Word: ryans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...credentials were irreproachable: he was Princeton '28, Republican, a grandson of Financier Thomas Fortune Ryan. With other moneyed political innocents (and some toughened professionals), he plunged eagerly into the Fusion movement which made Fiorello La Guardia mayor of New York in 1934. The Little Flower made him his secretary, later gave him a couple of city posts, until the two reformers had a falling...
Noisy & Hopeful. Not until two months ago did Clen Ryan return to New York politics. This time his entry was noisy and his ambitions were high; he might even be a mayor-maker again...
...Ryan dumped $500,000 into something he called the National Foundation for Good Government. It would scotch corruption not only in New York but elsewhere. He railed at Governor Tom Dewey for not investigating Mayor Bill O'Dwyer's administration. He trotted down to City Hall with ten questions for O'Dwyer. Their substance: Is Slot Machine Tycoon Frankie Costello the real boss of New York City...
Bill O'Dwyer contemptuously snorted "crackpot." Ryan was undismayed. He chirped back: "A question a day might keep Costello away." The next morning, resplendent in pearl-grey Homburg, Ryan was back at City Hall. This time he nailed to the front door of the Hall photostats of some old (and generally discredited) grand jury charges that O'Dwyer had been grossly lax as district attorney of Brooklyn. Ryan happily held every pose the photographers yelled for, withdrew the nail, and went away...
...Wild Plot. Then the pros-Bill O'Dwyer and Tammany Hall-looked Clen up & down without great passion, spit on their hands and went to work. Before they were even half through they had made Clen Ryan look bad. In the dead of night Bill O'Dwyer summoned newsmen to City Hall, himself broke the wildest wiretapping story to hit the town since Justice Aurelio was overheard thanking Frankie Costello for his nomination (TIME...