Biography The Deeds of My Fathers By Paul David Pope QuartetPounds 22.50
Fans of The Godfather will be familiar with the screwy moral codeof Italian New York immigrants in the early 20th century: you gottado whatever it takes to look after your family and build yourempire. Like it or not, Cosa Nostra got business going, even ifplenty of poor sops were screwed over or butchered along the way.
Generoso Pope Senior was 15 when he disembarked at Ellis Islandin 1906, with just $10 in his pocket. Twelve years later, he ownedhalf of Colonial Stone and Sand, the company making bricks for theRockefeller Centre. A decade on, he was outbidding William RandolphHearst to buy Il Progresso, New York's Italian language newspaper.So far, so Godfather Part II.
But it's in the story of the inheritance - Part One in Godfatherterms - that the plot picks up. Generoso Pope Snr doesn't think muchof sons one or two - too fond of golf and martini lunches - so onhis deathbed, aged 59, tries to give it all to go-getting son numberthree, Gene Jnr. But young Gene persuades Dad otherwise - "you can'tdo that. They're my brothers" - only to find himself booted out ofthe family. It turns out his brothers resented him for being Daddy'sfavourite, and even his mother loathed him, calling him the abortionshe wished she'd had.
So, with a pregnant wife and just $5,000, young Gene builds hisown empire. He buys the ailing National Enquirer, eventually turningit into America's leading scandal sheet. From day one, he's up tohis neck with unsavoury types: mobsters, bent cops, judges andpoliticians. But his father hadn't been much better, befriending andsupporting Mussolini.
Even if the characters are unlovable, this is a cracking tale.The author, Paul David Pope, who is Gene's son, conducted 500interviews to piece it together. Students of journalism will beintrigued by the story of the Enquirer, which Gene didn't mean toturn into a tabloid. His first edition splashed with an importantpolitical scoop, but he quickly learnt who his readers were. He tookThe Daily Mirror as his model, adopting its winning formula ofcrime, scandal and disaster, with all the boring serious newscrunched into one page at the back. A typical headline of the 1950sand 1960s read: "I cut out her heart and stomped on it". Salesblossomed.
Today, the Enquirer is ailing once more, largely because of theinternet. But, having gobbled up this gossipy account of power,crime and corruption, I don't think our appetite for scandal is indanger of dying just yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment