Biography

Hartford discovered Al Pacino in the 1960s. Hartford produced a play, "Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?" on Broadway, as cast Pacino, who was unknown at the time. After seeing Pacino's performance in the play, Francis Ford Coppola cast Pacino in The Godfather (1972).

Along with his uncles, George Ludlum Hartford (1864 - 1957) and John Augustine Hartford (1872 - 1951), and his sister, Marie Josephine Hartford (1902-1992), he was heir to his namesake grandfather's, George Huntington Hartford, privately owned Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (later A&P Supermarkets), which reached approximately 16,000 stores in 1930, the largest retail empire in the world at that time. He and his sister became heirs and owners of the private company, after the premature death of their father, Edward V. Huntington, the corporate secretary of A&P, who died in 1922.

After World War II, he purchased what was then known as "Hog Island" in the Bahamas, the private estate of the Swedish entrepreneur Axel Wenner-Gren, and renamed the island as "Paradise Island." He was the first developer of Paradise Island, where he built several clubs, bars, hotels, resort features, and a world class golf course, including the Ocean Club, Cafe Martinique, Hurricane Hole, the Golf Course, and other landmarks. During development, he purchased (from the Estate of William Randolph Hearst), transported, and re-installed "The Cloisters," a 14th-century French Augustinian monastery, which was originally located in Montréjeau, France, but had been dismantled, moved, and partially re-assembled by Hearst, in a Florida warehouse, in the 1920s. Hartford hired Gary Player to be golf pro and Pancho Gonzales to be tennis pro. Hartford's 1962 grand-opening of Paradise Island was covered in Newsweek and Time magazines, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He took on a limited partner in his original developments on Paradise Island, Jim Crosby, the founder of Resorts International Casinos, who ultimately bought Hartford out in 1981 for $79 million, and in turn sold to Merv Griffin in the late 1980s, who sold it to the current owner, Sol Kerzner, the developer of Atlantis Paradise Island Resort.

In 1953, future President John F. Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, commissioned an artist to create a bronze bust, at four times life size, of Hartford's grandfather and namesake, George Huntington Hartford I, along with seven others for Kennedy's (Chicago) Merchandise Mart. George Huntington Hartford I was chosen by Kennedy to honor his stewardship and ownership of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which, at that time had been largest retail company in the world for approximately forty years, and in 1953 was the second largest company in the world by sales, after only General Motors. The sculpture still exists today, and although the Kennedy family sold the Merchandise Mart to Vornado Realty Trust in 1998, the bust still stands, in the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame.

The Beatles shot part of their film, Help! (1965), on Paradise Island, courtesy of owner Huntington Hartford. The Beatles posed for a photo with Hartford, on the Paradise Island beach, with everyone waving to the camera.