Joseph P. Kennedy Presents Read online

  ALSO BY CARI BEAUCHAMP

  Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

  Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters

  from Inside the Studios of the 1920s

  Anita Loos Rediscovered

  Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival

  (with Henri Béhar)

  For Tom Flynn

  All arrogance will reap a harvest rich in tears. God calls men to a heavy reckoning for overweening pride.

  — HERODOTUS (underlined by Robert Kennedy

  in his copy of Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way)

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  1. “America's Youngest Bank President”

  2. “This Is Another Telephone”

  3. “I Have Just Reorganized the Company”

  4. “Fight like Hell to Win”

  5. “We Have Valued Your Advice and Assistance”

  6. “I'm Beginning to Think I'm a ‘Picture Man’”

  7. “I Never Needed a Vacation Less”

  8. “The Inner Cabinet of the Film Industry”

  9. “All Records Have Been Broken”

  10. “The Reigning Queen of the Movies”

  11. “Together We Could Make Millions”

  12. “Like a Roped Horse”

  13. “Industry Wide Influence and Respect”

  14. “I Have Gone into the Vaudeville Game”

  15. “Another Big Deal in Prospect”

  16. “You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet”

  17. “Swinging the Axe”

  18. “Now He's Back and Almost Anything May Happen”

  19. “The Dollar Sign Implanted in His Heart”

  20. “Gilding the Manure Pile”

  21. “Give Our Love to Gloria”

  22. “Having Tea with His Wife and My Husband and the Vicar”

  23. “Things Are Bad Enough Here”

  24. “A Good Trick If You Can Do It”

  25. “I Am Now Definitely Out of the Motion Picture Industry”

  26. “The Richest Irish American in the World”

  27. “Wall Street Awaits Kennedy's Findings”

  28. “The Embers of Terror, Isolationism, and Racism”

  Epilogue: “The First and Only Outsider to Fleece Hollywood”

  Author's Note

  Notes

  Bibliography

  5 Joseph P. Kennedy with his sisters, Loretta and Margaret, 1895. (Courtesy the JFK Library Foundation)

  6 Up front and in the middle, president of his graduating class of Boston Latin, 1908. (JFK Library)

  9 Rose (third from left) and Joe (second from right), Maine, 1907. (JFK Library)

  14 America's youngest bank president, 1914. (Courtesy the author)

  15 Rose in her wedding dress, 1914. (JFK Library)

  17 On the porch with Joe Junior, 1916. (JFK Library Foundation)

  18 Young Guy Currier. (Courtesy Anne Anable)

  28 Joe and Eddie Moore at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, 1921. (JFK Library)

  29 Betty Compson. (AMPAS)

  48 Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer, and Will Hays, 1925. (MOMA)

  52 Frances Marion. (Courtesy the author)

  56 Mary and P. J. Kennedy flanked by their daughters, Margaret and Loretta. (JFK Library Foundation)

  58 Joe Schnitzer. (AMPAS)

  70 E. B. Derr. (Bison Archives)

  72 Charlie Sullivan. (Bison Archives)

  77 FBO's main office. (Bison Archives)

  78 Kennedy at his first FBO sales convention dinner, 1926. (Bison Archives)

  79 Fred Thomson and Silver King. (Courtesy the author)

  81 Fred Thomson with crew. (Courtesy the author)

  83 Edwin King, Kennedy's first FBO production chief. (Bison Archives)

  86 In spite of his vow to produce only family fare, many titles, such as Rose of the Tenements, promised a sexier aura. (Courtesy the author)

  90 Fred Thomson. (Courtesy the author)

  91 Kennedy and Thomson seal the deal. (Courtesy the author)

  96 With Adolph Zukor at Harvard, 1927. (Courtesy the author)

  98 William LeBaron. (AMPAS)

  101 Aerial view of the Thomson estate. (Courtesy Edgar Wyatt)

  102 With Fred Thomson and Frances Marion at their home. (JFK Library)

  110 Gloria Swanson. (Courtesy the author)

  117 Gloria Swanson as Sadie Thompson. (Courtesy Photofest)

  124 Joe Schenck, Norma Talmadge, and Rudy Valentino, 1926. (MOMA)

  126 The Kennedy family Christmas card, 1927. (JFK Library)

  137 Joe Schnitzer (center), Bill LeBaron, and E. B. Derr celebrating Kennedy's “Jubilee” of two years heading FBO. (Bison Archives)

