A short, stocky, middle-aged man swings a macola above his head, tapping the jukebox in front of him, somewhat awkwardly. Wearing a smart jacket and tie, he poses for the journalists, who try to catch his every playful smile. The scene takes place on a boat off the coast of Long Island. The broken gaming machines are then simply swept out to sea. The man in the tie, armed with a macola, is the 99th Mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia. One of the most charismatic, popular and temperamental mayors the Big Apple has ever had.
In the 1930s, it was an exciting city in the grip of corruption and organised crime. La Guardia wanted to warn the Mafiosi that they were out of their depth with this unique show on the water. Gambling was a major source of income for gangsters.
New York’s landless workers and immigrants took him for their own, and political opponents scolded and ridiculed him, and feared him at the same time. The life of the defiant, stubborn and determined Fiorello La Guardia is a success story. An Italian-American success story.
From the Old World to the New
His father Achille came from a bourgeois family from Foggia, which lies at the heel of the Italian boot. His peculiarity made it difficult for him to fit into the local society, which was permeated by religiosity and conformity. In primary school, in his childish mischievousness, he put a drawing pin on his teacher’s chair and, when he was punished for this prank, which he considered too harshly, he decided that he had to leave as soon as possible the provincial Puglia that was stifling his irrepressible spirit.
His love of music took him first to Naples, where he enrolled at the Conservatory and became an accomplished horn player, even though he did not finish his studies. Later, as a professional musician and composer, he travelled to several countries and continents, playing in Italy, Germany, even Indonesia, until he made his first tour to the USA at the age of 19. The openness, the glamour and the endless possibilities of the New World captivated him to such an extent that he promised himself that one day he must come back and stay.
A few years later, his dream came true. In Trieste, at a dance, he met and charmed a local woman, Irene Luzzato Coen, who came from a wealthy and influential Italian Jewish family. They were married by the Mayor of Trieste and shortly afterwards set sail for New York. Unlike most Italian immigrants, they did not settle in the working-class neighbourhood of Little Italy, which had a bad reputation among New Yorkers, but opted for the more cosmopolitan, bohemian and liberal Greenwich Village.
Among the musicians, artists and other free-thinking people who lived there, young Achille felt at home. His education, his sparkle and his knowledge of foreign languages, which he had learnt on his travels, were at odds with the stereotypical image of the Italian immigrant as illiterate, lazy and primitive. He made a conscious decision to speak only English from then on, because he wanted to become an American. He taught his children to do the same. For this reason, the future mayor of New York did not learn Italian until he was twenty years old.
In their small New York apartment, their daughter Gemma was born, followed on 11 December 1882 by a son, Fiorello Rafael Enrico, named after his Jewish grandmother Fiorini and Italian grandfather Rafael Enrico. Rafael later dropped out and Enrico, in the spirit of Americanisation, changed his name to Henry.
A small flower in the prairie
Fiorello’s Italian-Jewish origins marked him for life. In those days, “real” Americans looked down on immigrants. While the Irish had more or less carved out their own place under the New York sun – including working in the police ranks – the Italians were forced to take on jobs that no one wanted to do. They were mostly manual labourers, leaving their health and their best years behind on the endless construction sites of the burgeoning metropolis, or at the port unloading the crates that came day and night from all over the world. Jews had a reputation for being meddlers, cheats and exploiters, so it is not surprising that Fiorello Henry La Guardia learned early on what it meant to be different.
A few decades before his birth, large numbers of Americans sought their fortune west of the Mississippi River, where vast and sparsely populated expanses stirred the imagination of adventurers of all kinds. A railway was built to bring those seeking a better life for themselves and their families to these remote places. In Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and elsewhere, new settlements began to spring up and quickly grew into real cities. Gold, silver and copper deposits attracted more and more people from other parts of the country. The westward expansion would not have been possible without the support of the US military, as settlers on the other side of the Mississippi often encountered hostile Indians and bandits. The legendary Apache chief Geronimo, for example, was still wreaking havoc on the Mexican-American border and sowing fear among the local population the year that little Fiorello was born.
Meanwhile, his father was unsuccessfully looking for a job as a musician in New York. Despite his talent and vast experience, he had no luck in his search. This is probably why he decided to join the US armed forces. He became a war musician in the 11th Infantry Regiment. Fiorello La Guardia’s childhood was thus spent not among the skyscrapers of New York, but in the remote garrisons of the vast country where his father was stationed.
