(4 of 7)
The New Deck. Emanuel's cloak-&-dagger manner and his name (his mother merely liked the name Victor, had no thought of Italy's ex-King) have caused some to suspect him of having an exotic foreign background. Actually, V.E. is as endemically American as flapjacks and maple syrup. He was born in Dayton, the son of a wealthy utilities man. It was a wonderful time and place to grow up in. Only two doors away Charles F. Kettering was working on a magical invention that would start autos automatically; Orville Wright skittered around in one of the first airplanes. Young Victor caught the speed fever, too. After graduating from Longfellow grade school and St. Mary's College (now the University of Dayton), he went to Cornell. But he spent less time on studies than driving around the countryside. (His taste in cars used to lean towards Rolls-Royces; now he owns a Lincoln.) When World War I came, he got his first taste of aviation as a naval aviator.
At war's end, he went to work for his father, who was in poor health. A few years later, in his first big deal, young Victor bought out his father's utility interest. He and Chicago Banker Arthur Cecil Allyn put up about $750,000, got the rest of the nearly $5,000,000 they needed for the deal through public stock issues. The new Emanuel-Allyn company (National Electric Power Co.) promptly expanded in all directions, in typical Emanuel fashion, soon controlled 14 utilities sprawled across the nation. The system, and the beautiful map outlining it, so impressed the late Samuel Insull, then grabbing up utilities like peanuts, that he bought out Emanuel and Allyn, paying them about $13,000,000.
Quick Tricks. V.E., who had made a pile at the age of 28, now set out to lounge as grandly as he had labored. He went to live in England, added to his stable of horses till he had 125 (now down to nine), bought a large diesel yacht, entered a horse in England's Grand National. The horse fell, but V.E. and his wife, Dorothy Elizabeth Woodruff, whom he had met at Cornell, liked the country. They leased Rockingham Castle, built in Norman times, spent a small fortune modernizing it, soon became known for their lavish parties. For one party, V.E. reportedly imported 300 guests from the U.S., paying their fares both ways. For such didos he won the somewhat dubious title of "The King of Glory." He became master of the exquisitely manicured Woodland Pytchley Hounds, fox-hunted with the Prince of Wales and the present King George, consorted with the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin (see cut). (At the end of his English period he was also divorced from his wife, who married a mutual friend, then divorced him to remarry Emanuel.)
But pink coats and popinjays were not really his dish. Never really happy unless he is closing—or opening—a deal, he kept a finger in the financial pot. He made friends with the great London bankers, J. Henry Schroder & Co. and Alfred Loewenstein, the hard-headed Belgian who came up from nothing to be rated as third richest man in the world, controlling a worldwide utility empire. And V.E. played the stockmarket. By 1928, when he had just turned 30, he was worth some $40,000,000—on paper. But it was not enough. It just whetted his appetite.