Word: curleys
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Under the heading of the word color comes Curley's gift for public speaking. Originally, he was only a commonplace orator but he sensed the need for inspiring speech-making even before he was mayor. He studied nights under a Professor Staley at a public speaking school in Boston. Staley comments that Curley was so unrefined when he first went to the school that the young man had a very difficult time convincing the professor to keep him. Curley soon became Staley's best pupil, and even now, the teacher still sends written comments to the mayor on each...
They say that Curley uses a different side of his mouth for either side of Beacon Hill. In his hey-day, he had the cultured charm in his voice of the highest rank of Brahmin, yet, on the same night, he could go across the Hill to the North End and deliver a spirited, rabble-rousing speech that would practically incite whole national groups to riot. There wasn't anyone who Curley couldn't sell in Boston. He could as easily convince the millionaire Robert White to leave his money to the city for health improvements, as line up ward...
...Curley, personally, gives the appearance of the utmost refinement. In his younger days, he was a very handsome man; today, at 75 he is jowled but in his face remains most of the vigor of his younger self. You stop and think if the stories about his being on his deathbed when he was in jail at Danbury in 1946 have any truth in them. A capable conversationalist, Curley can talk on almost any subject with the facility of a specialist, the gift of a retentive memory stands by him well. From a small amount of reading, he is able...
...dress makes him distinctive, too. The story goes that Curley came over to Cambridge at the outset of his career and bought a second-hand rich boy's suit from Max Keezer that he were for years as alderman and mayor. Now, you see him mostly in a cutaway; supposedly he once showed up in a tuxedo to shovel the first clod of earth for a foundation, complaining that he hadn't hat time to change his clothes after a formal luncheon...
Outside of the city of Boston, Curley's success has, been very limited. Beaton twice for governor, in 1924 by Alvin T. Fuller and in 193 8by Leverett Saltonstall, he was in the State House for only one term, 1934-6; and those were the years of Roosevelt's first term when no democrat could lose. In the last year of his governorship, he ran for the Senate against Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and lost even though it was the first time Lodge had ron for political office...