John Hay Whitney biography
John Hay Whitney, byname Jock Whitney, (born August 17, 1904, Ellsworth, Maine, U.S.—died February 8, 1982, Manhasset, New York), American multimillionaire and sportsman who had a multifaceted profession as a writer, financier, philanthropist, and horse breeder.
Whitney was born right into a distinguished household; his maternal grandfather was U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, and his father’s aspect included among the wealthiest people within the United States. After attending Groton Preparatory School and Yale University (1922–26), Whitney entered the University of Oxford, however, upon the loss of life of his father in 1927, he returned to handle the huge household fortune. Meanwhile, he had turn into a eager sportsman and an internationally ranked polo participant, becoming a member of the famend Greentree polo staff in 1924 and remaining an energetic participant till the staff broke up in 1940. He finally took a number one position in lots of horse-breeding and racing organizations, and his personal stables, Greentree, produced a number of notable profitable racehorses.
Whitney was additionally within the arts. He invested in Broadway performs, together with the long-running hit Life with Father; ventured into movies with Pioneer Pictures, which demonstrated the worth of Technicolor; and, in 1935, helped type the Selznick International Motion Picture Company, which, by means of Whitney’s efforts, obtained display rights to the novel Gone with the Wind even earlier than its publication. He served as a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from its inception in 1931 and himself finally fashioned one of many most interesting artwork collections within the United States.
With the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Whitney joined Nelson Rockefeller and others in forming what finally turned the U.S. Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. In 1942 he joined the Eighth U.S. Army Air Force as a captain within the Combat Intelligence Division and noticed responsibility in England and the Mediterranean earlier than being captured by the Nazis in southern France. He escaped and in 1945 was awarded the Legion of Merit. That 12 months he turned particular adviser to the U.S. Department of State’s Public and Cultural Relations Division and to the International Information Service, and in 1956 he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, the place he served till 1961.
In the years after World War II, Whitney additionally pursued enterprise alternatives within the communications trade, buying pursuits in quite a few newspapers, tv and radio stations, and magazines. His biggest disappointment was his lack of ability to revitalize the New York Herald Tribune, which he acquired in 1958 and which he served (1961–66) as writer and editor in chief till the newspaper folded.
As a philanthropist, in 1946 he arrange the John Hay Whitney Foundation, to which he contributed $1 million yearly, and in 1970 he donated $15 million to his alma mater, Yale.