Charles Templeton Crocker

Charles Templeton Crocker (September 2, 1884 – December 12, 1948) was an American philanthropist, art patron and yachtsman. He was a past president of the California Historical Society and a member of the board of directors for over twenty years. He also wrote the libretto to the first American opera that was produced in Europe; helped popularize French Art Deco in America; and funded and headed expeditions with the California Academy of Sciences and other academic institutions aboard his personal yacht . The town of Templeton is named after him.

Life and family

Charles Templeton Crocker was born September 2, 1884 in San Francisco, California, the only son and second (of three) children born to Charles Frederick (Fred) & Jennie Crocker (nee Easton); Templeton's paternal grandfather was Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four railroad magnates. Both parents died when he and his sisters were young: their mother died shortly after the birth of the youngest sister, Jennie, in 1887, and their father died in 1897. The three Crocker siblings continued to live in the family's Hillsborough estate ''Uplands'' with their maternal grandmother, Adeline Easton. Their parents had left them an $8 million fortune, which was put in trust and distributed to each in turn when they came of age; Mary, the eldest, inherited her share in 1899. Templeton survived significant injuries and illnesses when he was younger, including a grave fever when he was six, an accident involving a stair bannister a few months later, and fracturing both legs after being thrown by his horse when he was seventeen.

By the time Templeton received his $5 million share upon turning 21 years old in 1905, the siblings' collective inheritance had grown to $15 million with investments. Templeton and his younger sister Jennie received an additional $4 million inheritance in 1910 upon the death of their uncle George.

Templeton attended the Westminster School, graduating in 1903, and went on to attend Yale (graduating in 1908); Cole Porter was among his friends there. Upon his graduation, he returned to San Francisco and lived in the family's thirty-seven-room Italian villa on their estate in Hillsborough. The three Crocker siblings had inherited the ''Uplands'' estate upon their father's death; following Mary's untimely death in 1905 and Jennie's purchase of the Tevis estate in 1910, the property became Templeton's sole possession.

Templeton married Helene Irwin, daughter of the Hawaiian sugar baron William G. Irwin, at the Irwin family home in San Francisco on February 28, 1911. At the time of their marriage, the couple's combined net worth was estimated at . Shortly after they were married, Templeton hired noted architect Willis Polk to design a new mansion for the site as a wedding present for his wife. Work began on the new mansion, named ''Uplands II'', in 1913 and was completed in 1917.

Outdoor scenes for the motion picture ''Gimme'' were filmed by Rupert Hughes at ''Uplands II'' in 1922; the salaries of the society women who served as extras and the rental fee for the grounds were donated to charity. Irwin and Crocker announced their intention to divorce in 1927, with Irwin alleging cruelty, long absences from home, and neglect; the divorce was finalized in 1928 and Crocker decamped to his new San Francisco apartment, selling the mansion in 1942 to Romie C. Jacks, the son of David Jacks, who popularized Monterey Jack cheese. ''Uplands II'' was temporarily rented in 1951 to a Soviet delegation, including Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrei Gromyko, who were attending the Japanese Peace Conference that year. Jennie Crocker repurchased ''Uplands II'' in 1956 for and assisted the Trustees of Crystal Springs School in acquiring it for Crystal Springs Uplands School, where it serves as the main building for the private high school. The mansion is one of three prominent examples of Beaux-Arts architecture in Hillsborough, along with '' Carolands'' and ''La Dolphine''.

The original ''Uplands I'' was sold to C.J. Lindgren and moved to a new site approximately north from its original location in 1915. Reportedly, Lindgren was given the house for free, conditioned on its successful removal. It is still standing at 401 El Cerrito Avenue, near the intersection with Poett Road, albeit with significant alternations; when it was owned by George Randolph Hearst, who purchased it in 1927, he hired Julia Morgan to remodel it.

On December 12, 1948, Crocker died in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco after a long illness. After suffering a stroke, Crocker lived the last four years of his life at the hotel. Funeral services were held at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in San Mateo, after which he was interred at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park.