He finished primary and secondary school in Prescott, Arizona, where he first realised that not only Indians were discriminated against in the USA, but that all whites were not equal. A scantily clad itinerant Italian layabout with a small monkey on his shoulder came to town and became the laughing stock of the locals. They began to scold him, calling him “dago”, a derogatory term for Italian and Spanish immigrants. “You’re a dago too, where’s your monkey?” one of his classmates said to Fiorello in a stinging tone. The story ended in a fight. Because of his stubbornness, he often hit them over the head, but he didn’t let anyone make fun of him.
One of his teachers remembered little Fiorello as someone “who stubbornly insists on being right, but at the same time knows what he is talking about”. Later, his colleagues in the city administration used similar words to describe him.
Fiorello received a musical education at home, as his father worked hard to introduce him to music. He wanted to become a successful horn player one day. He was a demanding and extremely strict teacher, and Fiorello patiently endured his father’s harsh teaching methods. “Daddy, you just shout at me. It’s the only way I’ll learn something.” He got a hard skin and realised that if one wants to establish authority, one has to raise one’s voice.
Back to square one
In 1898, the US was involved in a war with Spain and Achille had to go to Florida, where the US army was preparing an attack on Cuba. Fiorello wanted to follow him in any way he could, so he tried to join the army, despite his mother’s opposition. Of course, as he was only 16, he was not allowed to do so. At the recruitment office, he was told that even if he had been older, he would not have been accepted. Because of his height. Even his political rivals often made fun of his 157 centimetres and called him Little Flower, which is the translation of his name.
He was very angry about what happened at the recruitment office, felt humiliated and was convinced that it was a case of discrimination . He directed his anger towards finding a way to join his father. In St. Louis, where he and his family were living at the time, he found work as a war correspondent for the local newspaper. He convinced the editor by his persistence, refusing to leave the office until he got a job. He was not offered a salary, but this did not stop him.
When he finally arrived in Florida, he initially enjoyed the camaraderie and dedication that prevailed among the soldiers. Soon after, however, he learned the other side of life in the army in a harsh way. Many complained about the food, especially the tinned meat, which they called ’embalmed beef’. Serious stomach problems began to appear in large numbers among the soldiers. One of the victims of ’embalmed beef’ was Fiorello’s father, who became so seriously ill that he was invalided out of the army and sent home. He also contracted malaria.
As long as Achille wore a US Army uniform, the La Guardia family had no money problems. Now the situation has changed. In New York, where they had returned after a long time, the 50-year-old and ailing Achille could not find a job. He had to swallow his pride and move with his family to Europe. They settled in Trieste, in the apartment of Fiorello’s Jewish grandmother. With the little money he had, Achille rented a small hotel in Koper, expanded his business over the years and became a successful businessman.
Fiorello did not want to go into the hotel business and, with the help of his father’s connections, got a job as a junior clerk at the American Consulate in Budapest. It was a low-paid and undemanding job, but it was his first steps in the civil service. On the one hand, he appreciated the Consul General immensely, because he offered an opportunity to a short, stubborn boy with an incomplete secondary education, who was also of Italian and Jewish origin.
On the other hand, they made it clear to him that he would never get higher than an ordinary civil servant because he did not have a degree from Harvard or Yale. The consul suggested that he learn as many foreign languages as possible, as this would help him in his work. The ambitious Fiorello took the advice and dug into the books on his own. He then learned Italian and Yiddish, and later German, Serbo-Croatian, French and Hungarian.
In 1903, he got a job at the American Consulate in Rijeka, which, like Trieste, was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The hard work paid off, and Fiorello was promoted to consular agent. In the course of his work, he met expatriates who had followed the same path as his parents decades before, heading towards their American dream.
Within a few years, he realised that he could no longer climb the career ladder and he started to get bored. He had a good salary, he lived by the sea, but it was not enough for him. “I needed action. I didn’t see a future in diplomacy”, he later recalled. No wonder, because directness, cordiality and impetuosity are not qualities that are welcome among diplomats. He boarded a ship and set sail for his hometown.
Advocate for the little people
He had a specific goal in mind: he wanted to study law and become a lawyer. As fate would have it, he found a job as a Serbo-Croatian interpreter at Ellis Island, the main entry point for people seeking a better future in the USA. Just a few years before, La Guardia had allowed people to cross the ocean by boat from Europe, but now it was welcoming them on free American soil.
The fates of the people he met did not leave him indifferent. He learned about the corruption of local authorities, police and lawyers. They all exploited the often naive and uneducated immigrants. Some women who were forced to prostitute themselves in order to survive had to pay bail to the police, otherwise they would be deported. Others were practically slaves, lured to the USA by unscrupulous criminals with false promises. In New York, moreover, there were thousands of factories where immigrants worked in inhuman conditions for a pittance. The idea of a happy and just America was fading before La Guardia’s eyes.
