Booknotes

MR. DONALD WARREN, AUTHOR, "RADIO PRIEST: CHARLES COUGHLIN, THE FATHER OF HATE RADIO:" He was a pioneer in using radio for a very let's call it activation of the audience, to get them to respond, to take action on the issues of the day. And some of those actions we would call hateful. And I feel that there's a connection between his activities back in the '30s and what we've seen emerge recently.

MR. WARREN: He lived he was born in Hamilton, Ontario. Then he moved on to Detroit and Royal Oak, where the Shrine of Little Flower is located is just north of the city, still standing; in need of some repair now. And he spent most of his life then in the US, although he was Canadian born. And then he did convert to American citizenship in his 30s, I believe.

MR. WARREN: He was much more than a priest. He was, for his parishioners, a figure who provided financial advice and the other missionary activities that are associated with the priesthood. But more than that, he was a figure who was a teacher, educator and put people in a position to understand the world around them.

MR. WARREN: That was taken in the early '30s. He was very close to his mother. She was a very important figure. She was the one that prayed that he would enter the priesthood and, indeed, he did. A father not so so active in his life, but they both later helped sell souvenirs at the shrine. And so this was a picture showing his strong family values. And he was a figure really of the era, but also of our era as well.

MR. WARREN: They were buddies, comrades often. They exchanged jokes with each other. They met frequently. They fell out around the New Deal politics. Joe Kennedy ended up having to try to cool down Charles Coughlin's passions and to try to do something about his opposition to many of the New Deal programs and policies.

MR. WARREN: Huey Long, of course, this marvelous figure from Louisiana. They probably only met once or twice, but their politics were seen as quite similar. And the idea that they might come together to form a third party was a very serious concern to the Democratic Party.

MR. WARREN: I would say it was at the time that Franklin Roosevelt was elected and the next year or two after that, when Coughlin could be both the spokesman for the administration he claimed that and at the same time going off on his own agenda. And as he began to move away from the New Deal, he lost support. There were incidents that occurred also that affected his credibility. He speculated in the stock market, even though he claimed to be one of those who was totally against any activity of that sort. I would say that '33 and '34 were his peak years. Ran as a candidate or at least he organized a party in '36. It didn't do as well as he had hoped. And after '36 he began to be marginalized to the extremes of the political spectrum.

MR. WARREN: Yes.

MR. WARREN: Actually, they had no relationship at all, although he claimed to have spoken with him. Charles Coughlin built his national reputation on attacking Herbert Hoover and condemned his policies, his insensitivity to the concerns of the Depression. And he was the first political figure that Charles Coughlin used as a stepping stone to his own national fame. Hoover's attitude toward World War II, though, brought them back together, ironically, by the end of the '30s.

MR. WARREN: Yes. They had similar views on the need to avoid any entanglements in Europe. But certainly at first they were bitter enemies. Hoover tried to find out how Coughlin was being supported and funded. There were attempts to take him off the radio during the time that Hoover was president. This was the first example, really, of an attempt to curb Coughlin, under the Hoover administration. And this is an interesting story in itself. The early days of radio there wasn't really a precedent. Charles Coughlin was a pioneer of political radio, in terms of the advocacy that he had of particular programs, ideas and even, at least indirectly, candidates.

MR. WARREN: Well, a couple of reasons. I was brought up in Detroit, raised hearing about him, had actually heard him speak once. And I became fascinated with the potential that this local boy had to become a world figure. When I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I thought I'd do a dissertation. My department felt, though, that they were not interested in case studies. And so in the early '60s I put it away, and then began studying the Wallace movement. And I developed a view of...

MR. WARREN: George Wallace.

MR. WARREN: I developed a view of a kind of distinct politics. We don't really have any category. We have conservatives and liberals, left and right. And I began to see George Wallace, as well as Charles Coughlin, presenting a kind of distinct politics that combined left and right: a concern with the elite exploiting the middle class, and a concern with ethnic minorities sometimes seeming to gain power, with the middle class more or less squeezed in the middle. I call these middle American radical politics. And I saw that the George Wallace movement of the '70s really had an antecedent in Charles Coughlin. Then I was given a an address that Coughlin had made, the tape and the transcript. And I was fascinated to read one paragraph in the address. And what Charles Coughlin said was that, `The middle class is being ground under in the twin threats from above and below.' And I thought, `Well, this is very contemporary. A lot of people are feeling that way in our country.' And Charles Coughlin was the first to identify this kind of usually called populist politics, but I see it as having populist elements but really perhaps somewhat unique in itself.

