Carole Radziwill - The Cartier Curse

 

 

When I turned 30, my husband gave me a Cartier Tank watch that had once belonged to his aunt, Jackie Kennedy. Now, I met my husband when I was working as a journalist. I worked for ABC News for nearly 15 years. So, by nature and training, I'm a rather rational and predictable person who believes in logic, and fact and science. But we all experience these events that defy logic that we simply brush off as coincidence, and sometimes they're called paranormal or metaphysical, some set in motion by a curse, like if you believe that nonsense. [audience laughter] 

 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to go way back to February 1963 to tell this story. Six months before I was even born. This particular watch was gifted to Jackie by Anthony's dad, Stas, my future father-in-law, to mark the occasion of a 50-mile hike, a challenge he had made with President Kennedy and the first lady while he was staying at their house for a weekend. Their house in Palm Beach. He would walk the hike the 50 miles, and when he finished, he got a steak barbecue, and Jackie got this watch and scripted on the back, to Jackie from Stas. February 23rd, 1963. This wasn't just any watch. This watch she wore nearly every day for the rest of her life. Eight months later, she was widowed when her husband was assassinated along a parade route in Dallas, and she was only 33 years old. 

 

So, fast forward three decades, it's 1994 now, and after Jackie passes away, the watch is handed down to her nephew, Anthony. That's how I came to have it. It's a simple watch with a white face with a gold and leather band. The inscription has all, but worn off on the back. And it was the year that we got married. We had a beautiful wedding on the beach at his mom's house in East Hampton. It was also the year that my husband was diagnosed with a really strange and rare cancer. 

 

Watches are like a unique piece of jewelry. They sit over your heartbeat, like absorbing your energy, like your life force, literally marking the passage of time. Time is your enemy when your husband has terminal illness. Five years almost to the day later, I lay on the hospital bed as Anthony took his last breaths. I was 34 years old. There's a picture of my mother in law, Lee, and I walking out of the church after the funeral, and you can clearly see this watch is on my wrist. I wore it for some time after that. I don't remember how long, but after a series of setbacks, which I attributed for absolutely no reason at all to this watch. I took it off and I put it in my top drawer where it lay undisturbed for nearly a decade. 

 

Now, when you're 34, as some of you might know, 10 years is a really long time, and a lot happens. I left my job, I moved downtown, I had a bunch of fun boyfriends and some not so fun. I made some girlfriends, because you realize when you're young and widowed, you don't have as much in common with your friends. One of these girls, her name was Cassandra, she's the kind of girlfriend you don't know you need until you meet her. We became instant besties, like real soul sisters. She had no connection to my past life. So, I wasn't constantly remembering or reminded of this life that I had once had. 

 

For the first time in a really long time, things felt good, like they should. I was happily in a new writing career. I had just published a memoir. Cassandra fell in love and moved to LA. I would visit her frequently on-- One of these trips, I noticed a portrait of Jackie that Cassandra had painted in a beginning art class. It reminded me of the watch, which I hadn't thought of in years. And so, I tell her about this watch-- I think she thinks it's absurd that this historical timepiece is in my top drawer. She's a proper girl with a dressing room and a safe, so I told her that I would send it to her for safekeeping. 

 

When I returned to New York, I mailed her the watch. It was the year that she got engaged. And like my husband, he was like the love of her life, and their wedding was filled with love and joy and magic, those kind of weddings. And then, shortly after the wedding, her young and healthy husband was diagnosed with lung cancer, though he never smoked. What are the chances of that? Like, two girlfriends, best friends going through the same exact, singularly unique experience. So, I just brushed it off as coincidence. It wasn't going to be the same as with Anthony. It couldn't be. 

 

Sure enough, like the first few years, the treatment was working, and no one even knew he was sick. And then, in the fifth year, like with my husband, the treatment just stopped working, and doctors started talking about clinical trials and experimental drugs. It was heartbreaking to see my friend go through the same exact experience. I started thinking about that watch again and getting that same uneasy feeling. So, I called Cassandra and asked her to send me the watch, because I had in my head this idea. I didn't tell her about my suspicions about a curse. Actually, I didn't even know what I thought at this point, but I had this idea in my head that if I got the watch back to its point of origin, that the curse would be broken. 

 

I had seen it like in an Indiana Jones movie, [audience laughter] like one or two. And so, that's what I was going to do. Like, sure, I was going to get the watch back to Cartier. [audience laughter] Okay. And so, the next week, I'm having dinner with my mother-in-law. She's now well into her 80s and frail. We would often have dinner, just the two of us at her apartment. I wanted to get her blessing, but also her advice. She was actually surprised I still had the watch. She hadn't thought about it in years. She started reminiscing about that time in her life and her husband and the hike. It was so nice, because she wasn't someone who was very sentimental and she rarely talked about that time in her life. So, I didn't want to spoil the night with like stories of curses and deaths. So, I said I didn't want the responsibility of having it anymore. She thought that was reasonable and suggested I call Christie’s's auction house. 

