Cornelius Vanderbilt IV was an American journalist and publisher.
Background
Cornelius Vanderbilt was born on April 30, 1898, in New York City. He was the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr. (also known as "Cornelius III" and "Neily"), a railroad magnate and yachtsman, and Grace Graham Wilson, a member of an affluent Southern family who, as the hostess of extravagant parties and a benefactor of the Metropolitan Opera, became a queen of New York City and Newport, Rhode Island, society.
As a direct descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt (the "Commodore"), a nineteenth-century tycoon and railroad baron, Cornelius IV was born into the highest echelon of society. His father had received medals and commendations for his bravery during World War I and had attained the rank of brigadier general in the Army Corps of Engineers; he was the first military man to appoint black officers to his staff and to allow blacks in the officers' mess.
During frequent travels abroad the family hobnobbed with royalty, and, since they were related by marriage to the Marlboroughs and the Astors, they mingled with the upper crust of English aristocracy. Cornelius, Jr. , was reared and educated by hosts of governesses and private tutors in the United States, Europe, and aboard his father's ocean-going yacht.
Education
Vanderbilt attended private schools in England, Germany, Russia, and Switzerland, as well as schools in Florida, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. When the United States entered World War I, he volunteered for the army despite his mother's protestations and was shipped out with "Pershing's Boys" to Europe, where he served primarily as a chauffeur.
He saw action in France and upon returning to the United States in 1918, he went to the War College in Washington, D. C. , graduating after one year with the rank of lieutenant. He subsequently served in the reserves (1920 - 1923), as a captain in the National Guard (1923 - 1927), and as a major in the reserves (1927 - 1942). During World War II he served in army intelligence but was never assigned overseas.
Career
To the dismay of the entire family, and contrary to the advice of his father's close friend, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius, Jr. , chose journalism as his profession. Between 1919 and 1922, he worked as a cub reporter at the New York Herald, following it with a stint at the West Coast Analyst and a job as a legislative reporter for the New York Times in both Albany, New York, and Washington, D. C. After a brief assignment to Seattle, the Times sent him back to Washington, D. C. , to cover the White House.
A fateful meeting in 1922 changed his life so completely that he never recovered from its consequences: in Vancouver, British Columbia, he interviewed Alfred C. W. Harmsworth, viscount of Northcliffe, the owner of the largest newspaper empire outside the United States, an empire that included the Times of London. Vanderbilt told the older man his own journalistic ambitions, and Lord Northcliffe aware of the Vanderbilt fortune as well as his interviewer's young age advised him to start afresh on the West Coast, a region, he assured Vanderbilt, whose journalism market was not yet conquered, and added that, if he was successful, a verbal understanding could be arranged between them. Vanderbilt did not ask for any written agreement.
Having grown up in a clubby business atmosphere, where the richest men in the country transacted deals in their private quarters over a glass of brandy and a smoke, and without so much as a handshake, it did not occur to young Vanderbilt to distrust Lord Northcliffe. He embarked on an ambitious program, starting the Illustrated Daily News in Los Angeles and the Illustrated Daily Herald in San Francisco, and expanding to the southeast with his Miami Tab daily newspaper. The first two ventures proved to be great successes, outnumbering in circulation the Chandler family's Los Angeles Times and hurting William Randolph Hearst's papers in San Francisco. Hearst and Chandler rose to meet the challenge by pressuring San Francisco department stores (the chief source of newspaper revenue) to cancel advertisements with the Vanderbilt papers, and by sending thugs to beat up Vanderbilt's newspaper delivery men and set fire to their vans.
Chandler's outrageous behavior only helped increase the circulation of Vanderbilt's southern California newspaper, but his failing San Francisco newspaper could not stand up to Hearst. Nevertheless, fired by his dream of a newspaper empire anchored in the United States and England, Vanderbilt continued to chase bad money with good, using his own savings, taking loans from banks and family members, and even borrowing from his future inheritance.
In 1922, Lord Northcliffe suddenly died in England at the age of fifty-seven. Vanderbilt rushed to London to salvage his dream, but the new owners of Lord Northcliffe's empire, being more conservative, showed no interest in Vanderbilt's claims. A desperate attempt to involve European investors also failed. Upon his return to the West Coast he asked his two archrivals, Chandler and Hearst, to call a truce, but to no avail. Hearst, however, offered Vanderbilt a job on one of his New York newspapers, which he was finally obliged to accept. The debts that his West Coast ventures had incurred plagued Vanderbilt for years to come.
Although he lived mostly in New York City and Florida, he purchased a home in Reno, Nev. , and recorded in books and articles the western life-style and big ranches. His love for racehorses was equally recorded in his writings. His frequent excursions to Europe resulted in two travel books and many articles. He died on July 7, 1974, aged 76, in Reno, Nevada.
Achievements
Politics
To his family's horror, he became a Democrat and a staunch supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. He also supported the State of Israel, for which he went on lecture tours and produced a film on location.
His criticism of the super-rich caused his name to be removed from the New York Social Register in 1937. But in later years, he was overcome by nostalgia and started a campaign for the preservation of the great homes and costumes of America's past. In June 1960, he revived the Vanderbilt Cup at the Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, New York. It had been initiated by his great-uncle in 1904.
Views
Quotations:
"Service in some form or other should be the keynote of every worthwhile thing in life, and newspaper work gives one a greater scope for serving the public at large, and molding public opinion, than any other present-day occupation. "
Personality
Vanderbilt learned French, German, and Italian, and took an interest in fencing, swimming, boxing, and sailboat races. He was an accomplished equestrian, shot quail, and learned social dances at a very early age. His strict father kept him on a very small allowance, and until the age of seventeen Cornelius, Jr. , never left home without bodyguards for fear of kidnapping. His personal hero throughout his early years was Theodore Roosevelt, a close friend of the Vanderbilts.
He viewed his work in journalism as a "series of exciting sensations. " From the beginning of his career he demonstrated a keen perception of the fragility and idiosyncrasies of his human subjects, a sense of drama, and a clear and lucid prose style. Because of his ease in the company of world leaders and other notables, he was given major interview assignments that he handled with elegance, humanity, charm, and humor.
He also had a very clear vision of his professional goals. At the age of twenty-four, he wrote, "Eventually, I hope by hard, steady and diligent effort to become a publicist if that is within my realm of opportunity. Again, I have the ambition to control a newspaper syndicate, through which I would contribute to the best of the papers in the country, irrespective of size and circulation. " Indeed, at that juncture in his life, this vision of his future career was well within his financial possibilities and the range of his talents.
Vanderbilt was an enthusiastic traveler, crossing the United States at least twice every year. The outcome was a bounty of sensitive stories about hopelessness in small towns and the migration of destitute populations during the Great Depression. The easy friendships he made along the highways and byways of America constitute one of the most unique records of that era in American history. Always an advocate for one cause or another, Vanderbilt never lost his youthful idealism and his faith in the ability of the press and a few good men to serve the high goals of mankind. To his friends, he was known as "the naive sophisticate. "
Connections
At the age of twenty-two, against his parents' wishes, Cornelius married Rachel Littleton on April 29, 1920, and they divorced on November 26, 1927. His subsequent marriages (shown with dates of marriage and divorce) were to: Mary Weir Logan (July 3, 1928 - August 1931), Helen Varner Anderson (January 4, 1935 - December 18, 1940), Feliza Loraine Fablos (September 3, 1946 - April 23, 1947), Patricia Murphy Wallace (September 2, 1948 - June 29, 1953), Ann Needham (September 3, 1957 - May 1960), and Mary Lou Gardner (November 4, 1967, until his death). He had no children.