When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling is a song whose documented appearance in Harry S. Truman’s story comes at the launch of his 1922 campaign for Jackson County judge. Sung at a rally in Lee’s Summit, it supplied a vivid musical moment in an evening that introduced Truman as a candidate and put his stage fright alongside the support of fellow veterans and local allies.

Campaign-opening performance

On March 8, 1922, two months short of his thirty-eighth birthday, Harry S. Truman opened his campaign at a rally for war veterans in an auditorium at Lee’s Summit. About three hundred people attended for speeches, free cigars, and music. The campaign was presented as an American Legion candidacy, with veterans from Battery D and some supporters connected to the Pendergast organization in the audience.

The evening’s musical highlight

Ethel Lee Buxton, a Kansas City entertainer who had performed for the Red Cross in France, sang When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and then closed with Mother Machree. The account identifies her performance as the highlight of the evening. The songs framed a gathering otherwise marked by campaign speeches and Truman’s debut before a political audience.

Place in Truman’s early campaign

Truman later recalled that he was so rattled at the rally that he could barely say he was willing to run. He remembered the meeting as a flop for him and said he had been more frightened than when he first came under fire in 1918. Yet the crowd responded warmly to his speech. The song’s place in the scene thus belongs to a campaign opening in which the candidate’s nervousness and the audience’s encouragement stood side by side, with Buxton’s performance providing the evening’s memorable close.