Billionaire Ted Turner's "alternative" cable TV network, TNT, recently broadcast a movie about former U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, who was mysteriously assassinated in Louisiana nearly 60 years ago. TNT's 1995 Kingfish movie, starring Roseanne's John Goodman, makes an interesting comparison with a video of All The King's Men, the movie version of Robert Penn Warren's fictionalized biography of Long that won a 1949 Best Picture Oscar.
According to TNT, "...with battles raging about the merits of Big Government, the fairness of taxation, the plight of the disenfranchised and the special treatment accorded Big Business, it is clear that Long's touchstone issues are once again prominent as domestic concerns take the forefront in U.S. politics."
Long's idea of a "Share-the-Wealth Society," which included promises of a minimum income for every American family, gave him nationwide popularity, while at the same time earning him some powerful enemies in politics and business. It looked like the Kingfish would be a strong third-party challenger to FDR, until his untimely death on September 8, 1935 put an end to his political career.
With regard to the assassination specifically, Louisiana historian Mike Wayne states the following: "There are basically three accepted versions of what happened. Version one is that Dr. Weiss shot Huey twice and the bodyguards killed Weiss... The second version is that Weiss did something-either slapped Long or argued with him or pulled a gun... and the bodyguards started firing and accidentally hit Long in the confusion. The third possibility is that he was assassinated by one or more bodyguards planted by anti-Long forces, and Weiss was a convenient scapegoat...We do know that two bullets of two different caliber were removed from Long's body, and neither was the same caliber as Weiss's gun."
Kingfish doesn't show in as convincing or dramatic a way as All The King's Men how a populist politician like Huey P. Long was actually able to rise to power within a state like Louisiana; and it portrays Long as a more cynical politician prior to his rise to power within Louisiana than the Long-type character portrayed in All The King's Men. But what Kingfish does do is reveal how a politician like Long was seen as a threat by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt once Long began putting forth his "Share Our Wealth" scheme and talking in terms of third-party politics on a national level.
A secret public opinion poll authorized by the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 1935, conducted for the purpose of determining how much of a threat Huey Long posed, found that approximately 11% of America's voters preferred the Kingfish over FDR or a Republican candidate. Democratic National Committee chairman Farley believed that Huey, on a third-party ticket, might garner as many as 6 million votes and thereby "have the balance of power in the 1936 election."
Kingfish mentions that the Roosevelt's Administration used the Internal Revenue Service as a political weapon against Long; and it shows that in the U.S. Senate a month before his murder, Long gave a speech in which he joked that some of his political opponents had held a meeting to discuss his assassination.
As David Zinman recalls in The Day Huey Long Was Shot: "On August 9, 1935, Huey rose and unleashed a blistering, if rambling, tirade against the Roosevelt Administration. In the midst of it, he disclosed that a pro-Roosevelt faction had met in the DeSoto Hotel in New Orleans to plot his murder."
Although the socialists and communists of the 1920s (who are ignored in Kingfish's cinematic portrayal of Great Depression politics) regarded Long as a kind of fascist competitor to their U.S. radical left, Long's Share Our Wealth scheme might interest folks in counter-cultural Ithaca who still need bread in 1995. The Kingfish And His Realm described how Long's Share Our Wealth plan would work:
"Personal and family fortunes above 3 or 4 million dollars would be confiscated. Annual income and inheritance taxes would be steeply raised-up to a flat 100% on anything above 1 million dollars. The national government would transfer this wealth to the poor."
The same book also noted that by 1935 there were 27,431 Share Our Wealth Clubs with over 7 million members in the United States; including many Share Our Wealth Clubs in New York State.
Nearly sixty years after the "Kingfish" was mysteriously killed, the wealth of the United States still has not been shared very equally among people who live here. In fact, the disparity in the wealth possessed by Super-Rich folks and the rest of us is probably even greater now than it was on the day Long was shot in 1935.