Joseph P. Kennedy’s reputation as a savvy businessman, diplomat, and sly political patriarch is well-documented.  But his years as a Hollywood mogul have never been fully explored until now.  In Joseph P. Kennedy Presents , Cari Beauchamp brilliantly explores this unknown chapter in Kennedy’s biography.  Between 1926 and 1930, Kennedy positioned himself as a major Hollywood player. In two short years, he was running three studios simultaneously and then, in a bold move, he merged his studios with David Sarnoff to form the legendary RKO Studio.  Beauchamp also tells the story of Kennedy’s affair with Gloria Swanson; how he masterminded the mergers that created the blueprint for contemporary Hollywood; and made the fortune that became the foundation of his empire. “An exceptional work of film scholarship, packed with information no one had uncovered before that reads like a juicy novel.” — Vanity Fair   “Beauchamp serves up with gusto many measures of gossipy history and historical gossip. . . . One hell of a story.” — San Francisco Chronicle “Fascinating. . . . The intellect, the intuition, the gumption, the gall, the vision, and the restless ambition of the founding father are meticulously documented.” — The Boston Globe   “Cari Beauchamp deserves great credit for bringing Joseph P. Kennedy into sharp focus with a wealth of detail. . . . Beauchamp has succeeded not only in finding a new way of telling the story, but one which adds to it much we didn’t know before. ” —Michael Korda, The Daily Beast “Smart. . . . Beauchamp suggests that nothing in Kennedy’s long career of banking, stock manipulation, and New Dealing prepared him for presidential politics the way his time in the picture business did.” — New York Times Book Review   “[A] crackling page-turner. . . . Beauchamp demonstrates again and again, that apart from [Kennedy’s] abiding love and concern for his nine children (and perhaps a few others including Marion Davies), the bottom line was everything.” — Los Angeles Times   “Rarely has [Kennedy’s Hollywood years] been documented in such meticulous detail. . . . Well-written and researched, Beauchamp’s book is a probing examination of the man in the industry during perhaps its most fascinating period.” — Chicago Sun-Times   “Beauchamp’s research is phenomenal and would have daunted any other author. . . . A masterpiece of backstage capitalism.” — Cineaste   “Cari Beauchamp has dug deep into my mother’s files and records and emerged to finally tell the true story of Gloria Swanson’s relationship with Joe Kennedy. No one else has ever been as honest or as thorough.” —Michelle Farmer Amon, daughter of Gloria Swanson Cari Beauchamp is the author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood and other film histories. She has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Variety and lives in Los Angeles, California. M ention the name Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of America’s royal family, and it evokes a mental picture: an older man smiling out from a photograph surrounded by numerous family members, or perhaps he is gaunt and wheelchair-bound, felled by a stroke. Erase those images. Visualize, instead, a young man in his mid-thirties, a “wickedly handsome six footer, exuding vitality and roguish charm.” He strides confidently into a room wearing “the most wonderful smile that seemed to light up his entire face,” impressing everyone he met with “his warm handshake and his friendly volubility.” His vibrant energy fuels a headturning charisma that commands attention. “You felt not just that you were the only one in the room that mattered,” recalls Joan Fontaine, “but the only one in the world.” With bright blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, a frequent laugh, and a tendency to slap his thigh when amused, he is strikingly different from the typical Wall Street banker or studio mogul. This is the man who took Hollywood by storm, at one point running four companies simultaneously when no one before or since ran more than one. He was profiled in national magazines and newspapers as a brilliant financial wunderkind, “the most intriguing personality in the motion picture world” and “the person who now monopolizes conversation in the studios and on location.” Kennedy was “the blonde Moses” leading film companies into profitable territory as they faced the pivotal years of converting from silent films to sound. In the process he was instrumental in killing vaudeville. The mystique around him grew so thick that Fortune magazine warned “the legends are so luxuriant that when you see Joe Kennedy you are likely to be startled to find him as plain and matter of fact as he is—a healthy hardy good natured sandy haired Irish family man—athletic, unperplexed, easily pleased, hot tempered, independent and restless as they come.” Louella Parsons hailed Joe Kennedy as “the coming Napoleon” of the movies, the white knight with the wherewithal to save film stu