Once Upon a Time in New York

by Herbert Mitgang

  In the contests for president and governor, Roosevelt had everything going for him: The Depression demanded a change in leadership; he had the Roosevelt family’s name recognition and popularity; and he had shown himself to be above the corruption of the city. Despite this last, Tammany worked hard for his ticket. Across the country, in the crucial two months before election day, F.D.R. was perceived as a strong but fair advocate against dishonesty in government. With his own brilliant political instincts, and a superb staff of strategists, he had managed to take on a symbol of Tammany misbehavior and, at the same time, succeeded in enlisting Tammany Hall on his side. Roosevelt and Lehman won by wide margins.

  To be sure, the times were ripe for the right man. Roosevelt’s running mate, Cactus Jack Garner, had confidently told him, “All you’ve got to do to be elected is stay alive.” Hoover had done little to fight the Depression and, fairly or not, he was singularly blamed for it.

  In a coast-to-coast campaign, F.D.R. promised unemployment relief, repeal of Prohibition, lower tariffs and (in a contradiction that foreshadowed Ronald Reagan’s budget promises) a cut in Hoover’s excessive deficit spending. What Roosevelt confronted were more depressing numbers than faced any twentieth-century president: fourteen million jobless and tens of millions more living marginally. He preached a politics of public relief to make up for the shortcomings of private corporations, which he attacked as much as he did his Republican opponent for failure to do something about unemployment. “I do not believe that in the name of that sacred word, individualism,” Roosevelt said, “a few powerful interests should be permitted to make industrial cannon fodder of the lives of half the population of the United States.”

  Today, Roosevelt’s words sound not simply liberal but positively radical. He lamented the fact that about six hundred corporations controlled two-thirds of American industry. He called for “distributing wealth and products more equitably.” Inevitably, Hoover and the conservative Republican press attacked him as an “agent of revolution.” Indeed, they were right: the New Deal wrought a revolution in American economic and social life for the remainder of the twentieth century (only President Reagan attempted to reverse some of the New Deal benefits—unsuccessfully).

  F.D.R. carried all but six states and won by a popular vote of 22,809,638 to Hoover’s 15,758,901. Norman Thomas, the Socialist party candidate, attained 881,951 votes. William Z. Foster, the Communist party candidate, received 102,785.

  “No cosmic dramatist,” wrote Robert E. Sherwood, the playwright and future F.D.R. speechwriter, “could possibly devise a better entrance for a new President—or a new Dictator, or a new Messiah—than that accorded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

  After the election, on December 27, 1932, Judge Seabury filed his final report: “In the Matter of the Investigation of the Departments of the Government of the City of New York.” His salutation simply read, “Sirs.” Privately, he told his friends he would not address the legislators as “Gentlemen” because that would be inaccurate. As a courtesy, he sent a copy to President-elect Roosevelt “with kind personal regards and best wishes for a Happy New Year.”

  The report summarized his findings of corruption by city officials but was mainly devoted to a review of the case against the former mayor. Seabury said that Walker was a person of questionable credibility whose career had been “an affront to New York’s citizens” and who had resigned “to avoid being removed.”

  The notorious Paul Block brokerage account from which Walker drew $250,000 in profits although he had invested nothing and been absolved by his benefactor from all risk was again emphasized, as it had been during the Albany hearings. It was in this connection that the name of Betty Compton found its way into the record. Referring to a $7,500 check drawn out of the account “to a person who, before the State legislative committee, was called the ‘unnamed person,’ ” the report noted:

  “While the hearings before the Governor were in progress, Mayor Walker disclosed that the person who had received this check was Betty Compton. This fact was widely published, and no further reason exists for referring to her as the ‘unnamed person.’ The principal significance lies in the fact that the payee is the same person with whom several financial transactions were cleared through the bank and brokerage accounts carried in Sherwood’s name.”