After completing his law studies and becoming a member of the Bar, he left his job at Ellis Island and opened his own office. He was considered a small people’s lawyer, fighting for the rights of immigrants and workers. He represented various trade unions and eventually began to attend their meetings and demonstrations. He knew then that he would not be a lawyer much longer and that he would become a “civil servant”. He did not like the word “politician”.
On the slippery political floor
His political involvement has always been marked by the struggle against Tammany Hall. It was the organisation of the Democratic Party, which had controlled New York in collaboration with the Mafia since the mid-19th century. It was made up of a majority of members of the Irish community. Its strength was reflected in the fact that its mayors came almost exclusively from its ranks.
Tammany Hall’s origins are linked to the struggle of the Irish people for a better position in society. The members helped each other and eventually managed to occupy many important positions in the city administration. Over the years, the organisation turned into a corrupt political machine, fed by bribes and only defending its privileges. For La Guardia, Tammany Hall was a symbol of oppression, corruption and depravity, an evil that had to be fought with all the means at its disposal. As an Italian, the door to the Democratic Party was closed to him, so he joined the Republicans.
His first chance to prove himself came in the 1914 congressional elections, running in a district that everyone in the party dreaded, as it had never been won by a Republican before. He campaigned with his characteristic commitment and passion. He attended countless weddings, funerals and baptisms in his district. He knocked on thousands of doors, talked to everyone who took the time for him, addressed the electorate once in Yiddish, another time in Italian and German, and in the end – lost by a hair.
Defeat did not take away his hope and he was firmly convinced that one day he would succeed. While waiting for a new opportunity, he took a job as Deputy District Attorney in New York and fell in love with Thea Almerigotti, a tall, fair-haired Trieste woman who refused to marry him “until the Italian flag flew over Trieste”. In his spare time, which he did not have in abundance, he took up flying and began to train as a pilot.
He didn’t have to wait long for a second chance. In 1916, he ran again for Congress in the same district, this time winning by a whisker. The first bill he introduced as a newly elected member of the US House of Representatives provided for the death penalty for anyone who would sell faulty equipment or food to the army.
He was the first Italian-American elected to the US Congress. A new star shines on Capitol Hill.
War, beer and mafia
The US entered World War I on 6 April 1917, after a desire for neutrality had prevailed for several years. While serving his first term in Congress, La Guardia found himself in a moral dilemma, having to make a decision on his country’s entry into the war. He was a pacifist, an internationalist, but at the same time a patriot. Like the vast majority of congressmen, he voted in favour of entry. He believed that the US should influence world events and support freedom and democracy. He defended the rights of Italian immigrants in Congress, and on the streets of New York he persuaded his fellow countrymen to remain loyal to America. “Those who prefer Italy to the USA should go back to Italy”, he said.
He decided to join the army because he felt it was only fair that politicians who voted to take their country to war should back up their decision with action. He joined the US Air Force. He was sent to Italy, to Foggia, his father’s birthplace, where he worked with experienced Italian pilots and attained the rank of major.
The US Ambassador to Italy had the idea that La Guardia could briefly take off his uniform and appear at a rally in Genoa to address the local population on behalf of the US. His energetic and emotional speech was warmly received by the Italians and spread across the ocean. Newspaper articles began to appear about the “Flying Congressman”. He was becoming more and more popular.
Officially, he was an employee of Congress and received a salary from the army, which was against federal law. As a result, both salaries were stopped and he was left penniless for a while. He took out a loan, knowing that this administrative inconvenience would sooner or later be resolved. “I will repay the loan as soon as possible. If I don’t fall into the hands of the Germans first, of course,” he told the bank.
After the end of the war, he did repay the loan and was re-elected to Congress, which he did several more times. In November 1918, Italian troops invaded Trieste and four months later Fiorello and Thea married.
The period between the two wars was one of the most turbulent in American history. On 15 January 1920, some bars and restaurants offered free drinks, while others charged exorbitant sums for a glass of whisky or a bottle of champagne. The following day, the Volstead Act, a law banning the consumption and production of alcohol, came into force, riding the wave of Puritanism. The era of Prohibition had begun.
Demand for alcohol was no less than before. The space from which the state has withdrawn is now occupied by the mafia. Illegal breweries and distilleries were making huge profits. According to some estimates, in 1925 there were around 100 000 illegal bars serving alcohol in New York alone. The state was the loser in this battle, and the Mafiosi the undisputed winner. This was particularly painful for La Guardia, as the names of Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Frank Costello and other Mafiosi with Italian surnames began to appear in the media. In the films made at that time, the criminal was always Italian. La Guardia, however, fought against such stereotypes throughout his life.
