CURLEY, James Michael, a Representative from Massachusetts; born in Boston, Mass., November 20, 1874; attended the public schools of Boston; salesman for Logan, Johnston & Co., a bakers' and confectioners' supply firm; engaged in the real-estate and insurance business; member of the Boston common council in 1900-1902; served in the State house of representatives in 1902-1904; convicted on September 24, 1903, of conspiracy; sentenced to county jail; member of the Boston board of aldermen 1904-1910; member of the Boston City Council in 1910-1912; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-second and Sixty-third Congresses and served from March 4, 1911, until his resignation, effective February 4, 1914, having been elected mayor of Boston, in which capacity he served from 1914 to 1918; unsuccessful candidate for re-election to mayor of Boston in 1917; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives in 1918; president of Hibernia Savings Bank, Boston, Mass.; again served as mayor, 1922-1926 and 1930-1934; unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1924; Governor of Massachusetts 1935-1937; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in 1936; unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Boston in 1937 and again in 1941; member of the Democratic National Committee in 1941 and 1942; elected to the Seventy-eighth and Seventy-ninth Congresses (January 3, 1943-January 3, 1947); was not a candidate for renomination in 1946; convicted on January 18, 1946, of conspiracy and mail fraud; sentence commuted by President Harry S. Truman on November 26, 1947; again elected mayor of Boston on November 6, 1945, and served until January 1950; unsuccessful candidate for re-election for mayor of Boston in 1949; unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Boston in 1951 and 1955; appointed a member of the State Labor Relations Commission in 1957; died in Boston, Mass., November 12, 1958; interment in Old Calvary Cemetery.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
[ Top ]Beatty, Jack. The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1993.
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------. I'd Do It Again: A Record of All My Uproarious Years. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1957. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1976.
Dinneen, Joseph F. Purple Shamrock: The Honorable James Michael Curley of Boston. New York: Norton, 1949.
Foley, William J. "Public Speaking in the Political Career of James M. Curley." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1953.
Howie, Wendell Dearborn. The reign of James the First; a historical record of the administration of James M. Curley as governor of Massachusetts. A foreword by Hon. Gaspar G. Bacon. [Cambridge, Mass.: Warren Publications, Inc., 1936].
Johnson, Robert. Curley: The Musical. Book by Frank Alcorn; additional dialogue by David J. Mauriello. [United States]: Alcorn/Johnson, [1996].
Kenneally, James. "Prelude to the Last Hurrah: The Massachusetts Senatorial Election of 1936." Mid-America 62 (January 1980): 3-20.
Lapomarda, Vincent A. "Maurice Joseph Tobin: The Decline of Bossism in Boston." New England Quarterly 43 (September 1970): 355-81.
Leinwand, Gerald. Mackerels in the Moonlight: Four Corrupt American Mayors. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004.
Russell, Francis. "Last of the Bosses." American Heritage 10 (June 1959): 21-25+.
Steinberg, Alfred. "James Michael Curley: The Joyous Plague of Boston." In The Bosses, pp. 134-97. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1972.
Sullivan, Edmund B. Campaigning With James Michael Curley. With Barry Mushlin and Robert E. Colt. Hanover, Mass.: Christopher Pub. House, 2000.