  Russell T. Sherwood—still a fugitive from justice, somewhere in Mexico—handled Walker’s personal business transactions and shared a safe-deposit box with him. Betty Compton was one of the beneficiaries of this secret account, which at one time or another held nearly a million dollars. In addition to the $7,500 check, a $16,500 letter of credit was purchased for her, and Sherwood gave her about $42,000 in bonds and securities.

  “The City of New York has been relieved of the presence of a Mayor whose career was an affront to its citizens, but it is with a sense of shame that we must admit those who were responsible for him still control the government of the greatest city in the world,” Seabury concluded. “How long this will continue rests primarily with the legislature of the State, in whose power it lies to grant or withhold from the people of the city a measure of freedom at least sufficient to accord them the opportunity, by revision of the city’s charter, to secure a better government.”

  President-elect Roosevelt delivered his last word about Tammany corruption and the mayor on December 29,1932. He didn’t twist the knife in Jimmy Walker’s mortal wound but instead established a record for future governors.

  The official statement for his successors in Albany contained neither self-justification nor vindictiveness toward the ex-mayor. Walker was far from City Hall—in fact, he was back in Europe with Betty Compton—when Roosevelt issued what amounted to a memorandum for the files.

  “The purpose of this memorandum is to record for convenient reference the proceedings incidental to the hearing,” he wrote, “including the controversies that arose during its progress relative to the Governor’s power of removal and to his conduct of the inquiry.”

  After summarizing the events that led to the Executive Chamber in Albany, Roosevelt said that, ordinarily, the mayor’s resignation would render any report unnecessary. But in this case, the governor’s right to remove the mayor of the City of New York had been challenged. That made it necessary to cite the precedents in constitutional history behind Governor Roosevelt’s jurisdiction.

  “It is to maintain the principle of accountability to the State, against wrongdoing by Government officials, that the Governor is invested with the power of removal,” the memorandum declared, adding that the governor exercised that power not as a judge or arbitrator but “in the interest of the people of the State of New York.”

  The memorandum referred to the discovery of the Tweed Ring frauds in 1871, a scandal that spurred legislation and judicial decisions upholding the governor’s right of removal. Roosevelt concluded that “the justification for the position taken by the present Governor was actuated by the same consideration which served as guides for his illustrious predecessors, Governors Tilden, Cleveland and Hughes.”

  True to his word, the ex-mayor remained a Democrat but very still during the unexciting special election that brought in John P. O’Brien. As a reward for his devotion to Tammany Hall, Mayor O’Brien was elected a sachem to succeed Walker. The new mayor had once said, “Join Tammany and work for it. Stay loyal. Stay put. Reward will come.” Once again, the Tammany bosses were counting on business as usual.

  Jimmy Walker stayed mainly in seclusion at A. C. Blumenthal’s estate during October. In early November, Betty Compton and her mother arrived in New York, ostensibly to wind up some business affairs. When Miss Compton was asked why she had returned to the city, she coyly said, “To eat oysters.”

  Rumors circulated that Walker and his mistress were preparing to go back to Europe for an indefinite stay. In the background hovered his and Allie Walker’s creditors. “They woo you on the way in and sue you on the way out,” Walker said. All during the investigations, neither
Jimmy nor Allie had given up their stylish living habits. A strong possibility existed that the government would be looking more closely at Walker’s tax returns, scrutinizing the admitted “beneficences” as well as any unreported ones.

  On November 10, 1932, Walker, Betty, and her mother, Mrs. Florence Compton, boarded the Conte Grande for Italy and the French Riviera. They occupied first-class cabins. Who paid for their costly passage, whether Walker had borrowed or received new money from old friends, remained a matter of speculation. Some critics guessed that Walker’s missing accountant had banked money for him abroad, but this allegation was never proved. What is known is that for the next three years, while he and Betty traveled around Europe, they managed to live well.

