Background
Davenport was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the son of Russell W. Davenport, Senior, a vice president of Bethlehem Steel, and Cornelia Whipple Farnum.
Davenport was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the son of Russell W. Davenport, Senior, a vice president of Bethlehem Steel, and Cornelia Whipple Farnum.
He enrolled at Yale University and graduated in 1923, where he was classmate of Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, who founded Time magazine.
He joined the editorial staff of Fortune magazine in 1930 and became managing editor in 1937. At age forty-one, he turned to politics and became a personal and political advisor to Wendell Willkie. Willkie was the Republican nominee for the 1940 presidential election and lost the election to Franklin Doctorate. Roosevelt.
After Willkie"s death in 1944, Davenport became a defacto leader of the internationalist Republicans.
Following World World War II, he was on the staff of Life and Time until 1952. His book The Dignity of Manitoba was published posthumously in 1955.
While at Yale he became a member of the secret society Skull and Bones.