FDR - Jean Edward Smith [254]
After his recovery James married his nurse at the Mayo Clinic and moved to California, where he was hired by Samuel Goldwyn as a movie vice president, first at $25,000, then $40,000 a year. Hollywood buzz had it that James had been given a leaf-raking job by Goldwyn so he could boast to friends that the president’s son was on the payroll.60* The fact is that Goldwyn was being sued by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations related to film distribution and saw James as a sheet anchor. “How can you do this with a suit pending?” FDR asked his son in December 1938. James said it was only a civil suit. “What is the difference between a civil and a criminal suit?” Roosevelt replied. “All I know is that you are working for a man who is fighting the United States Government.”61
Number two son, Elliott, was even more of a problem. A natural rebel, he objected to attending Groton, resisted confirmation in the Episcopal Church, and turned in a blank college entrance examination to avoid going to Harvard. Instead of college Elliott found a job with a New York advertising agency and earned enough to support himself but just barely. In 1932, at the age of twenty-one, he married Elizabeth “Betty” Donner, the attractive heiress to a Pennsylvania steel fortune. Betty’s father, a pillar in the Republican establishment, bankrolled the couple, provided them with a Park Avenue apartment, and invited Elliott into the family business as a vice president. “I saw my life laid out ahead of me,” he said later.62 Like his maternal grandfather and namesake, Elliott was restless. He and Betty and their infant son attended FDR’s 1933 inaugural, and four days later Elliott abandoned them and drove west. “He simply dumped them at the White House,” said an upstairs employee. Elliott told ER he needed to think things through. He had a job offer from a start-up airline in California. If it worked out, he might send for his family later.63
Elliott ran out of money in Little Rock and placed a collect call to his father. FDR explained that he had closed the banks and suggested to Elliott that he find a prosperous-looking farm where he might earn enough to continue his trip.
“What road are you following?” FDR asked.
“Dallas, El Paso, Tucson,” said Elliott.
“Just go as far as you can,” Roosevelt replied.64 Evidently FDR informed Jesse Jones, the Texas banker who headed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and Jones in turn alerted the Dallas business establishment. When Elliott arrived in the city, he was feted by the legendary C. R. Smith, the head of American Airlines, introduced to the moneybags of the Texas oil industry, Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and made grand marshal of the Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth. “I was vaguely aware that I was being sized up,” said Elliott.65 He also met and immediately fell in love with Ruth Googins, the daughter of a wealthy meatpacking family.
Elliott continued to California. The fledgling airline for which he hoped to work went out of business shortly after his arrival, and he too was rescued by William Randolph Hearst, who engaged Elliott as aviation editor of the Los Angeles Examiner at the princely salary of $30,000. Two years later Hearst put him in charge of the company’s radio operations at $50,000.* With Hearst’s offer on the horizon, Elliott decided to divorce Betty and marry Ruth. The easy way out was to break the news by telephone from the West Coast. The Donners were distraught; Franklin and Eleanor were appalled; and Anna was dispatched to counsel Elliott against the move. “See if you can’t keep him from rushing into it,” FDR instructed his daughter.66 When Anna failed, Eleanor flew out to Los Angeles but had no better luck. Elliott divorced Betty in Reno in July 1933, and married Ruth Googins five days later.
Like James—perhaps even more than James—Elliott was always on the lookout