May Aylen and General Sir Sydney Lawford, KBE, engaged in an extramarital affair as 1922 drew to a close and 1923 began. At the time, May was married to Captain Dr. Ernest Aylen, one of General Law­ford’s officers. May and the General intended to keep their relationship, the affair, a secret; but May soon discovered that she was pregnant. The conception was an accident, of course, and produced what May later characterized as the awful accident.

May struggled with the accident’s delivery on September the 7th in 1923 after hours of excruciating labor. The nine and a half pound baby boy was breech, and the doctor worked as gently as he could to free the infant from his mother’s forty-year-old body. A Red Cross Nurse, Miss Hemming, employed by May, assisted with the infant’s delivery. When the baby boy’s throat finally appeared, both doctor and nurse became alarmed: the umbilical was strangling the listless infant. After untangling the umbilical, freeing the infant, the doctor whispered his concern quietly to Miss Hemming. He feared that the baby would not survive for very long. His color was poor; and his left arm appeared to be paralyzed; but during the night, due to the heroic efforts of nurse Hemming, the baby gained some color. He became more animated and soon announced his existence with healthy and purposeful crying.

The crying baby boy was May’s first; he would also be her last. I can’t stand babies, she confessed in Bitch!, her odd memoir. They run at both ends […] smell of sour milk and urine (Lawford 40). It seems reasonable to conclude that May did not want the reeking infant. Even so, Miss Hemming swaddled him in a blue blanket and handed him to his mother on the Saturday morning after his delivery. And so, into this accepting and loving environment, the awful accident, which May named Peter, was born. A cousin once commented that Peter wasn’t brought up, he was dragged up (Spada 47). Based on the few available accounts regarding Peter’s life, his childhood and generally his life were absolutely bizarre and at times, miserable.

Even so, Peter also experienced a childhood enhanced by privilege and wealth. Before the boy reached puberty, he and his mother had circled the globe at least thrice, had lived in exotic places for prolonged periods of time; and Peter had learned to speak several languages, including Spanish, French and German. Still, May never sent Peter to an actual school to acquire a classical or formal education. Various nannies who traveled with the family educated Peter as well as they could; but when May began to feel guilty that she was ignoring her son’s education, she hired a combination nanny and tutor who imparted the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic to an otherwise curious and intelligent child. His lack of a formal education nagged Peter and troubled him during his adult life.

After their travels, the Lawford family returned to England, but they could not escape the residue of the scandal caused by May’s divorce, her marriage to Sir Sydney and Peter’s birth. They relocated to France briefly before moving to America in the 1930s.

Patricia Helen Kennedy was the fourth daughter of the five born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Born on the 6th of May in 1924, Pat was the sixth child of the nine sired by her father. It is doubtful that Patricia’s conception was an accident, and her mother certainly did not consider her to be the awful accident; but like Peter Lawford, Pat Kennedy was a child of wealth and privilege whose parents relied on nurses and nannies to care for and virtually raise their children while mother and father, at times together but more often apart, traveled abroad, living their big lives under the big spotlight of the press; and when the children were allowed to travel with their mother, the entourage always included nurse and nanny.

Based on what I have read, Joe Sr. loved his children, and they loved him, particularly his daughters; but for much of their early childhoods, he was not present. Still, and despite the senior Joe’s frequent absence, he ensured that his children had the opportunity to benefit from the best education his considerable influence could make available and his considerable wealth could buy. So, in that regard, Pat’s childhood diverged from the childhood of the awful accident.

As youths, both Peter and Pat were attractive, athletic and popular. Peter became a member of the Southern California surfing community that included Norma Jeane. In fact, he initially met the future Marilyn Monroe through that community of what might be called beach bums. Norma frequently called them wolves. Pat became the captain of her school’s tennis team, and she was also an adept sailor. According to The Rambler, a campus publication, Pat was a study in contrasts—

a spontaneous jokester to those who know her and rather reserved to those who don’t. Her diets are famous and her nightly exercises well done and unending. […] She is our tall sophisticate—the girl who knows her mind and can use it. For the most dual of all dual personalities, Pat takes the prize with her unbelievable combination of poise, joie de vivre [joy of life and general happiness], and, at odd moments, her complete urge for the nonsensical (Leamer 350).

Since Peter Lawford never attended an actual school with buildings, students and teachers, a profile of him, similar to the preceding, does not exist; but according to available accounts, Peter was also a sophisticated, handsome young man, well-spoken and with an overabundance of charm that both young women and old simply could not resist.

