POWER & BEAUTY: JUDITH EXNER

One of the most controversial chapters of John F. Kennedy’s rise to power is seen through the eyes of his mistress in the riveting Power and Beauty.

Judith Exner (Natasha Henstridge, Species), an attractive woman in her 50s, cool and comfortable, is engaged in an interview. The questions about her past are carefully worded. Her answers are carefully guarded. What’s in her heart is another story — the true story.

It starts when she is only twenty-six. Raised in privilege, and a debutante of upper-crust society, Judith enjoys a life of glamour among the Hollywood elite and the thrilling benefits offered by those she meets, including Frank Sinatra (John Ralston, Exit Wounds). Being pampered and bedded by the legend himself is exhilarating. But the hard-partying Rat Pack lifestyle is merely an introduction to the hard-edged world of politics, marked by power, deception and deadly manipulation. The glittering threads of this exalted circle have just begun to entangle Judith in their seductive web during the presidential campaign of 1960.

The attention of handsome Senator and president elect John F. Kennedy (Golden Globe nominee Kevin Anderson, Ruby’s Bucket of Blood) is intoxicating. Judith believes his promise to leave his wife. She trusts him, even as she is asked to abort his child. And he trusts her–with nothing less than his political future. What begins with a tryst on the eve of the New Hampshire primaries thrusts Judith into the dizzying and suspect constellation of the Kennedy clan. It’s an affair that eventually introduces her to Kennedy consort, Sam Giancana (Peter Friedman, In the Presence of Mine Enemies), the Chicago Mob boss. Together, Kennedy and Giancana use Judith as a money-runner and intermediary in the “purchase” of Kennedy’s election–and, without her knowledge, as a go-between in an elaborate plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Kennedy’s own assassination drives Judith into seclusion. However, her attempt at anonymity is impossible when Giancana is assassinated a decade later. With the FBI threatening her, intimidating her, and haunting her shadow, Judith asks herself: What lies about the presidency will she be asked to confess? What incendiary conspiracy theories will she inflame? What intimacies will she be forced to reveal? What will happen to her if she refuses? And what secrets will she take to her grave?

The answers are in Power and Beauty, a film that shatters the myth of Camelot with the unvarnished truth and the one woman who exposed it. The secrets of John F. Kennedy’s rise to political power are revealed by his most outspoken and controversial mistress in this shocking and riveting true story of a woman seduced and trapped by the Camelot myth.