33. Clipping from an unidentified Battle Creek newspaper, which describes the Soy Acidophilus treatment for the Dionne quintuplets. Dated in pencil, July 11, 1935, “Quintuplet Doctor Thanks Dr. Kellogg for Treatment Which Helped Save Babies,” Reel 32, Image 307, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M.
34. See letters from J. H. Kellogg to Allen Roy Dafoe, November 8, 1936, Images 435–36; J. H. Kellogg to David Croll, November 13, 1936, Image 443; David Croll to J. H. Kellogg, November 23, 1936, Image 462; J. H. Kellogg to Allan Roy Dafoe, November 26, 1936, Images 467–69; J. H. Kellogg to A. R. Dafoe, November 27, 1936, Image 470; J. H. Kellogg to David Croll, Minister of Public Welfare, Canada, November 27, 1936, Images 475–76; A. R. Dafoe to J. H. Kellogg, December 1, 1936, Image 480; David Croll to J. H. Kellogg, December 3, 1936, Image 483; Dr. Kellogg to David Croll, December 6, 1936, Images 487–90; J. H. Kellogg to A. R. Dafoe, December 9, 1936, Images 492–94; J. H. Kellogg to A. R. Dafoe, December 20, 1936, Images 508–10; A. R. Dafoe to J. H. Kellogg, December 22, 1936, Image 512; J. H. Kellogg to A. R. Dafoe, January 29, 1937, Images 605–6; J. H. Kellogg to David Croll, January 29, 1937, Images 608–9; J. H. Kellogg to A. R. Dafoe, February 11, 1937, Images 643–45, all on Reel 4, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M.
35. Letter from J. H. Kellogg to David Croll, November 27, 1936, Reel 4, Images 475–76, quote is from Image 475, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M.
36. Letters from A. R. Dafoe to J. H. Kellogg, March 25, 1936, Reel 4, Image 116, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M; W. J. Morse to J. H. Kellogg, April 4, 1936, Reel 4, Image 127, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M; A. R. Dafoe to J. H. Kellogg, June 24, 1936, Reel 4, Image 235; J. H. Kellogg to A. R. Dafoe, September 21, 1936, Reel 4, Images 316–17, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M.
37. Letters from J. H. Kellogg to R. E. Byrd, October 21, 1936, Images 404–6; J. H. Kellogg to Admiral R. E. Byrd, November 11, 1936, Images 440–41; R. E. Byrd to Battle Creek Food Co., November 17, 1936, Image 450; R. E. Byrd to J. H. Kellogg, November 18, 1936, Image 451; J. H. Kellogg to Byrd, November 23, 1936, Images 463–64, all on Reel 4 (1936–1938 Correspondence), J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M. See also “Miami Scientist Aids Byrd Antarctic Expedition” and Cecil Warren, “Noted Miami Doctor Prescribes Diet for New Byrd South Pole Expedition,” both in Miami News, November 5, 1939, Reel 32, Images 400–401, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M. For the life and times of Admiral Byrd, see Lisle A. Rose, Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008); Vincent P. Morris, “Richard E. Byrd,” in John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, Volume 4 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 133–35. Byrd’s first trip to the South Pole began in late 1928 and extended, off and on, until June 1930. This was a brief trip that was followed by a second, longer trip on January 17, 1934, that lasted until May of 1935. He made subsequent trips there in 1939, 1946 to 1947, and in December 1955–February 1956. Interestingly, the W. K. Kellogg Company was another provider of provisions for at least one of the Byrd expeditions and sent packaged cereals in a special container to retain their fresh taste under the harsh conditions of Antarctica. See Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 180.
38. Letter from J. H. Kellogg to John D. Rockefeller Jr., January 24, 1938, Reel 4 (1936–1938 Correspondence), Images 1293–94. In this letter, John invites Rockefeller back to Battle Creek. J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M. Another fan of the Battle Creek Soy Acidophilus Milk was the Johns Hopkins gynecologist Howard A. Kelly. Letter from Howard A. Kelly to J. H. Kellogg, April 21, 1936, Reel 4, Image 138; J. H. Kellogg to Kelly, April 24, 1936, Reel 4, Image 140, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M. For a description of Paramels, see Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg, p. 123. For a description of Lacto-Dextrin, see “Lacto-Dextrin,” promotional brochure, circa 1930s, Battle Creek Food Company, Battle Creek, Michigan, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
39. Letter from J. H. Kellogg to John D. Rockefeller Jr., January 24, 1938, Images 1293–94, quote is on Image 1293, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M.
40. Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford. Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal (Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1995), p. 112.
41. Howard Markel, “ ‘When It Rains It Pours’: Endemic Goiter, Iodized Salt, and David Murray Cowie, M.D.,” American Journal of Public Health, 1987; 77(2): 219–29. See also E. V. McCollum, The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition: The Use of Food for the Preservation of Vitality and Health (New York: Macmillan, 1922, 2nd edition); Apple, Vitamania.
42. Advertisement for Kellogg’s “PEP Toasted Wheat Flakes Plus Extra Bran. Ready to Eat,” circa 1934, featuring Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
43. Kellogg’s Corn-Soya Shreds advertisements, unidentified magazine clipping, circa 1949, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
44. Bruce and Crawford, Cerealizing America, pp. 112–13.
45. Two of the cereal’s biggest fans were the film actress Claudette Colbert and Ohio State University football coach Woody Hayes. Bruce and Crawford, Cerealizing America, p. 113; advertisement for Kellogg’s Concentrate: “The Little Gold Box: How it helps you balance your diet every day without a single chart,” unidentified and undated magazine clipping, circa 1967, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
15.
“UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN”
Chapter title: William Shakespeare, Henry the Fourth, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1, line 31.
1. Powell, p. 259.
2. During much of the 1920s, Will also occupied himself by building his Pomona ranch, a mansion on Gull Lake outside Battle Creek, and a luxury apartment building in Battle Creek, where he combined four apartments on the top floor for his own personal residence. See Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 83.
3. Powell, p. 241.
4. Ibid., pp. 239–42.
5. The ranch was designed by the architect Charles Gibbs. Mary Jane Parkinson, The Kellogg Arabian Ranch, The First Fifty Years: A Chronicle of Events, 1925–1975 (Anaheim: The Arabian Horse Association of Southern California, 1975), pp. 1–191.
6. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 107–8. Nearby, Will built a house for his daughter Beth’s family and his eldest son, Karl.
7. Powell, p. 229. In 1932, W. K. Kellogg donated his ranch, the land it occupied, and his beloved collection of horses to the state of California and its university system, where it became the W. K. Kellogg Institute of Animal Husbandry and the campus of California State Polytechnical University at Pomona. Will resided at “the Big House” until 1942. Parkinson, The Kellogg Arabian Ranch, pp. 177–85; Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 131–37.
8. Powell, p. 237.
9. Powell, pp. 237–38, 281.
10. Powell, p. 237. For descriptions of the 1925 M-G-M film Ben-Hur, see Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), pp. 99–110; Mark A. Vieria, Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Hollywood Prince (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 48–58.
11. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 137.
12. Powell, pp. 260–61.
13. H. L. Mencken, “Valentino,” in Alistair Cooke, ed., The Vintage Mencken (New York: Vintage, 1955), pp. 170–74, quote is from p. 174. (Originally appeared in the August 30, 1926, issue of the Baltimore Evening Sun.)
14. The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926), DVD, Blackhawk Films Collection (Los Angeles: Image Entertainment, 2002).
15. A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), pp. 105, 129–32, 161.
16. Parkinson, The Kellogg Arabian Ranch, pp. 67–89; Walter H. Roeder, “Jadaan, the Sheik and the Cereal Baron,” The Cal Poly Scholar, 1988 (Fall); 1: 99–103; Powell, pp. 228–43.
17. Parkinson, The Kellogg Arabian Ranch, pp. 70–72, quote is from Valentino’s reply telegram to W. K. Kellogg
on p. 72.
18. Parkinson, The Kellogg Arabian Ranch, p. 76.
19. Tino Balio, United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars, Volume I: 1919–1950 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), p. 56.
20. Emily W. Leider, Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), p. 369.
21. H. L. Mencken, “Valentino,” in Alistair Cooke, ed., The Vintage Mencken (New York: Vintage, 1955), p. 174. (Originally appeared in the August 30, 1926, issue of the Baltimore Evening Sun.)