  140 David Sarnoff (AMPAS)

  150 Downtown Culver City, 1928. (Courtesy the author)

  152 Cecil B. De Mille with his screenwriter Jeanie Macpherson. (Courtesy the author)

  153 El Mirador, Palm Springs, 1928. (Courtesy Margery Baragona)

  159 Gloria Swanson's Beverly Hills estate. (Courtesy the author)

  160 Joe talks straight to theater owners. (Courtesy Marvin Paige)

  161 Erich von Stroheim. (AMPAS) 170 Edward Albee. (Bison Archives)

  177 Welcoming Tom Mix to FBO, 1928. (JFK Library)

  181 Benjamin Glazer. (Bison Archives)

  182 Paul Bern. (AMPAS)

  188 With Jesse Lasky of Paramount, 1927. (Bison Archives)

  192 Cecil B. De Mille directing The Godless Girl. (AMPAS)

  195 His first big spread in Photoplay as a “Famous Film Magnate,” 1927. (Courtesy Kevin Brownlow)

  199 First National Administration Building. (Bison Archives)

  205 Spyros Skouras. (Bison Archives)

  206 Barney Balaban. (AMPAS)

  210 Aerial view of First National. (Bison Archives)

  212 Kennedy and the Marquis de la Falaise, September 1928. (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin)

  217 Gloria Swanson on the cover of Photoplay, September 1928. (Courtesy the author)

  227 Gloria Swanson's character in Queen Kelly meets her Prince for the first time. (AMPAS)

  232 Gloria with her husband, the Marquis de la Falaise, on the set of Queen Kelly. (Courtesy the author)

  234 Fred Thomson and his sons, Richard and Fred Junior. (Courtesy Carson Thomson)

  246 Tully Marshall in Queen Kelly. (Courtesy Photofest)

  249 Seena Owen as the Queen whipping Swanson in Queen Kelly. (Courtesy the author)

  259 Gloria was back in satin and lace for The Trespasser. (George Eastman House)

  262 Eddie Goulding directing Swanson in The Trespasser. (JFK Library)

  266 Constance Bennett. (AMPAS)

  269 The portrait Joe had painted for over Gloria's mantel, 1929. (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin)

  282 The Trespasser broke box-office records in November 1929. (Courtesy the author)

  296 Alexander Pantages. (Bison Archives)

  297 Eunice Pringle, age seventeen. (Courtesy Marcie Worthington)

  297 Eunice Pringle, age eighty. (Courtesy Marcie Worthington)

  304 Guy Currier months before his death. (Courtesy Anne Anable)

  320 Kennedy even put his name on the music that accompanied his films. (Courtesy the author)

  323 RKO-Pathé Studios. (Bison Archives)

  333 Cover of Time, September 1935.

  345 Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst, mid-1930 s. (Bison Archives)

  347 Surrounded by reporters at the Maritime Commission. (Courtesy the author)

  351 The new ambassador arrives at the White House
. (Courtesy the author)

  352 Rose and five of the children preparing to leave for London, 1938. (Courtesy the author)

  354 Joe and Rose Kennedy with King George and Queen Elizabeth, 1938. (Courtesy the author)

  356 Clare Boothe Luce. (Courtesy Photofest)

  358 Joe with Joe Junior and Jack. (Courtesy the author)

  360 Marlene Dietrich. (Courtesy AMPAS)

  361 With Bobby, Teddy, and Jean at the Hôtel du Cap. (Courtesy the author)

  363 Rose returning alone to the States for a visit, 1939. (Courtesy the author)

  365 Joe's daughter Rosemary with Eddie and Mary Moore. (JFK Library Foundation)

  366 Joe Kennedy relaxing with Damon Runyon and Walter Winchell, Miami, 1939. (Courtesy the author)

  369 Under duress, Joe endorses Roosevelt for a third term. (Courtesy the author)

  373 With his daughter Rosemary. (Courtesy the author)

  378 Joe Junior in September 1939. (Courtesy the author)

  396 A young Marion Davies. (Courtesy the author)

  398 Joe with Rose's niece Ann Gargan, 1960. (Courtesy the author)

  399 President Kennedy with his ailing father, 1962. (Courtesy the author)

  Mention the name Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of America's royal family, and it evokes a mental picture: an older man smiling out from a photograph surrounded by numerous family members, or perhaps he is gaunt and wheelchair-bound, felled by a stroke. Erase those images.

