TV 1, Jackie 0

By R.C.

JACQUELINE BOUVIER KENNEDY ABC, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. E.D.T.

The reputations of Nell Gwyn, Marie Antoinette and Lady Diana prove it: courtesans and consorts can lodge in legend as securely as the men they serve. They dress the naked throne of power with their glamour, sex, humanity; they provide a public-relations link between master and mass. They need do nothing special, for they become what they marry. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis only needed to sign a brace of marriage contracts. Because the other signatories were a young American as powerful as Minos and an aging Greek as rich as Croesus, she became the best-known woman in the world.

How appropriate, then, that in this three-hour TV movie she is impersonated by Jaclyn Smith, the Charlie's Angels alumna whom a PEOPLE poll designated "the most beautiful woman in America."

Royalty should play royalty, even in a pageant as pedestrian as this. Writer-Director Steven Gethers sketches a triptych of scenes from the life of young Jacqueline ("Not Jackie," as she firmly cautions). At first she is a solemn young equestrian, a pawn in her parents' grim power struggle for her love. Later, she is a budding journalist and the apple of Senator Jack Kennedy's roving eye. The film climaxes with the White House years, when she plays Guinevere in a contentious Camelot, acting as Jack's shy, willful, loving wife and then as his elegant widow.

In the film's first scene, young Jacqueline's rakehell father (Rod Taylor) roars home from an all-night frolic, and his haughty wife (Claudette Nevins) confronts him in full dominatrix regalia: breeches, riding crop and withering stare. If only the film had been subjected to some of the same discipline. The camera glides discreetly through Newport drawing rooms and Georgetown dining rooms--always the visitor on a guided tour, never the Knowledgeable Source with some dirt to dish. Jaclyn Smith is a stunner and a competent actress; as J.F.K., James Franciscus brings crinkled eyes and a Boston accent that he engages seemingly at whim. But the movie never comes to life, as love story or tragedy or even tattletale. The Queen of Celebrity deserves better, and so do her avid subjects. --R.C.

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