Introduction

 

Society Divas

Christina Onassis

Everyone thought she had it all. A tax free income of one million dollars a week; the world's largest yacht, which bore her name; and a life lived in the company of the richest, most powerful people on earth. Her tragic death at age 37 shocked the world, though people who knew Christina Onassis well weren't surprised at all. Even untold riches aren't enough to provide a buffer for the emotional onslaught she had endured most of her life. Christina had simply grown tired of the fight.

Born the daughter of Aristotle Onassis, a self-made shipping tycoon, and at the time the richest man on earth, Christina was born into luxury most people can't even imagine. She lived most of her childhood on the "Christina", the largest and arguably most luxurious yacht in the world, next to Queen Elizabeth's Britannia. At 100 meters, there was ample room for a family, and as many guests as they wished. A crew of 60 ensured that any request could instantly be fulfilled. There were 9 guest suites, all furnished in exquisite taste by Ari's wife Tina. Ari hadn't been able to find a yacht large enough, so he had converted one of his freighters to the task, and spared no expense in the process. Other elegant touches included a large, heated swimming pool and a living room fireplace made from lapus lazuli.

Though Ari wasn't poor, his family having made their business start at the time of the First World War, he was determined to be the greatest tycoon in history. He made his fortune at the time of the Suez Crisis, when Nasser had nationalized and obstructed the canal. Desperate oil producers suddenly found themselves in need of more ships, in order to transport extra oil over the much longer distance around the Horn of Africa. Onassis was able to profit from that by contracting his supertankers to the companies at vastly higher prices than he had ever before received. Though there were bitter complaints and Onassis made many enemies, he also had ensured his fortune.

It was in this dreamworld that Christina spent her youth. The family sailed the globe, Ari being able to conduct his business from the yacht; and his daughter saw all the great sights of the world from the comfort of her own home. Winters would find her in Paris, in the Onassis's chic apartment on Avenue Foch.

Christina could be forgiven for not knowing that her life was the exception and not the rule. After all, she was constantly surrounded by so many rich and famous people on her father's yacht that she had ceased to be impressed with them. When she was just a young girl, her family was invited to attend the wedding of Prince Ranier and Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco. She watched the soon to be crowned Princess sail into Monaco from the deck of her father's yacht, and the Royal couple spent a great deal of time with the Onassis family, Prince Ranier and Ari being old friends.

This happy idyll was soon shattered, however, as a young Christina witnessed her mother having an open affair on their yacht. Though both of her parents did their best to maintain a calm facade for the young child, the strains in their marriage were becoming increasingly hard to mask.

Ari was a man driven to succeed at any cost. Few people are born with the innate instinct for the deal that he possessed. Such power requires great concentration, and so Ari didn't spend the time with his family that he should. Every family member suffered from this, and all expressed it in different ways. Christina's brother Alexander repeatedly clashed with him, and engaged in many attention seeking behaviours. Tina had affairs. Christina threw temper tantrums, sometimes throwing her father's shoes and clothes out of the ship's portholes. Though Ari tolerated Tina's affair, he inwardly seethed that she would consider leaving him. When he met opera Diva Maria Callas, a plan for revenge began to formulate itself in his mind. A public affair with the world's reigning soprano would both punish his wife, forcing her to leave in defeat, as well as proving once again to the world the power of the Onassis name. The two had met at a party given by Elsa Maxwell in Paris. Though it wasn't love at first sight, their acquaintanceship eventually became mutual admiration, then love. The immense publicity of this affair finally drove Tina to leave Ari, and return to Paris for a divorce.

Though Miss Callas did her best to befriend the children, neither Tina nor Alexander liked her, and did nothing to hide their feelings. Christina, especially, blamed Callas for the divorce of her parents, and enjoyed provoking her on any occasion. It was not long after the divorce that Tina and Alexander moved to Paris, to live with their mother and her new husband.

