Paddy Whacked

by T. J. English

  The man whose name had once been synonymous with fear, power, and racketeering on the waterfront was relegated to the dustbin of history.

  Corridan’s Legacy

  The person who was most responsible for the purging of flagrant mobsterism on the docks did not testify at the Waterfront Hearings. Father John Corridan had been invited to appear, but he declined the invitation. He later explained his reasoning: “Any testimony that I might have given would weaken the belief of people around the waterfront in my trustworthiness as a priest to keep confidences. Some of the information had come to me in the confessional. Much of the rest of what I knew had been given to me in confidence.”

  Members of the commission conceded the validity of Corridan’s position. They asked if he would be interested in submitting a proposal for waterfront reform, which he did. The proposal became known as “Corridan’s Law” and served as a blueprint for leading the ILA out of the stone age and into the bright light of twentieth century labor reform.

  Corridan’s contribution did not end there. In 1952, just as the crime commission hearings were getting under way, Corridan had been approached by an eager young screenwriter named Bud Schulberg. Schulberg had been enlisted to write a screenplay loosely based on Malcolm Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning series in the New York Sun. Although Father Corridan had never heard of Schulberg, he was familiar with the screenwriter’s creative partner, Elia Kazan, the famous director who’d already directed A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, and other well-known Hollywood movies.

  Corridan viewed Schulberg and Kazan’s interest as a golden opportunity to call attention to conditions on the waterfront. He spoke at length with Schulberg and introduced him to numerous contacts on the docks. The savvy, street-smart screenwriter took it from there.

  Schulberg was fascinated by Father Corridan, whom he later described as “the antidote to the stereotyped Barry Fitzgerald-Bing Crosby ‘Fah-ther’ so dear to Hollywood hearts. In West Side saloons I listened intently to Father John, whose speech was a unique blend of Hell’s Kitchen baseball slang, an encyclopedic grasp of waterfront economics, and an attack on man’s inhumanity to man based on the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

  Having gotten his start as a boxing writer, Schulberg was comfortable in the brawny, profane world of the waterfront. His personal politics were on the side of the working man. He immersed himself in the world of the piers, guided mostly by a devoted disciple of Father Corridan’s named Arthur Browne—an Irish American longshoreman who was proud to be one of the stand-up “insoigents” in the Chelsea local run by “fat cats and their pistoleros.”

  Following months of research, Schulberg fashioned a script that contained a character named Father Pete Barry, based on Corridan. The screenplay’s other main character was a working palooka named Terry Malloy, a former boxer and sometime strong-arm man for waterfront racketeers who, inspired by the crusader priest, develops a conscience and becomes disillusioned with business as usual on the docks. Terry eventually turns against the union’s corrupt overseer, a petty dictator named Johnny Friendly, and testifies against him in front of a commission looking into mobster activity on the waterfront.

  In their quest to get Schulberg’s screenplay financed as a movie, the writer and Kazan were turned down by every major studio in the business. Kazan’s cache as an Academy Award–nominated director made no difference. Hollywood had little interest in making a film about common laborers. “Who’s going to care about a lot of sweaty longshoremen?” asked Warner Bros. Studio head Daryl Zanuck after reading the script.

  Eventually, once Marlon Brando agreed to play the character of Terry Malloy, Schulberg and Kazan were able to find financing at Columbia Studios. The budget was modest, with much of it going to Brando. Veteran stage actor Karl Malden was chosen to play the Corridan stand-in, Father Barry.

  The movie was filmed primarily in Hoboken, New Jersey, utilizing numerous nonprofessional bit actors culled from various ILA locals. The emphasis was on authenticity, with actual waterfront locations, believable dialogue, and a general level of realism that was unheard of for a big-studio Hollywood movie in the 1950s.

  On the Waterfront contains many classic scenes, but the moral center of the movie is a scene in which Father Barry, after a longshoreman has been killed in a work-related “accident,” climbs down into the hold of a freighter to deliver last rights. There he makes a fighting speech about “Christ in the shape-up,” comparing the longshoreman’s death to the Crucifixion. His dialogue is taken almost verbatim from a famous speech Father Corridan once gave to a group of longshoreman that became known as “the Sermon on the Docks.”

