- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJoseph Patrick Kennedy
- Nickname
- Joe
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Patriarch of a famous political family, Kennedy had a brief Hollywood career: He was one of the first financiers to play a leading role in the movie industry. Although he grew up in modest East Boston, where his father was a barkeeper and politician, Kennedy was educated with the Establishment's children at Boston Latin School and Harvard. In 1914, he married Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of Boston's mayor. Billed as "America's youngest bank president" at 25 (his father and his friends owned the bank.) He became a prominent stock market "operator" in the 1920s. In 1926, as the front man for Wall Street interests, he became chief executive of Film Booking Office, a distributor of low-budget features for unsophisticated audiences. Soon Kennedy also assumed power at another studio, Pathe, and at the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain. Through "financial engineering" of these companies - some of their pieces went into a new major studio, RKO - Kennedy added to his already substantial fortune. (A sidelight in his Hollywood period was his business and sexual relationship with Gloria Swanson, recounted in detail in her autobiography.) In the 1930s, Kennedy turned his attention to politics: an early fund-raiser for Franklin D. Roosevelt, he became the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, then U.S. ambassador to England (1938-40). Kennedy's pessimistic statements about Britain's chances in World War II alienated Roosevelt and made Kennedy deeply unpopular in America. After the war, Kennedy steered his surviving sons, John, Robert and Edward, into politics and served as financier and strategist for their campaigns. In 1961, he suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak, but by all accounts he was aware of many calamities that befell his family until his own death in 1969. Some say that the scandal of his son Teddy at Chappaquiddick was what killed him. Some historians see Kennedy's rapacious greed for success as a fatal flaw that he passed on to his sons, none of whom could transcend it.- IMDb Mini Biography By: David S. Smith
- SpouseRose Kennedy(October 7, 1914 - November 18, 1969) (his death, 9 children)
- Children
- RelativesRose Schlossberg(Great Grandchild)Tatiana Schlossberg(Great Grandchild)Jack Schlossberg(Great Grandchild)Caroline Kennedy(Grandchild)John Kennedy Jr.(Grandchild)Robert Shriver(Grandchild)Rory Kennedy(Grandchild)Patrick Joseph Kennedy II(Grandchild)Kerry Kennedy(Grandchild)Christopher Lawford(Grandchild)Tim Shriver(Grandchild)Mark Shriver(Grandchild)Anthony Shriver(Grandchild)Katherine Schwarzenegger(Great Grandchild)Patrick Schwarzenegger(Great Grandchild)Christina Schwarzenegger(Great Grandchild)Christopher Schwarzenegger(Great Grandchild)Maria Shriver(Grandchild)
- Born in Boston, the son of Patrick J. Kennedy, a successful businessman (liquor) and Irish Catholic community leader active in Democratic Party politics. Joseph attended Boston Latin School, where he was a below average academically but proved popular among his classmates, winning election as class president and playing on the school baseball team. Following the example of several older relatives, he attended Harvard University, where he focused on becoming a social leader, gaining admittance to the prestigious Hasty Pudding Club.
- Created RKO Pictures in 1928 by combining his Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chains, Film Booking Office of America (FBO) film production studio and the American Pathé film studio and distribution unit with the Radio Corporation of America's (RCA) Photophone Division. RCA hoped an alliance with Kennedy would allow it to break Western Electric Co.'s near monopoly on the sound-film business, and attempted to interest him in using its Photophone process for FBO Pictures. Kennedy responded by initiating negotiations with RCA boss David Sarnoff that resulted in the creation of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum holding company in October 1928. A master stock manipulator, Kenedy and his confederates drove up the share price of RKO before film production had even begun. Kennedy's interest in the motion picture industry was in making money, not necessarily in making films, and the finances of the new company were shaky. He sold the last of his RKO stock in 1931; RKO went into receivership in 1932, after which it was taken over by interests aligned with Nelson Rockefeller and his brothers. It is estimated that Kennedy made over $5 million (approximately $75.5 million in 2012 dollars) from his investments in Hollywood.
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, believing that Kennedy knew all of the goings on of the stock market, made him head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- As early as 1926, he set up a trust fund for the benefit of his wife Rose and the children that were then born. He set up two additional funds in 1936 and 1949. The 1949 trust is the fund that began to set portions of his wealth to his grandchildren. The three funds, plus the Joseph P. Kennedy,Jr. foundation were the chief vehicles for capital conservation. In 1968, the foundation had assets of $22.1 million (approximately $145.7 million in 2012 dollars), and dispersed as much as $1,600,000 to mental retardation research.
- The UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill threatened to have Kennedy arrested in 1940.
- If you want to make money, go where the money is.
- There are only two pursuits that get in your blood: politics and the motion picture business.
- Don't get mad, get even.
- [after the 1929 stock market crash] I knew it was time to sell when my 'shoeshine boy' gave me a stock tip.
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