MR. WARREN: Well, not exactly. I would say, though, that this set of political talk radio hosts that's been very active in the last few years would carry on the tradition of the very vociferous commentary using this medium. I would say that the third party developments that we've seen recently share some of the need to ask the question, `Does the existing political structure work?' And Coughlin said it didn't and that we needed to do something to change that. I would say also that Charles Coughlin shifted ground, so that if you were to call him a right winger, there's some validity to that. You could call him a left winger; he attacked capitalism vociferously. And Hoover, who was very angry at the very personalized attacks on him he he then described Coughlin as one of the most dangerous leftist radicals in the country. Coughlin later would see leftist politics as a great danger, and he himself having quite opposite views.

MR. WARREN: Yes, yes.

MR. WARREN: Well, part of the reason this is a kind of biography that shouldn't have been written and couldn't have been written in terms of the conventional approaches of papers of the individual and all those materials. I began trying to interview people who were still living, and I began that process in the late '70s and early '80s. I had taught out at his high school, which is a mile north. Our university, Oakland University, has extension courses. And so I began interviewing in the early '80s as part of that effort to try to reach anyone who was still alive who could give me some personal insights on Charles Coughlin. And so for the next few years I tried to reach as many of those people as I could.

MR. WARREN: Well, I think there were about 130 or 140 persons that I contacted and some extensive interviews, some telephone interviews. But it was, I would say, in that vicinity of well over 100. And a number of these were parishioners or people who had worked or known Coughlin. Some were his bitter opponents who had gone back to the years of the '30s. I tried to get a a spectrum of views on him. Very difficult. Some people were very reluctant.

I remember arranging an interview with Bill Paley at CBS. CBS had put Coughlin on for one year. It was a national contract, 1930. It had been arranged because one of the advertisers on CBS was the owner of station WJR in Detroit. He was also a General Motors car dealer, and his advertising was noticed by CBS. And as a favor to Bill Paley, the contract was arranged. Coughlin gave a bitter attack on the Versailles treaty that caused tremendous controversy. And as a result of that, CBS tried to get out of the contract, and it was terminated.

Well, I thought it would be important to try to pick up on the details of that story. And Frank Stanton, who had been very helpful, had arranged this interview with Bill Paley. And I recall going up to the CBS offices in New York and passing a number of secretaries to the inner sanctum. And when I sat down, he was very gracious. He welcomed me. And then I said `I'm here to talk with you about Father Coughlin.' At that point his face changed in demeanor. He said, `I have to ask you to leave. This is a subject I cannot and do not wish to talk about.' And so rather unceremoniously I was escorted out. And I think that reflected some of the still prevailing power that Charles Coughlin had in the mid 1980s even, and up to the present day, for those that had been involved with him in some way.

MR. WARREN: Well, I think the whole question of anti Semitism and and Charles Coughlin was such a looming question throughout his career that I think Bill Paley felt that he didn't want to associate himself in any way with Charles Coughlin.

MR. WARREN: Yes. Yes. This is a pamphlet that reprints a article that appeared in Coughlin's Social Justice magazine. And throughout a good part of his career he had the view that Jewish international bankers were undermining capitalism and that, also, Jewish radicals were bringing Communism to our shores as well as to Europe.. And so this was one of his dominant views.

MR. WARREN: Well, there was a real contradiction there. And it was something which partly was reflected in his network of people that he associated with, all of whom shared these views. The church itself, of course, had condemned anti Semitism, but it was part of sort of the popular culture in the '30s. And while the church did condemn it officially, unofficially it was not unusual for Catholic priests or persons from other denominations to carry a rather significant set of ideas about the Jews and their inordinate influence in society.

And Coughlin himself then tested, really, the limits of tolerance of his bishop. He continued to broadcast speeches and talks. His bishop tried to rein him in. At one point the Vatican was contacted, and the idea was to clearly state to Coughlin that he was in violation of church teaching. And such a reprimand was received by him. But his bishop, Cardinal Mooney at that time, did not make this public. So what happened was these private remonstrances against him for his anti Jewish attitudes never were public enough so that even today many people in the Jewish community feel that the church was not strong enough in condemning him. And he did have persons, though, within the Catholic community that that agreed with his views. And he proselytized these views very widely among his clerical associates and anyone that he could reach.

MR. WARREN: Yes, yes.