  Visualize, instead, a young man in his mid-thirties, a “wickedly handsome six footer, exuding vitality and roguish charm.” He strides confidently into a room wearing “the most wonderful smile that seemed to light up his entire face,” impressing everyone he met with “his warm handshake and his friendly volubility.” His vibrant energy fuels a head-turning charisma that commands attention. “You felt not just that you were the only one in the room that mattered,” recalls Joan Fontaine, “but the only one in the world.” With bright blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, a frequent laugh, and a tendency to slap his thigh when amused, he is strikingly different from the typical Wall Street banker or studio mogul.

  This is the man who took Hollywood by storm, at one point running four companies simultaneously when no one before or since ran more than one. He was profiled in national magazines and newspapers as a brilliant financial wunderkind, “the most intriguing personality in the motion picture world” and “the person who now monopolizes conversation in the studios and on location.” Kennedy was “the blonde Moses” leading film companies into profitable territory as they faced the pivotal years of converting from silent films to sound. In the process he was instrumental in killing vaudeville. The mystique around him grew so thick that Fortune magazine warned “the legends are so luxuriant that when you see Joe Kennedy you are likely to be startled to find him as plain and matter of fact as he is—a healthy hardy good natured sandy haired Irish family man—athletic, unperplexed, easily pleased, hot tempered, independent and restless as they come.”

  Louella Parsons hailed Joe Kennedy as “the coming Napoleon” of the movies, the white knight with the wherewithal to save film studios by bringing bankers and corporate representatives onto their boards of directors. He was the architect of the mergers that laid the groundwork for today's Hollywood. While even he might be surprised to find that United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Columbia are now all partially owned by the same multinational conglomerate, he was the one who designed that very blueprint.

  Kennedy was the first financier to simply buy a studio. Fortune used the metaphor of a chess game to describe his Hollywood climb: taking “small pawns” such as Robertson-Cole and FBO and methodically knocking down the knights and bishops of Pathé and Keith-Albee-Orpheum to create “the queen of R-K-O” in less than four years. They concluded that “Kennedy moved so fast that opinions still differ as to whether he left a string of reorganized companies or a heap of wreckage behind him.”

  Over one hundred films were released under the banner of “Joseph P. Kennedy Presents” during which time he influenced the careers and personal lives of Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, and the cowboy stars Fred Thomson and Tom Mix, as well as dozens of other investors, executives, and underlings. Kennedy was a multifaceted, magnetic charmer, a devious visionary with exquisite timing and more than a flash of genius. And nothing, including the destruction of other people's careers, deterred his consuming passion to increase his personal bank accounts.

  “Not a half dozen men have been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads,” F. Scott Fitzgerald noted in his final novel, The Last Tycoon. Joe Kennedy was not one of those men, for he had no appreciation of the nuances of storytelling or an ability to spark true creative collaboration. However, to paraphrase Fitzgerald, Kennedy may have been the only one to have the whole economic equation in his head and that is a key to understanding him. He saw everything and everyone, from Gloria Swanson to Adolf Hitler, through a lens of dollars and cents.

  When he first arrived in Hollywood in 1926, no one knew Joe Kennedy as the man he would become; he wasn't that man yet. He was already more than well off, always meticulously dressed and chauffeured in his Rolls-Royce, but he had yet to accumulate his fortune. His wealth was estimated at a little over a million dollars and he would increase that tenfold over the five years he was immersed in the film industry. When Kennedy left Hollywood, “he already had so much money that making the rest of it, which must have been many many millions, was almost a routine affair.”

  He caught the wave at exactly the right moment, and, perhaps more important, the timing of his departure was perfect. By 1932, he was “the richest Irish American in the world,” and while he would continue to build capital through other ventures, it was Hollywood that provided the foundation of his wealth. It was also Hollywood where he learned how to perform as a public personality and where he came to believe that how you were perceived was more important than who you were. The skills and knowledge he gained would affect everything he did and influenced from then on, from how he presented his family to the world to his son's election to the presidency.