  Walker told his friend Gene Fowler sentimentally, if not exactly accurately, “I had little more in the way of money than my father possessed when he arrived from Ireland so long ago. I thought of the thrill he must have felt at seeing a much lower skyline than I now looked upon. I saw the skyscrapers, their many windows glowing, then the tip of Manhattan receding. From my side of the ship I could not see the Torch of Liberty. A sad feeling came over me, but New York still seemed an enchantress, even to the eyes of one who was going away.”

  A few months after settling in Nice, Walker telephoned his wife in Florida to say he wanted her to file for divorce. With regret, Allie complied, charging that Jimmy had deserted her in 1928. They never saw or spoke to each other again. Allie ended her days running a religious bookstore at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Miami Beach.

  James J. Walker, age fifty-one, and Betty Compton, age twenty-eight, were married on April 19,1933, in a civil ceremony performed at City Hall by the mayor of Cannes.

  Only days before, Walker had read a New York newspaper clipping that said he might be considered to be living in sin, and unable to receive the sacraments, if he remarried outside the church. The possibility worried him—“I don’t want to be outside looking in,” he wrote to the rector of the American College in Rome. But he didn’t mail the letter. His fears were unfounded; no action was taken against him. He was never excommunicated.

  In 1933, a federal grand jury in New York examined Walker’s income tax returns. The mysterious Russell T. Sherwood turned up after he was given immunity from the contempt-of-court citation issued by the state legislative committee. Loyal to the end, the accountant denied that he had colluded with Walker during the Seabury investigation to avoid providing information about the mayor’s personal finances.

  The case against Walker for tax evasion was dropped in August, several months after his marriage. However, the government continued to check his financial records for another two years, and he was pursued by lawsuits arising from his own and his former wife’s debts. Walker claimed that he lived abroad for health reasons rather than to avoid being hounded by the courts or creditors.

  Most of the time, Walker and Betty stayed in England. Once they visited her birthplace on the Isle of Wight, and Jimmy told reporters that he would like to own a little farm there. However, in his wanderings the Greenwich Village boy proved to be more of a city dweller. While in London, they stayed at the luxurious Park Lane Hotel, facing Hyde Park. Their main base was a modest house in Surrey, near the village of Dorking. From there Walker would take an hour-long train ride into London to meet friends. Sometimes with Betty and sometimes alone, he traveled to Paris, Cannes, Rome, and Venice. Old theatrical acquaintances he encountered at fashionable resorts found him weary and dispirited.

  Finally, in the summer of 1935, Walker received notice that the government was ending its tax case against him. It was the signal the homesick couple had been waiting for. A New York Times editorial on August 31,1935, set a tone of forgiveness: “If and when he comes, he will have a triumphant reception in this city. It would be a kind of opening of hearts and hands for one who always was a popular favorite here.”

  When the Walkers arrived in New York aboard the liner Manhattan on October 31, 1935, boat whistles greeted them in the harbor. Tugboats were hired by the Friars and Grand Street Boys to salute his arrival. Thousands of people cheered the ex-mayor, Betty, and Mrs. Compton as they stepped down the gangplank. Jimmy Walker waved his derby as a loudspeaker played a recording of “Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May.”

  The mayor of New York City was now the feisty Fiorello H. La Guardia. His three terms in office, from 1934 to 1945, coincided with President Roosevelt’s New Deal, covering the era of social reform that ruled the city and the country through the Depression and the end of the Second World War.

  La Guardia ran as both the Republican and City Fusion party candidate for mayor (many New York Democrats couldn’t bear to pull a Republican lever, hence the independent Fusion line on the ballot). His coalition administration linked disillusioned Tammany Democrats, Roosevelt New Dealers, and reformers of various stripes. To those who worried about the fact that he also ran on the Republican line, the enigmatic Fiorello liked to describe himself as a Lincoln Republican. No one could say with certainty where Lincoln would have stood on the complex issues facing Roosevelt, but the sixteenth president’s name was magical on the hustings.

