James Michael Curley

For other people named James Curley, see James Curley (disambiguation).

James Michael Curley
53rd Governor of Massachusetts
In office January 3, 1935 – January 7, 1937
Lieutenant	Joseph L. Hurley
Preceded by	Joseph B. Ely
Succeeded by	Charles F. Hurley
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 10th district
In office March 4, 1911 – March 3, 1913
Preceded by	Joseph F. O'Connell
Succeeded by	William Francis Murray
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 12th district
In office March 4, 1913 – February 4, 1914
Preceded by	John W. Weeks
Succeeded by	James A. Gallivan
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 11th district
In office January 3, 1943 – January 3, 1947
Preceded by	Thomas A. Flaherty
Succeeded by	John F. Kennedy
41st Mayor of Boston
In office 1914–1918
Preceded by	John F. Fitzgerald
Succeeded by	Andrew James Peters
43rd Mayor of Boston
In office 1922–1926
Preceded by	Andrew James Peters
Succeeded by	Malcolm Nichols
Majority	2,315
45th Mayor of Boston
In office 1930–1934
Preceded by	Malcolm Nichols
Succeeded by	Frederick Mansfield
48th Mayor of Boston
In office 1946–1950
Preceded by	John E. Kerrigan
Succeeded by	John Hynes
Personal details
Born	November 20, 1874(1874-11-20) Boston, Massachusetts
Died	November 12, 1958(1958-11-12) (aged 83) Boston, Massachusetts
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Mary Curley Gertrude Curley
Religion	Roman Catholic

James Michael Curley (November 20, 1874 – November 12, 1958) was an American politician famous for his four terms as mayor of Boston, Massachusetts. He also served twice in the United States House of Representatives and one term as 53rd Governor of Massachusetts.

Early life

Curley's father, Michael Curley, left Oughterard, County Galway, Ireland at age 14. He settled in Roxbury, an Irish immigrant neighborhood in Boston, where he met Sarah Clancy, also from Co. Galway. They married, and in 1874, their second son, James Michael Curley, was born.

Curley's father died when the boy was just 10 years old, leaving his mother a young widow forced to support her children on her own. His mother got a job scrubbing floors in offices and churches all over Boston. It was back-breaking work and his mother's struggle influenced Curley's attitude toward the poor for the rest of his life. James had two brothers: John J. (1872-1944) and Michael (born 1879), who died at 2½.

Early in his political career he served in various municipal offices and one term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1902–1903).

Curley married twice, first to Mary Emelda Herlihy (1884–1930) in 1906 and then to Gertrude Casey Dennis in 1937, on his last day as governor.

1st prison term

Curley's first notoriety came as a result of having been elected to Boston's Board of Aldermen in 1904 while in prison on a fraud conviction. Curley and an associate, Thomas Curley (no relation), took the civil service exams for postmen for two men in their district to help them get the jobs with the federal government. Though the incident gave him a dark reputation in upper-class circles, it aided his image among the working class and poor because they saw him as a man willing to stick his neck out to help those in need. He kept that reputation for the rest of his life and it was known all over the city that the poor and unemployed often lined up outside his house in the mornings to speak with him about getting a job or to get a handout of a few dollars to get them through the week.

First election to the U.S. House

James Michael Curley in his first term as a Member of Congress in 1912.

In 1910 while a Member of the Board of Aldermen for the City of Boston, Curley decided to run for the 10th District U.S. congressional seat then occupied by Joseph F. O'Connell. (In the previous general election O'Connell won by a four-vote margin over his Republican opponent, ex-City Clerk J. Mitchell Galvin.) In a three-way primary among O'Connell, Curley, and O'Connell's predecessor William S. McNary, Curley defeated O'Connell and McNary. After winning the nomination of the Democratic party Curley went on to win the general election by a substantial plurality over Galvin, who was again the Republican nominee.

Mayor of Boston

Curley served four terms as Mayor of Boston: 1914-1918, 1922–1926, 1930–1934 and 1946-1950. During his second term in the House of Representatives, Curley's popularity in Boston remained high, even in the face of a felony indictment in 1943 for influence peddling, which stemmed from his involvement with a consulting firm seeking to secure defense contracts. On the slogan "Curley Gets Things Done" he won an unprecedented fourth term as mayor of Boston in 1945. A second indictment by a federal grand jury, for mail fraud, did not harm his campaign and Curley won the election with 45% of the vote.

