Once Upon a Time in New York

by Herbert Mitgang

  Mr. Walker has a singularly alert intelligence. He is quick not only in epigram and repartee, but in grasp of the essentials of a governmental problem laid before him. Probably no man in New York better understands its public business. What has been done, Mr. Walker has at the end of his fingers; what should be done at the end of his tongue. His versatility, his ingenuity in finding ways out of difficulties, his swift dispatch of affairs demanding his attention, his adroitness in dealing with opposition and in composing controversies—all these are high qualities in a public servant and should equip him for a most useful career.

  After this extravagant introduction to Walker’s instincts and talents, the anonymous Times editorial writer let the other shoe drop and said what he (there were no women on the editorial board then) really meant to say:

  What has been lacking has been the steady application of uncommon abilities to the uncommonly complicated and arduous work of the office. The city has stood by and seen, as it were, great powers going to waste. Citizens have not so much minded Mr. Walker’s frequent absences, or his obvious delight in the social side of life, but they have regretted that he has not devoted himself more exclusively and sternly to the big job placed in his hands. Everybody who knows Mr. Walker well is confident that he has in him the makings of a remarkable chief magistrate of this city. The Mayor that he has been gives only a hint of the Mayor that he might be.

  As for La Guardia, The Times noted that he was a worthwhile legislator with a strong record in Congress, a New Yorker who was close to his constituents, and a onetime president of the Board of Aldermen with a knowledge of city affairs. But as usual he was running as a Republican, and the newspaper, which normally leaned toward incumbent Democrats, did not break ranks with its independent electoral history and endorse him.

  Republican party enrollment citywide was less than half that of the Democrats. Running against the odds, La Guardia accused Walker of playing by the Tammany rules. He even claimed that the mayor and the police department knew who had killed Arnold Rothstein but did nothing to bring the murderer before the bar of justice. Despite La Guardia’s strong campaign—he spoke Yiddish in Brooklyn’s Jewish neighborhoods and Italian in Manhattan’s Little Italy—Mayor Walker won by better than a two-to-one margin, 865,000 to 368,000, with Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate, receiving 175,000 votes.

  Walker’s humor had often saved the day (and night) during the campaign. When La Guardia attacked him for getting his salary raised from $25,000 to $40,000 a year, he responded: “Why, that’s cheap! Think what it would cost if I worked full time!”

  Tammany leaders celebrated his victory with block parties and Walker visited the clubhouses to thank his supporters. On the quiet, he lifted a glass with old friends. His favorite drink was champagne or a Black Velvet, a mixture of champagne and Guinness stout.

  For La Guardia, the defeat was only temporary; his career was destined to blossom again. “To the victor belongs the responsibility for good government,” the Little Flower said. Although badly defeated, he had helped to open a window on corruption and Tammany’s role in city affairs.

  Walker said, “I hope this will be the last of the time-worn, moth-eaten imaginary slogan, ‘anti-Tammany.’ ” But it would be his last run for public office before human termites were discovered undermining the foundations of City Hall.

  Even some Democratic politicians worried about Jimmy Walker as mayor, not so much because of his lifestyle, though it demanded greater financial resources than he earned legitimately, but because of his inability to guard against the greed of others. They recognized Walker as an attractive vote-getter who was exalted by the electorate, yet harbored friendly doubts about him.

  One of the most powerful doubters was Edward J. Flynn, the man to see in the Bronx, whose background was similar to Walker’s: he was a son of Irish immigrants, a graduate of Fordham Law School, an attorney, and a state assemblyman. After a move to make him president of the Board of Aldermen collapsed, he became sheriff of Bronx County, a sinecure that operated under a fee system: the sheriff and his underlings collected fees for serving numerous writs and other court papers.

  The sheriff’s office was ideal training for the spoils system and advancement to county leader. In effect, Flynn became political boss of the Bronx, with the advice and consent of Tammany Hall in Manhattan. Unlike some of his confreres in the Wigwam on Union Square, he was generally respected by his constituents.

