| |
The Lyin' King, A True Story About an Aviation Magazine Editor
|
Henry Woodhouse
No other organization played such a significant role in the establishment of the First Aero Company as the Aero Club of America, and one person was the driving force of the Aero Club of America -- Henry Woodhouse. |
He had a unique way about him. He was able to not only convince America's top pilots and aviation luminaries that he was a leading authority in the art of flying, but he also published--for a time--what he claimed to be the nation's leading magazine on matters of the air. He got his start in the aviation publishing business by ingratiating himself to one of the leaders in the field. He lied about his background, painting himself as being far more educated and experienced in the science of flight than he really was. He even assumed a new name that he felt might both be more readily acceptable to his readers and might help to hide his past misdeeds.
His deception worked well for quite a number of years. He published a magazine that was, in many ways, at the cutting edge of flight technology. Even when he made false claims that he officially represented the largest body of aviation enthusiasts in the country, nobody came forth to challenge him. He was, after all, a leading authority. If it was in print, it must be true. There actually was a great deal of truth in what he wrote. Unfortunately, it was just enough that the falsehoods he also wrote passed, unchallenged, as truths themselves.
From his first introduction to the world of publishing, he grew quite fond of seeing himself pictured with the leading pilots of the time. He became so fond of this "fame by association" that he often published such self-promoting photos in his own magazine. He became a master at the art of positioning himself as a key subject within photographs of great aviators. When that was no longer enough, he would write articles in which he verbally positioned himself as a close friend or associate of some of the nation's most famous aviation personalities. He quickly learned that, by grandly flattering these flying figures in print, there was little danger that they would then expose such a fanciful personal relationship. Thus, he bought fame at a much cheaper price than that at which those around him had earned it.
Eventually he came to believe so strongly in his own stature in aviation that he dared to pose himself as an unimpeachable authority on the subject before agencies of the U.S. government. He was convincing enough in these attempts that he managed to bring the good names of well-meaning and influential men, with their consent, before these agencies as his collaborators and supporters. Sometimes he emerged from meetings with the government agencies and made claims that they also endorsed him and his proposed policies. When such claims later proved to be untrue, and the government officials rebuffed both him and his proposals, he protested that he had been grievously wronged by devious government representatives who had turned against him out of their own selfish motives.
He next became a self-appointed watchdog of these same government aviation agencies; loudly, in both print and voice, proclaiming his intent to save the nation and aviation from the ineptitude of dishonest government bureaucrats and industry officials. He eventually was responsible for several government investigations of persons within the government and industry. Although thousands of hours and dollars were expended in the investigations of his charges, none of them ever proved to have any merit. Each new barrage of accusations, however, served to place him--for a time--in the public spotlight. He managed to make some members of congress gun-shy, however, and their resultant hesitancy to become open advocates of the aviation industry--embroiled as it was in accusations of wrongdoing--set the progress of flight back substantially.
When well-meaning members of the aviation community tried to expose him as a fraud, he countered with numerous frivolous lawsuits. Although he never won any of them, he did manage to impose an expensive nuisance upon these people--thus limiting the amount of freedom with which they could exercise "free speech." But it was this series of lawsuits, and threats of law suits, that eventually led to his downfall. Eventually, enough members of the aviation community came to realize that he was, perhaps, protesting too much for an honest man. They insisted on being given answers to questions that a few among them had persisted in asking for years. When those answers finally came (forced out into the open by the defendant in one of his lawsuits), they discovered that the vigorous offensive position that the aviation magazine editor had so long taken was nothing more than a smokescreen to hide his dishonorable past and his present illegal activities. They learned that he was a con artist who had bilked aviation enthusiasts out of thousands of dollars in a scam, and had misleadingly used America's foremost aviation association to promote his publications for his own personal gain.
Yet further investigation into his background showed that he had launched himself into the aviation publishing business by smooth-talking influential people in the field, and deceiving them about his qualifications and background. He was, in fact, not an aviation expert at all, but a convicted felon who made fools out of many of the country's pioneer aviators and promoters of the science of mechanical flight. The damage that Henry Casalegno, a.k.a. Henry Woodhouse, did to aviation, however, would live long after him. His behavior so damaged the reputation of the Aero Club of America (America's first national Aero Club), and those of many of its top officials, that the club was forced to dissolve in the early 1920s and reincorporate under a new name that carried with it no association with Woodhouse. The aviation community learned too late how much influence could be wielded by an unscrupulous and self-promoting magazine editor.
copyright 1995, Bill Robie
Reprinted with permission of the author
|
| |
“I’m Working on a Million Dollar Deal”: A Biographical Essay on Henry Woodhouse
by Jerry Kuntz
The Early Years
By his own account, Mario was at an early age forced to be self-reliant, his father having died before Mario finished schooling, leaving a wife and seven children, and business debts. Some men follow their father’s footsteps; but Woodhouse was the opposite case: he never married, and used any means available to avoid debtors. Mario attended high school in Turin. From Turin, young Casalegno went to France and was able to settle his family's affairs by unknown means. Before coming to the United States in 1904, he traveled and studied in various cities in France, Switzerland, England, and Belgium. Again by his own account, he took advantage of every opportunity to improve his knowledge of language and science; and took a particular interest in economics, sociology, and aeronautics.