Extended family

Templeton was the grandson of Charles Crocker, one of the four chief builders of the western portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. His uncles were banker and investor William H. Crocker, president of the Crocker Bank and George Crocker, second vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

His mother's family were also prominent citizens on the San Francisco Peninsula: his maternal grandparents, Ansel I. and Adeline Easton (nee Mills) survived the sinking of the off Cape Hatteras during their honeymoon in 1857. Adeline's brother Darius Ogden Mills, for whom the city of Millbrae is named, was once credited as California's richest citizen.

His brother-in-law, via marriage to his eldest sister Mary, was Francis Burton Harrison. The first husband of his younger sister Jennie was national tennis champion Malcolm Whitman; after their divorce, Jennie married businessman Robert Henderson. Templeton's uncle (his mother's brother) Ansel Mills Easton was married to Louise (nee Adams); Louise's brother Charles Adams was the father of famed photographer Ansel Easton Adams, making Ansel Adams a cousin by marriage.

One cousin was the mystic, princess and author Aimee Crocker. His great uncle Edwin B. Crocker built Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum.

Interests

In 1910, when the Town of Hillsborough was considering articles of incorporation, Templeton Crocker was advanced as a candidate for its first mayor.

Librettist

A few years later, the multi-faceted multi-millionaire made history as a librettist. He wrote the lyrics for an opera entitled ''The Land of Happiness'', a Chinese fantasy-extravaganza set to music by composer (and Southern Pacific attorney) Joseph Redding which premiered on August 4, 1917 at the Bohemian Grove. After the success of this opera, Crocker was encouraged to mount an ambitious, professional production. While visiting Bohemian Grove in 1921, the well-known soprano Mary Garden accepted the opera with the intention to produce it in Chicago, but it would take several more years to make its public debut.

After the end of World War I, Crocker and Redding visited Paris in search of talent to design and produce his opera, by then renamed to ''Fay-Yen-Fah''. They created a partnership with Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev hired a youthful George Balanchine as choreographer. Dancers included legends Ninette de Valois and Alexadra Danilva. The brilliant dancer/painter Hubert Julian "Jay" Stowitts, aka “America’s First Ambassador of International Culture,” was employed to create authentic and sumptuous costumes and sets. The research and development phase of the project took three full years.

In February 1925, Crocker and Redding traveled to Monte Carlo where their opera had its European premiere at the Opéra de Monte Carlo. It was the first time in the history of music that a full-length opera composed by an American, on a libretto written by an American, was produced in Europe.

In mid-January 1926, Gaetano Merola, founding director of the San Francisco Opera Company, gave ''Fay-Yen-Fah'' its American debut at the Columbia Theater, which also marked the start of the 1926 opera season in San Francisco. San Francisco society appeared in large numbers, making the performance a dazzling success. Redding and Crocker received the Ribbon of the Legion of Honor from France for the opera in 1926. A music critic from the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' praised Crocker and Redding’s accomplishment, calling the opera “a refreshing breeze in a hothouse of artificiality.”

Crocker brought it back to Monte Carlo in 1932 with Balanchine and Stowitts and danseuse Tamara Toumanova in the principal role. It was revived in the spring of 2009, again in Monte Carlo, for a special performance using the original costumes. Two hundred members of the Bohemian Club came to the opening.

California Historical Society

Crocker collected rare books and in 1922 refounded the California Historical Society; at the time there were few collectors of books relating to California history and he amassed what was considered "the best in private hands" by 1923. He convened a luncheon on February 13, 1922 for a small group who agreed to restart the Society, which had, until then, an intermittent history since it was first mentioned in 1852. He served as the Society's first president and provided generous financial support over its first twenty years until its membership had grown sufficiently to cover its costs. Henry R. Wagner credited Crocker's "social position and wealth" with the Society's success; in addition, he donated his entire book collection to the Society in 1940 after an off-hand suggestion.