MR. WARREN: Well, this was part of his coming to the center stage with Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt, through an intermediary, Frank Murphy, who was mayor of Detroit at that time, later of course, Supreme Court justice and attorney general Roosevelt had sent out feelers about Charles Coughlin. He was tremendously popular by this time, 1932. And so a meeting was arranged, and Coughlin agreed that he would support Roosevelt's campaign. And he was invited as one of those persons to give a supportive speech. He coined one of his marvelous phrases. He, in that speech, said, `My friends, it is either Roosevelt or ruin.' Later he would change that to say, `Roosevelt and ruin.' But it was the kind of talk that helped Roosevelt gain supporters among those who saw Charles Coughlin and he as really forming a kind of partnership.

MR. WARREN: He died at the age of 88, 1979, long after his national fame had faded.

MR. WARREN: Not personally. I heard him give a midnight mass in 1958. Memorable. I'll never forget the appearance. Tremendously theatrical. This was true, of course, throughout his whole career. I recall the exact words, as a matter of fact. In 1958 he declared that, `I predict by the end of the next year that blood will be running in the streets of Moscow, that the people will rise up against their leaders.' Not quite accurate, but the power I shall never forget the power of his presentation. And if we do hear some of that from radio broadcasts, I think people will begin to understand.

MR. WARREN: Royal Oak is a few miles north of Detroit. It's one of the suburbs out Woodward Avenue, which is the main street going out toward the suburbs. It was a town which was with had dirt roads and one main street. And he set up a wooden church there in 1926, and with help from the bishop, giving him the money to build that.

MR. WARREN: That's the original wooden structure.

MR. WARREN: No, it burned. They're not clear how it happened. It was replaced by this magnificent stone structure that is depicted below.

MR. WARREN: Yeah. You notice the octagonal design, which was completely radical. The whole structure broke away from traditional Catholic style of architecture. And in that sense he was a radical. And and his original church he claimed that the Klan tried to stop its construction by burning a cross on the lawn. This became one of the things that he used to identify himself with tolerance; that he was always opposed to prejudice. And when I tried to trace down this story, whether the Klan had really burned a cross on the lawn, I couldn't find any evidence to support that early myth that he had created about how he got into national politics.

MR. WARREN: Oh, yes, indeed. Yeah. It's got some problems. It's sinking a little bit, not quite like the Leaning Tower. But it's a magnificent structure. And the parish, of course, still functions. There have been other persons who have marched up the stairway to the tower where he had his private office. It got to be dangerous, so they don't allow visitors up there because of the insurance problem. I think a woman tripped at one point. But you can go there. You can visit there's some memorabilia even that the shrine still has.

And there's a little bit of a story. I don't know if I brought this up in the book. When he was retired and still at the shrine in the '50s, he was very concerned with the pigeons who were sitting atop that magnificent structure. And so he asked the groundskeeper, was it possible to get rid of those pigeons that were besmirching the edifice. And he said, `I want you to do something to get rid of them.' And he ordered the groundskeeper to take a rifle and start shooting at those pigeons. The sheriff of Royal of the county came over and told him, `You can't be shooting up there because the bullets are landing out on Woodward Avenue into the traffic.'

MR. WARREN: Yes. April of '37, right. This was the 20th anniversary, really, of the US involvement in World War I. And so his entire address is devoted to the need to avoid such entanglements. And this is wh a a classic speech where you can hear the style and the force of the voice.

MR. WARREN: OK. (Excerpt from April 1937 radio broadcast) Father CHARLES COUGHLIN: ...obscene deaths created not out of the wealth of the country for purposes of production, but out of the borrowing power of the government from bankers whose institutions had been closed because their vaults were empty, empty of everything practically, save a bottle of ink and a fountain pen. And thus with their fountain pens and their ink, they began writing out checks of billions of dollars. They began issuing these checks to the United States government with little or nothing to back them. The United States government in turn began to issue bonds to these bankers for those worthless checks, bonds that contracted for you and for me to pay in real, hard earned money by the sweat of our brows, not only their capital sum...

MR. WARREN: Classic Coughlin.

MR. WARREN: Oh, yes. There is an organization that distributes his radio addresses. And I have a colleague who is doing some research on the rhetorical style of those addresses.

MR. WARREN: Well, they feel that he has been pushed aside as a figure; that he has something important to say, and they're keeping alive his ideas. And they believe strongly that his voice was a voice appropriate to America.

