"I can't take off and I can't land, but I sure can fly." - bomber pilot Fiorello LaGuardia, 1918. The Little Flower always knew he'd make a great New York mayor. By 1933 he'd been waiting years for the job.

As an anti-Tammany liberal Republican, Fiorello LaGuardia attracted national attention in Congress, but he could never build a constituency in his own heavily Democratic town. Now, with Jimmy Walker deposed, civic leaders at last were looking for a fusion candidate with LaGuardia's previously unfashionable reform opinions. There was only one problem. The one candidate they absolutely refused to consider was Fiorello LaGuardia.