Art Deco enthusiast

Templeton was one of the millions of fair-goers who became enamored with the geometrical motifs of Art Deco at the Paris Exposition of 1925. He would return to France a few years later to commission fashionable furnishings and objects for his penthouse apartment in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The prominent apartment building at 945 Green Street, completed in 1928, was part of a notable "spite war"; when the 12-storey building at 947 Green had been completed a few years earlier, it spoiled the views from an older property at 973 Green, and the owners of 973 retaliated by constructing the 15-storey 945 to completely obstruct the views east from 947.

Templeton hired none other than Jean-Michel Frank, Pierre Legrain, Jean Dunand and Madame Lipska to execute the decor for his modernist apartment. French Art Deco at this level was rare in the United States at the time and rarer still in the hills of San Francisco. Crocker ordered wall reliefs, screens, furniture and accessories — some 400 objects in all. Dunand, still widely considered the most important designer of French Art Deco, was charged with finishing Crocker's bedroom, dining room, and breakfast room. The Crocker/Dunand collaboration was ground breaking.

When everything was installed and his divorce from sugar heiress Helene Irwin became final, Templeton, nicknamed “Prince Fortunatus” by his classmates at Yale, moved into the apartment with longtime friend and valet-butler Thomas Thomasser. Thomas, Templeton and his Green Street apartment became the talk of the city’s social elite. The building sat atop a steep flight of steps. The glass-enclosed penthouse offered spectacular vistas of San Francisco Bay. Guests marveled at Crocker’s stunning aquariums of exotic tropical fish, dramatically lit and set beneath the level of the floor. Shark and camel skinned furniture highlighted the living room, while sheepskins served as wall hangings. The dining table, composed of crushed eggshells, was baked and carefully lacquered. Especially alluring, Crocker’s personal bathroom, had been built around a semicircular black tub with matching toilet fixtures.

'' Vogue Magazine'' declared in 1929 that it was, “perhaps the most beautiful apartment in the world.” It was the French master’s most important commission in the United States and one of the earliest luxury apartments in America completed in the modern style. Templeton made a sizeable mark in art history as an early innovator in bringing the French Art Deco movement to the U.S.

After Crocker's death in 1948, the apartment was maintained as it had been during his life. Eventually, his heirs dismantled the apartment and sold off the furnishings, and when the apartment itself was sold in 1999, the decorative wall panels were removed. The breakfast room panels (by Dunand) were acquired by the jeweler Fred Leighton, who used them in his VIP salon and viewing room; they were subsequently exhibited by Maison Gerard at the Winter Antiques Show in 2013–14. Most of the bedroom furniture has since been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; however, the bedroom panels are believed to be lost.

St. Francis Hotel

Templeton devoted himself intermittently to the management of the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square, which the Crocker family financed and built just before the Earthquake. Crocker and his sister Jennie deeded the land for the new north wing in 1912; Templeton himself was credited with redesigning the double-width north wing in 1909 after the original extension was criticized strongly.

After Dan London became the manager of the St. Francis in 1937, he, Crocker, and Crocker's nephew decided to hire brilliant San Francisco architect Timothy Pflueger to turn the existing ground-level restaurant into a sleek and curvaceous Art Deco lounge. The resulting "Patent Leather Room" was unveiled in 1939, with furniture finished in patent leather; however, the press and public dubbed it "Coffin Corner" or "The Black Hole". Ansel Adams was hired to take publicity shots. The Crockers sold their interest in the St. Francis in 1944 to a group led by Benjamin Swig and the Patent Leather Room was replaced by the "Terrace Room" in 1953.

Voyages aboard ''Zaca''

Crocker served in the Naval Reserve, sailing on as an ensign in 1921; at the time he was thought to be the wealthiest man in the Navy. When he died in 1948, he held the rank of Commander in the Reserve.

