John Hay Whitney (August 17, 1904 – February 8, 1982) was an American venture capitalist, sportsman, philanthropist, newspaper publisher, film producer and diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, and president of the Museum of Modern Art.
Born in 1904 to Payne Whitney and Helen Hay Whitney, Whitney was a member of the wealthy and prominent Whitney family, longstanding fixtures of New York City and New England society. After attending Groton School and Yale College, where he was an oarsman, he inherited a large fortune from his father, making him one of the wealthiest people in the United States. In 1929, he participated in a hostile takeover of Lee, Higginson & Co. with Langbourne Willliams, rising to the position of chairman of the board at just 29 years old. In 1946, after serving in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, he founded J. H. Whitney & Company, the oldest venture capital firm in the United States and the origin of the term venture capital. By the 1970s, he was one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Whitney was an influential figure in New York City politics and the politics of the Republican Party. As a moderate internationalist, Whitney was an early supporter of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential campaigns, and in 1957, Eisenhower appointed him United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, a position which had been held by his grandfather and namesake, John Hay. While ambassador, Whitney improved relations between the two countries in the wake of the Suez Crisis and purchased the New York Herald Tribune. Through the Tribune, he was influential in the election of John Lindsay as mayor of New York City in 1965.
Whitney was a skilled polo player and raised thoroughbred racing horses, which won him the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1929 and 1930 and were frequent entrants in the Kentucky Derby. He was a patron of the arts, financing several Broadway productions and films, including two Academy Award for Best Picture, Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940). He was an early supporter of Fred Astaire, his longtime friend, and helped secure Astaire his first major film contract with RKO Pictures. His large art collection included famous works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, William Blake and Vincent van Gogh. Works from his collection have been exhibited at the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Born on August 17, 1904, in Ellsworth, Maine, Whitney was a descendant of John Whitney, a Puritan who settled in Massachusetts in 1635, as well as of William Bradford, who came over on the Mayflower. His father was Payne Whitney, and his grandfathers were William C. Whitney and John Hay, both presidential cabinet members. His mother was Helen Hay Whitney.
The Whitneys' family mansion, Payne Whitney House on New York's Fifth Avenue, was around the corner from James B. Duke House, home of the founder of the American Tobacco Co., father of Doris Duke. Whitney's uncle, Oliver Hazard Payne, a business partner of John D. Rockefeller, arranged the funding for Duke to buy out his competitors.
Jock Whitney attended Groton School, then Yale College. He joined Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter), as his father had. Whitney, his father, grandfather, and great-uncle were oarsmen at Yale, and his father was captain of the crew in 1898. He was a member of Scroll and Key. While at Yale, he inspired the coining of the term "crew cut" for the haircut favored by the rowing crew which still bears the name. After graduating in 1926, Whitney went to Oxford University, but the death of his father on May 25, 1927, necessitated his returning home. He inherited a trust fund of $20 million (approximately $343.9 million in 2023 dollars), and later inherited four times that amount from his mother.
In 1929, Whitney, despite his vast wealth, was a clerk at the firm of Lee, Higginson & Co where, through his boss, J.T. Claiborne Jr., he met former Lee, Higginson clerk Langbourne Meade Williams Jr., who had come to Claiborne for help in his efforts to gain control of Freeport Texas Co. Williams was a scion of a founding investment firm in the sulfur mining company. In 1929, the year after Whitney became one of the wealthiest men in America, through inheritance, Williams enlisted the help of Whitney's boss, who then enlisted Whitney's financial participation, in his efforts to oust founder and Chairman Eric P. Swenson, casting Whitney in the role of corporate raider before the term existed. Whitney was soon Freeport's biggest shareholder, enabling Williams to replace the chairman and his management team. Claiborne was made a vice-president; Williams became Freeport's president in 1933, and Whitney was appointed chairman of the board.
In 1946, Whitney founded J.H. Whitney & Company, the oldest venture capital firm in the U.S., with Benno C. Schmidt Sr.—who coined the term "venture capital"—with J. T. Claiborne as a partner. Whitney put up $10 million to finance entrepreneurs with business plans who were unwelcome at banks. Companies Whitney invested in included Spencer Chemical and Minute Maid. In 1958, while he was still ambassador to the United Kingdom, his company Whitney Communications Corp. bought the New York Herald Tribune, and was its publisher from 1961 to its closure in 1966. He was chairman of the International Herald Tribune from 1966 until his death. Whitney Communications also owned and operated other newspapers, magazines and broadcasting stations. Whitney's television stations were sold to Dun & Bradstreet in 1969.
Whitney invested in several Broadway shows, including Peter Arno's 1931 revue Here Goes the Bride, a failure that cost him $100,000, but was more successful as one of the backers of Life with Father.
An October 1934 Fortune article on the Technicolor Corporation noted Whitney's interest in pictures. He had met Technicolor head Herbert Kalmus at the Saratoga Race Course. In 1932, Technicolor achieved a breakthrough with its three-strip process. Merian C. Cooper of RKO Radio Pictures approached Whitney with the idea of investing in Technicolor. They joined forces and founded Pioneer Pictures in 1933, with a distribution deal with RKO to distribute Pioneer's films. Whitney and his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney bought a 15% stake in Technicolor.
Whitney was also the major investor in David O. Selznick's production company Selznick International Pictures, putting up $870,000 and serving as chairman of the board. He put up half the money to option Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind for the Selznick film version, in which he then invested, and later in Rebecca (1940).
Whitney served in the United States Army Air Forces as an intelligence officer during World War II, assigned to the Office of Strategic Services. This is where he met his good friend and future leader of the CIA, Allen Dulles. He was taken prisoner by the Germans in southern France, but escaped when the train transporting him to a POW camp came under Allied fire.
Whitney inherited his family's love of horses, a predilection he shared with his sister, Joan Whitney Payson. Jock and his sister ran Greentree Stables in the U.S., owned by their mother. In 1928, he became the youngest member ever elected to The Jockey Club.
Whitney and his first wife "Liz" raced horses both in the United States and in Europe. He owned Easter Hero, the Jack Anthony–trained horse who was the first to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup twice in succession, in 1929 under the mount of Dick Rees and again in 1930, when ridden by Tommy Cullinan. In the 1929 Grand National, his horse twisted a plate and was beaten by a nose at the finish. Although Whitney entered the Grand National annually, he never again came close to winning.
The Whitneys entered four horses in the Kentucky Derby in the 1930s, "Stepenfetchit", which finished 3rd in 1932, "Overtime", which finished 5th in 1933, "Singing Wood", which finished 8th in 1934, and "Heather Broom", which finished 3rd in 1939.