Norton Simon(1907-1993)
Born into a moderately wealthy Jewish family in Portland, Oregon, Simon
was largely raised in the San Francisco area and ultimately detoured
from his family's planned career in law, dropping out of his second
year at University of California at Berkeley to found a sheet metal
distribution company in 1924. This was his first taste of success and
led to him coming across a bankrupt orange juice bottling plant in
Fullerton, California, which he bought for $7,000 in 1927 and renamed
Val Vita Food Products. Simon quickly moved to expand into canning and
added a variety of vegetables to the product line. In a shrewd move, he
sold the company to Hunt Inc. in exchange for controlling interest in
both companies. In 1943, he changed the name of the food division to
Hunt Foods Inc. and operated under a strict system of cost controls and
revolutionary (for a vegetable company, at least) advertising by
featuring their canned products prominently in full-page ads in
national magazines. As business flourished, Simon diversified his
interests into a self-named holding company that could have been a
textbook lesson for Warren Buffett decades later. Norton Simon Inc. was in
publishing (owning McCall's), rental cars (Avis), beverages (Canada
Dry) and cosmetics (Max Factor) and had extensive interests overseas.
Simon himself became seriously interested in art and began amassing an
enviable collection, which spanned impressionism, old masters, native
American, and modern forms. This private collection grew so vast that,
by the early 1970s, he was actively seeking a way to display it
publicly. He was approached by the financially strapped Pasadena Museum
of Modern Art in 1974, and a deal was struck for renaming rights. The
billionaire's life was not without turmoil, however; in 1969, his wife
Lucille divorced him, and his son Robert committed suicide soon after.
He elected to retire from business that year and accepted a number of
board memberships at various colleges. Simon married the actress
Jennifer Jones in 1971, and they remained happily together until the end of
his life. Simon died on June 1, 1993, in Beverly Hills.
