JIMMY WALKER: THE MAYOR WHO LOVED NEW YORK

LED BY MAYOR Eric Adams, who himself loves the city’s nightlife and hopes to steer our town back into the spotlight, New York needs a feel-good story about the city’s heyday in the Roaring Twenties. Jimmy Walker personified Gotham in its brash, rambunctious, turbulent, and gloriously late-night partying prime. Walker helped make New York the American international city.

The first half of the 20th Century saw the rise of America to the forefront of world powers. New York City became a world capital. Jimmy Walker (1881-1946) came of age in this period and personified it.

America’s industrial revolution had transformed New York City from a major port and trading center to the country’s capital of banking and finance. This period also saw the transition from the Protestant domination of Tammany Hall by the likes of Boss Tweed to an insurgent Irish political leadership, of which the Walkers were a prime example.

Jimmy Walker proved uniquely suited to his role as Mayor. He was handsome, highly intelligent, incurably witty, punctiliously dressed in a wardrobe of over 40 bespoke suits, and happily careless about old school customs, morals, and the law.

He was called “the late Mayor,” arriving 90 minutes late for his wedding and two hours late for his swearing in.

Show business impresario George Jessel remembered, “Jimmy Walker and I have been a team as after-dinner speakers at a thousand different affairs. One night, we were returning from a day long series of speeches in the Bronx bone-tired when Walker remembered we had one more engagement at the Biltmore Hotel. We hurried to the Cascade Room, and Jimmy took the podium. The only problem was we couldn’t remember what the occasion or who the group sponsoring it was. ‘Gentlemen,’ Jimmy began in his all-purpose routine, ‘In this kaleidoscopic era that we live in, this great melting pot where all walks of life men come closer together, it is needless for me to tell you what the people of Polish birth have meant to the progress of the City of New York. I can take you back to the great General Thaddeus Kosciuszko in 1776…’

“There was no reaction from the audience; they were definitely not Polish. Undaunted, Walker continued, ‘And the simple Italian ditch digger, imbued with the spirit of the great Giuseppe Garibaldi, has been more helpful to Greater New York than anyone I can think of.’

“Again, no recognition. Walker continued with his praise of ethnic New Yorkers until he finally ran out of countries. At last, he had a memory flash and brightened, ‘If only the streets of New York were as clean as those of Copenhagen, the great capital of Denmark…’

“The Danish-American New Yorkers cheered Walker for the first time, and he continued describing the virtues of their country. From then on Jimmy had their votes in his pocket.”

Jimmy Walker’s one liners were the stuff of legend. A few examples:

“No girl was ever ruined by a book.”

“A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.”

“Counting time is not as important as making time count.”

“Three things a man must do alone: Be born, die, and testify.”

When Fiorello LaGuardia ran for Mayor in 1929, he criticized Walker’s decision that year to raise his own salary from $25,000 to $40,000. Walker immediately rejoined, “That’s cheap! Think what it would cost if I worked full time.”

Jimmy Walker was born on June 19, 1881. He was the son of the Irish-born carpenter and West Village lumberyard owner, William H. Walker (1842-1916), who in due course became active in politics as a Democratic assemblyman and alderman. Walker was gregarious from an early age (his pastor at St. Joseph’s Church called him “Little Jimmy Talker”) but an indifferent stu- dent at the Catholic schools he attended. He dropped out of college but graduated from New York Law School in 1904. Even then, however, he resisted his father’s wish that he become a lawyer and politician and instead followed his dream of becoming a song writer and entertainer. He is best known for writing the lyrics to the 1906 hit, “Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?” Eventually, Walker acceded to his father’s will, entered politics in 1909, and passed the New York bar exam in 1912.

Jimmy Walker represented his home district in the State Assembly from 1910-1914. He was then elected to the New York Senate from District 12 and served from 1915-1925. He was Minority Leader from 1920-1922 and again in 1925. He was Temporary President for the State Senate from 1923-1924. He loved his jobs and served his constituents well.