After his childless marriage failed, Crocker lived an increasingly alternative, Bohemian lifestyle and indulged in numerous flights of fancy. In the late 1920s, Crocker commissioned Garland Rotch to design an extraordinary two-masted, -long, black-hulled schooner, on the lines of the famed '' Bluenose''. The boat was constructed by the Nunes Brothers Boatyard in Sausalito. Her galley and interior furnishings were the finest in pleasure craft equipment and she had a considerable spread of canvas. She was christened , a Native American word which means “Peace”, on April 12, 1930 by Academy Award winner Marie Dressler; one account reported the champagne bottle missed the boat and the christening ceremony was carried out after she was launched. Her maiden voyage was to Ensenada, departing on May 8, but the party was delayed for repairs to a propeller shaft.

The yacht provided the ever-restless Crocker a unique, luxurious escape and boasted sleeping accommodations for 18. Staterooms, glamorous hotel-like apartments reflecting favorite Art Deco motifs were done in combinations of imported woods, including beams of Alaskan cedar and panels in teak and primavera. She was equipped with two small diesel engines when off sail and four 5-kW electric generators to power accessories, including a refrigerator and a distiller capable of generating of freshwater per day. The total cost was reportedly : $200,000 for construction and an additional $100,000 for the interior and fittings, although chief engineer Garth Basford later recalled she had cost $450,000.

Global circumnavigation, 1930–31

Garland Rotch was Zaca’s first captain. With Rotch and a crew of 8, Templeton sailed his yacht around the world covering and calling at 50 ports including Marquesas, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Pago Pago, Trobriands, Bali, Java, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Arabia, Egypt, Malta, Cannes, Teneriffe, Puerto Rico, Panama, Guatemala, Manzanillo, and Ensenada. The voyage departed on June 7, 1930 and returned to San Francisco on May 27, 1931. It was the first time a private yacht circumnavigated the globe from the West Coast. Crocker sailed smiling seas. The weather was perfect with only 43 hours of gale in the Mediterranean. “It must have been the most perfect yachting adventure that anyone ever had,” Crocker said. In 1933, Templeton wrote a narrative of his one-year journey cruising around the world in his grand yacht under the title ''The Cruise of the Zaca''.

Scientific expeditions, 1931–38

After the globe spanning odyssey, the “Commodore,” as Crocker insisted on being called while at sea, ordered the yacht transformed into a floating laboratory for scientific expeditions. The yacht lost completely the appearance of a pleasure craft. Four temperature controlled tanks with running sea water were installed on her decks to bring back live fish. Six voyages in all between 1932 and 1938 transported ichthyologists, ornithologists, anthropologists, zoologists, botanists, and photographers from the California Academy of Sciences, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society and other academic institutions.

During an expedition to the Galápagos Islands for the California Academy of Sciences in 1932, Crocker and crew explored some of the previously untouched areas in the interior of several islands. Together they compiled collections of 400 stuffed or frozen birds, 3,000 plant specimens and 331 live fish. Artist Toshio Asaeda painted over 300 water colors of marine and terrestrial life and took over 1,400 photographs. Academy officials declared the expedition of great and permanent value to science. The perpetually tanned Templeton described the journey as “full of adventures,” and promptly offered to host a follow-up expedition that would pass through the Galápagos in 1934 on its way to Polynesia.

One species of finch not known since the time of Charles Darwin and supposed to be extinct was found to have survived on some of the islands. The birds of these islands were of exceptional interest, not only because of their many remarkable peculiarities, but because the study of them was largely responsible for the formulation of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The most important single accomplishment of the expeditions according to some was the penetration of Indefatigable (now Santa Cruz) Island and the first recorded ascent of its main volcano, accomplished on May 9, 1932. The challenge was not one of delicate mountaineering technique, as it only rose to an elevation of , it was a matter of perseverance and endurance in fighting through tangles of upland rain forests, dense thickets of dark green mangroves, and a most extraordinary forest of 20–30 feet cactuses. The mountain was named after Crocker in honor of his conquest of that peak.

