"Our Jimmy"

Old Tammany will greet him, And so will Fighting Al. Let's all clear the way, He'll be home today. Shaking hands with old Broadway. Our Jimmy's coming home boys, Greet him with a smile. He's been away From old Broadway For quite a little while.

So ran the words of a song which State Motor Vehicles Commissioner Charles A. Harnett distributed among 150 assorted businessmen, Broadway sports and has-been politicians who sailed down New York Harbor one morning last week aboard the lighter Charlie White to greet James John Walker. The onetime (1925-32) Mayor of New York was returning to his native city after three years of self-exile in Europe. A pall of dirty fog overhung the harbor. But it did not compare with the cloud which hung over Mr. Walker's head when he resigned his job and sailed away from New York in 1932 in disgrace, unwilling to face out removal charges before Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (TIME, Sept. 12, 1932 et ante).

At variance with the lyric distributed aboard the Charlie White, Tammany definitely did not turn out to greet prodigal Mr. Walker. "Fighting Al" Smith had other business. Onetime Official Greeter Grover Whalen, a decorative member of the old Walker entourage, and little Alfred Cleveland Blumenthal, Walker's Broadway companion, discreetly left town before his ship reached Quarantine. But the Master Brewers' Association, grateful for Walker's fantastic Beer Parade of 1932. was at the dock 2,000 strong. The Grand Street Boys and other sodalities with nothing to lose by consorting with the ex-Mayor had hired a dozen boats on which to welcome him home. The Press, always charmed by the slick little politician whose neat phrases helped them in making a living, was represented by a turn-out of reporters surpassed only by that given Charles Lindbergh and Edward of Wales. And, inexplicably, John J. Dunnigan, leader of the Democratic majority in the State Senate, calmly holding his political life in his hands, climbed aboard the Manhattan. It was he who took Jimmy Walker, natty as ever in a pinstriped, pinchback suit, out of the clutches of a customs officer, led him to a microphone to be interviewed for the radio. Since resigning his office and leaving the country, Jimmy Walker had returned once before for a brief period when, as a result of crossed political signals, he thought he might run for Mayor in place of bumbling John Patrick O'Brien (TIME, Oct. 17, 1932). This time what his welcomers lacked in public prestige they made up for in warmth of spirit, and their greeting went straight to sentimental Jimmy Walker's none too robust heart. "I'm happy but abashed," he said chokingly "I'm happy but humiliated. . . . I love every cobblestone in the City of New York. I did my best, but now I am through, confident that the record will be my best eulogy as long as I live."

One motorcycle policeman was sufficient to convoy to their hotel home Jimmy Walker and his second wife, onetime Musicomedienne Betty Compton whom he married in the South of France.* They then read 1,400 letters and telegrams of greeting, planned his future. Possibilities included the law, the theatre, the cinema, the liquor business. That night the City of New York was gently rocked by its first earthquake since 1925.

*Roly-poly Janet Allen Walker, onetime vaudeville singer and the ex-Mayor's first wife, denied herself to reporters at Miami, told her maid to announce: "Mrs. Walker is not feeling very well."

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