MR. WARREN: Complicated process. There's some myths about it. It was really a combination of his own actions and the church. He had begun to have contacts with Nazi Germany. He had made contacts before with Fascist Italy. He had actually written letters to Benito Mussolini offering his help for his Mussolini's economic policies. So by the end of the '30s there were examples of his staff and people who'd made contact with the German government. And his closest aide, Louie Ward, had actually been a working on behalf of the Japanese government as an unpaid as a paid agent of a foreign power. And the legislation passed in 1938 said if you don't register, you're liable for fines or imprisonment. So the federal government was finding out a number of things about his contacts.

In addition, the church was just appalled by what he was doing, and the attempts to restrain him were complicated. When there was a there was a private meeting, an unscheduled meeting, with Franklin Roosevelt and Cardinal Mooney, sort of warning the cardinal that, `There's quite a file building up. Why don't you try to do something? It would be much better if the church itself could take care of its own errant' as Cardinal Mooney referred to him `this bad boy.' And so there was an effort to have some ecclesiastical punishment.

And there were several fiery meetings between the attorney for Charles Coughlin and the bishop. Coughlin in these meetings threatened to pull millions of his followers out of the church. But he was afraid that he might have to go to jail, and he warned the cardinal as well that, `If I go to jail, you would have to testify, and if you give me the ecclesiastical punishment, that will ensure that I will have a secular punishment because my character would be vulnerable.'

So a kind of elaborate arrangement was worked out, a private understanding that if Charles Coughlin would was would withdraw from any kind of political activity, that he could continue on at the shrine; there would be no civil punishment; there would be no ecclesiastical punishment. But he would no longer be able to speak on directly political matters, that he could not organize movements and could not be part of any political activity. And so in May of 1942 he signed this agreement. And until he died in 1979, the next 37 years, he was not active in the way that he was before.

He did write, however. He wrote several books bitter condemnations of the church. But by then he was long forgotten, and only a few hundred of his closest friends and associates would know of his work. And he continued to rail against what he saw as the deterioration of American society. He had a number of views on well, Joe McCarthy, for example, who he thought was a positive force; John Kennedy he supported him for president, although apparently there were real concerns in the Kennedy campaign that Charles Coughlin would openly express that support. And so they quietly suggested to him, `Say nothing about your enthusiasm for John Kennedy.' So right till the end of his life he spoke and wrote and was, though, no longer a figure on the national screen.

MR. WARREN: Weekly.

MR. WARREN: Weekly, beginning in the fall of 1926, urged on by a group of his friends and WJR's owner to try it out. Received a few letters the first time. So from 1926 until 1940 that would be 14 years he was on the radio at least once a week, although not in the summer. His season would begin in the fall and run through to the spring.

MR. WARREN: Well, it would usually be in the afternoon and would vary across the nation. It would start at three. And there would be not necessarily rebroadcasts; these were live. He wouldn't repeat them. But what he would do is these would be they had these old fashioned kind of discs that they could transcribe. And so for the West Coast, some of those were transcribed. But it was every afternoon at three on Sunday.

MR. WARREN: Oh, usually an hour. And it would begin with organ music, a very religious theme. The announcer would now introduce him. He would then give a sermon, which would be religiously focused, but then very quickly turn to a controversial political matter of the day.

MR. WARREN: He had his own network. After the CBS experience, he put together, through his agent, contracts with up to 60, I think it was at one point 60 separate local stations, including New York, Washington, all the major areas. And through his agent they arranged for the contracts. And they were paid by contributions coming from listeners, although technically he wasn't allowed to do this and the announcer would not specifically ask for a solicitation. It was just understood that if you liked and enjoyed these broadcasts, that you might fold up a dollar bill and that was the very common way that it was done and just send it on to the shrine. You might get a booklet in return or some acknowledgment so that it wasn't really directly supporting the radio broadcast.

MR. WARREN: Well, Brian, this is a question that's still debated. I would say in the early '30s it looks like an estimate of 30 million to 40 million is not impossible. Later on, by the late '30s, it was down to five million to 10 million, and at the very end, probably no more than a million and a half to three million.

MR. WARREN: Oh, about 120 million.

MR. WARREN: Well, that's an underestimate, really, because if you went to many of the neighborhoods in the major cities, and let's say you didn't have a radio, but your neighbor did, you could simply walk down the street and you could hear his voice reverberating. And this was very common in many of the neighborhoods in New York and Boston. So that people were listening in groups, they were listening at the local barber shop, they were listening in homes and, of course, he had his newspaper as well. So I think that he was reaching an audience that was made up of the majority of the country at one point.