Jimmy Walker’s burning ambition was to become Mayor of New York, but to do so he would have to defeat the incumbent mayor, John Francis Hylan. Walker was vulnerable to attacks on possible corruption. Rumors also circulated about his friendships with crooked businessmen, known gangsters and glamorous chorus girls.

While these very traits made him a beloved personality to working class voters, questions about Walker’s conduct made more middle-class citizens uncomfortable.

Fortunately for Jimmy Walker, Governor Alfred E. Smith rode to his rescue. Together they backed social welfare legislation, legalization of boxing, and the repeal of blue laws banning Sunday baseball games. They also opposed Prohibition and condemned the Ku Klux Klan. All of this and his charismatic personality helped Walker defeat Hylan in the Democratic primary and triumph over Frank Waterman in the general election to become the 97th mayor of New York.

Walker’s early years as mayor saw the city prosper. He started many new public works projects and created a Department of Sanitation. He unified the city’s hospitals, upgraded parks and playgrounds, and led the fight to expand the city’s subway system. He also built new highways and docks for superliners in the pre-commercial aviation era. All of these achievements were popular with the electorate, and in 1929 Jimmy Walker was re-elected by an overwhelming margin over Republican Fiorello La Guardia.

Walker’s nights often ended at dawn, and his days seldom begn until noon or later. He often referred to his assistant, Charles F. Kerrigan, in jest as “The Day Mayor.”

A night out with Jimmy Walker would often include a political speech at the Harry Perry Club, the Grand Street Boys’ Association or the People’s Regular Democratic Club, a Broadway

Opening, meals at restaurants like Reisenwerer’s, Delmonico’s, Churchill’s, Jack’s or Monquin’s, and would usually end up at the glamorous Central Park Casino, where Eddy Duchin led the orchestra and Jimmy Walker dispensed patronage from an upstairs room into the wee hours.

Irving Berlin wrote a lyric that captured Mayor Walker’s huge popularity at this time:

Who told Broadway not to be gay?

Who gets his picture taken three times a day?

Jimmy!

We’re glad to show That we all know That Jimmy’s doing fine.

Can’t you hear those old New Yorkers hollering

Gimme- Gimme- Gimme Jimmy for mine!

With the onset of the Great Depression, investigations into Walker’s administration multiplied. The most serious of these was led by the puritanical, old-line WASP Judge Samuel Seabury, who was not susceptible to Jimmy Walker’s Irish charm, nor his penchant for Blarney on the witness stand.

Meanwhile, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was now running for president and felt the need to do something about Walker and New York City’s national reputation as a symbol of corruption. After presiding over hearings himself and se- curing the Democratic nomination, Roosevelt decided to remove Walker from office. Rather than be removed, Walker resigned on September 1, 1932, and soon left on a grand tour of Europe with Betty Compton, whom he married the following year.

Jimmy Walker returned to New York in 1935. He remained a popular toastmaster at banquets and became the president of Majestic Records. When an interviewer asked him if he would use his new position to put out a new recording of his early hit, “Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?” Walker answered, “I’ve been hired to plug the company, not sabotage it.”

In 1946, Jimmy Walker’s health worsened. He fell into a coma, was given the Last Rites, and moved from his East End Avenue apartment to Doctors Hospital. He died there on November 18th of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 65.

Thousands attended Jimmy Walker’s wake at Campbell’s funeral home and a full house assisted at the solemn high requiem mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral before his burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester. Disconsolate at the news of his old friend’s death, saloonkeeper extraordinaire Toots Shor closed his establishment early and began to drink. At four o’clock in the morning, he tearfully made his way to Campbell’s to look upon his departed friend. “Jimmy, Jimmy,” he burst out, “When you walked into the room you brightened up the joint.”

Indeed, he did, and all of New York as well. ◆