Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,511

This is the grave of Armand Hammer.

Born in 1898 in New York, Hammer grew up in a Jewish immigrant family. His father was a pretty big player in the early Communist Party, leading the Bolshevik faction in New York to split with the Socialist Labor Party after the Bolshevik Revolution. In fact, his father was involved in all sorts of activities, including smuggling diamonds to the Soviets. The father was also a doctor and abortionist. When one woman died, he was charged with illegal abortions and sentenced to three years in Sing Sing Now, Armand was in medical school at the time of the botched abortion and some have thought he might have done the job. In any case, he took over the family business when his father went to prison. His father ran a store as well and Armand made his first fortune creating high alcohol “medicines” during Prohibition that he could then sell semi-legally. Hammer spent the 20s in the Soviet Union, as his father kept up his business interests in his ideological paradise.

Hammer stayed in the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1930 and this gets pretty interesting. It’s clear that the Soviets relied on his father for some real financial backing and smuggling of various needed items. The Hammers also brought business expertise to the new nation and at this point, the Bolsheviks were still pretty pro-Jewish, as most of the leadership was Jewish until Stalin started his purges. Now, the Chekists truly controlled the Hammer interests by this time, but this was fine on both sides. Lenin gave him a big asbestos concession, or so he claimed anyway. What is clear about this period is that Hammer perfected his favorite business tactic–bribery. He also made a lot of money, really acting as a gangster as much as anything else.

Hammer however was incredibly useful to Lenin and other Soviets leaders. They needed infusions of capital. Hammer could provide that and they didn’t much care how. The New Economic Policy required some westerners to facilitate just how investment would work in the Soviet Union and Hammer was critical here. That included for Ford, who had massive investments in the Soviet Union. The irony of this was somewhat rich in that Henry Ford was such a rabid right-winger. But the Soviets loved Fordism. It was their ideal situation. The man is no longer important, they are just part of the machine. And Ford was not going to pass up on the money that selling its tractors especially would lead to. So Hammer helped work all that out. He also was effectively a spy for the Soviet government, even during the Stalin years, working closely with Anastas Mikoyan especially, one of the few early revolutionaries not killed by Stalin.

Through all of this Hammer was making ridiculous amounts of money. The irony of becoming personally loaded through working with the communists is rich. It is also not surprising once we consider how human nature flows through all political systems. Hammer came back to the U.S. in the early 30s and just built enormous investments from there, all the while still working with the Soviets. That included in alcohol, in oil, in just about everything. Among his biggest investments was leading United Distillers of America, in which he began making the first ever American vodka. And now I know who to blame for bringing this swill to the United States.

Other than his long-time Soviet work, Hammer’s most significant world contribution was probably his oil investments in Libya, which continued even under Gaddafi. He controlled Occidental Petroleum beginning in 1956. With his heavy investments in Libya and parts of the Islamic World, he helped to create OPEC, breaking the control of the American oil interests over the global market and empowering the newer producers to instead. This is part of the reason why he was able to manage working with Gaddafi about as well as anyone, which meant it was always fraught for sure, but the money kept rolling in, to both Hammer and Gaddafi.

Hammer was really a life-long supporter of the Soviet government. He was friends with all of the Soviet leaders, or at least could talk to them. Because of this, he managed to not only create business opportunities for himself, but also to serve as a go-between between the American and Soviet governments, all the way to the end of the Soviet Union. He was legit buds with Brezhnev and Andropov. He helped the Nixon administration work out the first trade agreement between the U.S. and the USSR. Of course he was stealing some of the money for doing so. Some of that he kicked back to Nixon to help his reelection campaign and then to defend Nixon during Watergate. And of course a lot of the trade deals facilitated his own interests, including specific ones that mandated he would personally supply fertilizer and other critical substances for that company.

Even though Hammer illegally funded Nixon and later had to plead guilty for charges over it (George Bush Sr pardoned him of course), his politics were weird. He didn’t believe in communism certainly. However, he was also not a committed Republican. He was also very close to the Gore political dynasty in Tennessee and was a huge supporter of Al Jr’s political ambitions. In fact, he told Al Sr that he could make his son president and was the major funder behind Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign. So this was really just rich guy politics. Nothing really mattered, it was all about connections and money. He was also good friends with King Charles III of the UK and evidently Charles wanted him to be William’s godfather but Diana nixed the idea. He was a huge art collector, spent a lot of money on cancer research, and was given the Order of Friendship of Peoples from Brezhnev for his long support of the Soviet Union.

Back to the bribery. Hammer had no compunction about corruption. He felt about as guilty about bribing foreign governments as you do for jaywalking. For some reason, he started taping this stuff in the early 70s, even though it implicated him too. I guess he wanted the evidence to hold over them. Maybe he learned this from his buddy Nixon. He used these tapes against the Venezuelan government. He taped his bribery of a major official in exchange for oil rights. Then, years later, in the Reagan administration, he got the American government to investigate Venezuela for bribery in its government and it ordered the nation to pay Occidental a $40 million fee for lost money. But the Reagan administration didn’t know Hammer had this information or that he had engaged in such bribery himself. There’s a long New Yorker article that tries to investigate the money trail, from back in 1996. Amazing stuff.

Oh also, while Hammer did have a huge interest in the company that makes Arm & Hammer products, those products predated him and had nothing to do with his name. In case you were wondering about that, which I always did.

In short, this is one of the oddest people I’ve ever covered in the grave series.

Hammer died in 1990. He was 92 years old.

Armand Hammer is buried in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California. Since it is for his family, maybe his actor/sexual abuser descendant Armie Hammer will end up there someday. I also like how this grave looks like the entrance to the office building behind it.

Because he was a major arts patron, Hammer was given a National Medal of the Arts in 1987. If you would like this series to visit other people who won that award in 1987, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Robert Penn Warren has had his day here. Ella Fitzgerald won that year, but you need to be patient here, that post is coming soon. Alwin Nikolais is in Paris, so that doesn’t help unless you all want to send me to France. Isamu Noguchi is in Queens and Sydney Lewis is in Richmond, Virginia. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.