Al Smith: Irish Revolutionary

This movie is predominantly about the life of Al Smith Jr. It is about how he went from an 8th grade education and working at Folton Fish Market to the presidential election of 1928.

Smith was born to Alfred Emanuel Smith and Catherine Mulvihill and initially grew up in the multiethnic Lower East Side of Manhattan, on Oliver Street, New York City, within sight of the Brooklyn Bridge which was then under construction. His four grandparents were Irish, German, Italian, and English, but Smith identified with the Irish American community and became its leading spokesman in the 1920s. He was thirteen when his father Alfred, a Civil War veteran who owned a small trucking firm, died; at fourteen he had to drop out of parochial school, St. James School, to help support the family. He never attended high school or college, and claimed that he learned about people by studying them at the Fulton Fish Market, a job for which he was paid $12 per week to support his family. An accomplished amateur actor, he became a notable speaker. On May 6, 1900, Alfred Smith married Catherine A. Dunn, with whom he had five children.

In his political career, he traded on his working-class beginnings, identified himself with immigrants, and campaigned as a man of the people. Although indebted to the Tammany Hall political machine, particularly to its boss, "Silent" Charlie Murphy, he remained untarnished by corruption and worked for the passage of progressive legislation.

The Republican Party was riding high on the economic boom of the 1920s, which their presidential candidate Herbert Hoover pledged to continue. Historians agree that the prosperity along with anti-Catholic sentiment made Hoover's election inevitable, although he had never run for office. He defeated Smith by a landslide in the 1928 election.

Smith was the first Catholic to win a major-party presidential nomination.

A major controversial issue was the continuation of Prohibition. Smith was personally in favor of relaxation or repeal of Prohibition laws despite its status as part of the nation's Constitution, but the Democratic Party split north and south on the issue. During the campaign Smith tried to duck the issue with noncommittal statements.

Smith felt slighted by Roosevelt during Roosevelt's governorship. They

became rivals for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. After losing the nomination, Smith begrudgingly campaigned for Roosevelt in 1932. When President Roosevelt began pursuing the liberal policies of his New Deal, Smith