page_title: Huntington Hartford
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Huntington Hartford / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: French Cloisters, Paradise Island, The Bahamas
context_page_description: George Huntington Hartford II was an American businessman, philanthropist, stage and film producer, and art collector. He was also heir to the A&P supermarket fortune.
  After his father's death in 1922, Hartford became one of the heirs to the estate left by his grandfather and namesake, George Huntington Hartford. After graduating from Harvard University in 1934, he only briefly worked for A&P. For the rest of his life, Hartford focused on numerous other business and charitable enterprises. He owned Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and had numerous other business and real estate interests over his lifetime including the Oil Shale Corporation, which he founded in 1955.
  Hartford was once known as one of the world's richest people. His final years were spent living in the Bahamas with his daughter, Juliet.
context_section_description: In 1940, Hartford invested $100,000 to help start a newspaper, PM, with Marshall Field III and worked as a reporter for the publication.  An avid sailor, he donated his yacht to the Coast Guard at the start of World War II.  During the war he was commissioned in the Coast Guard and commanded the Army supply ship FS-179, commissioned in May 1944, in the Pacific Theater.  Hartford twice accidentally ran the ship aground.
  After the war, he moved to Los Angeles and attempted to purchase Republic Pictures and RKO Studios from Howard Hughes. Huntington also started a modeling agency and an artists' colony, and opened a theater.
  In the 1950s, Hartford purchased a penthouse duplex on the 13th and 14th floors of One Beekman Place in the 1950s after moving from an apartment at the River House in New York City. He owned a home called "Pompano" on 240 El Vedado Drive in Palm Beach, a 150-acre (0.61 km²) estate in Mahwah, New Jersey called "Melody Farm", a 160-acre (0.65 km²) Hollywood estate known as "The Pines" (also known as Runyon Canyon Park), a townhouse in London, a home in Juan-les-Pins France and a house on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
  Hartford owned Huntington Hartford Productions which produced several films including the Abbott and Costello film, Africa Screams, in 1949. In 1950, Hartford produced Hello Out There, the last film of James Whale, the acclaimed director of the 1931 version of Frankenstein.  He produced several films starring Marjorie Steele and encouraged her to become an artist.
  In 1955, Hartford founded the Oil Shale Corporation, later known as Tosco, and was its majority shareholder and chairman.  Tosco was later acquired by ConocoPhillips.  He also set up the Denver Research Institute at the University of Denver to find alternate methods of oil extraction. During this period, he also wrote and produced The Master of Thornfield, a stage adaptation of Jane Eyre that ran for two weeks in Cincinnati starring Errol Flynn as Mr. Rochester. This partnership led to Flynn staying in Hartford's pool-house briefly in 1957–58 and is the origin of a legend that "The Pines" was Flynn's estate. Later, Hartford produced the play on Broadway. In 1964, Hartford offered The Pines as a gift to the city but was turned down by Mayor Sam Yorty. As Lloyd Wright recalled in 1977, "Here was this very wealthy man, and he wanted to give something very stunning to Hollywood. The Chambers of Commerce, the hotel owners and the various businesses were jealous of the park and with the help of the city officials, the city refused to give us permits. Hunt was so angry that he wanted to get out immediately and sold the property to [Jules] Berman who destroyed the mansion and let the place run down."
  When his uncle George Ludlum Hartford died in 1957, the trust set up by the elder George Huntington Hartford was liquidated and Hartford inherited his portion of the estate. The Chicago Tribune estimated his wealth in 1969 as half a billion dollars. In 1959, Mike Wallace introduced him on television interview as being worth half a billion dollars.
  In 1959, Hartford bought Hog Island in the Bahamas, renaming it Paradise Island. He developed it over the next three years hoping to turn it into another Monte Carlo. One feature of his Ocean Club was a cloister built from the disassembled stones of a monastery that William Randolph Hearst had stored in a Florida warehouse. In an interview with David Frost on British television, Hartford stated that the flag he created for Paradise Island was in the shape of a "P" and that he wanted to put it on the moon as a symbol of peace for the world. Hartford was responsible for getting the gambling license for Paradise Island by hiring Sir Stafford Sands, a Bahamian lawyer.
  In 1969, Hartford produced the Broadway show Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, which opened at the Belasco Theater starring the then-unknown actor Al Pacino. Pacino won a Tony for his performance.
caption: 14th-century French cloisters reassembled by Hartford on Paradise Island
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