John Hay Whitney
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John Hay "Jock" Whitney (August 27, 1904–February 8, 1982) was an American multi-millionaire, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1957–1961), pioneering color-movie producer, World War II soldier, sportsman, financier, philanthropist, art collector, diplomat, publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, among others, and a member of the prominent Whitney family.
Family
Born in Ellsworth, Maine, Whitney was a descendant of John Whitney, a Puritan who settled in Massachusetts in 1635, as well as of William Bradford, who came over on the Mayflower, and his two grandfathers, one a Republican and one a Democrat, were presidential cabinet members.The 1920 census lists the Payne Whitneys as living at 972 Fifth Ave. with their two children and 13 servants. At the time, they lived around the corner from James B. Duke, the tobacco baron, and his wife Nanaline and daughter Doris. Payne Whitney's uncle, Oliver Hazard Payne had arranged the financial buyout of Duke's competitors to create the American Tobacco Co., though Payne Whitney and James Duke never did business together. That stretch of Fifth Avenue, known as Millionaire's Row was home to some of the wealthiest people in New York. By the 1930 census, Helen Hay Whitney was listed as living with her son John Hay Whitney and 21 servants at the family's 438 acre (1.8 km²) estate Greentree in Manhasset. Situated on Long Island's North Shore, known as the Gold Coast, Greentree is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful estates in America.
Education
Jock Whitney attended Yale College, where his major pursuits were drama and rowing. He also joined Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, as his father had done before him. His father, Payne Whitney, grandfather William C. Whitney and great-uncle had all been oarsmen at Yale, and his father was captain of the crew in 1898. Payne Whitney followed the Yale rowing team all his life and helped finance the team, including donating financing to build a dormitory for the crew. While at Yale, John Hay Whitney allegedly coined the term "crew cut" for the haircut that now bears the name. Yale lore holds that young Jock went to a local tonsorial palace and asked for a short "Hindenburg" military cut. It was not long after World War I, and anything German was still unpopular. (sauerkraut had been renamed "liberty salad" during World War I.) The barber suggested to Jock that the hair-style should have a new name. They called it the "crew cut" in honor of Yale oarsmen.After graduating in 1926 (the Yale Yearbook listed Jock's ambition as being the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom), Whitney went on to Oxford, but the death of his father at the family's Greentree estate on May 25, 1927 necessitated his returning home. He inherited a trust fund of $20 million from his father (approximately $210 million in 2005 dollars, when factored for inflation), and would later inherit an estimated four times that amount from his mother. The money came from his paternal grandfather, William Collins Whitney, a traction magnate who consolidated New York City's street and railway lines, and his uncle, Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne, a business partner of John D. Rockefeller.
Jock Whitney also inherited his family's love of horses, a predilection he shared with his sister, Joan Whitney Payson, who went on to be the first owner of the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club from the Mets' founding in 1961 until her death in 1975. Payne Whitney had been interested in horse racing, and he had established a racing stable of his own to raise thoroughbred horses. After Payne's death, Jock's mother Helen owned the famous Kentucky horse-breeding farm Greentree Stables, which Jock and his sister ran for her. In 1928, Jock became the youngest member ever elected to the Jockey Club.
Sporting life
A master horseman, he almost won Britain's Grand National steeplechase in 1929. Jock was enjoying a commanding and apparently safe lead when "Easter Hero," his horse, twisted a plate and was beaten by a nose at the finish by a 100-to-1 long shot. Though Whitney entered the Grand National annually after his heartbreaking loss, he never again came so close to winning.He entered four horses in the Kentucky Derby in the 1930s, "Stepenfetchit," which finished 3rd in 1932, "Overtime," which finished 5th in 1933, "Singing Wood," which finished 8th in 1934, and "Heather Broom," which finished 3rd in 1939. Jock was an outstanding polo player, with a four-goal handicap, and it was as a sportsman that he made the cover of the March 27, 1933 issue of Time magazine.
Business ventures
Freeport Texas Co.
In 1929, Whitney was hired as a clerk at the sum of $65 per month at the firm of Lee, Higginson, where he met Langbourne Meade Williams, Jr., the son of the founder of Freeport Texas Co., the sulfur mining company that was responsible for one-third of domestic output. Williams enlisted Jock's aid in ousting the chairman of his family's company, and the two and some of their friends began buying shares of the company. Jock soon was Freeport' biggest shareholder, and with his support, Williams sacked the chairman and his senior management team in 1930. Three years later, Williams became Freeport's president and Whitney was appointed Chairman of the Board, at the age of 29. Jock remained involved with Freeport for the rest of his business days.Technicolor
The ordinary business world didn't prove fulfilling to the young multi-millionaire, whose personal fortune was estimated at $100 million. Seeking somewhere to park those tens of millions of dollars, Jock Whitney invested in several Broadway shows, including Peter Arno's 1931 revue Here Goes the Bride, a failure that cost him $100,000. Although Jock indulged his interests, he did not do so with the idea of losing money. Eventually, he'd achieve spectacular success as one of the angels of Life with Father, one of the all-time longest running Broadway shows.According to an October 1934 Fortune article on the Technicolor Corporation, which he had invested in, Jock had been interested in the movie industry for quite some time:
- John Hay (Jock) Whitney, long nursing an itch to get into pictures, but needing some special advantage to make up for his late arrival, decided that color was the "edge" he was looking for.