2nd prison term

In June 1947, he was sentenced to 6–18 months on the mail fraud conviction and spent five months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut before his sentence was commuted by President Truman under pressure from the Massachusetts congressional delegation. City Clerk John B. Hynes served as acting mayor during his absence. Truman gave Curley a full pardon in 1950 for both his 1904 and 1947 convictions.

Return to office

A crowd of thousands greeted Curley upon his return to Boston, with a brass band playing "Hail to the Chief". In a fit of hubris after his first day back in office, Curley told reporters, "I have accomplished more in one day than has been done in the five months of my absence." John Hynes, the city clerk and acting mayor, had intentionally held many important agenda items back until Curley's release from prison so the mayor could handle them himself. Angered and insulted by Curley's remark, Hynes ran against him for mayor in the 1949 election, defeating Curley and essentially ending Curley's long political career.

The 1932 Democratic National Convention

Denied by the then Republican governor a place in the Massachusetts delegation to the 1932 Democratic National Convention, Curley engineered his selection as a delegate from Puerto Rico (under the alias of Alcalde Jaime Curleo). Some say his support was instrumental in winning the presidential nomination for Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he broke with Roosevelt after the President refused to appoint him Ambassador to Ireland.

Governor of Massachusetts

James Michael Curley in his second term as Mayor of Boston, in 1922.

Curley ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 1934, and this time he won, having lost in 1924. Over the course of his term, Curley's extravagant personal spending and expensive vacations drew criticism and series of scandals rocked his administration, including the involvement of his state limousine in several traffic accidents, the alleged sale of pardons to state convicts, and the appointment of poorly qualified individuals, including his brother John, to public offices.

In the late 1930s Curley's political fortunes began to ebb. Denied Franklin Delano Roosevelt's endorsement in the 1936 senatorial election, he lost against a moderate Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. He was twice defeated, in 1937 and 1940, for the Boston mayoralty by one of his closest former political confidants, Maurice J. Tobin, and in 1938 Leverett Saltonstall turned back Curley's attempt to recapture the Massachusetts governorship. After leaving the office of governor, he squandered a substantial sum of his money in unsuccessful investments in Nevada gold mines; then he lost a civil suit brought by the Suffolk County prosecutor that forced him to forfeit to the city of Boston the $40,000 he received from General Equipment Company for "fixing" a damage claim settlement.

Return to Congress

In 1942, however, Curley managed to revive his faltering career by returning to Congress, serving from 1943 to 1947, this time in the 11th district. In defeating his liberal opponent Thomas H. Eliot, a former New Deal attorney with an exemplary voting record on behalf of the Roosevelt administration in the Democratic party primary. Eliot was the son of a Unitarian minister and grandson of Harvard president Charles Eliot and Curley based his campaign on appeals to ethnic, class and religious prejudice against the well to do WASP Eliot. In a quote from a campaign speech which has famously entered Boston political lore, Curley raised the specter of communist leanings in his opponent saying, "There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley's ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot." Curley won in a walk, and once back in Congress, he compiled a voting record that matched his former opponent's in support of the Roosevelt administration's social agenda.

Return to the Mayorality...and prison

in 1947, Curley was reelected Mayor yet again. During that term, he was charged with corruption and convicted. This did not stop him from being re-elected while being incarcerated, something that almost never happens.

End of career

Statues of Curley near Boston City Hall.

A failed mayoral bid in 1951 marked the end of his serious political career, although he continued to support other candidates and remain active within the Democratic Party, and even ran for mayor one last time in 1955, his 10th time running for the office. His death in Boston in 1958 led to one of the largest funerals in the city's history.

Curley's personal life was unusually tragic. He outlived his first wife Mary Emelda (née Herlihy), who died in 1930 after a long battle with cancer, and seven of his nine children. Twin sons John and Joseph died in infancy. Daughter Dorothea died of pneumonia as a teenager. His namesake, James Jr., who was being groomed as Curley's political successor, died in 1931 at age 21 following an operation to remove a gallstone. Son Paul, who was an alcoholic, died while Curley ran for mayor in 1945. His remaining daughter Mary died of a stroke in February, 1950 and when her brother Leo was called to the scene, he became so distraught that he, too, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died the same day, at age 34. Two remaining sons, George (1919–1983) and Francis X. (1923–1992) a Jesuit priest, outlived Curley.

Curley is honored with two statues at Faneuil Hall, across from Boston's new City Hall. One shows him seated on a park bench, the other shows him standing, as if giving a speech, a campaign button on his lapel. A few feet away is a bar named for one of his symbols, The Purple Shamrock.

His house, known in his time as "the house with the shamrock shutters," located at 350 The Jamaicaway, is now a city historical site. His former summer home in Scituate also has shamrock shutters.

