The sister of American president John F Kennedy and US senators Robert and Ted Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy was born into one of 20th-century America's most prominent political families. Presented to elite British society in the 1930s and deemed beautiful and charming by the press, the eldest Kennedy daughter would disappear from society at the age of 23, following a tragic decision taken by her father. Joseph P Kennedy was an Irish-American millionaire and politician, who had been born into a New England political family and made his fortune in films, whisky and steel.
He and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald – an intensely devout princess of Boston's Catholic aristocracy – married in 1914 and had nine children. The 'Kennedy Curse' refers to a tragic sequence of events that befell the Kennedy family – primarily the nine children of Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Kennedy – throughout the 20th century. The couple’s eldest son, Joe Jr – who had been groomed since childhood by his father for the future presidency of the United States – was killed in action in 1944 while serving as a pilot during the .
Their fourth child, Kathleen, was also killed in a plane crash, while flying with her lover from Britain to the south of France in 1948. The second Kennedy son, , would take over Joe Jr’s political mantle, elected as the 35th president of the United States in 1960; . In 1968, the couple’s seventh child, Robert ‘Bobby’ Kennedy, was shot during his own campaign to become presid.