22. Powell, p. 172.
23. Ibid., p. 185.
24. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 50.
25. Powell, p. 196.
26. Eagle Heights: The W. K. Kellogg Manor House (Hickory Corners, MI: Michigan State University/Kellogg Biological Station, 2015). W. K. Kellogg spent nearly $750,000 (about $10 million in 2016) building this sumptuous Tudor Revival mansion between 1925 and 1926. It featured a grand oak staircase, Rookwood tile flooring, rooms with seven (his favorite number) windows and wooden panels, rare Flemish tapestries, and a Skinner pipe organ. In early 1942, he donated Eagle Heights to the federal government as a convalescent center for wounded soldiers who had graduated from staying at what was once his brother’s Battle Creek Sanitarium but still required additional therapy. Will moved a few doors down the street.
27. Powell, p. 252.
28. Ibid., p. 152.
29. Ibid., p. 155.
30. Ibid., p. 249.
31. Ibid., pp. 214–15. The quote “almost impulsively” appears on page 214.
32. Ibid., p. 249.
33. Ibid., p. 215.
34. Ibid., p. 249.
35. Ibid., p. 250.
36. Ibid.
37. Will and Puss also had two boys who died very young. They were Will Keith Jr. (1885–1889) and Irvin Hadley (1894–1895). Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 22.
38. Ibid., p. 23.
39. Powell, pp. 72–73.
40. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 7.
41. Powell, p. 152.
42. Ibid., p. 151. The letter was to his eldest son, Karl. There was one other child in the household who merits a footnote. A red-haired Canadian girl named Pauline was taken into the Kellogg home, to play with and watch the other children, but her behavior was disruptive and combative. She left the Kellogg home to take up nursing around 1920, training at the White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. See Powell, pp. 154–55. In Powell’s version, Pauline joined the family at the age of three years. In Norman Williamson Jr.’s version, she came to the family as a teenager, during Puss’s illness. Williamson Jr. notes that Pauline’s behavior was so unruly that Will “finally packed her off once again; this time to a hospital in Chicago.” Later, Pauline was institutionalized in the 1930s in a mental health hospital in Guelph, Ontario, and lived there until 1978. Will Kellogg took care of her financial needs. Williamson Jr.’s version seems to be the one that is more accurate given his claim that he visited her when she was seventy-eight and was a trustee of the trust fund Will left in her name. See Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 23–24.
43. For a listing of Karl’s many maladies, including tuberculosis, malaria, and chronic ulcerative colitis, see Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 186. At one point, Karl even fractured several vertebrae while working on Will’s mobile “Ark,” which was built in 1923 upon the chassis of a White truck and contained sleeping berths, a galley kitchen, ice maker, shower bath, toilet, intercom, radio, and a sixteen-foot folding boat. See Powell, p. 220.
44. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p 186.
45. Ibid., p. 110.
46. Chula Vista Diamond Anniversary Committee, Chula Vista Heritage, 1911–1986 (Chula Vista, CA: City of Chula Vista, 1986), pp. 1–32, 51; Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 186.
47. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 186, 201–2. Karl was a member of the local school board and an elementary school in Chula Vista is named for him.
48. Letter from John L. Kellogg to his father Will Kellogg, October 3, 1897. See Powell, pp. 153–54.
49. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 67.
50. Powell, p. 193.
51. Ibid.
52. Wednesday, February 4, 1914, U.S. Patent for Waxtite, by W. K. Kellogg Co. (trademark serial number 71075679); Powell, pp. 194–95; “The Most Important Announcement I Ever Made,” Saturday Evening Post, May 23, 1914; 186(47): 74.
53. Carson, p. 223. Carson estimated a savings of at least $250,000 per year.
54. Ibid.
55. Powell, p. 173.
56. Ibid., p. 160.
57. Ibid., p. 195.
58. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 68–69.
59. Ibid., p. 195.
60. Ibid., pp. 53–65.
61. Dr. Selmon’s medical skills and diplomatic tact so impressed Will that, in 1930, he appointed Selmon the first president of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. “I’ll Invest My Money in People”: A Biographical Sketch of the Founder of the Kellogg Company and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle Creek, MI: W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1990), pp. 65–66.
62. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 67.
63. Will lived at 256 West Van Buren and John Leonard’s home was at 250 West Van Buren. Battle Creek, Michigan City Directory, 1921 (Detroit: R. L. Polk and Co., 1921), p. 581.
64. Helen came from an impoverished background. Her father was an alcoholic who stayed home in a stupor while demanding his young daughter run to the local saloon to fetch him tankards of beer. Despite her awful childhood, Helen was smart, ambitious, and eager to leave all of it behind. She had one son with her late husband, a boy named Thomas. According to Williamson Jr., “The death of her husband set back her plan for self-advancement a bit but the Kellogg Company executive dining room opened up a fascinating new opportunity.” See Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 69.
65. Ibid., p. 71.
66. Ibid.
67. John Leonard’s wife, Hanna (whom W.K. always wrote to as “Hannah”), emigrated from Sweden in her teens in 1900 to help an ailing Puss with taking care of the children and home. Beautiful, tall, and blond, Hanna was irresistibly alluring to the adolescent and hormonal John Leonard. In 1901, when they were both eighteen, they eloped to Hastings, Michigan. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 22, 67–75; Carson, pp. 222–23; Powell, p. 196.
68. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 71–75.
69. Ibid., pp. 77–81; Carson, p. 223.
70. Gerald Carson reports W.K. sold it at a loss to the Ralston Company, p. 223; Norman Williamson Jr. claims it became the first domestic Kellogg cereal plant outside Battle Creek, An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 77, 81.
71. Powell, pp. 195, 220–21.
72. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 89, quoting from Will’s diary for June 22, 1925.
73. Ibid., p. 90.
74. Powell, p. 196.
75. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 186.
76. Powell, p. 197.
77. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 93. At the time of Helen’s death in 1978, the John L. and Helen Kellogg Foundation had assets worth nearly $50 million; much of it went to Northwestern University and the University of Notre Dame.
78. Ibid., p. 186.
79. Carson, pp. 223–24.
80. Powell, p. 154.
81. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 42–43.
82. Ibid., p. 40.
83. Ibid., pp. 41–42.
84. Ibid. Kenneth Williamson died at age sixty-eight in Laguna Hills, California, after choking on a piece of food. “Kellogg Heir Dies,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, June 10, 1980, p. 10.
85. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 42, 45–46, 49; Powell, p. 156.
86. M. Green and A. J. Solnit, “Reactions to the Threatened Loss of a Child: A Vulnerable Child Syndrome,” Pediatrics, 1964; 34: 58–66. This dynamic commonly occurs after a child’s close call with death. The parents believ
e the child (or all of their children) to be especially vulnerable to illness and injury and overreact to any hint of a problem.
87. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 45–46, quote is from p. 46. When Norman Jr. and Eleanor were discovered to have scoliosis of the spine, Will arranged for an orthopedic surgeon to resolve this condition. Norman Jr. recalled that he, Eleanor, and John Harold suffered “severe nutritional deficiencies,” which seems odd given the family’s wealth and access to plenty of nutritional food. John Harold also suffered from pyloric stenosis as an infant, which required surgery.
88. Ibid., pp. 106–7, 202–3. Norman Williamson Sr. died on Christmas Day 1967.
89. Ibid., p. 73.
90. Powell, p. 201.
91. Ibid., quotes are from pages 198 and 199.
92. Ibid., p. 199.
93. Ibid., p. 200. The stock market crash of 1929 began on October 24, “Black Thursday,” when the Dow Jones Industrial average lost 11 percent in value at the opening bell. The following Monday, the 28th (“Black Monday”), margin calls facilitated another 13 percent loss, and on Tuesday the 29th (“Black Tuesday”), the Dow lost another 30 points or 12 percent.
94. Ibid., p. 201.
95. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 115–18, describes the tenures of several executives who were hired as president of the company, including an efficiency expert named Walter Hasselhorn from the consulting firm then known as McKinsey-Wellington and now McKinsey and Company.
96. This entire memorandum is reproduced in Powell, p. 203.
97. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 158.
98. Powell, p. 204.
99. Letter from W. K. Kellogg to J. L. Kellogg Jr., July 19, 1935, quoted in Powell, p. 204.
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