The places where he studied aren't mentioned by name.In 1905, less than a year after arriving in the United States, he was working as a cook. A fellow employee came near him and said something. "The big man [Mario was less than five feet tall] had been working all night and was in a bad humor. He said something to me in an angry way and I replied simply 'Oh, go along.' He jumped at me. I had a knife in my hand with which I had been working in the kitchen. After he jumped at me, the next thing I knew he was dead."
Mario was sentenced to four years and two months in Clinton Prison in Dannemora , NY . He was released in 1909. He took out his naturalization papers later in 1909, although there appears to be a question as to whether he concealed the fact of his conviction. During his later years, tales of a murderous background were whispered behind his back, but with the facts twisted; the rumors were that he fled Turin because of a killing committed there, and came to America to escape vengeance. Much later, on February 24, 1917 , he legally took the name of Henry Woodhouse and finally became a naturalized citizen on May 28, 1917 . It's unclear whether this discrepancy (1909 vs. 1917) is an indication that his 1909 application was turned down; or whether his naturalization was revoked and then reinstated. At any rate, naturalized, with a legal approval or not, Mario adopted and began to use the name Henry Woodhouse around 1909.
Aviation Writer and Editor
In 1910, articles on aviation written under his nom de plume Henry Woodhouse (a translation of Enrico Casalegno) began appearing in the periodical The Independent. It looks likely that around this time Woodhouse befriended Robert J. Collier, heir of the Collier's publishing empire. Robert’s wealthy father, P.F. Collier, died in a horse jumping competition in 1909, but Robert was no less a risk-taker. The aviation bug bit him hard. Before his early death in 1914 of heart failure, Robert J. Collier provided the funding for several aviation efforts, not the least of which was bankrolling the magazine Flying. Aviation's most coveted trophy, the Collier Trophy, was named after Robert Collier.
Over the next several years Woodhouse authored dozens of aviation articles that appeared in Collier's Weekly, McClures, Metropolitan, and World's Work. These were major periodicals in their day, indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. In 1911, Woodhouse, along with Robert J Collier and Henry A. Wise Wood, founded the monthly magazine Flying. Woodhouse became its managing editor.
By 1912, Woodhouse boasted of having accumulated capital of $25,000; but it is unclear whether this was personal savings or related to Flying. In his editorials and articles, Woodhouse was an early advocate for military aeronautics and the development of the hydroaeroplane (now called seaplanes). He also wrote on aviation as an economical mode of transportation. As early as 1912 he urged the use of airplanes as mail carriers to inaccessible locations. He was advised to suspend the publication of Flying at a point when it no longer was generating income; but opted to continue it at his own expense. Flying later became the leading aviation periodical. Woodhouse claimed that Flying and Aerial Age Weekly were the official publications of the Aero Club of America, but there was never any motion in the Club records to validate this claim. He would use this ambiguity to his advantage during later wrestling over control of the Aero Club.
Before World War I he was an active peace worker, writing articles and speaking on the subject. He believed that aviation and wireless communications would bring world peace, as they caused the intermixing of people and their interests. But after the outbreak of war in 1914 he became an ardent advocate of the national defense movement. He was a founder of the National Aeroplane Fund and a permanent delegate to the Conference Committee on National Preparedness. Woodhouse was a delegate to the second Pan-American Scientific Congress in 1916. He was an aeronautic advisor and associated with Peary, Amundsen, Bartlett, Shackleton, and other polar explorers. He assisted Amundsen in obtaining airplanes and scientific instruments for the 1916 and 1922 expeditions to the North Pole. It’s safe to assume that he shared the widespread passion for polar exploration; but what his real contribution to these expeditions was remains unknown.
The Aero Club Scandal
Woodhouse was an early member of the Aero Club of America, starting in 1911. Over the years his influence within the organization grew. Woodhouse, like Collier, Alan Hawley (Collier's successor as Aero Club president), was a fervent supporter of naval aviation. Under Hawley's term, the Aero Club ran a fund that trained many of the pilots who later saw action in World War I. The Aero Club was critical of federal legislative lack of support for military aviation. One incident that spelled the beginning of the end for the Club was its annual dinner in 1917. The guest of honor was Woodrow Wilson's former ambassador to Germany. Yet before he was introduced, Club governor Henry Wise Wood (Woodhouse's friend from the founding of Flying) launched into a long speech that was very critical of the Wilson administration and its lack of support for aviation.