Christina had always been a withdrawn child, given to sitting quietly in the garden and taking solitary walks, partly due to the absence of children her own age. In her stepfather's house, she at last found the companionship she needed, and began to emerge from her shell. Now, when Ari would phone without notice and ask her to visit, she was unavailable. The two grew closer, though, after he purchased Skorpios, a large island in Greece, and began to convert it to his home and office. Christina enjoyed staying on the island, and the privacy it afforded. Her pleasure was dulled, though, by the constant presence of Callas in their midst. However, she wouldn't have long to wait before Miss Callas was supplanted by another, even worse rival for her father's affections: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, widow of America's 35th president.

Christina disliked Mrs. Kennedy from the first moment they met. It wasn't just that she wanted her father to remarry Tina, but that she felt that Mrs. Kennedy was dull, vapid and avaricious. From the beginning, all except Ari could see that Mrs. Kennedy wanted to enjoy the riches of the Onassis empire more than she enjoyed the pleasure of Mr. Onassis himself. Christina, always loyal to her family, was determined to do what she could to prevent this union, though ultimately without success. Christina also realized that her father would be crucified in the press, for marrying one of America's greatest icons and ending the most celebrated widowdom of the century. Though there was no man that the American public would find acceptable for the widow Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis was probably the least acceptable choice imaginable. In the end, Christina was proven correct, though she took no pleasure from her father's humiliation and subsequent pain.

One of the things that Christina disliked so about her new stepmother was her innate ability to make Christina feel ugly and graceless in comparison. It wasn't even intentional, and Jacqueline certainly tried in the beginning of the relationship to befriend Christina, but her refined presence and demeanor inevitably made everybody else around her suffer in comparison. It must be added that Christina had always been self-conscious of her looks. Though not unattractive, she had typical Greek peasant features and form; and the racoon circles around her eyes and her well rounded hips were a constant source of shame for the young heiress.

At this point, Christina asserted her need for independence and began dating. Every choice she made, however, was vetoed by her father as being only interested in Christina for her money. Christina, always short of self-esteem, was deeply wounded by this, and eventually moved to the United States to escape her father's interference in her life. In California, she met a business executive named Joe Bolker, who she fell in love with and decided to marry. Once again, her father didn't approve, this time because of Mr. Bolker's religion. Onassis felt that having a Jewish son-in-law would hurt his business relationships in the Middle East. This was the first time that Christina had been confronted by her father's anti-Semitism, and it shocked her deeply. She angrily went ahead with the marriage, knowing how it would enrage her father, but determined that she would at last act of her own volition. Though the marriage would not last long, she had at last taught her father that she could not be controlled. A family crisis was averted by her brother Alexander's untimely death in a plane crash, while at the controls of a jet owned by Ari. Though never proven, a suspicion of sabotage was cast over Tina's new husband Stavros Niarchos. Many thought Tina had married him solely in order to gain revenge on Ari for his affair with Callas. A disconsolate Ari now had no choice but to groom Christina in the running of Onassis Shipping, as she was his only heir.

By this time Ari was having trouble with both his shipping company and his airline, which the Greek government eventually nationalized. His marriage with Jackie he now realized was a great mistake. Instead of providing him with companionship, and granting him the refinement and social cachet he sought, it now made him appear to the world both a clown and villain. Jackie, too, had finally dropped her veil, and began to pester him mercilessly for winter homes in Acapulco and even more money to shop. She sometimes ordered scheduled Olympic Airlines flights cancelled at the last minute, so she could travel alone from New York to Athens. Ari had even found out that she had been charging haute couture clothing to his account, then selling it to thrift stores to raise extra cash. Any pretense of friendship between them had long since evaporated; and Ari had even rewritten his will, so as to give Jackie as little as was legally allowed.

1974 was a difficult time for the Onassis family. Still recovering from Alexander's tragic death, they were now confronted with Christina's suicide attempt in New York and Tina's successful suicide in Paris. In October of that year, Ari was diagnosed with a terminal illness. His decline was swift, and Jackie finally had him moved from Athens to Paris, so that she could continue her social engagements uninterrupted. After he was installed at the American Hospital, Jackie announced that she was needed in New York, and to call if there was any change. She left Paris with a smile and a wave, the last time she ever saw her husband alive.