  Boss Flynn observed Jimmy Walker at close range for many years. His assessment of the mayor’s character was as perceptive as Governor Al Smith’s. Flynn regarded Walker with a mixture of warmth and despair.

  “No one in New York politics was more personable or more generally liked than Jimmy Walker. No one could become really angry with him. When, as frequently happened in my relations with him, he would do something that annoyed me, I found that his manner was so boyishly disarming that my resentment usually evaporated. This was a beguiling characteristic, but one which was destined ultimately to give him much trouble. Many of the people who surrounded him were superficial and rapacious. He found it hard to believe that any of his friends were bad—or even wrong. In the end, Jimmy became the victim of some of these so-called ‘friends.’ ”

  In retrospect, Flynn had to admit that during the Walker administration New York had “the worst example of the ‘spoils system’ that could be imagined.”

  As a Democratic leader, Flynn was of a higher caliber than the political bosses who ruled the boodle departments in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Governor Roosevelt appointed Flynn his secretary of state in Albany, and he remained a close political ally of the future president.

  To be sure, there were early indications that Jimmy Walker was on the take to support his expensive habits, which included making improvements on his home. One of his favorite millionaires, Jules Mastbaum, quietly paid for the repairs on his house on St Luke’s Place. “Go ahead and fix up the place and send me the bill,” Walker’s generous friend offered. The cost was $25,000. It was later discovered that Mastbaum had also been an intermediary in a deal that got the Mayor $26,500 in bonds and involved a payoff for a public transportation franchise.

  Another one of Walker’s fawning millionaires, A. C. Blumenthal, a man-about-town and theatrical producer, put his private railway car at the mayor’s disposal when Walker was invited to make a speech at a dedication of a Confederate army monument in Georgia. It was never made clear why Walker was chosen, unless it was for his oratorical skills and ability to please any audience—even if doing so meant playing to their prejudices and rewriting the past.

  Speaking of the Civil War at the ceremony, Mayor Walker cast the bloody conflict in terms the audience wanted to hear:

  “It was a real he-war, and it was predicated largely upon the theory that some men held in respect to the sovereign rights of the individual states. The South of the sixties of the last century fought for states’ rights, and today, in the twentieth century, I believe you gave up the fight too soon.”

  The audience cheered his remarks. At a banquet afterward, Mayor Walker spoke of his affection for his beloved father and for General Robert E. Lee, somehow linking them in his pantheon of heroes.

  The New York Herald Tribune was unimpressed by Walker’s junkets or by his ready excuse that he was “working” as a “goodwill ambassador” for the city. In an editorial comment, the newspaper noted that, during his first two years in office, the mayor had spent 143 days out of New York, visiting Hollywood, Houston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Florida, Louisville (for the Kentucky Derby), Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, and Dublin, with a few side trips to Bermuda and Havana.

  Nearly one year later, Walker’s total days spent away from his office would be higher, and he still seemed very secure. When he appeared in a self-aggrandizing film, The New York Times reported: “The Mayor, with grace and ease many a movie star might envy, played the principal role in a Movietone production of ‘Building with Walker,’ produced in the open air at Bro
adway and 47th Street. The Mayor’s monologue, which might have been entitled ‘My City,’ was followed by scenes of subway construction, with steam-shovel accompaniment, interspersed with musical interludes by a band.”

  In November 1928, just after Arnold Rothstein lost his life, Alfred E. Smith was defeated in his campaign for president by Herbert Hoover. And though Franklin D. Roosevelt won the governership by a narrow plurality of 29,000 votes against Albert Ottinger, his Republican opponent, what counted to Tammany Hall was that the legislature in Albany was now Republican in both houses.

  With Roosevelt in the governor’s chair, the reformers were on the march. In his first inaugural address, on January 1, 1929, Roosevelt graciously praised his predecessor, Alfred E. Smith, as a “public servant of true greatness” and then pledged that the state would not become involved in “partisan politics” during his administration. The next day, in his first annual message to the legislature, Roosevelt began to outline his programs.

