THE GREAT MOUTHPIECE, A LIFE STORY OF WILLIAM J. FALLON—Gene Fowler—Covici, Friede ($3).†
Most people liked the late Bill Fallon, but not even his bitterest friend ever called him unco guid. Author Fowler has put this sensationally journalistic biography of the lately dead (1927) Manhattan lawyer into the form of a novel; it reads like a super-Sunday-supplement-story.
Bill Fallon's father was an Irish contractor who prospered in Tammany-run Manhattan, gave his son a college education at Fordham. There Bill was popular with his peers, well-thought-of by his preceptors, and constantly on the edge of trouble. With a winning disposition, brazen effrontery, an excellent memory and a gift of the gab, he naturally turned . . . to the Law. Starting in Westchester County he soon rose to be Assistant District Attorney. In his prosecution of Warden Thomas Mott Osborne of Sing Sing for mismanagement and immorality he showed that he understood his job, but overplayed his hand and lost the case. "Not a prosecutor at heart," soon he was in Manhattan, in a role that fitted him like a glove : defense lawyer in criminal cases. Partner McGee did the ground work, Fallon put on the fireworks display in court. A tricky lawyer when he had to be, his specialty was getting his client off by a disagreement in the jury. He "hung the jury" so often by the score of 11 to 1 that finally people began to whisper of bribery. At 34, Fallon had won 126 cases straight.
His job & his inclinations both headed him down Broadway. More & more he became legal mouthpiece to the under world (Arnold Rothstein, Nicky Arnstein), stage-door playboy (Gertrude Vanderbilt, Peggy Hopkins Joyce). A brilliant improviser, he defended his cases with very little preparation; but, when it was necessary he could digest four technical books on gynecology in one night. In court he was the perennial schoolboy who plagued the judge to win the jury. His carelessly superior air drove opposing lawyers wild. Defending a well-ankled blackmailer, he won her first trial by exposing as much of her legs as pos sible to the jury; won the next one by having a fence built around the witness chair, then pretending the prosecution had done it to hide her legs.
Fallon made money by the fistful but could not keep his fingers closed. He grew increasingly fond of liquor & women. Married, with two children, he would not handle divorce cases because of his Roman Catholic faith. Outside of that he would defend almost any criminal against almost any charge. He lived more & more wildly, grew less & less careful of legal ethics. Finally Hearst's New York American discovered evidence that Fallon had bribed a juror. In the ensuing trial, Fallon electrified the court by announcing he had in his pocket birth certificates of two illegitimate children of a certain cinemactress whom he linked with Hearst. Said Hearst (according to Fowler) when a worried American editor called him by long distance: "Well, then, you won't be in doubt as to what your headline will be for tomorrow's paper." In his defense Fallon made his supreme effort, put on his best show. The jury acquitted him, but his career was over. Less than three years later he was dead of a hemorrhage and heart-attack brought on by excessive drinking.