While an unconcerned Jackie shopped and dined in New York, Christina stayed by her father's side until his death. After calling Jackie, a shattered Christina flew with her father's body to Athens, to arrange for his burial on Skorpios.

Aristotle Onassis's funeral was one of the greatest modern events in a country with a history of great events. Tens of thousands gathered to pay their last respects, including some of the most powerful people in the business world and government. The only flaw in an otherwise solemn occasion was Jackie's arrival in Athens, where she greeted reporters with the grin of a lunatic in need of medication, her countenance that a mega Lotto winner. In the car going to the grave, Jackie and her former brother-in-law, Teddy Kennedy, began to harass Christina about the will, and the necessity of probating it as quickly as possible. Horrified, Christina stopped the motorcade and leapt from the car, driving the rest of the distance with her blood family. Jackie's behaviour didn't improve during the service, and photos document a radiant, smiling widow escorting a grief stricken Christina away from her father's grave. The ensuing dispute over the will became a scandal that would sweep the world.

Knowing that Onassis Shipping would collapse if it were not to project an image of continuity and authority, Christina determined to take the helm. There was only one problem: she didn't have a majority stake in the company. In order to achieve this controlling interest, the will would have to be probated in Greece, where the surviving heir is required by law to receive at least 50 percent of the estate. However, the danger in this plan lay in the fact that Greek law didn't recognize prenuptial agreements, and Jackie stood to gain even more than Ari had intended. So Christina would have to negotiate with the black widow in order to seek the business security she needed.

Ari's will gave Jackie a small cash sum of $250,000 a year for life, as well as partial interest in the yacht and Skorpios. Jackie, feeling betrayed and knowing the importance of these proceedings, dug in her heels and demanded a king's ransom for her relinquishment of claim to further money or the island and yacht. They eventually settled on a figure of $26 million - $20 million in cash, and $6 million to cover the taxes. This deal was almost ruined, however, when details broke in the world press, and accusations of a family feud were played out on front pages everywhere. Jackie threatened to break off negotiations all together, so great was her embarrassment at being seen as such an avaricious gold digger; so Christina was forced to hold a press conference, denying all of the quite true allegations.

During these stressful days, Christina met and married her 2nd husband, Alexander Artemis, a playboy of good family but little money. Exercising her Greek passion for revenge, Christina ordered Jackie and her son John John attend her wedding and dance Greek dances, like contract players in an MGM musical. Anxious to deny the ugly rumors in the press, the two complied.

Alexander was a mistake from the beginning, Christina later realized. In the first six months of the marriage, he and his mother asked her for more than 20 million dollars. He was overweight, belligerent, coarse and money hungry, and the two had nothing in common but for their Greek ancestry and the friendship of their families. It was not long before Christina decided to end the marriage, and she left him in Greece when he broke a leg, flying away to continue her business enterprise. She was now in total control of Onassis Shipping, a business worth in excess of one billion dollars. Her personal fortune was $500 million, and she earned one million dollars a week, tax-free. Though she didn't have to work, Christina was driven to prove to her father that she had what it took to run an empire, and that his confidence in her hadn't been misplaced.

Establishing a base in Paris, Christina immersed herself in the day to day operations of the business, proving to the executive officers and the world that she, too, possessed the Onassis charm for running a business. She guided the company through several crisis's, always able to emerge victorious and better positioned to maintain a market lead. With Christina at the wheel, Onassis Enterprises was once again a stable, profitable business concern. While making a deal with a Soviet oil company, itself a radical proposition in the era of the cold war, Christina, newly divorced, met her third husband.

Sergei Kausov was an unlikely choice for a romantic alliance with a shipping heiress. A loyal member of the Communist Party, Mr. Kausov nevertheless managed to charm Christina during their business meeting and the two eventually began to meet, first clandestinely, then openly. Sex with him was a revelation for Christina, and he was the first man that openly reveled in and worshipped her body. Christina felt beautiful for the first time in her life. Shortly after their return from Carnival in Rio, Mr. Kausov was captured by the KGB, and forced to work in a small village in Siberia. Terrified that she had condemned her lover to death, Christina spent nearly a million dollars trying to free him, before resolving to fly to Moscow, marry him and live as a Soviet housewife.