During a visit to London in 1949, Peter initially met Pat Kennedy while attending a party. She was excited to meet a movie star, particularly one as strikingly good-looking as Peter Lawford; but the strikingly good-looking movie star was merely pleased to meet John Kennedy’s fourth sister. As the years passed, they encountered each other three more times, first at the studios of NBC and, oddly enough, a second time at the RNC in Chicago. Peter was Henry Ford’s guest, and Pat attended the enemy’s national convention with her sisters, Jean and Eunice. Peter Lawford was not a political creature. Still, debate amongst the group was political and included friendly but delicate ribbing. After the convention’s closing session, the actor and the Kennedy daughter encountered each other for the third time at a dinner party but went their separate ways. Finally, upon their fourth encounter during November of 1953 in Manhattan, Peter asked Pat to join him on an official date, which began a chaste romance and courtship.

How they became engaged due to the presence of a rival who was interested in wedding Pat, and some subterfuge by her, is a cute story, but unrelated to the subject of this discussion. Joe and Rose Kennedy, devout Catholics some accounts contended, slightly resisted their daughter’s plans to wed an Episcopalian English actor; and in May’s opinion, the arrogant but powerful Kennedy clan consisted of merely barefoot Irish peasants. May believed, and commented privately, that the Kennedy bitch had ensnared her son in a marital trap (Leamer 449). In a way, May’s observation and comments were not entirely incorrect. Eventually, though, the betrothed overcame their parental issues; and so on April the 24th in 1954, Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy exchanged wedding vows. On her wedding night, at the age of twenty-nine, Patricia Lawford was a virgin; she did not take drugs; and she consumed alcohol in strict moderation. In April of 1954, at the age of thirty, Peter Lawford was, even then, a drug using alcoholic and inveterate womanizer: he enjoyed the company and sexual favors of beautiful young women and expensive, stylish prostitutes of all ages.

During his marriage to Pat Kennedy, Peter never deviated from his chosen life-style; and like her mother before her, Pat tried to accept Peter’s adulterous behavior, look the other way as it were, and remain quiet. Sex with Peter became more difficult due to his known to be perverted desires and odd proclivities, and as a result, less frequent. Pat could feel and smell the presence of other women that Peter used as a barometer and against whom he measured her sexual performances. Near the end of their relationship, Pat began to engage in her own adulterous liaisons, the result of what friends considered to be her deep loneliness. Evidently, Peter suspected that Pat had become his faithless wife. Perhaps he even knew she had; but he never questioned her, never raised an objection. How could he?

Many observed that Peter felt intimidated by and lived in the enormous shadow cast by the Kennedy clan. The Kennedy Kids were very close, particularly the sisters, who enjoyed an incomparable bond; and when they visited Pat, the girls had their own dialogue, their own language. They laughed together and had their own little secrets. And anyone who wasn’t the most secure had to feel very intimated and to feel less than great (Leamer 456). In short, Peter Lawford, who knew nothing about enjoying a close relationship with one sibling, much less several, and also suffered from a deeply hidden inferiority complex, was invariably excluded from the interior of the sorority sisters off among themselves (Leamer 456). And too, many observed that Pat’s demeanor became more and more negative and her appraisals of Peter more and more caustic. Pat had a wicked tongue, and she seared Peter’s ego with her words (Leamer 486). Feelings of inadequacy were difficult for Peter to shrug-off.

Despite their monumental problems, Peter and Pat remained technically married for twelve years. Eventually, though, Pat left Peter, took their four children, returned to the East Coast and her Irish family; and eventually, after Robert Kennedy easily won his seat in the US Senate, there was no longer, in her view, any reason to delay. She notified Peter that she wanted to draw up a separation agreement and then proceed with a divorce (Spada 404). Although Peter wanted to save his marriage to Pat and he attempted to contact her frequently, the family interceded, primarily her brother, Senator Robert Kennedy. On December the 17th in 1965, the soon to be divorced Lawfords signed a separation agreement crafted by a retinue of Kennedy attorneys, an agreement that essentially gave Pat complete custody and complete control of the Lawford children. The visitation privileges granted to Peter were paltry.1Both James Spada and Laurence Leamer maintained that Robert Kennedy was not a Peter Lawford fan and Robert Kennedy was not a fan of Hollywood? Pat’s younger brother despised the actor, Leamer asserted. Why? Because Peter personified everything Bobby hated about the Hollywood world that he wanted to be rid of forever (Leamer 610). Spada essentially agreed with Leamer. That being the case, why would Robert Kennedy ever have considered wedding the reigning Queen of Hollywood?

