‘The Greatest Talker of His Time’
In September 1953, with the Supreme Court only months away from rehearing oral argument in Brown v. Board of Education, Justice Felix Frankfurter received word while vacationing in Massachusetts that Chief Justice Fred Vinson had died suddenly of a heart attack. Returning to Washington so that he could attend Vinson’s funeral, Frankfurter bumped into his former law clerk Philip Elman in Union Station. Frankfurter did not exactly appear staggered by grief. To the contrary, Elman observed the 5-foot-5 Frankfurter walking with a particular spring in his diminutive step. Vinson’s unexpected departure might enable the Court to issue an effective decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools, an outcome that was, Frankfurter believed, well beyond the late chief justice’s meager intellectual and leadership capabilities. Frankfurter gripped Elman by the arm, stared at him intently, and uncorked the following line: “Phil, this is the first solid piece of evidence I’ve ever had that there really is a God.”
This yarn encapsulates vintage Frankfurter in at least two distinct senses. First, he was a lively, often dazzling conversationalist. Despite his never having heard a word of English before he immigrated to Manhattan from Vienna at age 11, elite Americans widely celebrated his silver tongue. As would , “He was … bursting with joy and wit and sarcasm, eager to exchange gossip or debate eternal verities—but at any rate, to talk. He was by all odds the greatest talker of his time.” This encomium was not one that Frankfurter received only posthumously. A 1960 book titled , which consisted merely of transcribed interviews, became an improbable best seller and a finalist for the National Book Award. That volume forthrightly conceded that it was not
