February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The book became a bestseller and was later turned into a hit movie starring Spencer Tracy. It is still considered the greatest American political novel and one that sheds light on an important chapter in Irish American history.
Edwin O’Connor was born in Providence, R.I., in 1918 and grew up in nearby Woonsocket. His father was a respected doctor who provided his family with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Like many Irish-Americans of his generation, Edwin attended college, enrolling at Notre Dame in 1935. He majored in English and discovered his love of literature and writing.
After graduation, it took a while for O’Connor to establish himself as a writer. An unsuccessful stint in graduate school was followed by work as a radio announcer. The onset of World War II led him to join the Coast Guard, where he served from 1942 to 1945. He returned to radio work after the war but increasingly took on freelance writing projects. Soon his short stories and essays began appearing in prominent magazines like the Atlantic.
O’Connor’s first novel, “The Oracle,” appeared in 1951. Dismissed or ignored altogether by reviewers, the book sold poorly. Undaunted, O’Connor presently began work on a second novel. Unlike the previous effort, this one would draw upon and reflect O’Connor’s Irish-American heritage.
“The Last Hurrah,” published in February 1956, chronicled the final campaign of one Frank Skeffington, a classic Irish political chieftain. Despite advanced age and a lifetime of accomplishment. Skeffington can’t resist one last campaign. Part of his motivation, it seems, is his desire to educate his nephew Adam Caufield on the workings of the political machine and the science of old-time campaigning.
Skeffington’s opponent, an uninspiring nobody named Kevin McCloskey, seems at first hopelessly overmatched by the wily, experienced, and ever-popular veteran. But as the campaign progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the tried and true methods of campaigning — the ones for which Irish-American politicians had been famous since the 1860s — are outdated by the 1950s. McCloskey represents the up-and-coming Irish in post-war America. Young, handsome, middle-class, and college-educated, he is far removed from the working-class world of the Irish slum and barroom politics. Hopelessly unaware of how much the world has changed in recent years, Skeffington focuses his campaign on wakes, weddings, and old-fashioned corner rallies, while McCloskey and his savvy handlers concentrate on the new medium of television.
On election night, a stunned Skeffington loses in a landslide. When Skeffington’s nephew turned to someone to explain the defeat, he received what has become known to historians and political scientists as the “Last Hurrah” thesis for explaining the demise of Irish political machines in the 1940s and ’50s. It was, the man explained, the natural consequence of the New Deal. The Irish political machine had originated and thrived for more than a century by meeting the needs of poor, powerless people. All people like Skeffington asked for in return was a vote. The birth of the welfare state in the 1930s meant that people began to turn to the state, not the “ward heeler,” for assistance. Old timers like Skeffington and their political machines were simply obsolete by the 1950s.
“The Last Hurrah” won several literary awards. Columbia Pictures bought the film rights and brought out the movie version in 1957. Directed by the celebrated Irish-American John Ford and starring Spencer Tracy as Skeffington, it enjoyed a successful run at the box office.
One of the things that made “The Last Hurrah” so compelling a story was its true-to-life feel. Indeed, nearly everyone agreed that Skeffington seemed remarkably like Boston’s James Michael Curley. The latter dominated Boston politics from the early 1900s to 1949, serving as common councilman, alderman, state representative; U.S. congressman, governor (1935-1937), and, most memorably, mayor of Boston (1914-1917, 1922-1925, 1930-1933, and 1946-1949). Like Skeffington, Curley’s flamboyant and combative style made him a favorite with the city’s poor, whose cause he championed, and an enemy of Boston’s Yankee elite, against whom he often railed. In 1949, Curley launched his “last hurrah” mayoral campaign and lost to a young unheralded rookie strikingly similar to the fictitious McCloskey. “The decision rendered yesterday by the voters of the city of Boston,” commented the Boston Daily Globe, “marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.”
True to form, Curley was not offended by the novel and instead embraced it as a fitting tribute to his legacy. Capitalizing on the book’s success, Curley published his memoir, “I’d Do It Again,” in 1957.
O’Connor continued writing and in 1962 published what many consider to be his best work, “The Edge of Sadness,” which won the Pulitzer Prize. Like his previous novel, it dealt with Irish-American characters and themes, but the tone was more brooding and critical. Two more novels followed, “I Was Dancing” (1964) and “All in the Family” (1966) and O’Connor was at work on another when in 1968 he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60.
HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK
Feb. 2, 1880: Charles Stuart Parnell, on a fundraising tour of the U.S. for the Land League, addresses the U.S. Congress.
Feb. 5, 1917: Margaret Sanger is jailed for opening the nation’s first family planning clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.
Feb. 6, 1971: The first British soldier is killed in the escalating violence in Northern Ireland.
HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES
Feb. 1, 1894: Oscar-winning director John Ford is born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Feb. 4, 1868: Nationalist Countess Constance Markievicz is born in London.
Feb. 7, 1873: Designer of the ship Titanic Thomas Andrews is born in Comber, Co. Down.