Joseph N. Welch

Joseph Nye Welch (October 22, 1890 – October 6, 1960) was the head attorney for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities. This investigation (known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings) was underway when television was first becoming a common household product in the United States. It was the first time many people got a first-hand view of McCarthy.

Biography

He was born in Primghar, Iowa on October 22, 1890 as the seventh and youngest child of English immigrants. He attended Grinnell College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1914, then attended Harvard Law School and graduated in 1917, with the second highest GPA in his graduating class. Welch married in 1917 and had two sons.cite web |url=http://law.jrank.org/pages/11264/Welch-Joseph-Nye.html |title=Joseph Nye Welch |accessdate=2008-07-28 |quote= |publisher=Jrank ]

On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the hearings, McCarthy accused Fred Fisher, one of the junior attorneys at Welch's firm, of association (while in law school) with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which J. Edgar Hoover was seeking to have the U.S. Attorney General designate as a Communist front organization (see Army-McCarthy hearings). Welch wrote off Fisher's association with the NLG as a youthful indiscretion and famously rebuked:

:"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch cut him off and demanded the chairman "call the next witness." At that point, the gallery erupted in applause. These proceedings have been recorded in the documentary film "Point of Order!" (1964). The title is taken from a phrase that was repeated often by McCarthy during the hearings.

His wife, Judith Lydon, died in 1956, and he remarried in 1957. Welch was a partner at Hale and Dorr, a Boston law firm, and lived in nearby Walpole, Massachusetts for over two decades. Welch played a criminal court judge in northern Michigan in Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959). He took the part "because it looked like that was the only way I'd ever get to be a judge." He received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role. [cite web
url =http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052561/awards
title =Awards for Anatomy of a Murder
publisher = IMDB] He also narrated the television shows "Omnibus" and "Dow Hour of Great Mysteries".

Death

He died on October 6, 1960 at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Joseph N. Welch, Army Counsel In McCarthy Hearings, Is Dead; Lawyer Gained Nation-Wide Prominence at Televised Proceedings in 1954. |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20614FF3C5C1A728DDDAE0894D8415B808AF1D3 |quote=Joseph N. Welch, the Boston lawyer whose dry wit and keen legal mind gained him nationwide prominence in the televised Army-McCarthy hearings six years ago, died today at Cape Cod Hospital. |work=New York Times |date=October 7, 1960 |accessdate=2008-07-28 ] cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Died. |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,895030,00.html |quote=Joseph Nye Welch, 69, Iowa-born Boston barrister who on coast-to-coast TV gently and repeatedly needled the late Senator Joseph McCarthy into fury during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings; of a heart attack; in Hyannis, Mass. |work=Time (magazine) |date=October 17, 1960 |accessdate=2008-07-28 ]

References

External links

*imdb|0919583
* [http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html McCarthy-Welch Exchange: "Have You No Sense of Decency" (transcript and sound file)]
* [http://wilmerhale.com/about/history/ History of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr]
* [http://img.timeinc.net/Life/covers/1954/cv072654.jpgJoseph Welch on the cover of Life Magazine]