Coup d'Etat

CCLXVIII

Trippe should have seen it coming for a long time but he had grown too used to getting his own way, too complacent with the idea that his word was law in the Pan American universe. From nearly the very beginning he had effectively controlled the very Board of Directors that he was officially answerable to. He had invited first friends, then business associates, and latterly a broad spectrum of men in the transportation and trade industries onto the Board, adding a sort of diversity to Pan Am’s controlling body. The upside was that Pan Am had connections throughout all sectors of the U.S. economy and in international business affairs. The downside was that the more strangers he brought aboard the less loyal they were to him personally. 

He’d run Pan Am like a closely-held corporation for more than a decade and had had miraculously few problems. The airline was world-famous. Pan Am’s safety record was excellent if not perfect. It was the largest airline in the world, both in terms of mileage and in terms of the numbers of aircraft that flew them.  Pan Am had the reputation of a national carrier, and even though it had run afoul of the Black Committee in the halls of Congress, the airline had hardly been besmirched in the public eye. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt (“Sonny”) Whitney in 1939

So it was deeply troubling that the dividends in 1938 and 1939 paid out in pennies or not at all (in January of ’39). Clearly something was terribly wrong.

The Board took action, and with a typically corporate failure of nerve the members named Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Trippe’s oldest friend “Sonny”, to head the airline as its CEO. Juan Trippe remained President, but was made answerable to Sonny. Realizing that Sonny knew relatively little about running an airline, the Board placed most operational decisions in the hands of an Executive Committee, a move which all but guaranteed that Pan Am was headed either to obscurity or back into the capable hands of Juan Trippe.

Juan wasn’t angry at Sonny for becoming the CEO. As a matter of course over the years, Juan and Sonny had occasionally switched titles, with Juan as CEO and Sonny as President sometimes. It looked good to the shareholders and to the public and it didn’t matter because Juan had always remained in firm control of everything. This time it was different. J.T. was clearly Sonny’s subordinate according to the rules the Board had laid down, and Juan was furious that Sonny had, in his eyes, jumped at the chance to be in charge of Pan Am. 

As for good-natured Sonny, he had little ambition to be Juan’s boss in anything but name. Indeed, he had only grasped the gold ring to keep one of Juan’s enemies on the Board from grabbing it, and he assumed Juan saw it that way. Juan didn’t. 

Whitney knew more than a little something about Pan Am’s operations, but he was no savant like Trippe. In reality, Sonny was far more interested in his thoroughbred farm, his polo ponies, his Florida-based Marineland, mining, and his film production company, which financed Gone With The Wind that year.  He was also distracted by his mistresses, his increasing number of ex-wives, his various philanthropic interests, and a growing involvement in public service. Basically, he was content to sign his name to things, let Juan Trippe run the airline on a daily basis, and defer to the Executive Committee on big things.

 

Even his ex-wives had nary a nasty word to say about Sonny except that he philandered with the best of them. He loved women --- as many as possible --- but preferred the Sport of Kings

Juan hated the whole arrangement. Sonny angered him beyond words when he took over Juan’s office and immediately redecorated it (his first official action as de facto head of Pan Am). Juan moved to a smaller (but still large) office down at the end of a long hallway, and had his President’s office laid out so that he could see who came and went from Sonny’s office, who visited Sonny first, and who never visited him.  

It was Sonny’s signatures that went on the paperwork for the Boeing 314s, and this made Trippe fume. 

Board meetings grew ugly. Trippe never missed one. He also never spoke. He would vote, but only in a way that would subvert the new corporate arrangement. Mostly, he sat and glared. Glared at Sonny, who became increasingly uncomfortable with every passing moment. Glared at whoever was speaking to Sonny. Glared at the members of the Executive Committee. Glared at the men he blamed for his own ouster. Some glared back, but they were unequal contestants, for Juan had his heart invested in Pan Am. No one else did.

Despite Juan’s fall from grace in 1939, most of the world still thought he was the puppetmaster of Pan American and indeed he and Betty, along with Whitney and an entourage, undertook a tour of Europe in 1939 to introduce the new Boeing 314. They were feted by Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Chancellors. Although Sonny remained largely unacknowledged at these affairs he neither minded nor corrected anyone. He just wanted to be friends with Juan again. This picture shows the Trippes with the President of Colombia in 1951.

Trippe even gave up speaking at home for a time. Betty Trippe remembered this era as a time when Juan wouldn’t even address her unless pushed. Cautious of the anger she felt rising like smoke from dry ice, she avoided pushing. 

Betty Trippe understood her husband’s unspoken rage and to an extent she shared it, so she stood by him. Pan Am’s Board members were different.  Some members of the Board took to gawking, like spectators at a gladiatorial contest. Those who had no real stake in what was quickly evolving into a combat between Trippe and his detractors began to stay away. Everyone expected an explosion, but it never came. 

“The Mummy” didn’t need to be dramatic. He merely kept silent. And since most of the details surrounding Pan Am’s day-to-day operational details were filed neatly away in his mind, Sonny couldn’t do much without asking Juan for help. The Committee meant to manage the airline was forced to come to Trippe on a near-daily basis for information. Decisions taken without consulting Trippe usually conflicted with existing arrangements and had to be undone.

The air of discomfort that swirled around Sonny and Juan soon began to infect the whole of the 58^th floor, and then began to spill outward to Dinner Key, Treasure Island, and the Marine Air Terminal. Lower level Pan Am employees who had to address anything to the Board were quietly warned not to direct remarks toward Sonny at eventual risk to their employment. The grapevine hummed with the news that anyone who answered to Sonny Vanderbilt would be on the chopping block once Juan Trippe came back into power --- for Trippe’s return from internal exile was increasingly assumed to be a fait accompli.  

It was amazing that the airline did not just grind to a halt in 1939, but Trippe’s habit of decentralizing authority and budgets allowed local operations to carry on without much disruption. But when it came to sending complex requests up the decisionmaking tree no fruit ever came back down since no one wished to take sides --- or, rather, wished to appear to take sides. 

In 2004, Alec Baldwin played Juan Trippe in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator

As for Sonny, he was increasingly miserable. Had Juan allowed, Sonny probably would have allied himself with his old college buddy, but Trippe now saw Vanderbilt as the creature of an increasingly hostile Board of Directors. As for the Directors they had offered Sonny up as a sacrifice. If the Board accomplished but one thing in 1939 it successfully drove a wedge between Trippe and his mostly likely ally.

Just after World War II began in Europe, Sonny threw in the towel. He announced to the Board that he would be stepping away from Pan Am (though he intended to remain as CEO) in favor of pursuing his other multifarious interests. He pointedly advised the Board that his successor would need a great deal of international business acumen to navigate the increasing difficult sea of international relations during wartime, and suggested that Juan Trippe be given these responsibilities. 

The Board (which had reached much the same conclusion) passed a Resolution on January 9, 1940, transferring the responsibilities of the CEO to the Office of The President. After eight interminable months, Juan Trippe was back in power.

He moved back into his former office.* 

*Sonny Vanderbilt remained nominal CEO of Pan Am thereafter but he never attended another Board Meeting and Juan Trippe never spoke to him again. As for the Executive Committee, it quickly became supernumerary. Trippe would remain in firm Executive control of Pan American until his own retirement in 1968. As an aside, Trippe’s beloved globe was put into storage after he regained his old office. No longer did he need it. He had conquered his world