MR. WARREN: Indeed, yeah. Well, you know, his character here is is very contradictory. He is a person of enormous energy, enormous talent and, also, of enormous sales personality, which meant that whatever he says, you have to take with a grain of salt. There was a book written, and any of the interviews that he held with people and I've interviewed some of the people that interviewed him all say that he would change what he said from one day to the next. He was a great storyteller. And so he's not a reliable reporter on his own activities or of others. And so you have to see, though, that in his approach to anything he was always larger than life.

MR. WARREN: Oh, yes. The...

MR. WARREN: Yeah. This is the Kelon, yeah. Francis Kelon, yeah, one of his backers. Fascinating story. I ran across Francis Kelon's sister and was able to talk with her in New York City. She was quite ill. It was near the end of her life and see, this this Francis Kelon actually, his whole career, much of it was in shadow. Many of the things about his immediate backers, his circle of supporters, really not known. And I was fascinated by how he had the funds to start the third party. And so I learned that Francis Kelon was a key figure and I searched the telephone directories of cities and finally ran across Joanna Kelon in New York City and talked with her. And her brother owned a number of homes. He was very wealthy. He'd been a Wall Street had a seat on Wall Street. And this was one of the homes up in Great Barrington. And when he was...

MR. WARREN: Right. When he was putting together the individuals that would form the third party cobble, he used Francis Kelon's home. And the local paper up there had done several stories, and those were the first newspaper coverage that I'd seen of the Kelon Estate and there was this interview where he was in this library of the home and he was leaning against the wall talking with the local reporters only. He didn't allow any of the national media in. And they wrote a story saying that here the famous Charles Coughlin has come to our city and he's going to form a new party, and he feels that that party is going to challenge the existing establishment. So the home itself has another facet to it.

Joanna told me that her brother and Charles Coughlin, as well as other guests, would frequently come there and imbibe rather fully in the evenings and that Coughlin really was the co owner of the home. And this was not really known.

MR. WARREN: Oh, yes. He he had various accounts. He was very sophisticated in in setting up various non profit organizations for various purposes. The story she told me was that there was a a miniature shrine put into the back of the bookshelf in this library. And with the press of a button, the bookshelf would open up and there would be this altar. And she told stories that frequently Father Coughlin or others would pray at the altar in a in a less than sober state. Rumors persisted during World War II that there had been a Nazi transmitter behind the wall, and when I went to visit the home in the late 1980s, I was able to ask could we take a look behind the bookshelves. Indeed, there was a space there, but there wasn't any transmitter and no altar.

MR. WARREN: A a Wall Streeter who had gained and lost a fortune several times, was a figure then who from the beginning of Coughlin's national career backed him politically, funded the third party and continued to be a funder for Coughlin's Social Justice publication, which began in 1936.

MR. WARREN: Weekly. Kind of a newspaper, tabloid we'd call it now, probably at its peak, a half a million. Again, Coughlin exaggerated, said it had a million or more circulation. At the end, it wa it had a circulation of about 150,000, 200,000. This would be in 1942. That was one of the specific understandings reached that Social Justice would cease publication. The federal government actually was very upset about the content once we were in the war after Pearl Harbor, because week after week it would be a withering attack on what was happening with defense industries. We were losing, Britain was losing and so forth.

MR. WARREN: Yes. Joe Kennedy had driven him there. Kennedy had actually called Coughlin in Royal Oak and invited him and said, `The boss would like to see you.' And so Coughlin took the train out to to Roosevelt's home and Coughlin I I'm sorry, Kennedy picked him up at the airport and they both drove to Poughkeepsie to meet with the president...

MR. WARREN: I'm sorry. The railroad station.

MR. WARREN: The it was interesting the timing. This was early September of 1935, and Huey Long had been shot and was dying in the hospital. And as Coughlin states it, he had the newspaper fresh off from the railroad station and he brought it up to FDR and said, `Your boy is dead.' I don't know; that's apocryphal, there's no confirmation. There were no minutes of the meeting. But Joe Kennedy was there and this was the last time that Roosevelt really seriously attempted to try to work out some sort of understanding with Coughlin before there was a final break later that year.

MR. WARREN: No. He wasn't. He avoided that.

MR. WARREN: Yes.

MR. WARREN: Well, Gerald L.K. Smith is in the middle, having his hair rustled by ruffled by Coughlin. He was a Protestant minister who had been very close to Huey Long. He was he considered himself sort of Long's heir apparent.

