and Jackie shared served as their armor against an ever-intrusive world. The childlike persona also masked a dimension of Michael's psyche that Jackie found troubling.

At Hayvenhurst and later at Jackson's spectacular Neverland Ranch in the mist-shrouded foothills east of Santa Barbara, Jackie had commented on the young boys who always surrounded Michael. "Doesn't it strike you as, well, odd'" she asked a colleague.

Dancing the Dream was one of the first gifts Michael gave the twelve-year-old boy the superstar would later be accused of molesting- These explosive charges, which came to light when police raided Neverland in August of 1993, made lurid headlines around the word for more than a year. During that time, his career in shambles, Jackson teetered on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Despite her own precarious health, Elizabeth Taylor rushed to Michael's side in Singapore. She was practically the only one of Michael's many famous "friends" to stand up and be counted in his defense, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, David Geffen, and hundreds more who once clamored to be photographed beside him now remained stonily silent

Most conspicuously absent of all was Jackie. Facing criminal prosecution and a possible prison sentence, a frantic Michael placed several calls from Neverland to Jackie's Doubleday offices. Mrs. Onassis, conveniently, was never there to take his calls.

Eventually, Jackson agreed to buy his accuser's silence. Without the victim's testimony, prosecutors in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara felt they no longer had a case. Coincidentally, the amount Michael agreed on with the boy's litigators was identical to the settlement Christina Onassis paid Jackie: $26 million.

Miss Jackson's wig looks machine washable.

R3 Yes, he was very obsessed and fixated on the very famous people with legendary status. like Jackie Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor, to name a few, and he managed to befriend them and some of their kids. Not to mention marrying Elvis's daughter!

Jackie never got over when John shook her baby to death and then she had to cover it up to make herself a good mom.

JFK was the New England Baby Shaker.

Scores of toddlers were left discarded and limp by the side of cribs and cars throughout the '50s and early '60s.

Jackie was never friends with Jackson, it was purely professional. She didn't even want to write the forward to Moonwalk as she didn't want to be associated with him publicly beyond editor, so she wrote as little as she could. She thought he was weird and bizarre like the rest of us.

[quote]By this time Jackie, who now religiously practiced yoga and meditated between 7:00 and 7:30 each evening, was sharing health tips with her emotionally fragile author. She introduced Michael to Deepak Chopra, author of Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind...

Fat lot of good it did either of them!

Being the hooker that she was, I'm surprised Jackie didn't use Jackson to get expensive jewelry, like that old slapper Elizabeth Taylor did.

Jackson apparently threatened to block the book unless Jackie wrote the intro.

That 80’s outfit Jackie is wearing. They should make a coffee table book called Jackie in the 80’s and just have pics of her in her 80’s outfits.

Who would buy it, r16? Jackiemania has been over for quite a while now.

[quote] He invited Jackie and Caroline to be in the opening night audience. When illness kept them both home in New York, Michael arranged for a special phone hookup so they could listen to the concert live.

I wonder if Jackie and Caroline really were ill.

I'm sure they weren't ill, and kept the hookup turned off while the concert was playing.

Jackson always assumed anyone famous interested in him almost entirely because of his fame and his strange childhood (such as Katharine Hepburn, Jackie, Elizabeth Taylor, Lia, etc.) was really interested in him because they were into his onstage shrieking and crotch grabbing.

R17 really?? Hmmm thank you so much for telling me. I’m ever so grateful. I really am. You’ve really helped me out a lot. I feel like I’m ready to begin a new life.

"Is there anybody else you'd like me to try and get?" she asked Lisa Drew. "Because people do sometimes take my phone calls."

That's funny.

"As with Moonwalk, Jackie oversaw the project, although the actual editing was done by Shaye Areheart." Small world: I worked with Shaye in the late 90s. Super nice and smart lady. I didn't know that she had worked with Jackie but I'm not surprised since she was not a name dropper.

[quote]I wonder if Jackie and Caroline really were ill.

I wonder if they were really on the phone.

R22 hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Jackie had Nancy Tuckerman hold the phone, whispering, pretending to be her

There was a rumor that Michael asked Jackie about when JFK's head exploded ...'and you got all that blood on you; - wonder how that went down?

Michael: Jackie, tell me about when JFK's head exploded and you got his brain all over you. Jackie: When you tell me all about how much you like licking little boys assholes. Michael: But I love children

This thread makes me a little sick.

How confusing must it have been to buy Moonwalk and find that the foreword was written - out of everyone in the world who could have written the foreword for Michael Jackson's autobiography - by Jackie O?

R28 Anyone stupid enough to buy that book wouldn't think that hard.