 

So, about a week later, I'm having a meeting with John Reardon, the International Head of Watches, like the big guy at Christie’s's. I tell them that I have this watch that once belonged to Jackie Kennedy and would maybe they'd be interested in selling it or auctioning it. And so, I take the Ziploc bag out of my purse, slide it across the desk. Now, you have to understand, John is a very tall and elegant man, but he's a man who's obsessed with timepieces. So, he quickly takes it out of the Ziploc bag and puts it on a black velvet tray and he's staring at it like it's the Hope Diamond or something. He looks up at me, back at the watch and he's like, “Was this watch in that Ziploc bag for 25 years?” I was like, “Obviously not. It was in a tube sock in my top drawer, protected.” [audience laughter] I thought he was going to faint. 

 

He asked me how I came to have this watch. So, I tell him my name, which he may or may not have connected. I explain the story that explains the inscription now very faded on the back of watch. He can't believe his luck, because unbeknownst to me, Christie’s's had been working all year long on an auction titled Rare Watches and American Icons. It was coincidence. They had already gotten the watch of President Johnson and Joe DiMaggio and a small time New York gangster named Bumpy Johnson. 

 

So, I told him that they should-- I didn't want to tell him anything about my suspicions about the curse, because then I thought maybe he wouldn't want the watch. [audience laughter] So, I just say to list the provenances, Radziwill family. I casually mention, “Are you going to call Cartier?” And he said, “Yes.” Of course, he'll call Cartier the next day. He had called Cartier in Geneva, the headquarters. So, I was like, “Yes,” like the mothership Geneva. [audience laughter]

 

The next few months, John took the watch around the world, showing it to high end collectors in the Middle East, and Asia, and to Cartier in London, and Hong Kong and Geneva. As the watch toured around, Cassandra's husband got sicker and sicker. And then, he died too. Cassandra had just turned 39. And a month later, 54 years after the watch was first gifted to Jackie, Christie’s puts it up for auction. Cartier is bidding on it aggressively. And the last moment, they lose out to a mystery buyer on another phone. So, I don't have this, like Indiana Jones moment, but I feel good. I feel such a sense of relief, because it's not my problem anymore. Like, it's somebody else's problem, someone I don't know and someone far away. 

 

About a few days later, John calls me. Apparently, they don't usually reveal who gets things at auction, but he told me that there was going to be some press. Okay. And that's how I learned that Jackie Kennedy's watch was bought by Kim Kardashian. [chuckles] This was many years before she at least publicly expressed any interest in anything Kennedy. I don't know Kim well, but I've met her a few times and we had some mutual friends. She was in my sphere of existence. I'm like, “Wow.” I'm processing this in New York, she's in LA. Through the grapevine, she's hearing about some curse. [audience laughter] 

 

So, she calls Shelly, our mutual friend, one of them, and Shelly calls me. Now, Shelly's not the kind of woman who-- She definitely doesn't believe in curses or any nonsense. She's like, “What is this I hear about a curse? Kim is freaking out. Obviously, she wants to protect her family. She wants to give you the watch back.” [audience laughter]

 

I'm like, “Literally, this watch is not letting go of me.” It's like that moment like in the horror movie when the girl escapes the house and she's free, but she's sitting by the lake and it's quiet, and then the hand reaches up and drags her back in, that's how I'm feeling right now. I want to scream into the phone to Shelly, “Tell Kim not touch the watch.” But I'm super paranoid and I don't want to give this curse any more energy. Clearly, I've underestimated the power of it. [audience laughter] 

 

So, instead, I tell Shelly the facts, that three women were in possession of that watch and all three were widowed in their 30s. I could hear Shelly's silence on the other end of the phone and connecting the dots in the way that I did. We hung up. And a few months later, Christie’s sends the paperwork, and it's all done. I never hear about the watch again, or so I thought. [chuckles] 

 

Fast forward a few years, now it's 2019, and a friend of mine randomly sends me a photo of Kim from her show. She's wearing Jackie's watch, but it's slightly different, noticeable only to me. So, I zoom in, and it's a Cartier Tank watch, that's for sure, but it's not Jackie's watch. So, I called John, and I hadn't seen him in a few years and make a date to have lunch. And after some small talk, I show him the picture and I tell him what I know. He already knows that this isn't Jackie's watch. He offers an explanation, but honestly, he doesn't really understand what happened, other than Kim called his office a few weeks after the auction, after she had done all the paperwork, and paid for the watch and said that she was not going to take possession of it, that he should just sell it. 

 

John, being an elegant man who's obsessed with timepieces, was just blown away by this. He just didn't understand what was going on. He thought maybe it was like some reality show thing. So, I asked him, I'm like, “John, where's the watch?” He said, it's still in the vault under Christie’s at Rockefeller Center, right below us. I'm like, “Damn.” [audience laughter] So, I tell John everything. Like, everything, and the curse. He's listening. His eyes are wide, because it turns out that John too is a believer, and this isn't his first cursed watch. There were others. [audience laughter] 

 

A few months later, I read in a magazine that Cartier had quietly bought the watch back, where it remains to this day, in their vault under their mansion at Fifth Avenue. So, I got the watch back to Cartier. So, we are all safe now. [audience laughter] [audience applause]

 

I would posit that if you believe in blessings, you should at least entertain the existence of curses, much like there can't be love without hate or courage, without cowardice or good luck without bad. What is a blessing if not just the absence of a curse? Boo.