On December the 20th, Pat and the Lawford children joined Bobby, Ethel and Jacqueline, along with their children, for skiing in Sun Valley. Pat was actually there to establish and meet the minimum six-week residency required to file for divorce in Idaho. After the other Kennedy skiers departed on January the 5th in 1966, Pat remained at the Lodge. After six weeks plus one day, Pat appeared in an Idaho courtroom. She charged Peter with mental cruelty and stated that her differences with him were irreconcilable (Spada 406). The Sun Valley Lodge owner confirmed Pat’s residency; and that testimony concluded the hearing, which lasted all of twelve minutes. Newspapers from Boise to New York City, and in other locales across the country, reported on the Kennedy divorce. The Idaho Statesman proclaimed the divorce with the following headline: Claims Mental Cruelty: Kennedy Sister Gets Quickie Gem Divorce.2“Claims Mental Cruelty: Kennedy Sister Gets Quickie Gem Divorce” by Richard Charnock. The Idaho Statesman, Boise Idaho, United Press International, 2 February 1966.

In accordance with their separation agreement, neither husband nor wife would pay alimony, and each waived any right to the other’s estate. Pat did not request child support payments, but Peter insisted. Pat finally agreed that if Peter really wanted to he could pay four hundred dollars a month in child support. Peter made the first two monthly payments and then never made another one (Spada 405). Peter Lawford seldom saw or communicated with his children.

Although Pat Lawford never remarried, Peter remarried three times and each time to women young enough to be his daughter. The accounts that I have read regarding Peter’s three marriages following his divorce from Pat Kennedy have been slightly discrepant. It is evident, however, the odd behavior and habits that ruined his relationship with his first wife ruined his relationships with the next two; and although his fourth wife’s chosen life-style was more compatible with Peter’s, she also had difficulty accepting some of his habits and expectations.

Near the end of October in 1971, a forty-eight year old Peter Lawford married the daughter of “Laugh-In” host and stand-up comedian, Dan Rowan. Mary Rowan was twenty-two years old. She endured Peter’s life-style, his abuse of drugs and alcohol, along with what she considered to be his perverted sexual demands, for as long as she could. After frequent separations from her husband, Mary decided that she could no longer remain married to the fifty-year-old aging and addicted actor: […] I realized I wasn’t happy with my life anymore. […] I wanted a separation (Spada 462). In February of 1973, she left Peter and filed for divorce. Peter attempted to reconcile with Mary, and his attempts included promises that he would alter his way of life, forsake his use of drugs and alcohol. Mary demanded an additional alteration from Peter: he needed professional help dealing with what she considered to be his sexual issues. When he refused, Mary realized that Peter would never change, despite his earnest promises: the marriage had to end. The couple’s separation lasted two years: Mary received a final divorce decree in January of 1975 (Spada 462).

On a warm June evening in 1976, Peter threw a party during which the frequently unknown guests drifted aimlessly in and out of his apartment, alighting just long enough to drink their host’s liquor, smoke his pot, snort his cocaine and drop his Quaaludes; but Peter did not care. Even though he had a date for the evening, he asked another young woman if she had a friend who might want to attend the party. A telephone call and a brief conversation with a woman on the other end sent Peter onto the streets of LA with a mission to collect a twenty-five-year-old woman who has been described as a sweetheart with a youthful vivacity. Peter did not care that he was her senior by twenty-seven years. Not long after they met, Peter announced that he and his new girlfriend would get married; and not long after his announcement, enveloped in a misty haze of drunkenness and Quaaludes, Peter Lawford, attired in a leisure suit, married Deborah Gould. He realized immediately that he had made a colossal mistake. Deborah required slightly longer to reach the same conclusion. Their wedding reception devolved into a grotesque scene and argument between the newlyweds. Their marriage did not endure for even a year.

After only two months of cohabitation, Deborah instigated a separation. Even so, she hoped that she and Peter would reconcile. With a plan to create a reconciliation, she invited him to a large dinner party; however, Peter did not give Deborah much attention during that evening. He spent most of his time talking to a chubby-faced child of seventeen, Patricia Seaton. As Deborah watched, her husband left the party with Patricia. Deborah finally accepted the clear evidence that her relationship with Peter Lawford had reached its end; and so, she returned home to Miami and filed for divorce. Since Deborah’s father was an attorney, the courts expedited the divorce process and granted Deborah her freedom as 1977 reached its end.

