The Rockefellers -An American dynasty 2e by Peter Collier

Author:Peter Collier [Peter Collier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rockefeller family, Rockefeller (Famille), Welgestelden, Families, Olie-industrie, http://www.archive.org/details/rockefellersamer00coll
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

22

IT WAS EARLY IN 1973 that the Rockefeller Brothers agreed to grant CBS permission to film a documentary about their lives. They had always rejected such proposals in the past; but now, with the Watergate crisis and the disarray of the Republican party sharpening Nelson's presidential ambitions once again and with news of Winthrop's terminal illness reminding them of their mortality, they decided that the time had come for a summary of their joint and individual accomplishments.

Once the decision was made, the filming itself became just another item on calendars already tightly scheduled far into the future. Over a period of several weeks, the Brothers allowed network crews to trail them through their crowded lives. They knew how to put themselves in the hands of experts when their purposes so required. They sat docilely where they were told, posed for background footage when asked, and answered Walter Cronkite's questions on cue. All but Laurance. He wanted to stage his own scenes, setting up his entrances and exits and suggesting that his career might be summarized by vignettes showing him emerging from a swim near his Virgin Islands resort, talking over problems with administrators at the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer clinic, or in some other moment of crucial self-dramatization.

The role of director suited him. He liked orchestrating things and appearances, and a hint of theatricality had always been submerged just below the calm surface of his personality. Each of the Brothers had arrived at his own way of coping with his special vulnerability as a Rockefeller. Laurance's solution had been to create a mask through which he could look out at the world but not really be seen. The idea was to seem more formidable and mysterious than he was, and he had worked as a young man to fashion the poker player's eyes, the mouth turned up at the corners in an enigmatic smile, and the unruffled look of someone more interested in the mechanics of a problem than the morality. It was a face that had served him perfectly in the years when he was just back from the navy and making his mark as an entrepreneur in the interstices of the military-industrial complex. He had assumed automatically that it would work just as well when he decided to go public as a conservationist. It was a rare miscalculation.

Laurance was quick to recognize that the Outdoor Recreation Resources and Review Commission, to which President Eisenhower appointed him in 1958, could be the bridge leading him from his enterpreneurial past to his conservationist future, and poured more of himself into it than he had previously into any other activity. He spent time in Washington getting to know the congressional leaders and private conservationists serving with him on the commission, the Interior Department sachems, and key businessmen. He smoothed the interfacing between the commission's work and his own private efforts, augumenting the commission staff with aides from his two conservation organizations, Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc., and the American Conservation Association. In 1962,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.