The Deeds of My Fathers

It was an American Dream. Generoso Papa left his village in Italy, with no English and only 10 dollars worth of lire in his pocket, and sailed to America to make his fortune. He was 15 and made the voyage on his own. When he died in 1950, aged 59, he left a five million dollar estate along with a raft of successful businesses; and he had changed his name to Pope.

Most of the wealth came from his ownership of Colonial Sand and Stone, a business that had supplied the basic building materials for many of the Manhattan skyscrapers, and he also owned newspapers and radio stations in New York City. One of his newspapers was Il Progresso, an Italian language paper written in and about the US for publication in Italy. Generoso’s relentless rise to fame and fortune is told here by the old man’s grandson, Paul, with warts incorporated. The warts include the murky side of political deals, support from Frank Costello (an early friend of Generoso who became a powerful member of the mob), and support for and admiration of Mussolini.

After Generoso’s death, his wife and two older sons worked together to exclude his third son, and Paul’s father, Gene Pope Junior from the businesses. Gene Jr. had been the old man’s favourite. So, wanting to make his own way, and with help of a large loan from Frank Costello, both his godfather and his ‘Godfather’, Gene Jr. bought the New York Enquirer, a pretty moribund paper at that time.

He built it up steadily and not without problems into The National Enquirer, the famous supermarket tabloid, described by the author as an “icon of journalistic audacity”. Interestingly, this paper was modelled in part on our Daily Mirror. Circulation rose to a staggering seven million for the 1977 issue, which told the true story of Elvis Presley’s death and included an exclusive picture of his corpse.

Gene Jr’s. story is also told very candidly, so that he too comes across as a ruthlessly ambitious achiever, just like his father. Among other flaws, both Genes were dreadful womanisers who treated most of the women in their lives badly.

Although this is an account of real people and events, it reads like a carefully researched novel, a very well-written page turner which is hard to put down.