Patricia Seaton, otherwise known as Patty, and Peter enjoyed a Jacuzzi at the Playboy Mansion after leaving the dinner party and leaving Deborah Gould behind. They spent the night together in a plush bedroom set aside for Peter. According to James Spada: The two continued an on-again, off-again relationship for the next eight years, interrupted by Patty’s long sojourns in London and Hawaii (Spada 495). Patty Seaton would eventually become Peter Lawford’s fourth and final bride. She and that curious event will appear again later in this section.

Coincident with Mary Rowan’s departure, the year of 1973 was also the year that Peter’s financial quagmire began to swallow him. According to Milt Ebbins, Peter’s agent, the actor’s debts far exceeded his paltry income; and his creditors regularly garnished the salary of any job he happened to secure. Even so, Peter continued to live like he was a wealthy movie star who was also married to a Kennedy daughter, the sister of the president. His alcohol and drug use completely swallowed the money that he happened to earn and could hide from his creditors. The cost of pot, cocaine, Quaaludes, PCP, and even heroin, left him virtually penniless; and as a result, he began to borrow money from friends, at least those who still wanted to be a part of his life. Soon, most of his friends, who no longer wanted to support Peter’s nasty habits, deserted the actor. Drug users and dealers became the most important persons in his life. Peter lived on the fees he could extract from newspapers and tabloids that were willing to pay for interviews during which Pete revealed only enough juicy tidbits so that no one quite realized he was giving away very few real secrets. Reporters often bought Peter meals and drinks in exchange for a few innocuous morsels about his past affiliations (Spada 464).

When the nostalgia craze hit America, Peter was able to develop and maintain a moderate income and a moderately lavish lifestyle due to paid interviews and frequent appearances on television, primarily game shows like “Password.” Various companies also featured him in their commercials and other advertisements. The money he earned allowed him to feed his addictions and other appetites. Sundry women floated in and out of his life like windblown street debris, women that were invariably much younger than he.

Despite his many years of drinking excessively, even in 1981, Peter still asserted that his drinking problem was a myth, absolutely untrue; even though he would spend most of the early eighties in a drunken stupor (Spada 509). By the end of 1981, the symptoms of the serious diseases that would eventually kill Peter Lawford started to appear, the harbingers of his fate and clear evidence of how he had abused his body. With the mounting accumulation of health problems, the actor finally admitted to himself that he was suffering from the effects of severe alcoholism. Peter confessed to Ian Brodie, a British journalist, the he could not stay away from the vodka bottle. Peter knew he was killing himself; the doctors told him that he had already destroyed seventy-five percent of his liver; he knew he would not live much longer if his nightmare of booze continued. I’ve reached a point, he admitted, where the days all merge into one long drunken haze. Things have got so bad I rarely leave my apartment (Spada 509).

Likewise, things had grown so bad between Peter and Patty Seaton that they argued frequently and frequently engaged in lengthy separations, usually instigated by Patty, the few times that Peter threw her out of his apartment notwithstanding. In the spring of 1982, for instance, Patty left Peter and lived in Hawaii for five months. After she returned to the mainland in the fall, she lived in Las Vegas briefly; and upon returning to Los Angeles, she found Peter languishing in a deplorable and horrid condition. His body emaciated and foul smelling, he resembled Howard Hughes at the end of his life, long hair and fingernails. He had been incontinent and had not bothered to change the sheets. Rotting food and cat feces were all over the apartment (Spada 510-511). Determined to save Peter, Patty cleaned both him and his apartment; she encouraged him to eat properly and curtail both his alcohol and drug use. Peter appeared to be on the road to a recovery from his unhealthy habits (Seaton 175).

In early 1983, Milt Ebbins secured for Peter a small part in an English made-for-TV movie,  Where Is Parsifal? He and Patty flew to England for filming, where, once again, Peter resumed his drinking and drug use, but in comparatively reduced amounts. Despite the smallness of his part in the movie, Peter still earned $45K for his work, approximately equal to $160K in 2024 currency. When he and Patty returned to the US, Peter returned to his excessive use of alcohol and drugs and quickly depleted the money he had earned in England (Spada 511).