Crocker crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean from California to Asia and from the Arctic to Antarctica contributing much to the world of science. A new species of sea snake, found while exploring a brackish lake on Rennell Island, was named ''Laticauda crockeri'' after Templeton Crocker following his 1933 expedition to Western Polynesian and Melanesian Islands.

In 1934–1935, Crocker went on a sea borne investigatory enterprise with Harry L. Shapiro, anthropologist extraordinaire. Shapiro set out to measure mixed-race islanders, including the descendants of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island. The study came to influence U.S. racial thought, adding impetus to the condemnation of racism in science.

Crocker went on two oceanic adventures along the Pacific Coast from Baja California to Columbia with William Beebe, renowned naturalist, marine biologist and world deep sea record holder. Beebe described his two expeditions on board ''Zaca'' in his books ''Zaca Venture'' (1936 expedition) and ''The Book of Bays'' (1937–38), in which he emphasized his concern for threatened habitats and his dismay at human interference with ecosystems.

Scholars accompanying Templeton determined that the Commodore was troubled with an eccentric and compulsive personality. He was indeed a complex character. Templeton grew up pampered, in an exceedingly wealthy family. He had a scenic town in California’s wine county named after him at aged two. Templeton, however, suffered the loss of both parents by aged ten and thereafter struggled to feel worthy of his great fortune. The victim of intense mood swings and prone to alcoholic binges, Crocker could be both a generous and entertaining host and a demanding Captain Bligh. “It is curious,” Shapiro observed, “that so introspective a man with ultra-sensitive feelings should be so callous about inflicting torture on others.”

William Beebe, in spite of some tensions, dedicated one book to Crocker: “Not only must Mr. Crocker be given full credit for the inception and carrying out of the expedition and for the constant care that he took to see that every wish of ours was provided for, but especial thanks are due to him for his active part in capturing, sorting, labeling and preserving specimens, thousands of which passed through his hands.”

World War II and Errol Flynn

Crocker sold ''Zaca'' to the United States Navy on June 12, 1942, after World War II broke out; she was again converted, this time for military use. The refit took a week and added anti-aircraft machine guns; by June 19, she was stationed off the California coast to patrol for enemy ships and rescue downed pilots. ''Zaca'' was decommissioned on October 6, 1944, stored at Treasure Island, and stricken on November 13, 1944.

After the war, the dismasted schooner was sold to Joseph Rosenburg in June 1945 for $13,350, who sold her on to motion picture actor Errol Flynn in 1946 for . Flynn allegedly sailed her with “full cargos of passionate women.” ''Zaca'' became the true love of his life. She is featured prominently in the 1947 Orson Welles film '' The Lady from Shanghai''. A documentary short film, ''Cruise of the Zaca'', which features Errol Flynn aboard his vessel, was made in 1952. Press reports referred to the storied vessel as “the sexiest yacht in the world.”

Flynn died in 1959 while arranging for the sale of ''Zaca'' in Vancouver, British Columbia to cover debts; she was abandoned in Mallorca and slowly deteriorated into a rotting hulk, passing between several disinterested owners, including Flynn's widow Patrice Wymore and Freddie Tinsley, who sailed the decrepit ''Zaca'' to Cannes in 1965. She eventually sank in 1988 while berthed in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. In 1991, she was acquired by Roberto Memmo and refloated; her structural restoration was completed in 1992 at Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer and her interior restoration was completed in 1994 at Port Fontvieille in Monaco. Currently, she sails occasionally from her home port in Monaco.

References

External links

*
*
1933 correspondence
from Crocker to Noël Sullivan
In the Wake of the Zaca
2009
* (''Laticauda crockeri'', new species, p. 186).
California Historical Society
- official site

1884 births
1948 deaths
Crocker family
Philanthropists from California
American art patrons
Yale University alumni
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