Anthony Radziwill

Prince Anthony Stanislaw Albert Radziwill (4 August 1959 – 10 August 1999) was an American television executive and filmmaker.

Early life and education

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Radziwill was the son of socialite/actress Caroline Lee Bouvier (younger sister of First Lady Jacqueline Lee Bouvier) and Polish Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł. He married a former ABC colleague, Emmy Award-winning journalist Carole Ann DiFalco, on 27 August 1994 on Long Island, New York.

As a member of the Radziwills, one of Central Europe's noble families, Anthony Radziwill was customarily accorded the title of Prince and styled His Serene Highness, although he never used it. He descended from King Frederick William I of Prussia, King George I of Great Britain, and King John III Sobieski of Poland. The family's vast hereditary fortune was lost during World War II, and Anthony's branch of the family immigrated to the United Kingdom, where they became British subjects.

Anthony Radziwill was raised Roman Catholic there; he attended Colet Court preparatory school in London, and later Choate Rosemary Hall preparatory school in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1978. In 1982, he finished his studies at Boston University, earning a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism.

Career

Radziwill's career began at NBC Sports, as an associate producer. During the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he contributed Emmy Award-winning work. In 1989, he joined ABC News as a television producer for Prime Time Live. In 1990, he won the Peabody Award for an investigation on the resurgence of Nazism in the United States. Posthumously, Cancer: Evolution to Revolution was awarded a Peabody. His work was nominated for two Emmys.

Illness and death

Around 1989 he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, undergoing treatment which left him sterile, but in apparent remission. However, shortly before his wedding, new tumors emerged. Radziwill battled metastasizing cancer throughout his five years of marriage, his wife serving as his primary caretaker through a succession of oncologists, hospitals, operations and experimental treatments. The couple lived in New York, and both Radziwill and his wife tried to maintain their careers as journalists between his bouts of hospitalization. During this period, Radziwill became especially close to his aunt Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the sister of his mother, who was also terminally ill with cancer.

On September 21, 1996, Radziwill was the best man for the wedding of his best friend and cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. (the son of Jacqueline) and Carolyn Bessette, while John Jr.'s older sister Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg was the matron of honor.

Radziwill died on 10 August 1999, nearly a month after John Jr. and Carolyn Bessette perished in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. Radziwill was cremated and buried next to his father at a London church. He was survived by his sister, Anna Christina Radziwill, who was born in 1960 and married Ottavio Arancio in September 1999 (they divorced in 2005). His elder half-brother, Jan Stanislas Radziwill, was born in 1947 of their father's second marriage to Grace Kolin, and is the father of two sons, Jan Michal (born 1979), and Filip (born 1981), by his wife Eugenia Carras.

In 2000, his mother, Lee Radziwill, and widow, Carole Radziwill, set up a fund to help emerging documentary filmmakers.

In 2005, Carole Radziwill wrote an autobiography, focused largely on her marriage to Anthony Radziwill. Titled, What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love (Scribner), the book made the New York Times Best Seller List.