  His words foretold the vastly larger-scaled National Recovery Act, which he would establish during his first term in the White House.

  Roosevelt expressed concern for the alarming number of farms abandoned because of the agricultural depression that had existed since 1920. He proposed a fairer adjustment of assessments and taxes to help family-owned farms exist. Both the farmer and the consumer would gain, he said, if “the problem of distribution” could be solved.

  Then Roosevelt addressed the needs of working men and women in the cities and towns. “When I consider the extraordinary progress which has been made in labor and social legislation,” he said, “I am reminded of the fact that eighteen years ago, when I was a member of the legislature, any person advocating a large part of the laws which have been enacted would have been called a dangerous radical.” (That—and worse—is exactly what he was branded in Albany and Washington.) But, Roosevelt added, criticism was the price that had to be paid for social progress throughout history.

  “While much has been accomplished so far, we cannot stand still, and I recommend to you the following program which I believe to be the needs of the day:

  “A real eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week for women and children in industry.

  “The establishment for them of an advisory minimum or fair wage board.

  “The extension of workmen’s compensation to give its benefits to all occupational diseases.

  “The continuation of such provisions of the emergency rent laws as are necessary.

  “Declaration by law that the labor of a human being is not a commodity or an article of commerce.”

  This last recommendation was not so much a legal remedy as a philosophical expression of sympathy for people who worked with their hands—a Rooseveltian Emancipation Proclamation for labor in the twentieth century.

  As the Depression struck the nation in October 1929, Governor Roosevelt’s programs to improve working conditions and aid the unemployed were enacted. In his last annual message to the legislature before he moved on to Washington, Governor Roosevelt expressed for the state a commitment that would later resound for the country:

  “The actual present conditions of life which face at least two millions of the citizens of our State compel a reiteration of the principle to which we are committed—that the people of the State of New York cannot allow any individuals within her borders to go unfed, unclothed, or unsheltered. From that fundamental springs all the work of relief now in progress.”

  In Manhattan, another story was slowly beginning to surface that threatened the stability of government and the public’s belief in the integrity of some of their officials.

  Yet even while rumbles of discontent with City Hall were heard in the broadsheet newspapers, Jimmy Walker himself still remained the prodigal son of Tammany’s Sachems. Occasional questions were raised about his personal and ceremonial activities, but he remained popular with the tabloids and the electorate. Few citizens—or journalists—were aware of the degree of corruption that existed inside the municipal government.

  Scandal was in the air, but the majority of the people believed it had nothing to do with their own Jimsie. Only half in jest, an unnamed crony of the mayor was quoted as saying, sotto voce, “One thing about Jimmy, he may steal a dime, but he’ll always let you take a penny.”

  The Tammany Sachems and their loyalists still gathered in their new Wigwam on Union Square, confident that nothing would change in the Democratic-controlled precincts of the city. So, raising mugs of bootleg beer, the party faithful sang their ancient theme song:

  Tammany, Tammany,

  Swamp ’em, swamp ’em

  Get the wampum,

  Taammanee!

  But Jimmy Walker’s rhinestone world was about to be exposed to daylight by the Goo-Goos, by the Seabury investigation, and, to Tammany’s surprise, by Governor Roosevelt himself.

  FOUR

  Night Mayor of New York

  New Yorkers adored Mayor James J. Walker. He was one of them: a hometown boy, part Kilkenny sentimentalist, part Greenwich Village boulevardier, an Irish charmer with the gift of gab who was good for a laugh at his own expense—and theirs. Among his many contributions to political and human discourse were some memorable one-liners:

  “I’m trying to find out if Diogenes was on the level.”

  “No girl was ever ruined by a book.”

  “There are two places where politicians end up, the farm or the breadline. I am a farmer—at the moment.”

  “A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.”