Many Aero Club members were offended by this rude treatment of a guest, and were equally uncomfortable with the shrill tone set by President Hawley and Governors' Wood and Woodhouse. These factions were further split by their views on the Manufacturers Aircraft Association, a government-funded cartel for sharing aviation patents during the War. Some Aero Club members were manufacturers and members of the MAA; but Woodhouse and his friends were critical of the MAA and took every opportunity to accuse the government of scandalous misuse of funding for MAA efforts.
By 1918 there was overt confrontation between the factions. J.C. "Bud" Mars (who, by the way, was Alfred Lawson's first flying instructor) accused Woodhouse of being a murderer, and of defaming the Aero Club. Furthermore, he alleged that Woodhouse had registered for the draft, and then claimed exemption on "essential labor" grounds. In late 1918, an opposition faction tried to unseat then-president Wood and his cronies; but was unable to gain access to the membership list needed to collect proxy votes. Over the next two years, The Aero Club's influence waned as a result of the combination of infighting combined with the rise of other aviation organizations centered on WWI pilot veterans.
Finally, things unraveled in 1920. A donor accused the Aero Club of mishandling monies donated to the National Aeroplane Fund. Woodhouse responded with a libel suit. A month later, Woodhouse was suing the Aero Club itself in order to block the attempt of a faction within the club that was trying to merge the Aero Club with the American Flying Club, the best-known of the WWI-veteran pilot organizations. Woodhouse's suit claimed that this merger was an attempt to gain control over the Aero Club's historical records, which he claimed offered proof that the MAA had misused government funds.
In 1922, dissatisfied Aero Club members once again tried to merge into a larger national organization, and again Woodhouse responded with a lawsuit to block the merger. This time he claimed to hold the proxy votes of 404 members. The courts ordered him to produce the names of these members, which Woodhouse failed to do. Furthermore, Woodhouse's criminal past was again used against him and aired in public via the New York Times. The court ruled against Woodhouse, and the Aero Club of America became the National Aeronautic Association.
Woodhouse responded by throwing his support to the Aerial League of America. The Aerial League claimed to include some famous names as members, but it is unclear whether these people were ever active members and contributors. At any rate, no major figures in 1920's aviation paid much heed to the Aerial League of America. Even so, Woodhouse used the Aerial League of America stationary for many years when it suited the situation.
An ordinary man would have been brought low by these circumstances. Henry Woodhouse’s career as a publicist for the nascent aviation industry was over, his reputation irrevocably shattered and his past crimes made public. All he had left to his name were letters written to him by famous names in aviation (people who would no longer acknowledge him), piles of letterhead stationary of marginalized organizations, and a few old contacts that still respected what he had done to promote naval aviation. He still published magazines throughout the 1920s, but never again achieved any level of success with them. The direct cause of his downfall was the inability to produce a list of signatures to satisfy a court of law. From these broken shards Henry Woodhouse reinvented himself as a figure whose infamy still survives.
The Turkish Oil Concessions
In 1921-22, Woodhouse bought options in claims to Turkish concessions of Read Admiral Colby M. Chester, U.S.N., and formed a syndicate that resulted in the organization of the Ottoman American Development Company. In 1923, this company obtained from the government of Turkey the “Chester Concessions” for the construction and operation for 99 years of 2,700 miles of railroad in eastern Anatolia , two ports on the Black Sea and one on the Mediterranean Sea , exploitation of the oil fields of Mosul , etc. Woodhouse owned one-sixth of the capital stock of this Ottoman American Development Company. Woodhouse was also a director and secretary for the Turco-American Corporation, which bought options in 1923 to plan and build the city of Angora (today's Ankara) , which was to be the new capital of the Republic of Turkey .
In later years, Woodhouse inflated this episode to Herman Herst Jr., a philatelic authority and fellow collector. “Another one of my big coups was when I utilized a little fact I picked up from the Bible. I had read a biblical tale about fire shooting out of the earth in Mesopotamia . That meant only one thing to me—oil! I talked Standard Oil into looking into the matter and of course they discovered oil. They gave me a royalty from every barrel taken out of the Near East oil fields.”
The details are murky, but it looks as though these options were highly speculative, given the situation in Turkey at the time. On the losing side in WWI, Turkey was carved up and occupied by Allied forces following the Armistice. The last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire controlled only a small percentage of what is now Turkey. The Allies had to decide if the remaining land was to be restored to the government of Turkey or given to neighboring countries (or made into new countries). Britain and France could not agree, which caused a major diplomatic discord. The French leaned towards empowering the weakened Ottoman Sultan, while the British wanted to carve Turkey apart. Woodhouse, in both his magazine writings during these years (for the New York Times, no less) and in his speculative investments, supported the French position and was gambling that the Turks (first the Sultan, then Ataturk) would retain control over these assets.
