Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was a prominent American businessman and political figure, and the father of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, United States Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, United States Senator Edward Kennedy, war hero Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, and grandfather of U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy. He was a leading member of the Democratic Party and of the Irish Catholic community. He was the inaugural Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later directed the Maritime Commission. Kennedy served as the United States Ambassador to Great Britain from 1938 until late 1940, including the early part of World War II.
Born to a political family in Boston, Massachusetts, Joseph Kennedy was educated at Boston Latin School and Harvard University, and embarked on a career in finance, making a large fortune as a stock market and commodity investor and by investing in real estate and a wide range of industries. Allegedly these included bootlegging, the illegal importation of alcohol into the United States during Prohibition, though these allegations have never been proven. It has been substantiated that toward the end of Prohibition, Kennedy and James Roosevelt traveled to Scotland to buy distribution rights for Scotch whiskey. In addition, Kennedy had purchased spirits-importation rights from Schenley, a firm in Canada.
During World War I, he was an assistant general-manager of Bethlehem Steel and developed a friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Kennedy made huge profits from reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios, ultimately merging several acquisitions into Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios. After Prohibition ended in 1933, Kennedy consolidated an even larger fortune when his company, Somerset Importers, became the exclusive American agent for Gordon's Gin and Dewar's Scotch. He owned the largest office building in the country, Chicago's Merchandise Mart, giving his family an important base in that city and an alliance with the Irish-American political leadership there.
His term as Ambassador and his political ambitions ended abruptly during the Battle of Britain in November 1940, with the publishing of his controversial remarks suggesting that "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here, ." In later years, Kennedy worked behind the scenes to continue building the financial and political fortunes of the Kennedy family. After a disabling stroke on December 19, 1961, at the age of 73, Kennedy lost all power of speech, but remained mentally intact. He used a wheelchair after the stroke.
Kennedy was the one of three fathers (the other two being Dr. George Tryon Harding, Sr. and George H. W. Bush) to live through the entire presidency of a son. He died on November 18, 1969, two months after his eighty-first birthday.
Background, education, and family
Joseph Patrick Kennedy was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a son of P. J. Kennedy, a successful businessman, ward boss, and Irish American community leader, and his wife Mary Augusta Hickey. All of Kennedy's grandparents emigrated to Massachusetts in the 1840s to escape the Irish famine. Kennedy was born into a highly sectarian society, where Irish Catholics felt themselves excluded by upper-class Boston Brahmins. Boston Irish became thus active in the Democratic Party, including P.J. and numerous relatives.
P.J. Kennedy's home was comfortable, thanks to his successful saloon business, investments, and an influential role in local politics. His mother encouraged Joseph to attend the Boston Latin School, where Joe was a below average scholar but was popular among his classmates, winning election as class president and playing on the school baseball team.
Kennedy followed in the footsteps of older cousins by attending Harvard College. He focused on becoming a social leader, working energetically to gain admittance to the prestigious Hasty Pudding Club. While at Harvard he joined the Delta Upsilon International fraternity and played on the baseball team, but was blackballed from the Porcellian Club.
Marriage and family
In 1914, Kennedy married Rose Fitzgerald, the eldest daughter of John F. Fitzgerald, a Democratic mayor of Boston and probably the most recognized politician in the city. They had nine children.
Business career
Kennedy made a large fortune as a stock market and commodity investor and by investing in real estate and a wide range of industries. He never built a significant business from scratch, but his timing as both buyer and seller was usually excellent. Sometimes he made use of inside information in ways which would later be made illegal, but regulations were lighter in his era. He later became the first chairman of the SEC. Kennedy was associated with various mobsters by their own account, including Sam Giancana and Frank Costello. According to some accounts, Kennedy was associated in the "Bear Raid" that precipitated the 1929 stock crash, as well as much of the bootlegging activity that was current at the time. When Fortune magazine published its first list of the richest people in the United States in 1957 it placed him in the $200–400 million band ($1.51-3.03 billion today), meaning that it estimated him to be between the ninth and sixteenth richest person in the United States at that time.
Early ventures
After graduating from Harvard in 1912, he took his first job as a state-employed bank examiner. This allowed him to learn a great deal about the banking industry. In 1913, the Columbia Trust Bank, in which his father held a significant share, was under threat of takeover. Kennedy, borrowing $45,000 ($966,970 today) from family and friends, bought back control and at age 25 was rewarded by being elected the bank's president, "the youngest in America."
Kennedy emerged as a highly successful entrepreneur with an eye for value. For example he turned a handsome profit from ownership of Old Colony Realty Associates, Inc., which bought distressed real estate.
Although skeptical of American involvement in World War I, he sought to participate in war-time production as an assistant general-manager of Bethlehem Steel, at a major shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. There he oversaw the production of transports and warships critical to the war. This job brought him into contact with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Wall Street
In 1919, he joined the prominent stock brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. where he became an expert in dealing in the unregulated stock market of the day, engaging in tactics that would later be labeled insider trading and market manipulation. In 1923, he left, and set up his own investment company, becoming a multi-millionaire during the bull market of the 1920s and even more wealthy as a result of taking "short" positions in 1929.
David Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear , describes the Wall Street of the Kennedy era:
The Crash
Kennedy formed alliances with several other Irish-Catholic money men, including Charles E. Mitchell, Michael J. Meehan and Bernard Smith. He helped establish the Libby-Owens-Ford stock pool, an arrangement in which Kennedy and colleagues created a scarcity of Libby-Owens-Ford stock to drive up the value of their own holdings in the stock, using inside information and the public's lack of knowledge. Pool operators would bribe journalists to present information in the most advantageous manner. Attempts to corner stocks were made that would cause the price to go up, and bear raids could cause the price to collapse downward. Kennedy got into a bidding war seeking control of founder John Hertz's company Yellow Cab.
Kennedy later claimed he knew the rampant stock speculation of the late 1920s would lead to a crash. It is said that he knew it was time to get out of the market when he received stock tips from a shoe-shine boy.
It has been noted that during the Depression Kennedy vastly increased his financial fortune by investing most of it in real estate. In 1929, Kennedy's fortune was estimated to be $4 million (equivalent to $49.8 million today). By 1935, his wealth had increased to $180 million (equivalent to $2.8 billion today). According to Time Magazine , Kennedy survived the crash "because he possessed a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment and a marvelous sense of timing."
Investments in movie production, liquor importing, real estate
Kennedy made huge profits from reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios. Film production in the US was much more decentralized than it is today, with many different movie studios producing film product. One small studio was FBO, Film Booking Offices of America, which specialized in Westerns produced cheaply. Its owner was in financial trouble and asked Kennedy to help find a new owner. Kennedy formed his own group of investors and bought it for $1.5 million ($18.2 million today).
Kennedy moved to Hollywood in March 1926 to focus on running the studio. Movie studios were then permitted to own exhibition companies which were necessary to get their films on local screens. With that in mind, in a hostile buyout, he acquired the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters
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