Congressional Hearings I

There was a time when Congressional Hearings were handled primarily by the committee counsel which was how Roy Cohn and Bobby Kennedy first came to our attention. Now with CSPAN panning the room every Senator and Congressman/woman wants to make a showing back home and even tho they have nothing to say - they say it.                                                                                
During a fifteen month period in 1950/1951 Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) chaired the senate committee investigating crime in the U.S.A.  This was live television at a time when daytime TV had very few shows so these continued hearings became the best show in town. You had the dignified Kefauver in the chair and the committee counsel was the steely eyed Rudolph Halley with his New York delivery.  The witness list highlighted Frank Costello who succeeded Lucky Luciano as a crime syndicate boss and his girl friend Virginia Hill. It was better than a Hollywood movie. Costello refused to have his face on camera so the TV camera fixed on his hands. The hearings ran for fifteen months in fourteen cities and called 600 witnesses. During the highlights TIME magazine said the dirty dishes sat in the sink and all the department stores emptied out while these live hearings were on. Another witness was the infamous gambler Mickey Cohen who complained to Kefauver about Halley's grilling -" Senator, why can't this fellow ask questions "nice" like you." Sen Charles Tobey was a older senator from New Hampshire - a Yankee Republican - he would rise up and lecture these crime bosses with phrases like "Be Ye Clean!"   C SPAN would have loved it.
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