LOUISIANA: Ole Earl

LOUISIANA Ole Earl

Dressed in white pajamas and bathrobe, Louisiana’s fleshy, silver-haired Governor Earl Kemp Long received a visitor in Galveston’s John Sealy Hospital last week. It was Galveston County Deputy Sheriff Gerald Leslie. “Well,” cried Earl Long, “I’ll be damned. Here’s a Texas Ranger! At least I know the law is on my side. Sit down and let me talk to you, Ranger.” The deputy told Long that he had come to serve a writ. Said Governor Long: “I’m glad to know you’re helping me. Now, son, sit down and read those papers you have to me.” The papers were stark in their legal phrasing:

The State of Texas For the Best Interest and Protection of Earl Long, A Mentally Ill Person , . . because of his mental illness is likely to cause immediate injury to himself or others if not immediately restrained . . . It is therefore ORDERED that the said EARL LONG be, and he hereby is, detained in protective custody . . .

The deputy left, and Earl Long, 63, stood alone in a simple white room whose window was guarded with heavy wire mesh. Outside, the corridor was kept locked at both ends, and close by, within a moment’s call, were two male nurses. Earl Long, serving for the third time (1939-40, 1948-52, 1956-60) as one of the most powerful and certainly one of the most controversial Governors of any U.S. state, drifted aimlessly around, strolled up and down the corridor, babbling endlessly to himself. And back in Louisiana, thousands of men and women, those who had voted for Earl Long and for his brother Huey and for Huey’s son Russell for more than 30 years, shook their heads sadly. The fact was clear: Earl Long had just gone plain crazy.

Life in the Shadow. The crack-up had come with unexpected fury, but Earl Long had been heading for it all his life. He was reared in the giant shadow of his brother Huey—the Kingfish, a Louisiana legend as living tyrant and assassinated martyr. Earl Long hated his place in Huey’s shade. To prove himself a better man, he merely proved himself a wilder one. In his role as a man of the people, he casually cleaned between his toes at press conferences. As a political fighter, he once sank his teeth into an opponent’s throat. He billed himself as “Ole Earl,” and. if he never became the national figure that Huey unquestionably was, he nonetheless kept Louisiana tightly under his thumb. That is, until recently, when he determined to gimmick his way around the Louisiana prohibition against a second consecutive gubernatorial term by resigning and letting his complaisant Lieutenant Governor run the store until he himself got elected again (TIME, May 18).

That caused a howl. Earl retaliated by trying to push through the once amenable Louisiana legislature a law making it easier for backwoods whites and Negroes, Long’s staunchest backers, to vote. That caused even more of a howl—and if there was one thing Earl Long could not stand, it was opposition to his will. It was the beginning of his end.

The fight over the new registration bill was manic. Earl began keeping guns in his Cadillac, started drinking heavily, spent hours on the telephone trying to line up legislative support. When the senate declared the bill integrationist-inspired and turned it down, Long clutched frantically at his slipping power. One afternoon he hopped aboard a National Guard plane for a quick trip to Atlanta to pick up some entertainers for a blowout he was throwing at the mansion for legislators and their wives. (“Authorization? Shucks, I’m the author of authorizers. In this case I’m Caesar’s wife, and you know she could do no harm.”) That night at the party, he bounced downstairs in a red polka-dotted vest, guzzled pink champagne from a glass tumbler, spat on the floor and had himself a high time.

How Uncle Died. Next day he swung into the house chamber to campaign for his registration bill, now reshaped into two amendments tacked onto another bill. Roaming back and forth from his chair to the microphone, Ole Earl smoked, swigged bourbon from a Coke bottle, placed illegal horse-race bets with a bookie through an aide (“How them horses come out, Jesse?”). At times, he sat frozen in his chair, with one finger dipped in his water glass. At other times, he burst into an almost soundless, wheezing laugh. His voice harsh, his folksy galluses showing. Earl Long screamed incoherently about his enemies, both real and imagined. Accused of being soft on integration, Ole Earl reached into his family background, came up with a repulsive story: “About 1908, or 1906, I had an uncle that got killed. Being a good man. good to his family, he taught me how to ride a horse. He got drunk one night, went down to the colored quarters at Winnfield. He kicked a nigger man out of the bed and got in with his woman. The nigger man got so enraged he shot my pore ole uncle, and he died.”

The gallery gasped, stricken, as Earl Long ranted on, his false teeth gleaming, his eyes swimming. One legislator he called a Dago; another a Dillinger. Both left the chamber in tears.

What Brother Said. Next morning the crazed, ranting Governor was back at it. First he tried to round up somebody to introduce his amendments on the floor. Failing that, he showed up at the legislature again, this time with a written apology for the previous day’s fiasco. But before he was fairly into it, he was off again in a new torrent: “My brother Huey once told me you couldn’t believe what a man would do to be Governor. He would do almost anything short of murder.” Nursing his Coke bottle, he proclaimed hoarsely: “I have the experience to be Governor. I know how to play craps. I know how to play poker. I know how to get in and out of the Baptist church and ride horses. I know the oil and gas business. I know both sides of the street. I know how it is to be in and to get out . . .”

For an hour and a half he raved, until aides pulled at his sleeve imploringly. At length. Long said: “Yes, I’ve talked long enough. God bless you. But the only way Ole Earl can get people on his side is by talking. If anything happened to close this big mouth, God help Ole Earl.” Then he let himself be led back to his mansion.

Point of No Return. TV newsreels had recorded the whole session, and viewers the state over watched their screens in horrified fascination as their Governor tormented his legislature and himself. From Washington sped Earl’s nephew, U.S. Senator Russell Long. Trying to save the tottering Long regime, Russell Long went before the legislature in Baton Rouge to explain his uncle’s illness. Heartbroken, Earl Long’s wife tried to get her husband to rest quietly. Turning on her, he accused her and Russell Long of conspiring with his enemies. He became violent, had to be locked in his room. There was talk that he threw empty bottles through his window that night, and broke his bedstead. Finally, at week’s end, he permitted a doctor to give him a sedative, and then, early one morning, he was carried on a stretcher into a white station wagon and driven to the airport for the trip to the Galveston hospital.* On the way, in his National Guard plane, Long once again erupted, demanded that the plane be turned back to Baton Rouge. Refused, he “busted” the accompanying Louisiana adjutant general to private, and “promoted” the pilot from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. Still the pilot would not turn back, and Earl Long went to the white hospital room with strong, screened windows. He was a pathetic case.’So was the state he had governed so long, so badly.

* Under state law, Long could not have been involuntarily committed in Louisiana while still Governor. He would first have had to be impeached, a lengthy process which, while running its course, would have left an obviously irresponsible man at the head of the state.