Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 6, 1886, Joseph Patrick Kennedy was the son of Mary Hickey and Patrick Joseph Kennedy, a local political figure who served in the Massachusetts House and Senate and was also a successful businessman helping to found Columbia Trust Company in 1895. Although Kennedy attended Catholic schools throughout his childhood, his father enrolled him in Boston Latin School, a preparatory school. Class president during his senior year, Kennedy graduated from Boston Latin in 1908 and went on to Harvard University, earning his degree in 1912. Upon graduation, he took a job as an assistant state bank examiner.
Throughout high school and college, Kennedy courted Rose Fitzgerald, a childhood friend and daughter of Boston Mayor John Francis Fitzgerald (“Honey Fitz”). They were married on October 7, 1914. After a two-week honeymoon, the couple settled in the Boston suburb of Brookline and their first son, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., was born on July 25, 1915. The Kennedy family continued to grow: John Fitzgerald (Jack) was born on May 29, 1917; Rosemary on November 11, 1918; and Kathleen on February 20, 1920.
After averting a takeover at his father’s Columbia Trust Company, Kennedy became president of the bank in early 1914. At twenty-five years old, he was touted in the press as the country’s youngest bank president. While president of Columbia Trust, Kennedy also served on the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Electric Company where he met Guy Currier. In 1917, Currier offered Kennedy a position as an assistant at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. Run by Bethlehem Steel, the shipyard prospered with American involvement in World War I. While working at Fore River, Kennedy first met Franklin D. Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy. At the end of World War I, Kennedy left Bethlehem Steel to return to finance, accepting a job as a stock manager at the Boston branch of Hayden, Stone and Company, under the direction of partner Galen Stone. When Stone retired in 1922, Kennedy remained in the same office but struck out on his own, becoming involved with Wall Street and real estate speculation. During this time Kennedy became involved in the movie industry.
In 1919, Kennedy and a group of investors, including Guy Currier, purchased the Maine and New Hampshire Theatres Company, a chain of thirty-one New England movie theatres. Throughout the early 1920’s, Kennedy was associated with the finances and distribution of several different film companies, joining the board of directors of Robertson-Cole/Film Book Offices (R.C./F.B.O.) in 1923. It was also in 1923 that Kennedy met Fred Thomson, a popular film star of westerns. Kennedy later coordinated a production deal between himself, Thomson and R.C./F.B.O., arranging for Thomson to create a series of westerns directly for the studio under Thomson's production company. After resigning from the board of directors in 1924, Kennedy purchased R.C./F.B.O. in 1925, working with a group of investors that again included Guy Currier, along with Frederick H. Prince and Louis Kirstein, head of Filene's department stores. When the purchase was publicly announced in early 1926, Kennedy and Currier formed Cinema Credits Corporation. Kennedy then coordinated a lecture series at Harvard University entitled “The Story of the Films” that included speakers such as Marcus Loew, William H. Hays and Cecil B. DeMille. In 1927, Kennedy struck another production deal with Fred Thomson, arranging for four westerns to be produced by Fred Thomson Productions on the F.B.O. lot and released by Paramount Pictures. In late 1927, Kennedy met actress Gloria Swanson, one of the most prominent actresses of her time. Because of Swanson’s extravagant lifestyle and financially disastrous attempt at self production under the aegis of United Artists Corporation, Kennedy took over Swanson's personal and professional finances, creating Gloria Productions. In early 1928, Kennedy hired director Erich Von Stroheim to direct Swanson in a lavish film designed to restore her former star power. Though Von Stroheim’s film was never completed, Kennedy and Swanson produced two other films, including Swanson's first talking feature, “The Trespasser” before ending their business relationship in 1930.
During 1927, Kennedy began meeting with David A. Sarnoff, head of Radio Corporation of America (R.C.A.). To join the film industry and begin the merger that would eventually create Radio-Keith-Orpheum (R.K.O.), R.C.A. purchased shares of F.B.O. This process continued throughout 1928 as Kennedy, Sarnoff, and J.J. Murdock, head of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theatre network, merged their respective companies together to create R.K.O., the first film studio designed to exclusively produce sound pictures. The merger was completed in late 1928, leaving Sarnoff as the head of the newly created R.K.O. In 1928, Kennedy also assumed a position as “special advisor” to Pathé studios, Cecil B. DeMille’s former company and owner of the lot where Gloria Productions films were made. In December 1930, Kennedy sold his share in Pathé to R.K.O. and resigned from active management of Gloria Productions.