In popular culture

• Curley is considered the inspiration for the protagonist Frank Skeffington in the novel and film The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor. Curley himself thought so; initially considering legal action, he changed his mind, and upon meeting O'Connor, he told him he enjoyed the book, the passage he enjoyed most being: "The part where I die."
• Curley was the inspiration for the song The Rascal King on the album Let's Face It by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
• Since Curley, every Boston Mayor has been driven in a car with the license registration 576 - which were the corresponding numbers for his first, middle, and last name. James (5) Michael (7) Curley (6).
• The Curley family still holds Massachusetts auto registration number 5.
• Curley appeared at the Harvard University commencement ceremony in 1935 in his role as Governor wearing silk stockings, knee britches, a powdered wig, and a three-cornered hat with flowing plume. When University marshals objected to his costume, the story goes, Curley whipped out a copy of the Statutes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which prescribed proper dress for the occasion and claimed that he was the only person at the ceremony properly dressed.
• A paper by Harvard economists Andrei Shleifer and Edward Glaeser, 'The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate', describes the strategy used by Curley and other political leaders of increasing their political base by using distortionary economic policies to cause groups which tend to oppose them to emigrate as 'The Curley Effect'.

Bibliography

• Bulger, William M. "James Michael Curley: A Short Biography with Personal Reminiscences." Commonwealth Editions 2009.
• City of Boston Statistics Department Municipal Register for 1922 (1922) Frontispiece.
• Connolly, Michael C. "The First Hurrah: James Michael Curley Versus the 'Goo-goos' in the Boston Mayoralty Election of 1914." Historical Journal of Massachusetts 2002 30(1): 50-74. ISSN 0276-8313.
• Connolly, James J. "Reconstituting Ethnic Politics: Boston, 1909-1925." Social Science History (1995) 19(4): 479-509. ISSN 0145-5532.
• Dineen, Joseph F., The Purple Shamrock (1949), an authorized biography
• Kenneally, James. "Prelude to the Last Hurrah: the Massachusetts Senatorial Election of 1936." Mid-America 1980 62(1): 3-20. ISSN 0026-2927.
• Lapomarda, Vincent A. "Maurice Joseph Tobin: the Decline of Bossism in Boston." New England Quarterly (1970) 43(3): 355-381. ISSN 0028-4866.
• Lennon, Thomas, producer, Scandalous Mayor. Film. 58 min.; Thomas Lennon Productions, 1991. Distrib. by PBS Video, Alexandria
• Luthin, Reinhard H., American Demagogues: Twentieth Century (1954) ch. 2.
• Piehler, G. Kurt. "Curley, James Michael" in American National Biography, 2000, American Council of Learned Societies.
• Steinberg, Alfred. The Bosses: Frank Hague, James Curley, Ed Crump, Huey Long, Gene Talmadge, Tom Pendergast - The Story of the Ruthless Men who Forged the American Political Machines that Dominated the Twenties and Thirties Macmillan, 1972.
• Trout, Charles H., Boston, the Great Depression, and the Ne Deal NY: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Who's who in State Politics, 1912 Practical Politics (1912)
• Zolot, Herbert Marshall. "The Issue of Good Government and James Michael Curley: Curley and the Boston Scene from 1897-1918" Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1975. Citation: DAI 1975 36(2): 1053-A.

External links

• Information on Mayor Curley at Political Graveyard
• James Michael Curley at Massachusetts Moments
• James Michael Curley at The Bostonian Society, section on Jamaica Plain historical place markers
• James Michael Curley at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Official Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Biography
• Boston Public Library. Curley, James Michael (1874-1958) Collection

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by Joseph F. O'Connell	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 10th congressional district March 4, 1911–March 4, 1913	Succeeded by William Francis Murray
Preceded by John W. Weeks	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 12th congressional district March 4, 1913–February 4, 1914	Succeeded by James A. Gallivan
Preceded by Thomas A. Flaherty	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 11th congressional district January 3, 1943–January 3, 1947	Succeeded by John F. Kennedy
Political offices
Preceded by John F. Fitzgerald	Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts 1914–1918	Succeeded by Andrew J. Peters
Preceded by Andrew J. Peters	Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts 1922–1926	Succeeded by Malcolm Nichols
Preceded by Malcolm Nichols	Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts 1930–1934	Succeeded by Frederick Mansfield
Preceded by Joseph B. Ely	Governor of Massachusetts 1935–1937	Succeeded by Charles F. Hurley
Preceded by John E. Kerrigan	Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts 1946–1950	Succeeded by John Hynes