To the mythmakers of his day, Joseph P. Kennedy, like his glamorous and doomed presidential son Jack, led a charmed existence. He was celebrated as the son of an East Boston saloonkeeper who rose to become one of the richest men in the country. He served as the wartime ambassador to Great Britain, the chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and the chairman of the United States Maritime Commission. He was also a major legitimate liquor distributor, a moviemaker in Hollywood, and a master manipulator of the stock market. Yet his fortune, estimated at $100 million, traced its beginnings to his career as a bootlegger in partnership with organized crime during the Prohibition era. Even more disturbing, he was a documented anti-Semite and an appeaser of Adolf Hitler. The beaming family portraits and admiring newsmagazine prose never portrayed any of his many mistresses - or hinted at his seemingly unlimited corruption and duplicity.
