The Old Charm

To every sturdy heart in Tammany Hall the congressional candidacy of young Franklin Roosevelt was a low Harvard trick, and dirty pool besides. The patent inability of the voters to feel the same way stirred a Tammany spieler to baffled rage one night at an election rally on upper Broadway. "Get wise to yourselves," he wheezed heavily. "Do you know where Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. lives? At the Stork Club."

The clubhouse lawyer had gone beyond his instructions. He was only supposed to refer slightingly to Roosevelt as "Junior." But then, things were out of hand in the late Sol Bloom's 20th District on Manhattan's West Side. And Tammany, weak and flabby as it had become, was still steeped in the rich, venal tradition of Boss Croker: precious few Democrats who ever made a showing in Manhattan--and that went for Franklin's father--did it without getting the office from the Hall.

Young Franklin Roosevelt broke the rules: when the Hall turned him down he loudly insisted that he was a true Democrat, who was going to buck the machine. He moved into a hotel in the district and set up something called the Four Freedoms Party. It was a well-heeled crusade: Roosevelt was backed by the Liberal Party, pale offshoot of the shocking-pink American Labor Party; Americans for Democratic Action; the powerful International Ladies Garment Workers' Union; such big New York City C.I.O. outfits as Mike Quill's transport workers. He could list among his campaign contributors such interested outsiders as Actress Tallulah Bankhead ($100), Actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ($100), Multimillionaire Marshall Field III ($1,000), former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. ($500).

The Wooing of the 20th. Never in their lives had the voters in the 20th been courted with such tender ferocity. In a coltish way, the young amateur had a considerable portion of the old Roosevelt charm: the billion-candlepower smile, the ability to shake hands without looking as though he were calling for a towel and soap. He was boyishly grave and gay by turns. Occasionally the timbre of his voice induced a shiver of reminiscence in his listeners.

From Irish Chelsea up through Hell's Kitchen, into the Puerto Rican-Negro area west of Columbus Circle known as San Juan Hill, in & out of the faded elegance of Riverside Drive and the Jewish areas of upper Broadway he padded, flashing his white teeth at the voters who trailed him admiringly. He draped his big body across drugstore stools and munched ham sandwiches as he chatted with the customers, swapped slangy courtesies with housewives in supermarkets, scrawled autographs for the shrill urchins who clustered about his long legs.

The Other Suitors. The opposition was hardly glittering: Tammany put up grey, dapper Municipal Court Justice Ben Shalleck, a great man for philanthropies and after-dinner speaking. Wearily, politely, Shalleck pleaded the same cause as Roosevelt (the Truman Fair Deal program), insisted he was a better man because he had lived in the neighborhood for 42 years. Democratic National Chairman J. Howard McGrath endorsed Tammany's man. The Republicans hopelessly produced a good-natured, "gangling fumbler named William H. Mclntyre who insisted on calling Roosevelt "Major" (he was a Navy lieutenant commander). From the American Labor Party came Dr. Annette Rubinstein, who looked like the Powerful Katrinka and clubbed the constituents with party-line dialectic.

More than 80,000 voters turned out last week instead of the expected 50,000 and they gave Franklin 40,825 votes--more than the rest of his opponents lumped together--and sent him to Congress on his first try for public office.

The triumphant candidate toured his new domain. Everywhere his celebrating supporters cried "Next stop, Albany!" and "When are you going to the White House?" President Truman sent his congratulations.

Winner Roosevelt, who will take his seat in Congress in June, felt his oats at once: before taking off for a trip to Europe and Israel he demanded the resignation of Tammany Chief Hugo Rogers and a thorough Wigwam cleaning.

In Nevada, four days after Frank Roosevelt was elected to Congress, his marriage to the former Ethel du Pont ended in divorce. Her attorney, George Springmeyer, told reporters: "The story should be treated with decorum. After all it involves a future President of the United States." When this didn't deter them, he appealed to local patriotism: "Bad publicity has hurt the divorce business in Nevada. I know of a few cases which were taken to the Virgin Islands."

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