Summary

This is the extraordinary story, told for the first time, of Joseph P. Kennedy's remarkable reign in Hollywood, in which he ran three movie studios simultaneously, led the revolution in sound picturesand made the fortune that became the foundation of his empire. Kennedy saw filmmaking as "a gold mine" when movies were an idea one week, in front of the camera the next, and in theaters within the month. It was 1919; Kennedy was thirty-one years old. Between 1926 and 1930, Kennedy used his talents to position himself as a Hollywood leader. He ran Film Booking Offices (FBO), was brought in to run Pathe and the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theaters, and became the chairman of their boards. Within months, he was asked to head First National film company. By 1928, Kennedymerciless, electrifying, a visionarywas running three studios at once. InJoseph P. Kennedy Presents,Cari Beauchamp writes about the genius behind Kennedy's profiteering and his importance in changing the way Hollywood conducted business. As one of the first nonfamily members to be given access to Kennedy's personal papers, Beauchamp, through years of meticulous research and countless interviews with those close to Kennedy, has dug through the maze of deals and the files of memos and notes, only recently made available, to tell in full how he made it all happen: how he charmed, cajoled, and bullied; how he juggles various backersand managed to line his pockets with millions. Beauchamp writes about the movies Kennedy produced and the stars he made, about the studios he razed and those he reorganized, about the jobs that were lost and the careers that were ruined (among them, that of silent film cowboy star Fred Thomsonone of America's top box-office draws). Beauchamp tells for the first time the full story of Kennedy's affair with the feisty Gloria Swanson, the "reigning Queen of Hollywood"an extravagant escapade that became legend and that triggered one of Hollywood's biggest financial fiascos. It began with Kennedy taking over Swanson's personal and professional life ("Together we could make millions," he promised), and ended with his first failure (personal and public) and her career on the brink of ruin, a million dollars in debt. Beauchamp writes as well about the Hollywood titans surrounding Kennedy: William Randolph Hearst (Kennedy was a welcome guest at "the ranch") . . . Cecil B. De Mille . . . David Sarnoff, who, with Kennedy, masterminded the unprecedented deal that resulted in the founding of RKO, and that made Kennedy millions. A fascinating tale of business genius and personal greed that brings to light not only the way Joseph P. Kennedy made his fortune, but how he forever changed the business of movie-making.

Author Biography

Cari Beauchamp is the author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood and other film histories. She has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Variety and lives in Los Angeles, California.

Contents

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 Need 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 Can 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
Index

Supplemental Materials

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Excerpts

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 headturning 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 thatFortunemagazine 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.Fortuneused 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 th

Excerpted from Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years by Cari Beauchamp
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