Family background; childhood and education, Rhode Island; early vaudeville career; 1919-1920 FOLLIES; Actors' strike, 1919; early plays: SALLY, IRENE, AND MARY; HONEYMOON LANE; SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK; Chrysler-Ziegfeld Radio Follies; New York City Democratic politics: William F. Kenny's Tiger Room; national and state campaigns, 1926-1940, organization and finances; banking crisis; 1932 Federal Theat er Project; organizer and first president, United Service Organizations Camp Shows, World War II; Tennessee Williams, THE GLASS MENAGERIE; Eugene O'Neill, THE ICEMAN COMETH; comments on many people in the theater, Hollywood, business, finance, and politics, including L. B. Mayer, Marcus Loew, Sarah Bernhardt, Boris Said, George Jean Nathan, Alfred E. Smith, J. J. Raskob, Tim Mara, Henry Morgenthau, Frank Hague, Joseph P. Kennedy, Michael Curley
Theatrical producers and directors; Actors; Theater; Vaudeville; New Deal, 1933-1939; Motion picture industry; New York (N.Y.) Politics and government 1898-1951; United States Economic conditions 1918-1945; United States Politics and government 1901-1953; Dowling, Eddie; Democratic Party (U.S.)