Word: gene
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...most enthusiastic presidential commentator by far was ex-Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunney. After a short visit to the White House with shaggy-haired Football Coach Jimmy Conzelman, Tunney announced to reporters that the country is in good hands. "I never saw a more solid citizen. His eye is clear and he's just as solid as a wall. His jaw is square and his stomach is as flat as an athlete...
...Pittsburgh. But there was still a South the rest of the U.S. could not quite understand. That South loved buffoons, corny oratory and the smell of violence; its prophets were demagogues like "Tom Tom" Heflin, Huey Long, Senator Bilbo and the late governor-elect of Georgia, turkey-necked "Old Gene" Talmadge. Last week it got a new one-at least temporarily. Old Gene's heavy-lidded, 33-year-old son Herman (pronounced Hummon) claimed that he was now the governor of Georgia...
...from little Monticello (pop. 1,746). One day just before last November's final election, Ezell ran a coony eye over the new Georgia constitution, discovered that it provided no clear answer to a question which had been bothering him and many other Georgians: "What if ailing Old Gene Talmadge died before he got inaugurated?" Ezell thought of an answer that suited him, and telephoned Hummon: "You better get some votes written in for yourself...
Hummon got busy. On election day, 675 hastily coached Talmadge backers scratched Old Gene's name off their ballots and wrote in Hummon's. This placed him second to Gene's 143,279. When Old Gene died, Hummon and an ex-Georgia legislator named Roy V. Harris set out to parlay this handful of paper into the governorship. They put their faith in a line in the constitution which read: "If no person shall have [a] majority (of the total votes cast) then from the two persons having the highest number of votes . . . the General Assembly shall...
Spit V Image. But Hummon and Harris were undismayed. They sent a reassuring message to the Atlanta "interests" who had backed Old Gene and to the country "wool hat" boys, who had elected him. The message: Hummon was just like his pappy. He chewed corn pone, had Old Gene's cowlick, and stood foursquare for white supremacy and the white primary...