The Last Hurrah

About The Last Hurrah

The Last Hurrah is a 1956 novel written by Edwin O'Connor. It is considered the most popular of O’Connor’s works, partly because of a significant 1958 movie adaptation starring Spencer Tracy. The novel when published was immediately a bestseller in the United States and stayed so for 20 weeks and on bestseller lists for the year it was published. The Last Hurrah, which won the Atlantic Prize, was also highlighted by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Reader's Digest. The Last Hurrah received very positive critical reviews, including an "ecstatic" one from the New York Times Book Review.

The plot of The Last Hurrah focuses on a mayoral election in an unnamed city in which veteran Irish Democratic Party politician, Frank Skeffington, is running for yet another term as Mayor; a former governor, he is usually called by the honorific title "Governor." While the city is never named, it is frequently associated with Boston and Skeffington with former Boston mayor and Massachusetts governor James Michael Curley. The story is told in the third person; our viewpoint character varies between the omnisicient narrator and Adam Caulfield, the Mayor's nephew. Skeffington is a veteran and adept machine politician, and, arguably, corrupt as well; the novel portrays him as a flawed great man with many achievements to his credit. At the beginning of the book, Skeffington, who is 72 and who has been giving signs that he might consider retiring from public life at the end of his current term, surprises many by announcing what he had always intended to do -- to run for another term as Mayor. The main body of the novel gives a detailed and insightful view of urban politics, tracking Skeffington and his nephew through rounds of campaign appearances and events. In the actual election, Skeffington is defeated. One of Adam's friends explains that the election was indeed a last hurrah for the kind of old-style machine politics that Skeffington had mastered; the changes in American public life, including the consequences of the New Deal, have so changed the face of city politics that Skeffington no longer can survive. Kevin McCluskey, a neophyte candidate with a handsome face and good manners and a good World War II record but no political experience and no real abilities for politics or governing, defeats Skeffington. Immediately after his defeat, Skeffington suffers a heart attack with another soon afterward; ultimately, he dies, leaving behind a city in mourning for a pivotal figure in its history but one that has no room for him or his kind any longer.

While not a roman à clef, there are points of similarity between Skeffington and Boston mayor James Michael Curley which led some to believe that Skeffington was based on him. O'Connor denied this. The city of the novel is never explicitly named; but that it is supposed to represent Boston is certainly implied (O'Connor also lived for a period in Boston).