Word: curleys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Boston got that way has been writen down in the involved accounts of many long books. The Puritans are blamed, or the Irish, or the Italians, or the weather, or Curley, or Beacon Hill, or the Red Sox, or social forces...
Twenty years later, John L. Sullivan had come to Boston from Roxbury. At the advent of another tavern renaissance, society began its journey westward from Beacon Hill to Brook-line and finally to Wayland, Weston, and Wellesley. Since 1900 the biggest thing that has happened to Boston is Mayor Curley, and he is still happening. The sale of his library at Lauriat's a week ago started a near riot...
Proudest Boast. Curley's book is sprayed with political maxims (see box) which, however amoral, surest an expert deeply fascinated by a great art. He scarcely bothers to deny the charges of corruption that soiled virtually his whole career. For the "Goo-Goo" (good government) forces he has sublime contempt: "There were the pitiable, simpering halfwits who went about nudging people in the side, pouring the devil knows what poison in their ears, and the brethren of hamlet and village, who had never seen Curley, gazed upon his countenance on posters that portrayed a baleful-eyed monster glaring...
...Curley's proudest boast is that he was always a friend of the poor. The Christmas basket, the $10 loan, the stay of eviction, the city job-all bought him votes, but also made his headquarters a "school, employment agency, court of domestic relations and poor man's 'psychiatric couch.'" He was the voice of the poor, too, railing down the years against the Brahmins of Back Bay, State Street and Harvard. Curley's long memory bears the imprint of the Yankee sign, "No Irish Need Apply," that was so frequent in his youth. Though...
...Bury All. Curley's private life was scarred by tragedy. His first wife, Mary, died of cancer. Of his nine children, seven died, two of them on the same day from the same cause: cerebral hemorrhage. Today James Michael Curley is beyond the end of his political trail, the last of the city bosses who went down before a combination of social services, prosperity, a more hardheaded electorate. He was soundly beaten in his last three mayoralty bids (the most recent in 1955), and last December narrowly survived an operation for a stomach ulcer. His final ambition: attaining...