  After Walker’s downfall, the 1933 election of the flamboyant half-Italian, half-Jewish ex-congressman from East Harlem puzzled many New Yorkers. Judge Seabury had practically had veto power over the mayoralty ever since his investigation. Indeed, the nomination had first been offered to him, but he declined to run.

  Why did Seabury handpick La Guardia?

  “Because he’s absolutely honest, he’s a man of great courage, and he can win,” Judge Seabury said. He might have added that both had nurtured a longtime enmity toward Tammany Hall. At political rallies, Republican and Fusion party balladeers parodied the Tammany theme song:

  Tammany, Tammany,

  Better stay in your tepee,

  Watch a Fusion victory,

  Tammany, Tammany,

  Crack ‘em, smack ‘em, rock ‘em, sock ‘em,

  Tammany!

  In his first successful run for mayor, La Guardia handily defeated his two opponents: Mayor John O’Brien, who was Boss Curry’s regular Democratic candidate, and Joseph McKee, the former acting mayor, who ran on the Recovery party ticket. After his election, La Guardia chose to be sworn in as mayor in Judge Seabury’s home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and he did so both times he was reelected.

  During his three terms in office, La Guardia did more than read the Sunday comics during a newspaper strike, chase fire engines in his borrowed fireman’s hat, and conduct orchestras whenever he was handed a baton. He restored the city’s credit during the Depression; unified the transit system; built small parks, cleared slums, and began low-cost housing; and reorganized the police and sanitation departments. Although La Guardia cut a few corners and infuriated some of his subordinates, he filled important jobs with qualified individuals who were attracted to his clean administration.

  Like F.D.R. in Washington, the Little Flower lifted the spirits of the citizens and gave New York City soul.

  After returning to New York, Jimmy and Betty rented an apartment in a nondescript building at 132 East Seventy-second Street, off Lexington Avenue, and settled down to a relatively quiet life. They adopted two children. He spent time with friends at the Friars and the Grand Street Boys, spoke at charitable functions, and devoted more time to his family. His financial condition was still something of a mystery.

  When some of his friends in the state Senate urged him to run for office again, Walker replied, “I did my very best and the record must tell the story. I have no vindictiveness and no ill feelings.” Although he made it clear that he was through with politics, he openly supported President Roosevelt’s policies and reelection campaigns.

  In what was interpreted as a crack against his old mentor, Al Smith, and the right-wing Liberty League, with which Smith had affiliated himself, Walker said, “President Roosevelt has become the symbol of liberalism as opposed to reaction. Reacti
on goes hand-in-hand with racial and religious bigotry and with anti-Semitism. I shall always be on the side of the masses against their oppressors.”

  James A. Farley—now President Roosevelt’s postmaster general—arranged for Walker to pay a social call at the White House in May 1938. The visit amounted to an imprimatur for the tarnished ex-mayor. Even during the investigations that had brought him down, he and Farley had remained good friends. While Walker lived abroad in self-imposed exile, Roosevelt had often asked Farley how he was faring. Despite the hearings and the harsh words that followed, Farley said, the president had always liked Walker as a person. They had known each other since before the First World War, when both were New York State senators.

  Shortly after Walker’s White House visit, Mayor La Guardia invited him in for a talk at City Hall. As he emerged afterward, Walker wisecracked to reporters, “We were trying to find out if Diogenes was on the level.” Walker graciously called the Little Flower the greatest mayor in the city’s history.

  In a gesture that was almost universally admired, Mayor La Guardia appointed Jimmy Walker as impartial chairman of the garment industry at a salary of $20,000 a year, plus $5,000 for expenses. Judge Seabury interpreted the mayor’s appointment as an attempt to gain voters for Roosevelt’s third term among New Yorkers who still admired Walker. La Guardia replied, “The Walker selection by the dress industry is not an issue in this campaign. Coming from Judge Seabury, a man I admire so much and am so fond of, it hurts me personally.” They soon reconciled.

  People on both sides of the negotiating table agreed that Walker did a creditable job settling labor disputes.