Lucky Billo

During 4 1/2 years as mayor of New York, Irish-born Bill O'Dwyer often seemed to be doing his bullheaded best to commit political suicide. He made an enemy of President Harry Truman by publicly opposing him as a candidate before the 1948 Democratic Convention. He feuded with reporters. He enraged millions of his fellow citizens in the summer of 1950--when the district attorney began unearthing corruption in New York--by staging the biggest police funeral in city history for a captain who had put a bullet through his head while under investigation.

But charming Billo had slathers of luck. It had never deserted him in the years in which he lifted himself from stoker to hod carrier to bartender to cop to D.A. to brigadier general in the U.S. Army to mayor. It did not desert him when the roof began falling in on him at city hall. Democratic bosses figured a special city election in 1950 would be just the thing to rouse the faithful and help put a Democrat in the governor's chair in Albany. Harry Truman swallowed hard, but in the hope (later proved false) of carrying New York, he appointed Bill O'Dwyer ambassador to Mexico.

"The Grandest Way." It was, as one barnacled and admiring city hall politico put it, "the grandest way to skip town I ever heard of." When Bill arrived at the embassy at Mexico City with his pretty new wife and helpmate, Sloan, he acted as if nothing had happened at all, at all, and soon had Mexicans of all classes eating out of his hand. Mexico's President Miguel Aleutian, a broad-minded politician, found him a congenial soul. Thousands of other Mexicans were flattered to find that O'Dwyer spoke Spanish (learned as a youth when he studied for the priesthood at Salamanca, Spain), that he liked bullfights, and was a charming and democratic host.

But New York began to erupt with one scandal after another concerning his administration. His closest political sidekick, James J. Moran, was found guilty of engineering a huge fire department shakedown of oil-burner dealers--a shakedown which netted millions. Convicted Brooklyn Bookie Harry Gross told of paying off whole platoons of New York cops during the O'Dwyer era, and charged that Moran had once called a pre-election meeting of O'Dwyer and the city's top bookies.

Like a Retired Houdini. For more than two years, O'Dwyer, popular as ever with the Mexicans, airily refused to pay any attention. Harry Truman as airily refused to fire him. But last week, with the Eisenhower Administration on its way in, Bill O'Dwyer gravely notified the President that having "done everything in my power to serve my country well" he was withdrawing from the diplomatic service. The President, in a letter of praise, "reluctantly" accepted his resignation.

This pious gravity was not echoed, however, in New York. "Come home, Bill," jeered the tabloid Daily News in a one-line editorial, "nothing is forgiven." City Council President Rudolph Halley said he hoped that O'Dwyer would either come back voluntarily or be brought back to testify on the city scandals. But this was mostly talk. If O'Dwyer chooses to stay in Mexico--as he has strongly indicated he will--he cannot be brought back unless 1) he is charged with a specific crime, and 2) his Mexican friends can be persuaded that it is legally necessary to extradite him.

This week, Lucky Billo engaged in his last big diplomatic chore, lent his official presence to the inauguration of Mexico's new President (see HEMISPHERE). Then, as he went off to relax on the sands at Acapulco, many a New Yorker guessed that he would settle down south of the border for good, to bask in the southern sun and enjoy the admiration of the understanding Latins, and perhaps reflect cozily, like a retired Houdini recalling the box trick, on his old adventures in practical politics.

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