From the very beginning, he was a fervent opponent of Prohibition. In 1926, he called a press conference in his congressional office. He was holding a glass of very low alcohol beer, which was perfectly legal to buy. Then, while the cameras flashed, he added malt, which was also legal, and “brewed” a real beer. “Someone prove to me that this is illegal,” the congressman said with a straight face as he drank.
The move reverberated in the US media and made him a whole new set of enemies. He ignored it, convinced that Prohibition was to blame for the rise of corruption and crime in the country. “Prohibition will only be successful when Congress is able to legislate to stop the fermentation process or abolish gravity,” he said. He calculated that New York alone would need 250,000 police officers to control illegal alcohol consumption. “And 250,000 more policemen to control the former,” he added sarcastically.
Political opponents saw him as an entertainer, a clown and not a politician for making similar statements, even though he regularly beat them in elections. From 1922 to 1933, he sat continuously in Congress, causing grey hairs for his conservative colleagues with his eccentricities. He campaigned for the rights of workers at the mercy of greedy factory owners, visited miners in the pits where they toiled in impossible conditions, fought against the bullying of immigrants, and grew more popular by the day.
New York, New York
La Guardia was a New Yorker at heart, even though he grew up far from his hometown. Ever since he returned, he had a burning desire to one day become mayor. He had accumulated a great deal of political experience over the years and was convinced that he could win the 1929 mayoral election. His opponent was the Democrat Jimmy Walker, a puppet in the hands of Tammany Hall, the very antithesis of La Guardia. Blond-haired, always smartly dressed, tall, corrupt and lazy. In his previous four-year term, he had been on leave for a total of 143 days. He never arrived at work before midday. He liked to drink and it was an open secret that he had a young starlet for a mistress. For La Guardia, Jimmy Walker was like a red rag to a bull.
During his political career, La Guardia has stood for office 13 times and has been defeated only three times. He channeled all the anger he harbored towards the corrupt New York Democrats into this campaign, but was defeated outright. It was probably the worst blow of an otherwise very successful career.
In the same year, the US stock market crashed and the biggest economic crisis in history erupted. People’s savings evaporated, millions were out of work and some even returned to the countries from which they had emigrated to the US.
The 1932 presidential election was won by Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who defeated Herbert Hoover, a Republican who had been accused by voters of not having done enough to end the Depression. Just a month before his victory, Roosevelt made a move that, as it later turned out, would have a profound impact on Fiorello La Guardia’s future political career. Tammany Hall became embroiled in a major corruption scandal in New York. Thousands of people testified in court about the extortion of police officers and corrupt officials. Roosevelt, who was still Governor of New York State at the time, had no choice but to force Jimmy Walker to resign.
La Guardia unexpectedly got a make-up exam, which he passed with flying colours this time. In the 1933 elections, he was the first Italian-American to be elected Mayor of New York. “The people elected me not because I look good, but because they know I am a man of action”, he said after the counting of the votes was over.
The city was on the brink of financial, moral and political collapse. The country was facing an economic crisis of enormous proportions. Roosevelt was in the White House, looking for ways to kick-start the US economy, and Fiorello La Guardia was in Manhattan’s City Hall, promising change and an end to corruption. At first sight, they could not have been more different. The first was a Democrat, a representative of the traditional American aristocracy, always polite and calm, the second a Republican, the son of immigrants, who had a reputation for impulsiveness and for not being able to hold his tongue. Both have gone down in history as great politicians who, in difficult times, put aside their differences and worked together successfully for the common good.
Roosevelt tackled the crisis with a programme called the New Deal. In contrast to the US economic policy of free markets and deregulation, Roosevelt spent a huge amount of public money on investment and public works to provide jobs for the people most affected by the crisis.
As a defender of the welfare state and the rights of the lower classes, La Guardia was a strong supporter of the new economic policy. He was even considered a socialist by some, which sounded like an insult to some in the US. He successfully tapped into the federal budget to finance the city’s infrastructure and social benefits. At the same time, Roosevelt was able to present New York as a successful model for the implementation of the New Deal. During this period, the city was given a huge number of new parks, which still grace it today. Roads, tunnels and bridges were built. The city bought out the various subway companies and brought public transport under the same roof. New York also got two new airports. One of them is now called Fiorella La Guardie.