  Tammany Hall, too, admired Jimmy Walker. He was electable, he didn’t rock the boat, and he played by their rules.

  True, he spent his nighttime hours with the bobbed-hair beauties in the Ziegfeld Follies and his daytime hours greeting celebrities on the steps of City Hall—or on longer and longer vacations away from his clean desk.

  At least, he believed in live-and-let-live for the city’s working stiffs, all those noble straphangers clinging for dear life on the BMT and IRT lines. He was aware that the United States was a nation of immigrants, that New York was the cultural capital of the country, and that Broadway and Forty-second Street was the crossroads of the world.

  No one could accuse him of intolerance toward the electorate. He respected the rainbow of colors and mosaic of religions living in the balkanized enclaves of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. After an average forty-eight-hour workweek, it was still only a Buffalo-nickel ride for people on the subway, the elevated, the trolley, or the ferry all the way to the end of the line and home again, and he was mayor for all of them.

  When speaking of his youth growing up in Greenwich Village, on a square between Seventh Avenue and Hudson Street called St. Luke’s Place, he waxed sentimental:

  “I saw the skyline grow, and I saw the city grow, and sometimes I wonder if it was worth the price we paid. In those days we did not need interracial movements or goodwill groups. Then a neighborhood group meant so much.

  “Here in the most cosmopolitan community since the beginning of time, a city composed of sons and daughters of every one of the forty-eight states, and with men and women from every country in the civilized world, we worked together. Here where there were and are more Irishmen than in Dublin, more Germans than in any city other than Berlin, and more Jews than in Palestine—here we lived together in peace, like one great family, and should so live today and tomorrow.

  “We all went to school together, went to work together, and to the theater and to the fields of sport—with little rancor, no real hatred. We lived like human beings, who asked only the opportunity to work out our earthly existence and worship our God according to the dictates of our conscience.”

  Elected mayor at the age of forty-five in 1925, Walker wore the big town’s heart on his hand-tailored sleeve. He was a dude for all seasons who always dressed to kill. The sidewalks of New York resounded beneath his pointy-toed black shoes, which were carefully cradled
in four-button gray spats. He loved to lead a parade up Fifth Avenue—or any other street where the crowds could cheer him as he smiled and waved his shiny silk topper.

  Jimmy Walker’s wardrobe was very much a part of his personality and theatricality in office. He changed his outfit three times a day—twice during office hours and once again for his nighttime peregrinations. Various matching outfits were parked in different places for quick changeovers: his tailor’s shop at the Ritz-Carlton, at City Hall, and wherever he slept that evening.

  Ever since he entered public life, before the Great War, Jimmy Walker had employed a private tailor who cut his suits to order. Jeann Friedman, who had emigrated to the United States from Hungary, designed two basic ensembles for him. The first was called the Hyde Park. It featured a plain jacket with prominent lapels and a pinched waist, a waistcoat, and matching striped trousers. The second, the Biarritz, was deliberately informal but, if anything, even more studied, according to George Walsh, an editor and biographer. It combined a flannel jacket with tweed knickers. In both ensembles, the trousers, which measured exactly ten inches wide at the knees and nine and a quarter inches at the bottom, buttoned directly on his waistcoat so they could hang in a straight line, with no break at the instep.

  “He designed all his clothes and he was a tailor’s dream,” Mr. Friedman said. “Whenever he needed a dressing gown or pajamas, I would accompany him to Sulka’s and help him supervise his own design for these garments.”

  Undoubtedly, the cost of Walker’s wardobe alone exceeded his yearly salary as a state senator or as mayor of New York.

  “There is no law to define the kind of clothes a Mayor must wear,” Jimmy Walker said, criticizing his critics. “If I thought that I might serve the taxpayers better by appearing at City Hall clad in overalls, or even a snood, I should do so. But until we have an ordinance to the contrary, I shall bathe frequently, as is my custom, and change my linen often, as is my perhaps eccentric desire, and patronize the tailor of my own choice.”