John Hay Whitney

John Hay Whitney ( born August 17, 1904 in Ellsworth, Maine, † February 8, 1982 ) was an American businessman, diplomat, publisher, patron of the arts and art collector.

Life

His father was the contractor Payne Whitney and his mother was Helen Hay Whitney, the Kuntmäzenin. Joan Whitney Payson His sister was. Whitney studied at Yale University and was in World War II in the United States Army operates.

In the 1930s he invested in several Broadway shows, including Peter Arno's Revue of 1931 Here Goes the Bride. He invested in the US-American company Technicolor. Together with Merian C. Cooper he founded Pioneer Pictures. Whitney was from 1961 to 1966 editor of the American newspaper New York Herald Tribune, which he had purchased with his 1946 founded company Whitney Communications Corporation. He supported politically Republican politician Dwight D. Eisenhower. From 1957 to 1961 Whitney was the successor of Winthrop W. Aldrich, United States Ambassador in the United Kingdom.

1930 Whitney married the race horse owners Liz Whitney Tippett, from whom he divorced in 1940. Whitney married his second wife Betsey Cushing Whitney, the daughter of U.S. neurologists Harvey Cushing and divorced wife of James Roosevelt. The couple adopted two girls. Among his close friends included, among other things, Fred Astaire.

In the 1970 Whitney was one of the ten richest people in the world. Among his extensive possessions were, for example, an estate on Long Iceland, the Greenwood Plantation in Georgia, a city apartment and another townhouse in Manhattan, an estate on Fisher Iceland near New London, Connecticut or even a 12 -room house in Saratoga Springs and a house in Surrey, England near the Ascot Racecourse. In Augusta, Georgia, he was a member of Augusta National Golf Club.

Among other things, Whitney promoted with financial donations, the New York Presbyterian Hospital and the New York Public Library. In 1946 he founded the John Hay Whitney Foundation for educational projects. As an art collector belonged to him, among other things, the Renoir painting Bal au moulin de la Galette, which in 1990, after his death his wife auctioned at Sotheby's in New York City.