Her decision to live among the enemy at the height of the cold war caused an explosion on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Both the officers of her company, and the governments of the west were concerned at the thought of the world's richest woman defecting to the East, awhile the Soviets could see the immense propaganda value of the decision. Though all was resolved successfully, the stress of this situation, as well as the shock of learning that her husband may have been both married and working for the KGB, caused Christina to begin taking tranquilizers, something that would ultimately contribute to her early death. After giving her maid a parting gift of $250,000, Christina left on a train from Paris to begin her new life.

Once in Moscow and married to a newly divorced Sergei, Christina was forced to adjust to the harsh realities of Communist Soviet Union life. She and her husband had no choice but to share an unheated cold water one bedroom apartment with his mother, who only spoke Russian. Then there was the scarcity of edible food, at any price. Christina was also furious to learn that she would not be allowed to keep her new jet, to which she had grown so accustomed. It wasn't long before she realized that this, too, had been an impulsive decision; and that though she loved Sergei, she would not be able to adjust to life in a dictatorship. Though Sergei had much charm, there were also characteristics to which she had been blinded before the marriage, but that now seemed an enormous obstacle to a successful relationship. Feeling guilt that he had so disrupted his life on her behalf, but knowing that the situation was simply untenable, she resolved that she would leave, either with or without her husband. The only question was how.

A crisis in her company provided an excuse to travel to the west, and there Christina learned that the Saudi government was deeply concerned about the marriage, afraid that the KGB would be allowed to infiltrate the company. They threatened to destroy Onassis Shipping if she did not dissolve the marriage. Assuring them of her understanding, she agreed to their demand. By this time, she had come to realize that her personal life had to take a second place to her corporate life. She had become so merged with the business that it was unnecessary even to think before making the decision. She only asked that she be allowed to remain married until she could arrange to have Sergei and his mother brought of the Soviet Union.

Christina waited in Moscow with Sergei for almost a year, before deciding that she had to live in the west in order to competently manage her business. Before leaving, she set up a small shipping company for her husband, worth $8 million. Promising him that she would say nothing about a divorce until he and his mother were safely out of the country, she departed for Switzerland.

Happy to be back in the civilized west, Christina decided to indulge herself. She spent almost a million dollars redecorating her house in Switzerland, and began flying ten cases of diet Coca~Cola a month by private jet from America to her home, at a cost of $3,000 a case, as it was then unavailable in Europe. She felt that even in the can, a soft drink lost its freshness after a month or two, so refused to buy in larger volume. Christina was a connoisseur of Coca~Cola, able to distinguish differences in the various bottling plants of Europe. At times, she drank up to 25 cans a day.

Soon after this, Christina came upon an interview that her husband had given with a gossip magazine, and learned that his passion for her was motivated by an obsession with fat women, and not a sincere love for her inner qualities. She was crushed to realize that she had just been the satisfaction of somebody's fetish, and not the beautiful woman she had felt herself briefly to be. Though she kept her promise to Sergei, Christina felt no guilt when they divorced, and she was deeply scarred to realize that she would probably never find a man to love her for herself.

After her experiences in Russia, Christina at last began to indulge herself as she had never done before. She began to use her jet for small errands, such as flying to New York to pick up the latest episodes of Dallas and Dynasty on videotape. She would be seen at all the fashion shows of New York, Paris and Milan, her business being brought to her, rather than the other way around. At this time her company was ranked as the 8th largest shipping firm in the world, and she was one of the richest people on earth. She was enjoying life to the fullest.

Not long after this, however, she began to have a series of business and tax problems that eventually led to her being detained at the airport in Athens. After intense negotiations with the government, she paid a tax bill of six million dollars, and donated her father's yacht that bore her name to the Greek government. She then retreated to Skorpios, first in silence, then as a social queen unparalleled in modern times.