Confront the Mafia
A new wind has blown in the town hall. The lethargy of the Tammany Hall days has been replaced by the energy and freshness of Fiorello La Guardia. He ruled in his own style. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave. He avoided official receptions and commemorations as much as possible, as he considered them a waste of time. He concentrated his efforts on reorganising the city administration and cutting costs. He did not listen to his advisers, was stubborn and autocratic. He demanded total commitment from his colleagues.
One of the objectives he set himself was to fight crime. Prohibition had just been abolished, but the Mafiosi turned their business to gambling. Slot machines, “one-armed bandits” as they were called, could be seen at every turn. People poured millions of dollars into them, which ended up in the pockets of Frank Costello, one of the most powerful Sicilian mafiosi in New York.
Police raids began, seizing thousands of machines. La Guardia destroyed some of them and swept them into the sea. This was a big blow for Costello, who had to move his vending machine business to New Orleans. With the help of Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey, La Guardia continued his crusade against the Mafia.
The next target was Lucky Luciano, capo di tutti i capi, the head of the New York mafia, who had strong connections in Tammany Hall. Times had changed, however, as La Guardia was on duty at City Hall and ordered Dewey to arrest him at the first opportunity. The until recently untouchable Luciano now found himself before a jury which sentenced him to a long prison term for organising prostitution. It was a double victory for La Guardia. He cleared the city of gambling and prostitution and put behind bars an Italian who cast a bad light on his honest compatriots.
A premonition of evil
One journalist wrote that La Guardia was the only mayor in the US who had a foreign policy. He watched the rise of Nazism with alarm and disgust, warning the public as early as 1934 that Hitler intended to exterminate all Jews. On one occasion he described Firer as a “brown-skinned fanatic” and a wave of indignation followed from Germany. The US Foreign Minister even had to issue a formal apology for the outburst.
La Guardia, however, took every opportunity to ridicule Hitler. When a high-ranking representative of the Nazi Foreign Ministry visited New York, the German consulate demanded tighter security for him. La Guardia assigned him a group of police officers, all of whom were Jewish, once again showing his contempt for the Nazis. He did this not just because his mother was Jewish, but because he sincerely believed that all thugs, whether Sicilian immigrants or Austrian painters, should be put on their toes.
The strange and successful symbiosis between the two men who occupied the first and second most prestigious jobs in the USA continued. La Guardia, despite opposition from his parent party, travelled the country urging voters to vote for Roosevelt in the presidential elections. After his successful election, the latter appointed him Director of Civil Protection, which was responsible for the preparedness of the population in the event of a possible German or Japanese attack on the USA. He served without pay.
He spent three days a week in Washington and the other four in New York. He no longer found the mayoralty a challenge, often saying that he saw himself as a “glorified janitor”. Shortly after the US entered the war, civil protection came under the Ministry of Defence and La Guardia was dismissed.
He returned to his hometown and devoted himself to the remainder of his third and final term. He started a radio show on the city’s radio station, sharing his thoughts on current affairs with New Yorkers. He discussed all sorts of topics: the war in Europe, the price of fish in New York markets, the weather, housing policy and much more. The show immediately became hugely popular.
In June 1945, drivers delivering newspapers all over the city went on strike. People were left without newspapers, and La Guardia wanted at least children to be able to read the comics that some newspapers published for them. He included a corner on his radio show where he read comics to children. With his high-pitched voice and funny intonation, he entertained thousands of children every day over the airwaves. For many New Yorkers, the image of the Mayor sitting in front of a microphone and enthusiastically reading the adventures of Dick Tracy to their children is forever etched in their minds.
As incorruptible as the sun
After the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on 14 August 1945. Hundreds of thousands of euphoric people gathered in Times Square to celebrate the end of the war. Fiorello La Guardia also took a few hours off to relax and celebrate.
In his last broadcast, he summed up his 12 years as mayor by saying, “The city administration has been given a soul.”
Harry Truman told La Guardia that he is “as incorruptible as the sun”. Many New Yorkers agreed with this assessment, remembering well the days of Tammany Hall and the pervasive corruption that stifled the development of this fascinating city. His three terms were a breath of fresh air that blew the blight and corruption off the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
In a country where looks are everything, this 157 centimetre tall immigrant with tousled hair and a squeaky voice was far from the ideal of the American real man. He was an anomaly. He lived among, socialised with and listened to ordinary people. He was one of them.
He died on 20 September 1947 of pancreatic cancer. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers attended his funeral.
His legacy lives on today in the form of parks, roads, bridges and other projects. His skill in bridging different peoples and cultures is sadly lacking today.
