Grover Aloysius Whalen (1886–1962) was a prominent politician, businessman, and public relations guru in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s.
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Grover A. Whalen was born on June 2, 1886 in New York City. Whalen was the son of an Irish immigrant father and a French-Canadian mother, who named their son after President Grover Cleveland, who was married on the same day that their child was born.[1]
Whalen ran his father's ash and garbage disposal business for a time before becoming involved in politics working for the election of John F. Hylan as Mayor of New York.[1] In 1914 Whalen was appointed as Vice Preisident of Operations for the new Rodman Wanamaker founded American Trans-Oceanic Company, a new airline flying Curtiss seaplanes between New York and Florida.[2]
His first major political assignment was New York City Police Commissioner, where he was known to be a ruthless enforcer of prohibition laws. Whalen was famously quoted as saying, "There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick."[1]
Whalen came under fire for police handling of the International Unemployment Day demonstration on March 6, 1930 in New York City, in which an impromptu march of 35,000 or more demonstrators down Broadway Avenue to New York City Hall was set upon by 1,000 baton-wielding police.[3]
The brutal scene was described by a reporter from the New York Times:
"Hundreds of policemen and detectives, swinging nightsticks, blackjacks, and bare fists, rushed into the crowd, hitting out at all with whom they came into contract, chasing many across the street and into adjacent thoroughfares and pushing hundreds off their feet. From all parts of the scene of battle came the screams of women and cries of men with bloody heads and faces."[4]
Sharply criticized for the escalation of violence by the police, Whalen was forced to resign his post within two months.[5]
He was later appointed by Fiorello La Guardia as Chairman of the Mayor's Committee on Receptions to Distinguished Guests, succeeding William Francis Deegan, and became a public celebrity easily recognized by his exquisitely groomed moustache and carnation boutonniere. In this capacity, in which he served until the early 1950s, he officially welcomed everyone from Charles Lindbergh to Admiral Richard Byrd to Douglas MacArthur to New York and became master of the ticker tape parade.
In 1935 he became president of the New York World Fair Corporation and put a familiar face on the 1939 New York World's Fair. In this capacity he was on the cover of Time magazine on May 1, 1939.
Grover Whalen died on April 20, 1962. He was 75 years old at the time of his death.
He is mentioned in the Harold Arlen song, Lydia the Tattooed Lady, the Cole Porter song Let's Fly Away, the Bobby Short song "Sweet By and Bye", as well as in the 1933 film The Prizefighter and the Lady starring Myrna Loy and Max Baer. Grover Whalen was also mentioned in Act II in the play, Once in a Lifetime, a play written by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman in 1930. He is also mentioned in E.B. White's essay "The World of Tomorrow."
In the 1971 TV Movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story Whalen is mentioned in a news broadcast. "Lucky Lindy (Charles Lindbergh) was welcomed on the steps of city hall by Grover Whalen."