Kitty Kelley Popular Books

Kitty Kelley Biography & Facts

Katherine Kelley (born April 4, 1942) is an American journalist and author of best-selling unauthorized biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British royal family, the Bush family, and Oprah Winfrey. For the Sinatra biography, Kelley won praise for the quality of her research and willingness to risk a lawsuit, but critics have not rated her other works as highly. She has been described as a "professional sensationalist" and the "consummate gossip monger". Early life Catherine Kelley was raised in Spokane, Washington, the eldest of seven children of Adele (née Martin) and William Vincent Kelley, a lawyer who served as president of the city's bar association. She had "an unhappy home life with an alcoholic mother" who "wasn’t just a closet drunk. She was often a nasty public drunk." She helped take care of her five sisters, Mary Cary, Ellen, Margaret, Adele Monica and Madeleine Sophie, as well as her brother, John. The family vacationed in Europe and spent summers at their two lakeside cottages in western Idaho. Kelley graduated from St. Augustine's Elementary School and then attended the private prep school Holy Names Academy. According to the biography Poison Pen by George Carpozi Jr., in 1962, Kelley was expelled from the University of Arizona in lieu of police filing criminal charges for grand larceny against her; the stolen items were expensive pieces of jewelry that Kelley's fellow students had kept in their dorm rooms; one sorority sister reported Kelley had also stolen her corselet and "lots more". During the aftermath of her leaving the University of Arizona, her parents refused to let her live with them and sent her to live in Seattle with her maternal grandparents, the Martins. It was there that Kelley suffered a breakdown and used a wheelchair during some of that time. After this eight-month hiatus, she surfaced at the University of Washington, where she received a B.A. in English. She worked at the 1964 New York World's Fair and went on to become a receptionist-press secretary for Senator Eugene McCarthy. Following four years as a press assistant to McCarthy, Kelley worked for two years as the editorial page researcher for The Washington Post. She went on to have a full-time career as a freelance writer. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Washington Post, People, Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. In 1976, Kelley married Michael Edgley. Edgley was media director for the National Council on Aging. He later quit his job to help Kelley with her early books, even looking in the garbage of Elizabeth Taylor and her then husband, U.S. Senator John Warner. Kelley and Edgley divorced in 1989. In 1992 Kelley married John Zucker, an allergist. Zucker died in 2011. Books Jacqueline Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor biographies Kelley's first celebrity biography was Jackie Oh! (1978), a life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which was written at the request of Lyle Stuart, who launched the book into the New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Kelley describes John F. Kennedy's womanizing and includes "revelations" about Onassis's love life, her depression and electric shock treatment. Kelley's publisher Lyle Stuart was later quoted saying "at the time I believed her shock-treatment story. Looking back, I feel I was had and the whole thing was a fable. I doubt that it ever happened. And knowing how she makes things up, I believe she was sure she could get away with it because no one would sue." Journalist Michael Crowley stated Jackie Oh! contained "core truths—including an unflinching look at JFK that showed him to have been 'more of a Romeo than has been previously revealed.'" This book was followed by Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star (1981). His Way Kelley's next book, His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra (1986), was declared "an act of bravery". Kelley discussed Sinatra's marriages, affairs and links to the Mob. Sinatra filed a $2 million lawsuit to prevent it from being published but subsequently dropped it. The book was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list and hit best-seller lists in England, Canada, Australia and France. William Safire of The New York Times said "His Way...turns out to be the most eye-opening celebrity biography of our time." In The Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley, wrote that "His Way is such an improvement over her two previous books ... that comparisons border on the pointless." People magazine story In 1990, Kelley wrote a piece for People magazine based on interviews she had conducted with Judith Campbell Exner, a former girlfriend of Frank Sinatra's who claimed to have had an affair with John F. Kennedy. Exner told Kelley that she had arranged ten meetings between Kennedy and Mafia gangster Sam Giancana, and they discussed having the mafia kill Fidel Castro. It was subsequently revealed that Exner, who was terminally ill, had been paid $50,000 to talk with Kelley and had not mentioned these "revelations" in her own autobiography, published years earlier. A former FBI agent said that Giancana had been under a federal wiretap, so these multiple meetings with Kennedy would have been impossible to cover up. Nancy Reagan biography In 1991 Kelley published Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography. She was paid $3.5 million to write the book. The book claimed that Nancy Reagan had had affairs with Frank Sinatra, that she frequently relied on astrology, that she had lied about her age, and that she had a very poor relationship with her children, even alleging that she hit her daughter, Patti. In December 2021, the book's allegation that the future first lady, "was renowned in Hollywood for performing oral sex... not only in the evening but in offices. That was one of the reasons that she was very popular on the MGM lot" became a minor internet meme. According to Newsweek, "Despite her wretched excesses, Kelley has the core of the story right. Even her staunchest defenders concede that Nancy Reagan is more Marie Antoinette than Mother Teresa." However Newsweek also criticized the book's basic factual accuracy, noting that Kelley had reported that Ronald Reagan had allegedly date raped a 19-year-old, when the accuser would have actually been 25 at the time. The book included an interview with actress Jacquelyn Park, who detailed an alleged affair with Ronald Reagan in the 1950s. Former President Ronald Reagan issued a statement saying the book "has no basis in fact and serves no decent purpose." Michael Korda, who had been the editor for Kelley's previous book on Elizabeth Taylor, asked to excuse himself from this work as he was slated to edit Ronald Reagan's autobiography. The Nancy Reagan book was edited instead by Alice Mayhew. Korda stated that Nancy Reagan was purported to have said about Kelley, "I hope she gets hit by a truck." British royal family and the B.... Discover the Kitty Kelley popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kitty Kelley books.