Jimmy Hoffa on being tough and being able 'to withstand anything'
In 1960, Teamsters leader told CBC he could not be pushed aside in protecting his union's interests
Jimmy Hoffa was said to be tough, but the Teamsters president once told CBC-TV he saw himself as simply being indomitable to pressure on his union.
"There's no such a thing as being tough, so far as a physical sense is concerned," he told CBC's Close-Up in 1960.
"I certainly believe that I have the physical stamina to be able to withstand anything that threatens this international union."
The Close-Up interview provided a glimpse of the personality at the top of the Teamsters, a 47-year-old man whose life story was already dramatic by 1960 and would become even more so in the years ahead.
To that point Hoffa had certainly been put under pressure: He'd faced challenges in courtrooms and Senate hearing rooms, but never ceded his grip on the powerful trade union that counted more than 1 million members.
A tough mindset
A sign on his desk that read "illegitimi non carborundum" gave a clue as to his mindset on such matters. Close-Up asked him to explain its meaning.
"Don't let the B's wear you down," Hoffa said, though Close-Up's Washington correspondent Robert Hoyt hinted to viewers that a more accurate translation of the not-quite-Latin phrase was warranted.
"That sounds to me like that's stretching the interpretation just a little," said Hoyt, alluding to the word "bastards" that had been dropped from Hoffa's description.
"No, that's what it is," a smiling Hoffa said. "That's exactly what it is."
But Hoffa's perseverance through pressure would not keep him out of trouble forever.
'It was a matter of actual survival'
The Indiana-born Hoffa had grown up in a family of four children that struggled following the death of his father when the Teamsters leader was a boy.
"We lived in a small town where there wasn't any employment," Hoffa told Close-Up, explaining how circumstances eventually led them to move on to Michigan where his mother found work in a factory.
Asked what good times he could remember from that period in his life, the Teamsters president was unsentimental.
"Actually, there wasn't any good time," he said. "It was a matter, actually, of actual survival, of our family to be able to keep body and soul together, to hold our family together and we came out of it in good shape."
A sharp rise and fall
As Hoffa told Close-Up, he had a full-time job by the time he was a teenager.
According to a memorial profile on the Teamsters website, Hoffa led a strike effort at age 19 while working at a warehouse. The following year, he joined the union that he would later lead.
Within the Teamsters, Hoffa continued to ascend to higher and higher leadership positions, culminating in his being elected president of the organization in 1957.
Yet his actions caught the eye of the U.S. government and law enforcement. And Hoffa would eventually spend time in prison, following a jury-tampering conviction in 1964 and his failed attempts to overturn it. He was also separately convicted of fraud.
His time behind bars — for most of which he remained head of the Teamsters — was shortened after U.S. President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence in 1971.
Gone without a trace
Hoffa's story took a darker turn a few years later when he went to a meeting at Detroit-area restaurant on July 30, 1975.
His car was found unlocked, with no trace of Hoffa. And it quickly became clear that his disappearance was a serious matter.
"Right now the betting is that he's killed, he's dead," said John Herling, a syndicated labour columnist, who spoke to CBC Radio's As It Happens on Aug. 1, 1975, just two days after Hoffa was seen alive for the last time.
Foul play has long been suspected and his body has never been found, despite a long-running investigation by the FBI.
Continued interest
Many theories have been put forward as to who is responsible for Hoffa's disappearance and presumed demise.
The mystery has been explored in various books and movies, including in The Irishman, a new Martin Scorsese-directed film that tells the story of a hit man who claimed to have killed the Teamsters leader.
Al Pacino portrays Hoffa in the film. He recently told the New York Times about his approach to playing the labour leader on screen.
"You have to find the fictionalization of it some way," Pacino told the paper. "You have to find the drama and the character. Because otherwise, do a documentary on someone."
Hoffa, the man and his life story, can surely provide enough of both for Pacino or any actor to work with.