Word: curleys
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...When Curley had playfully suspended a football game in Harvard Stadium (because President Lowell was not anxious to sponsor B.C. against Holy Cross), the Crimson and the Daily Dartmouth compared him to Hitler. But in an attempt to assess the man, to make that suggestion is only to confuse matters in a manner worthy of Curley himself. For he was one Hitler who could not do without a soapbox and a Boston Irish audience. As garrulous as was his term in the State House, he did not seem made for government on that broad a scale. His lavish handouts...
...Curley had thousands of friends, recipients, at one time or another, of his largesse. Not a few were bums, many of whom travelled out to his Jamaicaway door to put the touch on him personally. The bus fare was rarely a bad investment. Curley thrived on their visits. "A Great Dane," he once said, always has a few poodles yapping at his heels...
Though his personal following was immense, Curley lacked what might usually be called an organization. "One reason," Professor John K. Galbraith wrote recently, "is that a leader must also be loyal to his organization, and where his own interests were involved Curley was never a man of divided loyalties." But, though he was not much interested in electing anybody to public office besides himself, Curley often managed...
Neither the personal nor the local character of his following was sufficient to distinguish Curley from the other big-city bosses. Frank Hague controlled Hudson County, mostly Jersey City; Tammany had the city across the river; in Chicago Boss Kelly ran Cook County, and Ware had Philadelphia. But, as Louis Lyons points out, none had an organization that reached far outside his city...
What lifted Curley out of the barren pattern set by most other bosses was his wit. Much of it was of a local variety. In 1921 campaigning for Mayor against John R. Murphy, a good Irish Catholic, Curley dressed up a few of his camp followers as priests and sent them across Charlestown and elsewhere bruiting it about that John R. Murphy had renounced his Catholic Faith, joined a Masonic Order, had been observed attending Back Bay's Trinity Church, and intended to divorce his good wife in order to marry a sixteen-year-old girl. As the campaign...