MR. WARREN: Yes, he was his bodyguard, and, of course, Long had set up these share the wealth clubs, which were grass roots organizations trying to have this radical tax reform, where funds from persons who made more than $1 million were to be put into a a giant fund to be distributed. Smith then allied himself with Coughlin in this third party as one of the triumvirate. The person on the other side of the photograph is Doc Townsend, who had formed, again, grass roots organizations dealing with the old age pension plan that he had set up, and the Townsend Clubs were concerned with getting something that we now see in the form of Social Security. So these three formed a very uneasy alliance, with a lot of backbiting and not very much unity.

MR. WARREN: That's right. Yeah, it was a confiscatory plan.

MR. WARREN: No, it didn't, and it there were various versions of this. I don't know the plan was that concrete. It was one of those sort of shibboleths that were put out often by a political figure like Huey Long to draw himself to the people, and then, when the details would be spelled out, they would change from day to day.

MR. WARREN: Yes, yes.

MR. WARREN: Well, an American poet who became an expatriate, lived his life mainly in fascist Italy. He was a literary figure of some note and still is, but who had deep anti Semitic views. He would see Coughlin as one of the people taking political action in the United States to support the reform of the tax system to get rid of the influence of Jews, and Pound himself wrote letters to Coughlin encouraging him, sent some money supporting him; and, of course, Coughlin himself had a standing among what were called sort of `The funny money crowd.'

Social credit in Canada, for example, was one example, where the whole notion of the faults of the capitalist system had to do with the way in which money was controlled for example, the Federal Reserve system. This view was that the Federal Reserve doesn't really do anything at all, but creates sort of phony money, and that what you needed to do was to have a currency tied to real value.

And also there was a long tradition of viewing modern capitalism, with its interest as an element of normal business exchange, really being antithetical to Catholic thought and to the height of the perfect or a much better economic system which was present during the medieval period. So a number of Catholic intellectuals and others were attracted to some sort of monetary reform, and some of it led to efforts such as in Canada to try this out. And in the United States, we never did, but there were people who were sympathetic to this view internationally, and Coughlin was one of the figures in that crowd.

MR. WARREN: Oh, yes. He is, indeed.

MR. WARREN: Yes, I did interview him, and very interesting that he had, of course, himself formed his own political party in 1934, with the uniforms, the the sort of fascist style uniforms. He was rather wealthy and was interested in what he called national socialism as something worth trying.

MR. WARREN: Yes. He had traveled every summer. He traveled to Europe, was very deeply impressed by Hitler's speeches and what was happening in Germany in terms of bringing the society together, as he saw it, and when Father Coughlin sort of sent a call out to talented people to work with him on the third party, Philip Johnson was one of those who answered the call. He helped organize rallies. There was this huge, fantastic rally in Chicago, where the motorcycle police of the Chicago Police Department led the way to Soldiers Field, and Coughlin gave one of these rousing addresses, and Philip Johnson helped set that up and organize it, and so he worked as a a party activist; and then later he wrote some dispatches from Europe for Charles Coughlin's Social Justice newspaper.

MR. WARREN: I believe I interviewed him in 1984.

MR. WARREN: Well, his attitude was that he really felt that we needed a strong leader like Hitler, and he thought Coughlin was that leader, but he found out that Coughlin did not have the political will. What he told me was very fascinating. He broke with Coughlin not because of some of his ideas, but he felt that Coughlin was not genuine and not committed. And, for example, during the '30s, Coughlin was compared to one of the figures that was Kate Smith, at the time, who had this marvelous voice, "God Bless America," but she was just that, a voice, and didn't have any other credibility in terms of politics.

So Philip Johnson began to think that Charles Coughlin was just a voice without any real commitment and, disappointed, he left him. He had advised Coughlin to leave the Catholic Church, and Coughlin said, `You want me to do a Martin Luther?' And so Coughlin, of course, didn't, and Philip Johnson did, though, have continue to have some association with him, as I said.

MR. WARREN: Jim Coelho, yes. Yes. Yeah.

MR. WARREN: Yes. Wonderfully helpful, had some great anecdotes, really, about the station and the time. He was not a sympathizer or a supporter, but he was right involved at the time when Coughlin was making his broadcasts from WJR. He told me stories about Dick Richards, George Richards, who was the owner of WJR, and who had been the one to bring Coughlin to the attention of CBS, and he told me stories about the imperiousness of his boss, who, like Coughlin, was a very authoritarian style personality.

