How I Saved Roosevelt

That was President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, ladies and gentlemen

Speaking to a crowd of supporters here in Miami's beautiful Bayfront Park

A group of notables are pressing in around the President-elect's car

There's Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago...

There's been a shot!

Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a shot!

Wait, I can't see—

No, Mr. Roosevelt is waving!

He's all right!

But Mayor Cermak has been hit!

The police have somebody in custody

An immigrant—Giuseppe Zangara

Ladies and gentlemen, we take you now to a group of eyewitnesses

Who will tell us what they saw!

We're crowded up close

And I see this guy

He's squeezing by

I catch his eye

I say to him, "Where do you

Think you are trying to go, boy?

Whoa, boy!"

I say, "Listen, you runt

You're not pulling that stunt—

No gentleman pushes their way to the front"

I say, "Move to the back!", which he does with a grunt—

Which is how I saved Roosevelt!

Then—!

Well, I'm in my seat

I get up to clap

I feel this tap

I turn—this sap

He says he can't see

I say, "Find a lap

And go sit

On it!"

Which is how I saved—!

Then—!

He started to swear

And he climbed on a chair

He was aiming a gun—

I was standing right there—

So I pushed it as hard as I could in the air—!

Which is how I saved Roosevelt!

Lucky I was there!

That's why he was standing back so far!

That's why when he aimed, he missed the car!

Just lucky I was there!

Or we'd have been left

Bereft

Of FDR!

You think that I scare?

No scare

You think that I care?

No care

I look at the world—

No good. No fair. Nowhere. 

When I am a boy

No school

I work in a ditch

No chance

The smart and the rich

Ride by

Don't give no glance

Ever since then, because of them

I have the sickness in the stomach

Which is the way I make my idea

To go out and kill Roosevelt

First I was figure I kill Hoover

I get even for the stomach

Only Hoover up in Washington

Is winter time in Washington

Too cold for the stomach in Washington—

I go down to Miami, kill Roosevelt

No laugh!

No funny!

Men with the money

They control everything

Roosevelt, Hoover

No make-a no difference

You think I care who I kill?

I no care who I kill

Long as it's king-a!

The crowd's breaking up

When I hear these shots

And I mean lots—

I thought I'd plotz!

I spotted him—

My stomach was tied in knots—

So I barreled—

Harold—!

No, what happened was this:

He was blowing a kiss—

She means Roosevelt

I was saying to Harold, "This weather is bliss!"

When you think that we might have missed

Seeing him miss—!

Lucky we were there!

It was a historical event

Worth every penny that we spent!

Just lucky we were there!

To think, if I let him get up closer—!

I saw right away he was insane—

Oh, this is my husband, we're from Maine

He told me to sit, but I said, "No, sir!"

This makes our vacation a real success!

Are you with the press?

Yes

Oh God, I'm a mess!

Some left-wing foreigner, that's my guess

No!

And wasn't the band just fantastic?

No left!

You think I am left?

No left, no right

No anything!

Only American!

Zangara have nothing

No luck, no girl

Zangara no smart, no school

But Zangara no foreign tool

Zangara American!

American nothing!

And why there no photographers?

For Zangara no photographers!

Only capitalists get photographers!

No right!

Lucky I was there! (No fair! Nowhere!)

I'm on the front page, is that bizarre? (So what?)

And all of those pictures, like a star (No sorry!)

Just lucky I was there! (And soon, no Zangara!)

We might have been left (Who care?)

Bereft of F— (Pull switch!)

—D— (No care no more! No—!)

R!