  When On the Waterfront opened in theaters in September 1954, it was an immediate sensation, garnering rave reviews, impressive box office totals, and, eventually, Academy Awards for Schulberg, Kazan, and Brando. Today, the movie is rightfully considered a classic, but, at the time of its original release, its main power was as a “straight from the headlines” exposé. Appearing in theaters on the heels of the New York Waterfront Hearings, the movie was that rare item: an explosive, socially relevant presentation of a contemporary labor condition, told unabashedly from a proletarian point of view. Among other things, the movie played a major role in the turning-of-the-tide against corrupt forces within the ILA, most notably Joe Ryan, whose legal comeuppance in the courts was taking place at the same time that On the Waterfront played to large audiences around the country.

  To the extent that movies are able to reach the masses and enlighten minds, On the Waterfront was a landmark. The movie helped to expose a culture of gangsterism in the ILA that had existed for decades. While the awards for this went to Schulberg, Kazan, and Brando, the moral imperative that made it all possible came from the Waterfront Priest. According to Bud Schulberg, “Without the life, activism, and example of Father John Corridan, there’s no way On the Waterfront ever would have happened. It was Father John who took on the mobsters—and the rest is history.”7

  CHAPTER # Nine

  9. the patriarch

  In the decade of the 1950s, America was in the throes of committee fever. Secret agendas, subterranean alliances, and subversive activities were a national obsession, and it appeared that the only way to root out the enemy within was through official governmental investigation. Hot on the heels of the Kefauver Hearings on organized crime and the Waterfront Commission’s public tribunal in New York came the anti-Communist witch hunts of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. The McCarthy Hearings were televised and, like the Kefauver Hearings, captured the public imagination. McCarthy was allowed to run rampant, making wild accusations and destroying careers, until he eventually overstepped his boundaries by taking on the U.S. Army.

  Before Joe McCarthy’s vile and divisive subcommittee crashed and burned in December 1954, he appointed an eager young attorney named Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy as his assistant counsel. Kennedy was the seventh of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy, the well-known billionaire banker, tycoon, ex-movie mogul, and former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James during the Franklin Roosevelt Administration. The elder Kennedy was a friend and financial benefactor of Joe McCarthy’s. Over the years, the alcoholic senator from Wisconsin had occasionally been a guest at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, where he once almost drowned after falling from a sailboat into the bay. He was saved by another son of Joe Kennedy’s—John—at the time a congressman from Massachusetts, who dove into the water and helped pull McCarthy back into the boat.

  On McCarthy’s Senate Subcommittee, Bobby Kennedy served under Roy Cohn, the senator’s vicious and unscrupulous lead counsel. As the subcommittee became more wantonly unethical in its pursuit of phantom communists and subversives, Kennedy bolted, astutely surmising that McCarthy’s crusade was headed for disaster.

  Bobby Kennedy may have recognized the flaws and public relations limitations inherent in McCarthy’s scorched-earth approach, but tha
t did not mean he was against the notion of high-profile governmental committees. In late 1956, when Kennedy was approached by Senator John J. McClellan of Arkansas to take part in yet another major senate investigation—this one looked into the role of mobsters and labor racketeers in the Teamsters Union—the young lawyer jumped at the chance.

  Officially, the investigation was to be called the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field. The committee and their investigators would be given the power to subpoena whoever they wanted. For Kennedy, thirty-two years old and looking to put his career on a par with that of his older brother John, the offer was irresistible. As chief counsel, he would be given the opportunity to square off with major mafiosi and corrupt union officials similar to ILA boss Joe Ryan and others of his ilk. Kennedy, notoriously competitive, relished the prospect.