So Coelho was right there having to deal with all of the problems of a very controversial radio program, and he gave me some insights, though, in terms of the atmosphere at WJR at that time, which would not, for example, hire Jews; that George Richards was deeply and fanatically anti Roosevelt; and later on, in the 1940s and '50s, some of the most elaborate FCC cases involved the licensing of WJR because Dick Richards more or less tried to dictate, in an editorial way, everything that was done on the news programs, and slanting it very much in terms of his direction. It led to a whole series of cases. Finally, Richards died before this was all resolved, but it makes a lot of case history there with the communications issue.

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. WARREN: Yes, yes.

MR. WARREN: People think so. He stretched out his O's, and when he pronounced Versailles, he would pronounce it Versailles. He had his own special kinds of pronunciations, and there was probably some affectation to this to reinforce the brogue.

Charles Coughlin was one of these people that was always on stage. So, for example, as you and I are talking here, he would sound exactly the same way, as if he were addressing thousands of people, and he would come out with that very elaborate style. Coughlin also was someone who really knew how to reach people in terms of any issue that they might respond to.

MR. WARREN: Sure. Mr. CHARLES COUGHLIN (WJR Radio): (From radio recording) ...until Congress begins to coin and to regulate the value of money. We have endeavored to teach you time and again that there can be no coming out of this depression until what you earn goes to sustain your wife and your children. But somehow or other, you're satisfied to sustain the wives and children of those who do the coining and regulating of money, who live in their palaces and travel in their yachts. You want that. You voted for that. You herald that. And it's time that you take that.

MR. WARREN: The style here is very impressive. You can see what he does. He stands back from the microphone so that the effect is if you're at a large meeting, and he learned that strategy early. Then he also softens the voice and comes close to give that intimate tone. And so he could play, really like the notes of a piano, his voice and the audience, and he's just brilliant at that.

MR. WARREN: Well, he would do it in a regular studio. I mentioned the tower, but he seldom broadcast from that. So it was a regular radio studio down in in the fisher building, the golden tower, and that's where the broadcasts would emanate from. They would sometimes be telephoned or by wire from his shrine office out to the WJR studio.

MR. WARREN: Oh, yes, yeah.

MR. WARREN: Yes.

MR. WARREN: I think there are a number of examples of that.

MR. WARREN: Well, rather than naming individuals, what I would say is that almost every city, and even some small towns, have a radio figure whose political views are are very strongly voiced and slanted, and that this makes for exciting and often marketable commentary. And so we have developed this as a basic institution, and we have those persons who are now picking up some of the elements of the Coughlin pioneering effort, in the sense that he did not attempt to give a balanced view. He was not concerned with that. He was concerned with driving home certain views.

And I think we've come to see that. And it has entertainment value. There's no question some people listened to Coughlin really not for the ideas, but that marvelous voice and the excitement that he could bring of a very controversial statement, a statement that would be offensive, but you just enjoyed hearing someone challenge and break out of the establishment, and certainly Coughlin tried to do that.

MR. WARREN: Yes.

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. WARREN: Well, I think that it's important to recognize really the ideas that Coughlin was promoting, which was that there's an economic elite in the society that is manipulating the society, and that many of the organized minorities in the society are able to get the ear of those elites, and that the middle class suffers. So I would say that we have a variety of political figures who build on that theme. And rather than naming any given individual, I'd have to start with George Wallace and say that he really was the figure who developed this middle American radical theme, and we've had a number of people who have picked up on that because it is a view held by a number of people, and I I think it's important, rather than even to look at the speakers, is to look at the audience.

In America today, we have and at the time that Coughlin was speaking people who were demanding to be heard, who felt powerless, who felt angry, were looking to blame, and they don't hear anyone that is, let's say, in the established parties who seems to be voicing their concerns, and so they turn to others, and Coughlin was one of those, and we have several nowadays.

MR. WARREN: This is His Bishop Michael Gallagher. Gallagher is just returning from a visit to the Vatican which was occasioned by the very severe criticism that Gallagher was receiving from the church hierarchy about Coughlin moving into politics and forming a third party and calling the president of the United States anti God and a liar. And so Bishop Gallagher, who was in a sense in a father son relationship with Charles Coughlin, was called to the Vatican for a variety of reasons, but that was one of the main elements. And in a sense, he was called to task: `Can you go back and really now do something about your errant priest?' And so when Gallagher comes off the boat in New York, Coughlin is there to meet him, and then this scene takes place just out of view, I think, of the mass waiting at the dock.

