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| Joseph P. Kennedy--Played by himself and by Matt Letscher (right) |
Last fall, in its final season, Boardwalk Empire added its own fictionalized support to setting the record straight about JFK’s no less dynamic father,
Joseph P. Kennedy. Without question, the Kennedy patriarch was a womanizer and
a master of financial legerdemain, including making the most of insider
information (legal in the 1920s). But he scrupulously remained within the
letter of the law. According to David Nasaw’s The Patriarch (2012)--a Pulitzer finalist--and Dan Okrent’s Last Call (2010), Joe’s reputation as a
Prohibition-era bootlegger was a myth, propagated by JFK’s political opponents and
organized crime habitues. (That, of
course, didn’t stop JPK from leveraging political influence and insider
information when cornering the scotch import market immediately after
Prohibition).
Joseph’s Choice
As season five of Boardwalk opens, the year is 1931, with
the end of Prohibition a growing likelihood.
Boardwalk’s central character, Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), pitches
Kennedy (Matt Letscher) to join forces in importing Bacardi rum from Cuba to
the U.S, ostensibly after Prohibition. (Nucky, a veteran bootlegger, considers
Kennedy a strong prospect given his extreme wealth and new-found participation
in grain markets—a prelude to post-Prohibition distilling.)
Following conversations between the two that explored their shared
roots and self-driven opportunism, Joe rebuffs Nucky, after asking:
What are you doing this for? What are you making the money for?
For Kennedy, it’s all about family. After a painfully pregnant pause, all Nucky can manage is a stilted “I want to leave something behind.” (see clip below.)
The Kennedy-Thompson relationship incidentally is a “business”
variation on the crime movie theme where [some] cops and robbers discover a mysterious affinity for one another and gravitate toward a climactic tryst (A favorite
is DiNiro and Pacino in Heat).
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| Rendez-vous with Nucky |
JFK: “My father
always told me that all businessmen were . . .”
Ironically, as the first chairman of the SEC, Joe Kennedy excelled
in putting insider trading and other questionable practices out of
business. Initially, many a New Dealer blanched at Kennedy's 1934 appointment. But FDR knew better. Who
better than business insider Joe Kennedy, the President figured, to extirpate practices
that he himself knew first-hand?
In his memoirs, FDR advisor Raymond Moley recalled vetting Kennedy
for the job:
Joe, I know darned well you want this job. But if anything in your career in business could injure the President, this is the time to spill it. Let’s forget the general criticism that you’ve made money on Wall Street.’ Kennedy reacted precisely as I thought he would. With a burst of profanity he defied anyone to question his devotion to the public interest or to point to a single shady act in his whole life. The President did not need to worry about that, he said. What was more, he would give his critics—and here again the profanity flowed freely—an administration of the SEC that would be a credit to the country, the President, himself and his family—clear down to the ninth child.” [excerpted from Nasaw]
Joseph's Choice (via YouTube):
