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William Edwards, a.k.a. Big Bill Edwards, collector of internal revenue for the Wall Street district and former Princeton football star, delivering a speech circa 1915. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
If there was ever a movie of Big Bill it would have to be John Goodman that played him...
I'd be curious to know in what capacity that piano was used to augment Big Bill's speech.
Wow. I think everybody is wearing a hat ... times sure have changed.
Now I read that Big Bill was unmarried, so that must be someone else's "Edwards Boy".
But "Big Bill" was a character, to be sure:
"People who called Edwards the Peter Pan of Princeton, who were bored by his after-dinner speeches, who declared that he was at heart a schoolboy who blustered his way through life seeking the loud worship of some irrecoverable football game, such people ate their words the day he stood next Mayor Gaynor. For a maniac, jerking out a pistol, emptied it at New York's good Mayor. "Big Bill" Edwards, for one moment of splendor, got back the glory of the greatest game that he had ever played as with a mechanical impulse he leaped for the murderer. There were detectives in the group that day, men trained for just such moments. "Big Bill" Edwards acted quicker than any of them. Straight as a bullet he launched his enormous bulk forward in a flying tackle that had in it all that nerve and muscle remembered of wild times on ringing fields. The gunman, still firing, crumpled backward; powder burned the sleeve of "Big Bill" Edwards; a bullet seared his arm. For a while after that he was cheered wherever he went. " - Time Magazine, Oct. 4, 1926
[The Edwards boy pics were taken by National Photo in Washington; this Bain News Service photo was taken in New York. - Dave]
Nice hat...no, not you, you. Nope, next to him - oh, forget it.
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