  When Bobby told his father that he had accepted the offer to become chief counsel for what would come to be known as “the McClellan Committee,” the patriarch of the Kennedy family was livid. According to Bobby’s sister Jean Kennedy Smith, the argument that ensued at the family’s annual Christmas gathering at Hyannis Port was bitter, “the worst one we ever witnessed.” Bobby argued that by taking on organized crime in the labor movement, the Kennedy family would be establishing a reputation for independence. Recalled longtime Kennedy confidant Lem Billings, “The old man saw this as dangerous…. He thought Bobby was naïve.”

  Joe Kennedy’s main argument against Bobby’s involvement was that it was going to cause an upheaval that would turn organized labor against Senator John Kennedy, thus damaging his quest for the presidency. Ever since the tragic death of his first son, Joe Jr.—a fighter pilot whose plane blew up while transporting explosives during World War II—Papa Joe’s desire to see J.F.K. elected as the first Irish Catholic president of the United States had become his overriding ambition in life. His own personal designs on higher office had been permanently derailed long ago, during his disastrous tenure as ambassador to England, so Kennedy had transferred his hopes to his children, becoming for them the ultimate man behind the man, cajoling and manipulating with the skill of a master puppeteer.

  The emotional force Papa Joe exhibited when arguing against Bobby’s potentially damaging decision to oversee the McClellan investigation was no surprise to those who knew him—nor was the rigidity of his son’s counterargument. To even his best friends, Bobby was known at times to be a “stubborn bastard.” In the weeks that followed Bobby’s Christmas announcement, Joe enlisted some of his son’s closest mentors and advisers to try to talk him out of it to no avail. Bobby held his ground.

  R.F.K.’s decision to proceed as planned caused a rift between father and son that continued over the next two years. The rift was regrettable but expected, given Joe Kennedy’s proprietary interest in seeing J.F.K. ascend to the presidency. Most everyone who knew Papa Joe accepted his argument at face value: He was against Bobby’s involvement in a crusade against organized crime because it would “stir up a hornet’s nest” that might hurt John’s chances. But there was more to this argument than the elder Kennedy was able to fully vocalize at the time.

  Papa Joe knew that chasing after mobsters was not like chasing communists, as both Bobby and John had done during the McCarthy hearings. Chasing “Reds” had been like shooting fish in a barrel; communists were social pariahs, with no one to advocate on their behalf. Mobsters, however, tended to strike back. They created corrupt, subterranean alliances that could destroy careers, resorted to violent intimidation, or sought revenge through sensational acts of murder and mayhem.

  At the very least, taking on the mob was messy business. Joe Kennedy knew this intuitively and from firsthand experience, not because he read it in a book or heard it through the grapevine. Although very few people, not even members of his own family, were cognizant of it at the time, Joe Kennedy’s rise to power was riddled with potentially compromising underworld alliances. Kennedy had been dealing with mobsters nearly his entire adult life. By and large, they had served him well. He had amassed millions of dollars, in part, by cultivating certain nefarious relationships. Were these relationships to become known, they would destroy the hopes and dreams he had for his family. This was, in effect, Papa Joe’s dirty little secret. For decades, he had been not only the patriarch of an attractive and politically ambitious Irish clan, but also, in a number of interesting ways, the patriarch of the entire Irish American underworld.

  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Whiskey Baron

  In the nearly forty years since Joseph P. Kennedy’s death in 1969, a more complete portrait of the man’s life has slowly emerged. It has taken this long partly because Kennedy shrouded his personal and professional activities behind a veil of secrecy. Even today, the official record is carefully sanitized. Voluminous FBI records released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) are comprised mostly of innocuous security reviews and fawning letters between Kennedy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. There is no mention of Kennedy’s associations with organized crime figures. FBI communiqués about Kennedy’s links to mobsters have come to light in recent years, leaked to various biographers and investigative reporters, but they are not part of the official file. For a more well-rounded profile of the man, we have a library full of memoirs and remembrances from nonofficial sources, people who knew Kennedy or were directly affected by his actions throughout history.