Pioneer Pictures
Jock Whitney joined forces with Merian C. Cooper and founded Pioneer Pictures in the spring of 1933, with a distribution deal with R.K.O. John Hay Whitney was Pioneer's president. Jock had importuned his cousin, Cornelius Vanderbilt "Sonny" Whitney, into sharing the financial risk, and the two bought a 15% stake in Technicolor as well. While there was no official corporate connection between Pioneer and Technicolor, the idea was that any initial financial losses generated by Pioneer would be made up by the appreciation of the Whitneys' stake in Technicolor, whose product they would showcase.Selznick International
Jock Whitney was the major investor in Selznick International Inc., putting up $870,000 and serving as Chairman of the Board. Jock also put up half the money for the $50,000 option on Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone With the Wind," then invested more money for the production of both "Gone With the Wind" and "Rebecca," Selznick's back-to-back Oscar winners for Best Picture of 1939 and '40. After an unprecedented run of success for an independent, Selznick International was dissolved in 1940 in order to liquidate the profits from the two pictures.J.H. Whitney & Co.
After the war, Jock he forsook Hollywood for Wall Street, founding J.H. Whitney & Co., a highly successful investment company that is the oldest venture capital firm in the U.S. In 1958, while he was still ambassador to the United Kingdom, his company Whitney Communications Corp. bought the New York Herald Tribune, a bastion of liberal Republicanism and the-then paper of record of the United States. After returning to the U.S. in 1961, he became its publisher until it folded in 1966. Whitney Communications also owned and operated other newspapers, plus magazines and broadcasting stations.Hollywood playboy
In his early years, Jock was renowned as a playboy, and though he was married to Mary Elizabeth Altemus, he was romantically linked to actress Tallulah Bankhead in New York, and to Paulette Goddard and Joan Crawford in Hollywood. It was at a lavish costume party he held in Hollywood that Clark Gable got together with Carole Lombard, the love of his life. Jock divorced his wife in 1940 after ten years of marriage, and in 1942, he married Betsey Cushing Roosevelt, the ex-wife of James Roosevelt, the eldest son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.Military career
Jock Whitney served in the United States Army Air Forces as an intelligence officer during World War II, assigned to the Office of Strategic Services. He was taken prisoner by the Germans in southern France, but he escaped within a fortnight when the train transporting him to a POW camp came under Allied fire. A patriot, he was shocked when his interactions with soldiers revealed that they had little patriotic feeling, but were serving in the war because it was something they had to do. This revelation, that other Americans did not have as bountiful a view of their country as he did, profoundly changed him.Political life
Whitney was involved in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, where he was the major financial backer of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. As president, Eisenhower appointed Whitney Ambassador to the United Kingdom, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and realizing the ambition he had mentioned in the Yale yearbook. Whitney played a major role in improving Anglo-American relations, which had been severely strained during the 1956 Suez Crisis, when Eisenhower demanded that the British, French and Israelis terminate their invasion of Egypt.Philanthropy
The Whitney family had a long history of both public service and philanthropy. Payne Whitney had been a benefactor of educational and charitable institutions, making substantial gifts to Yale, to the New York Presbyterian Hospital, and to the New York Public Library, to which he made a $12,000,000 gift in 1923. After his death in 1927, the family financed the construction of the Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale in his honor. The family also financed the establishment of the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 1932.Jock Whitney became a noted philanthropist, creating the John Hay Whitney Foundation for educational projects in 1946. The Foundation provided fellowships to the racially and culturally deprived and had a large impact on the evolution of higher education in post-war America. He continued the family tradition by becoming a major contributor to Yale University, where he served as a trustee.
Declining health
John Hay Whitney survived two severe heart attacks in his life, but after a long illness, he died on February 8, 1982. He was survived by his wife Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, and their two daughters, Kate DiBonaventura and Sara Wilford.His friend, ABC News Vice President Richard Wald, said upon his death that Jock's major interest in life was the proper organization of society and how to provide for the disadvantaged in a fiscally responsible way. Wald said his friend went to sleep at night a Democrat and would wake up a Republican. Wald also said that Jock Whitney had a marvelous time and lived a marvelous life, happy and rich in a time when Americans liked the rich. And, it might be added, in a time when the rich knew in their souls that they owed an obligation to society at large, and to the disadvantaged in particular, and tried to fulfill that obligation for the betterment of the society that had given them so much.
Legacy
Betsey Whitney, who died in 1998, had an estimated personal fortune of $700 million in 1990 (approximately $1 billion in 2005 dollars), according to Forbes magazine. After her death on March 25, 1998, she bequeathed eight major paintings to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., including:- "Self-Portrait" (1889) by Vincent van Gogh
- "Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in Chilperic" (1895–1896) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- "Open Window, Collioure" (1905) by Henri Matisse
- "The Harbor of La Ciotat "(1907) by Georges Braque
- "The Beach at Sainte-Adresse" (1906) by Raoul Dufy
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