The American public, brought up on gangster movies, is always anxious to meet the real thing. The Kefauver and McClellan shows were popular in the same way that a Humphrey Bogart show is. The crowd came to see gangsters, and in Jimmy Hoffa they were not disappointed. He has spent his life imitating the Bogarts who imitated the Capones and Costellos. Carrying his cocky little body like James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson, speaking the same “me and my pals” language, hunching his shoulders at a question like a man responds only with his fists, he was a caster’s dream come true.
It was pathetic to see this man who has all his life tried to convince others that he is a tough guy despite his five feet four inches, trying at a stroke to destroy the role he had so carefully built up. He appeared on his last morning before the Committee, scared but smiling, ostentatiously carrying his brief case; to a bored press table he moaned about the executive meetings he had been at all night, the work he had done on the Teamster constitution, the further meetings he must attend that evening. To the Committee he kept bringing up the “Constitooshun” he was reworking; re-emphasized his title of vice president; tried with disastrous results to use dignified language. (A beautiful example: Senator Ives, noting the vast power Hoffa would have for good or for evil as Teamster president, asked him what he meant to do about it. “I will live up to both responsibilities,” he solemnly assured the Committee.)
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