Peter traveled to Boston for his daughter’s wedding in early September of 1983. Patty remained in Los Angeles: the Kennedy clan disapproved of her involvement. Evidently, the Kennedy clan did not even want Peter involved, but Sydney insisted on having her father give her away. As the Kennedys feared he would be, Peter once again was a public embarrassment to them: Tipsy at the rehearsal, he tripped and fell while walking Sydney down the aisle. At the reception in Hyannisport, Peter was obviously intoxicated; and the young black woman who accompanied him spent the entire evening wandering around with a champagne bottle in her hand (Spada 512). After Peter returned to Los Angeles, his once understanding, tolerant friend and landlord finally evicted the actor. Peter lost his residence due to a large amount of delinquent rent. He and Patty relocated into a small apartment in West Hollywood. Finally, in December of 1983, Elizabeth Taylor, also a struggling alcoholic, convinced Peter to follow her into the Betty Ford Clinic. He entered therapy on December the 12th. During the five weeks Peter remained in therapy, he did not drink; but remarkably, he was able to procure cocaine. After his release, almost immediately, he went to a restaurant bar and proceeded to get extremely intoxicated (Spada 517).

During the final few years of Peter Lawford’s life, his health and his appearance began to deteriorate rapidly and his final months were marred by extreme illness. In July of 1984, his stomach began to cause him considerable pain; and his frequent coughing, caused by years of heavy smoking, began to produce blood. Doctors at the UCLA Medical Center diagnosed a severely bleeding ulcer and surgeons removed thirty-five percent of his stomach.3According to Lady Lawford’s autobiography, Bitch!, after parties, a young Peter would slip around to the ashtrays and smoke the leftover “stubs” of cigarettes (p 46). He also drained her guest’s unfinished drinks.

During his hospitalization, he prepared his will. He left everything he had, possessions and assets, to Patricia Ann Seaton, who he called his common-law wife and companion.4California abolished common-law marriages in 1895.

Despite being weak and frail, intravenous tubes hanging from his arms, with some help, he managed to stand next to his common-law wife and companion. In a ceremony administered by a Justice of the Peace and witnessed by a nurse, and a vomiting patient in the adjacent bed, Peter Lawford, while wearing a hospital gown, married Patty Seaton. She wore white (Seaton 178).

Remarkably, Peter recovered enough after the stomach surgery to return home, but he needed constant care by a trained nurse: he had no money to pay for one. Despite Patty’s efforts, Peter’s condition deteriorated. He developed coagulopathy, a potentially fatal condition caused by his damaged liver. On a swelling caused by accidentally bumping his arm, blood appeared on its surface like perspiration. Peter spent another three weeks in the hospital. Once again, he recovered and returned home, where he began to use cocaine and marijuana while also drinking heavily. Eventually, he re-entered Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where, yet again, almost miraculously after various detoxification treatments, he recovered sufficiently, which allowed him to return home. The doctors warned him: never touch drugs or alcohol again. When Patty arrived at the medical center to collect Peter on the morning of December the 13th, the hospital had already discharged him. She found him strolling down the street drinking one ounce bottles of vodka that he had purchased at a nearby convenience store.

On Sunday, December the 16th, Patty found Peter collapsed on the kitchen floor, bleeding and barely conscious. His liver and kidneys failing, doctors admitted him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center once again and placed him on life support systems. As his kidneys failed, the actor’s skin turned the color of urine. Peter lapsed into a coma on December the 19th. He never opened his eyes again. The once debonair and handsome English actor, a former Kennedy brother-in-law and member of the Rat Pack, died at 8:50 AM on Christmas Eve in 1984. He was only 61 years old.

Following his unfortunate death, Peter Lawford became a favorite source for more than a few authors who wrote about Marilyn Monroe and the middle Kennedy brothers, but none more so than C. David Heymann. In each of the writer’s Kennedy narratives and the writer’s final pathography about the relationship between Marilyn and the Yankee Clipper, Heymann chronicled the lives of his subjects and the events that allegedly entangled them; and for source material, Heymann relied inordinately on Peter Lawford. The author quoted the actor more times than Carter’s got little liver pills, quotations set apart and formalized by quotations marks, indicating testimony actually spoken by Peter Lawford and lifted directly from either accurately prepared, contemporaneous notes or taped interviews. Certainly, most readers, if not all readers, assume, even expect without hesitation, that all biographies are truthful and factual. Such an expectation by a reader is only logical since biographies are works of non-fiction: providing facts and truth is, after all, the moral obligation, the moral duty of the biographer.

I am guardedly optimistic that a majority of biographers understand and accept their moral obligation and duty to present the facts and the truth, an obligation and duty not only to their subjects, but to themselves and the reading public. Still, I must acknowledge, and confess to a certain cynicism regarding the industry of biography, a cynicism fomented by what I have encountered, by what I have learned during the past twelve years, years invested researching the life and death of Marilyn Monroe. More than a few authors have contributed to my cynicism, but none more so than C. David Heymann.