Guests to Christina's island were pampered from the moment of their arrival in Athens. Whisked through customs, they were flown by helicopter to Skorpios, where Christina would greet them personally. Her estate had been transformed into a palace of luxury, catering to every whim of the billionairess. Some of the most famous names of the social era visited, and an invitation to Skorpios was a highly sought trophy. The day would invariably begin at one in the afternoon, and end sometime after four in the morning, with non-stop partying the entire time. While the liquor flowed freely, Christina was adamant that there be no drug use on the premises. This, of course, didn't include her prescription use of Seconal for sleep - sometimes 6 pills a day - amphetamines to control her weight, or tranquilizers to reduce the irritability caused by the amphetamines. By this time, her weight had ballooned to more than 100 kilos, and she was reduced to promising men positions in her company in return for sexual favors.

Thus it was an unhappy Christina who met her final husband, Thierry Roussel. Though the two had known one another and had an affair in the early 1970s, they couldn't marry due to his marriage with another woman. This time both were free, and it wasn't soon before they decided to marry. Christina checked into a health clinic, both to detox and lose some weight through a rigorous therapy of bullion and enemas. They cure worked, and she returned to Thierry both drug free and many kilos lighter. They hastily began to plan the wedding and try to have a baby, something Christina had longed for for years.

After the wedding, Thierry began to urge Christina to spend even more lavishly than she had before. Even at the rate she had been going, she still had over 40 million extra dollars at the end of each year. With his persuasion, Christina bought an even bigger jet, additional homes, and another yacht, the Alexander. They settled in a villa on Lake Geneva, and it was there that Christina gave birth to her daughter, Athina.

The birth of Athina satisfied a primal longing in Christina that she hadn't known existed. For the first time in her life, there was someone into whom she could pour all of her love, without the thought that they loved her just for her money. This was the happiest event in her life, and something that all the riches of the world couldn't buy.

It was the love for her daughter that got Christina through the divorce form Thierry. Though he had planned with Christina to have a child, he discovered that living with one of the richest, most powerful women on earth can be very difficult. The two fought constantly, and it wasn't long before Thierry began disappearing for long stretches of time. After a year or so of this tension, Christina was shocked to read a newspaper interview, in which Thierry said he wanted a divorce. He publicly aired all of the dirty laundry of their marriage for the world to see. Shortly after this, he announced his engagement to another woman. Christina had been betrayed again.

Lonely and with nobody to trust, Christina was easy prey for anyone trying to make fast money. She lost several million dollars in fraudulent transactions. In a desperate move to put the past behind her, Christina announced she had decided to travel to Buenos Aires. Hoping to begin a new life with a new body, she stopped enroute for a lengthy stay at a Swiss hospital, where she had her thighs surgically reduced, among other cosmetic procedures.

Living in Buenos Aires, Christina dutifully played the role of billionaire heiress, relishing in society's adoration of her. Though she realized that they only adored her for her fortune, she enjoyed the parties and attention, as well as the friends who called her "The Queen". This happy period of calm in her life, however, was brought to an abrupt end with her mysterious death in 1988. Though the death certificate read simply "pulmonary edema", most assumed that the edema was brought about by an overdose of barbiturates, which she had never really been able to resist. She died alone, her daughter having been too ill in Europe to travel to Argentina.

Christina's death was a shock felt all around the world. Nobody could believe that someone who had been given such unimaginable wealth could have died so tragically, and alone. Her solitary return to Greece was the occasion of massive traffic jams in both Buenos Aires and Athens. Thousands attended her funeral, weeping as her body was borne out of the church. In the end, she found her final rest on Skorpios, next to her father and brother in the family chapel.

Though many are inclined to dismiss women of society as superfluous, Christina Onassis is not so easily cast aside. Though she failed utterly in the role she had been born to, that of beautiful social ornament to a successful man, she did what few heiresses have ever done before: she took what she was given, and made it even better than it was originally. Unlucky at love, she proved that she could hold her own in a man's world of business, and beat the men at their own game. While ultimately felled by the "Onassis Curse", she left a lasting mark on the world, something few of us can say. 

(Written by Jeff Woloson)

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