The entry begins:My man, John Raskob, couldn’t sit still. He ran through life reinventing himself every few years. He got bored easily. He had a prodigious gift for numbers and for risk-taking. He started off as a newsie in the little Erie Canal support town, Lockport (the very same place Fitzgerald has Dick Diver land after his alcoholic fall from grace), and ended up managing the DuPont Company and General Motors. He was a famous—then infamous—King of the Bull Market during the Jazz Age. He thought up the Empire State Building, built it, and owned most it. He was a devout Catholic and was made a Knight of Malta by Pope Pius. He had thirteen children but after he became very rich he enjoyed the life of a New York City boulevardier, far from his wife and family.Learn more about Everybody Ought to Be Rich at the Oxford University Press website.
Raskob’s mid-life adventure in politics, I think, is the chapter of his life best fitted to silver screendom. And, alas, my protagonist would play the part of the heavy. In 1928, Raskob managed the presidential campaign of his fellow Irish-Catholic, New York Governor Al Smith. After Smith lost to Hoover, Raskob stayed on as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He wanted to make the Democrats the party of Big Business. Naturally, he worked hard to deny Franklin Roosevelt the 1932 nomination. That’s the background to our picture show...[read on]
The Page 99 Test: Everybody Ought to Be Rich.
My Book, The Movie: Everybody Ought to Be Rich.
--Marshal Zeringue
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