  According to those who knew or did business with the man, Kennedy’s involvement with gangsters began, not surprisingly, with Prohibition. The Kennedy family fortune, which Joe inherited as the oldest son of five-time Massachusetts representative and state senator Patrick Joseph “P. J.” Kennedy, made it possible for the young businessman to dabble in banking and shipbuilding before the onset of Prohibition in 1919. As the full dimensions of the Volstead Act became apparent, enterprising entrepreneurs like Kennedy were in the right place at the right time. With his family fortune and money he made from the stock market, Joe had the capital. He also had the contacts. His father’s political career had been largely financed by the Boston liquor lobby, and his father-in-law, John F. Fitzgerald, was a Boston saloon keeper who rose to become the city’s highly popular mayor and served proudly in local politics from 1892 to 1919.

  In accounts of his life, Joe Kennedy is sometimes called a bootlegger, which is not exactly accurate. The term itself comes from old-time moon-shiners hiding flask bottles of whiskey in their boots and refers to the process of distribution. Kennedy was more precisely a rum runner or whiskey baron—an importer and wholesaler. He purchased large quantities of alcohol, mostly Scotch, from England or Canada and facilitated its shipment along Rum Row. The booze was usually transferred from Nova Scotia to the Eastern Seaboard, where it was off-loaded under cover of darkness along the Massachusetts or Rhode Island coastline or somewhere in Long Island, New York. The bootleggers and crime syndicates took over from there. There were literally thousands of bootleggers in operation during Prohibition, but there were very few overseers like Joe Kennedy, who supplied the suppliers and kept up the steady flow of product that made the entire booze racket possible.

  The relationships Kennedy forged through whiskey smuggling were the same types of alliances he depended on at various stages throughout his career. In the fledgling movie business, in real estate, and in politics, the scion of the Kennedy clan did not hesitate to utilize the influence of the underworld as an edge in his professional life. He understood how spheres of power interacted in big-city America. Kennedy gained this knowledge at the knee of his father and later from his father-in-law, “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, a quintessential Irish pol who sang “Sweet Adeline” at campaign stops and seemed politically invincible until he was forced to relinquish his hold on the mayoralty because of a sex scandal.

  In biographies and other accounts of the Kennedy clan, Papa Joe is often described as having been tough and ruthless in his business dealings. In fact, he was probably no more ruthless than the Cabots, t
he Lodges, and other Brahmin family dynasties of his Boston youth. He was certainly no more ruthless than American industrialists like J. P. Morgan and Henry Ford who used violent strikebreaker squads and labor espionage to keep workers in their places. In the early years of the twentieth century, for a man to rise to a level of corporate esteem, the ability to play hardball was highly valued. What Kennedy also possessed in abundance was an inherent sociability and charm, the byproduct of a vibrant cultural heritage.

  Joseph Patrick Kennedy was born on September 6, 1888, at a time when Boston was fiercely divided between New England’s entrenched Yankee aristocracy, the Brahmins, and the growing mass of Irish immigrants who had been flooding into the city since at least the 1840s. Boston, more than any other city, became a center of hostility between native-born Protestants and Irish Catholics. The Know-Nothing Movement achieved its highest level of electoral success in Boston, where church burnings and other acts of intimidation against Catholics were part of the city’s heritage.

  The most famous attack was the torching of the Ursuline Convent in 1834. A small group of nuns operated the convent as a boarding school for children of local families. The nuns and children were chased from the building by a Protestant mob, and the convent was burned to the ground. Eight people were eventually brought to trial for the capital offense of arson, but they were all acquitted, a verdict that was greeted with cheers of delight by their supporters. For Irish immigrants throughout the United States and especially in Boston, the burning of the Ursuline Convent and its aftermath was a watershed event in the history of anti-Catholic bigotry.

  By the end of the century, the Irish had grown in significant enough numbers to overwhelm the Know-Nothings and ensure that there would be no more church burnings. By 1900, Irish immigrants and Irish Americans represented more than a third of the city’s population and acquired clout in all of the typical areas of employment—police, firefighting, saloons, and politics—but were still relegated mostly to ghetto neighborhoods in the North End, Charlestown, and South Boston.