  This is the story of those Hollywood years.

  “America s Youngest Bank President”

  (1888-1919)

  The family that Joseph Patrick Kennedy was born into on September 6, 1888, was more comfortable than that of most Boston Irish Catholics. His father, Patrick Joseph (known to everyone as P.J.), was a thirty-year-old member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and his mother, Mary Augusta Hickey Kennedy, was the daughter of a relatively well-to-do family. Although Boston in 1888 was heavily populated by Irish Catholics, it was dominated by the Protestants who had founded it two hundred and fifty years before. John Winthrop and John Cotton, along with the Quincys and the Saltonstalls, had arrived with the strict and codified purpose of establishing their “City upon a Hill.” The churches and schools they had built and their streets and the common ground remained the city's defining touchstones, and their descendants still ruled Boston society. The Irish population had skyrocketed with the potato famines of the late 1840 s, and one of their own was elected mayor in 1885, yet when openings for work were advertised, “Protestant only” or “Irish need not apply” were all too familiar provisos.

  P. J. Kennedy's father, Patrick, had immigrated to Boston from Ireland after the second potato famine in 1848. Unlike those fleeing poverty and starvation in “coffin ships,” Patrick was a younger son of a landed family, and he arrived as a passenger on a scheduled liner. Half of the Boston Irish were tagged as “laborers,” but Patrick was a skilled artisan, much in demand as a cooper, making the kegs and barrels used for storing and shipping everything from china to produce. He married fellow émigrée Bridget Murphy, and they were already the parents of three daughters when PJ. was born on January 15, 1858. A few months later, Patrick died at the age of thirty-five, a victim of cholera or consumption, without leaving a will. Bridget put up the $600 bond the court required for her
to be named executor of Patrick's estate and was left with a home large enough to take in a boarder. Though the story is often told of her working at a notions shop on the docks, she may actually have owned the store. The family was far from wealthy, but P.J.'s older sisters all “married well.” By the time he had finished his schooling in his late teens, P.J. was working on the docks as a stevedore. He soon saved enough to buy his own “lager bar” on Elbow Street in East Boston, and two years later, P.J. joined with a partner to open Kennedy & Quigley's Saloon on Border Street. Then, combining his knowledge of the docks and saloons, he formed his own liquor import company.

  P.J. was firmly established and in his second year in the Massachusetts House of Representatives when he married Mary Hickey in 1887. The following year brought the birth of their first child, and instead of giving him the potential burden of being a “Junior,” Mary reversed her husband's given names and christened the boy Joseph Patrick. “Pat” was a typical Irish name; “Joseph” transcended ethnicity. A daughter, Margaret, was born the next year and then came another son they named Francis. Loretta was born in 1892, completing the family, but Frank died before reaching his third birthday. Just as P.J. had been the revered only boy in an Irish Catholic family of girls, Joe held the same familial rank, made all the more precious by the loss of Frank. And this time it was in a household with an assured income and a very successful, very present father.

  When Joe was four, P.J. became a founding partner in Columbia Trust, an East Boston bank created to serve the growing ethnically mixed neighborhood. That same year, he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, but in turn-of-the-century Boston, power was exercised more overtly in the precincts than in the statehouse. Being a ward boss in East Boston meant “running a pocket sized welfare state,” and P.J., most comfortable behind the bar, was in a unique position to know the personal concerns and professional troubles of his constituents. He was smart and calculating, but he was also patient and sympathetic to the problems of others.

  Boston was the home of both the American League Red Sox and the National League Braves and father and son went to games together and then played ball in the yard at home. Joe occasionally accompanied P.J. to his parades and precinct meetings, or to his liquor dealership on High Street. Time and attention were lavished on Joe and neither parent was a harsh disciplinarian. He described his father as “the sweetest, gentlest man I've ever known; he never raised his voice and was never other than kind.” Respect was assumed, and Joe said that all it took was a certain look from his mother, given at a telling moment, to get the message across. Joe also saw that look when supplicants came to their door and P.J. willingly left the dining-room table to hear their pleas. Mary thought such discussions should take place elsewhere and for Joe, who “worshipped” his mother, those scenes deepened his belief that his father was being taken advantage of.