Censored : the private life of the movie (1930)

by JOHN BRIGHT Hizzoner Big Bill Thompson Introduction by Harry Elmer Barnes The author was confronted at the onset, with the career and personality of a man of great national interest but merely local political importance. Here was a man who set the world agape but was unable to order his materials for the gratification of the two major ambitions of his mature life: a term in the Senate and the Presidency. Frustrated but still agog with prodigious energies, he created a tempest in a teapot — his astounding crusade culminating in the trial of William McAndrew. His success is easy to explain. In the beginning he was discovered by a group of men who were shrewd, unscrupulous and untiring. They exploited his hearty personality and enormous frame, his wealth and family reputation, to result in his election to the mayoralty in 1915. Re-election was effected by similar amazing shibboleths. Again ensued four years of disastrous government, climaxed with a criminal trial of the ringleaders staggering in its details. Chicago's political history of the last twenty years is a weird and fascinating phantasmagoria, chock-full of high comic drama. In this drama Big Bill Thompson has had a prominent role. It is his part that the author of his biography has tried to illuminate, with as much of the setting as is necessary for proper understanding of it.