Seventy five years ago on November 4, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt made his final campaign stop with a speech before a crowd of 40,000 at Fenway Park in Boston.
Red, white and blue bunting and banners were looped along the infield fence, around uprights and the edge of the grandstand roof of the historic ballpark.
Orson Welles accompanied Roosevelt to Fenway Park, where Frank Sinatra sang “America the Beautiful” and Welles pushed for a fourth term for the incumbent Democrat.
“The crowd roared its enthusiasm as Orson Welles and Frank Sinatra were introduced,” reported The Boston Globe, which referred to Welles and Sinatra as “the ‘dramatic voice’ and ‘The Voice’.”
The progressive Welles told the Boston crowd that the GOP was not concerned about the working man, according to Smithsonian.
“By free enterprise they want exclusive right to freedom,” Welles said. “They are stupid enough to think that a few can enjoy prosperity at the expense of the rest.”
Welles also attacked Republican candidate Thomas Dewey for running a negative campaign, which had questioned FDR’s health. (Roosevelt would die five months later on April 12, 1945.)
Throughout the fall of 1944, Welles had made campaigning for Roosevelt a priority, leaving his pregnant wife, Rita Hayworth, at home to travel the country by air and rail.
In his speech at Fenway Park, FDR acknowledged he had been “reluctant to run for the presidency again this year. ”
“But since this campaign developed, I tell you frankly that I have become most anxious to win — and I say that for the reason that never before in my lifetime has a campaign been filled with such misrepresentation, distortion, and falsehood,” Roosevelt said. “Never since 1928 have there been so many attempts to stimulate in America racial or religious intolerance.”
Three days later, Roosevelt defeated Dewey by winning 53 percent of the popular vote and taking the electoral college, 432-99.
Later, FDR sent Welles a telegram, thanking him for his help during the 1944 presidential campaign.
“It was a great show,” Roosevelt cabled, “in which you played a great part.”
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