During Curley's successful campaign for Governor in 1934, the Lampoon published a cartoon satire entitled "Curley Addressing His Puritan Ancestors." Curley demanded a public apology. "The downy-cheeked editors waited in an ante-chamber at City Hall for two hours," he recalled, "while I wrote out an abject apology for them to sign. They signed it."

In 1935 Curley found himself elected Governor. The four years that followed were as riotous as any in State House history. He controlled patronage on a grander scale than ever, and had unlimited opportunities to harass his friends from Harvard. To replace the noted Commissioner of Education, Payson Smith, Curley appointed a woolly-minded old crony who had once taught in a country school. The man promptly enraged even Ward 17 by changing his name from Reardon to the more distinguished Reardan.

It was also during that term that Harvard held its Tercentenary Commencement. There was no choice but to invite the Governor; and he put on a very fine show. Consistent in minute detail to the precedent of the colonial governors (which had not been observed since Harvard's Centennial), Curley heralded his arrival with a massed band, an escort of fully-armed lancers, the National Guard, trumpet sounds, bugle calls, the beating of drums, the shooting of guns, and the cheers of a mixed collection of Boston Irish such as Harvard Yard had never imagined. He reminded the assembly that the last President to address a Harvard anniversary celebration, Grover Cleveland, was a Democrat, that President Roosevelt, sitting behind him, was a Democrat, and that he, Curley, was likewise a Democrat. Who, he queried, were they?

The speech did not lack for repercussions. Presaged by phone calls and threatening letters, a time bomb appeared one morning on Curley's doorstep. Investigation revealed it to be the work of Harvard students: a box of peppermints wrapped in a copy of the Boston Herald, to be ignited the ringing of an alarm clock.

The other events of these years were less spectacular. Curley is said to have turned up at Lowell House High Table one evening. When asked for his impressions of House life, he replied, "They wanted to know how a city government works and I told them." He paid a visit too, in 1939, to Government 1 as a guest lecturer. When asked how to achieve success in politics, Curley replied, "Become a Republican; and then they won't criticize you for doing what I've done." Professor Cherington recalls that, "He improved the quality of the course immensely." It was during those years, also, that his son Leo, a first year law student, made headlines by quitting the Law School after a professor had likened Curley to Big Bill Thompson of Chicago.

Although the war years saw Curley in Washington and curtailed his active relationship with the University, his term in Danbury Prison lit the spark once again. Curley came back reporting that his closest friend had been a Harvard graduate, and that he had, indeed, become acquainted there with representatives of all the Ivy League campuses.

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When Curley had playfully suspended a football game in Harvard Stadium (because President Lowell was not anxious to sponsor B.C. against Holy Cross), the Crimson and the Daily Dartmouth compared him to Hitler. But in an attempt to assess the man, to make that suggestion is only to confuse matters in a manner worthy of Curley himself. For he was one Hitler who could not do without a soapbox and a Boston Irish audience. As garrulous as was his term in the State House, he did not seem made for government on that broad a scale. His lavish handouts, his willingness to trade legwork for votes and to dispatch hecklers with tongue or fists, the techniques he applied as boss of Ward 17, were best suited to government on that level.

"Poodles at his Heels"

Curley had thousands of friends, recipients, at one time or another, of his largesse. Not a few were bums, many of whom travelled out to his Jamaicaway door to put the touch on him personally. The bus fare was rarely a bad investment. Curley thrived on their visits. "A Great Dane," he once said, always has a few poodles yapping at his heels.

Though his personal following was immense, Curley lacked what might usually be called an organization. "One reason," Professor John K. Galbraith wrote recently, "is that a leader must also be loyal to his organization, and where his own interests were involved Curley was never a man of divided loyalties." But, though he was not much interested in electing anybody to public office besides himself, Curley often managed to do so.

Neither the personal nor the local character of his following was sufficient to distinguish Curley from the other big-city bosses. Frank Hague controlled Hudson County, mostly Jersey City; Tammany had the city across the river; in Chicago Boss Kelly ran Cook County, and Ware had Philadelphia. But, as Louis Lyons points out, none had an organization that reached far outside his city.

What lifted Curley out of the barren pattern set by most other bosses was his wit. Much of it was of a local variety. In 1921 campaigning for Mayor against John R. Murphy, a good Irish Catholic, Curley dressed up a few of his camp followers as priests and sent them across Charlestown and elsewhere bruiting it about that John R. Murphy had renounced his Catholic Faith, joined a Masonic Order, had been observed attending Back Bay's Trinity Church, and intended to divorce his good wife in order to marry a sixteen-year-old girl. As the campaign was drawing to its successful close, Curley asked a Roxbury audience, "Where was James Michael Curley last Friday night? He was conducting a political meeting in Duxbury. Where was Mr. Murphy last Friday night? Eating steak out at the Copley Plaza."

His resourcefulness was not limited, however, to a single theme, nor to rostrum repartee. It lent itself to schemes of a sometimes highly elaborate variety. During Curley's first (and successful) campaign for Congress in 1910, his opponent William J. McNary elaborated on the theme of his own integrity to eventually tedious lengths. Forthwith, Curley summoned one of his indigent acquaintances, suited him up in Grecian-like robes, put a lantern in his hand, and set this Diogenes out upon the streets of South Boston. His inability to find the honest man McNary was attended by sufficient cameramen and reporters to ensure the Curley victory at the polls.

Curley's wit raises a question that still divides the faculty of the institution he so enjoyed baiting. Was he the colorful old rogue that he has been made lately, or did he do Boston irreparable harm? In his old age he certainly tried to give credence to the former view. Though he grouched about Joseph Dinneen's biography and Edwin O'Connor's novel, he seemed immensely to enjoy the renewed attention they brought him. He gave the books away with such genial inscriptions as may be found in Lamont's copy of The Purple Shamrock: "To Jack: From one swindler to another. Jim Curley."