James Michael Curley - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Curley is considered the inspiration for the protagonist Frank Skeffington in the novel and film The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor. Curley himself thought so; initially considering legal action, he changed his mind, and upon meeting O'Connor, he told him he enjoyed the book, the passage he enjoyed most being: "The part where I die." He did successfully sue the film's producers.
• Curley was the inspiration for the song The Rascal King on the album Let's Face It by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
• Since Curley, every Boston Mayor has been driven in a car with the license registration 576 - which were the corresponding numbers for his first, middle, and last name. James (5) Michael (7) Curley (6).
• The Curley family still holds Massachusetts auto registration number 5.
• In a tweak at the state's WASP elite's rupture with its own constituency and origins, Curley appeared at the Harvard University commencement ceremony in 1935 in his role as governor wearing silk stockings, knee britches, a powdered wig, and a three-cornered hat with flowing plume. When University marshals objected to his costume, the story goes, Curley whipped out a copy of the Statutes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which prescribed proper dress for the occasion and claimed that he was the only person at the ceremony properly dressed, thereby endearing him to many working and middle class Yankees.
• A paper by Harvard economists Andrei Shleifer and Edward Glaeser, 'The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate', describes the strategy used by Curley and other political leaders of increasing their political base by using distortionary economic policies to cause groups which tend to oppose them to emigrate as 'The Curley Effect'.