MR. WARREN: There were a number, and there still are.

MR. WARREN: Yes. I interviewed several priests that feel that he was speaking the truth, that he was speaking things that need to be said.

MR. WARREN: Well, the view in terms of money control by a conspiracy involving Jews, and the view that, really in our society, that there is no real democracy, that both political parties are under the control, if not of Jews directly, then of the `economic royalists,' as Coughlin would have put it in those days.

MR. WARREN: Definitely, yes. It is a reflection of a longstanding view that takes us back, really, to the earliest roots of anti Semitism, in which, while there's a religious base for it, there is also an economic base, in terms, and a cultural base, and this these are all elements of anti Semitism for the last century and a half.

MR. WARREN: Yes, yes. MacArthur had just delivered a speech in downtown Detroit and drove out to the shrine. MacArthur, of course, had explored running for president in 1948, and Charles Coughlin supported that candidacy, and so they did see eye to eye on some issues. Father Coughlin greatly admired MacArthur, and MacArthur in turn admired Father Coughlin. And so this is a scene caught where they had a chance to shake hands.

MR. WARREN: Yes, and the rate drops, but then rises again toward the end of the '30s, again into high double digits.

MR. WARREN: Well, I think there are two things. First of all, that he seemed to be speaking to their fears and their anxieties that we'd never pull out. And he was saying, in effect, `The New Deal isn't going to help us out. It's not enough. It's not radical enough. It's not doing enough for the average person.' And so he continued to hold onto those people who feel they hadn't been helped yet by the New Deal. So I think the Depression clearly is central.

The other thing is I I think more of a social psychological dynamic, that wonderful voice that simply exudes confidence and power at a time when many people were feeling confused and feel that they themselves didn't count anymore. The society was becoming a mass society, and change was happening so rapidly, and they did not feel that they were able to express themselves, and he could do it.

MR. WARREN: Well, Charles Coughlin's private life is a subject which a number of people spoke to me about in interviews, and I felt that, rather than deal with speculation, the only incident that did come up had to do with Drew Pearson, and this is an interesting chapter. Pearson aired a story on his...

MR. WARREN: Yes.

MR. WARREN: Well, he was a columnist and a radio commentator of the '30s and '40s, tremendous audience.

MR. WARREN: Yes, that's right, and very controversial, and he often had tidbits of inside information, and this was one of those tidbits that he shared, that Father Coughlin was having had had an affair, which came up in a tax case. The defendant in the tax case had a $50,000 sum of money which he was attempting to declare, but the Internal Revenue Service was concerned with the source of that income, and he finally said it was for alienation of affection, and he named Father Coughlin; and Father Coughlin had to testify in court, denied the charges. The wife of the person who was under indictment, she denied it. I interviewed her many years later. She continued to deny it. Drew Pearson then the wrath of the Catholic Church came down on him. This was 1949...

MR. WARREN: Yes. They said this was malicious and unfounded. He nearly lost his sponsor because of this, and he tried with every means at his disposal to have private investigators track this down, and they did find some information. But after several lawsuits brought against Drew Pearson, they were withdrawn finally. Pearson continued on for a while, and the matter, to my satisfaction, has never been completely resolved, but it reflects the fact that, at the time, even bringing up these kinds of charges against a religious figure were simply something that one didn't do.

MR. WARREN: Yes, yes.

MR. WARREN: Well, he he remembers that Drew Pearson was deeply hostile to Coughlin, and that Charles Coughlin and these suits had caused Pearson to experience great anguish. And it was Tyler who, though, gave me access to some of Drew Pearson's papers.

MR. WARREN: Yes. Mm hmm.

MR. WARREN: Yes, grad school. I went to Wayne State for grad school as well, in Detroit, and then on to U of M, getting degrees in political science first and sociology.

MR. WARREN: Yes, north of Detroit, right.

MR. WARREN: This is a medium sized university. We have the full array of programs. It's been growing. It is one of those sort of medium sized universities. And I'm in the department of sociology and anthropology.

MR. WARREN: I teach a course on community, ethnic relations and the basics.

MR. WARREN: Nearly 20 years.

MR. WARREN: That's taken when he was engaged in one of his third party rallies in 1936.

MR. WARREN: Yes. National Union for Social Justice had been formed a year before, and it was his grass roots lobbying organization.

MR. WARREN: Thank you.