Into the power vacuum that was Turkey stepped the figure of the populist military leader, Ataturk. Ataturk and his supporters threw out the Greek forces occupying large sections of Turkey, overthrew the Sultan, and formed their own government. The Allies--who had been badly beaten during the war in several battles with the Turks--weren't about to halt the ambitions of Ataturk. Ataturk regained most of the occupied territory. However, the oil fields of Mosul had already become property of the new Iraq by the decree of the Allies. Between the loss of the Ottoman Sultan and the eventual loss of territory, Woodhouse’s interests were probably diluted to the point that he earned little from the “Standard Oil royalties.”
How did Henry Woodhouse get mixed up in Near East intrigue? Once again, it was through a friendship--this time with the distinguished Admiral Colby M. Chester, United States Navy. Chester's career included founding the Naval Institute (he was their first Commandant). Chester and Woodhouse met, it appears, because of their mutual interest in Naval Aviation. In 1917, Woodhouse was appointed by the Navy Dept. to be the Executive Secretary of the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics and in this capacity was instructed to organize the Naval Aerial Reserves and the Aerial Submarine Patrol.
Admiral Chester later went on to be one of the American negotiators representing US interests in Turkey immediately after WWI. [Woodhouse's 1917 Textbook of Naval Aeronautics was reprinted in 1991 by the Naval Institute Press] Woodhouse's affinity for French interests could be traced back to 1917, too. In that year, he was appointed by the French Government to be the honorary director of the French Aerial Warfare Exhibit, which displayed French military equipment in several US cities as part of the home front propaganda campaign.
Hobby Becomes New Career
At some point during his career as a publisher and aviation advocate, Woodhouse started a hobby that coincided with the patriotic fervor he felt for his adopted country--collecting artifacts and antiques relating to American history. This started with an interest in the iconography and documents relating to George Washington and signers of the Declaration of Independence. There is a good chance that by the late 1920s Woodhouse had settled into a career as a collector and artifact dealer catering to rich clients in New York City .In 1930, he made news by acquiring a famous oil portrait of U.S. Grant, and in fact both collected and sold a great many genuine artifacts. In 1936, Woodhouse donated many of his Washington documents to the Library of Congress, where they reside today. However, there were other Washington items that Woodhouse sold or tried to sell during the 1930s through auctions. He teamed up with a "black sheep" of the Washington descendants, W. Lanier Washington , to sell items to which they had added the Washington crest. With exuberant publicity, Woodhouse announced that he had acquired Lanier Washington ’s library, and called it “one of the great book purchases of the century.” Joining this team was a talented painter named Hart, who produced fake portraits.
Hollywood
Woodhouse claimed involvement in over 40 motion pictures, one would assume as an aviation consultant or an expert on the life of George Washington. However, the only film he mentioned by name was the 1926 silent classic, Wings. Woodhouse's name does not appear in the credits; and the names of the unaccredited aerial sequence photographers and directors are established. This small mystery becomes clearer via an anecdote from the book antiquarian Raphael Gould, who met Woodhouse in the 1930s: “I ran into Woodhouse one afternoon and he joyously showed me a settlement check for twenty-five thousand dollars from Paramount Pictures in Hollywood . They’d ‘infringed’ on his title, ‘Wings’, which he had copyrighted only a year or two before [John] Monk Saunders wrote his war-birds book with that same name. A typical Woodhouse caper!” So a more plausible explanation of Woodhouse’s Hollywood “involvement” may have been a scheme to systematically copyright titles in anticipation of future infringements that he could claim.
The "George Washington Air Junction" Land Grab
In the early 1930's, Henry Woodhouse saw an opportunity to combine his two passions--aviation and George Washington--into one project: the George Washington Air Junction. This was envisioned as the largest airport in the world, with a 7200 ft. runway and mooring fields for trans-Atlantic Zeppelin fleets, right at the gates of the nation's capital. The land it would be situated on included hundreds of acres first granted to George Mason and then to George Washington himself. The airport would include a shrine containing Washingtoniana and memorabilia of other presidents.
This episode seems to be the basis for Woodhouse’s embellished version of events as told to Herman Herst, Jr. “You see, when America entered the conflict [WWI] in 1917 most big cities built parade grounds on which to train soldiers. To accommodate thousands of marching men they put down asphalt or concrete on a large area near the city. After the war was over I bought the paved land cheap because it wasn’t any good for farming. Everybody thought I was crazy for investing in ‘useless’ property. But I knew then that the airplane had a great future and airports near each big city would be needed. Later I got a lot of money for the paved areas. I owned the first airport in Richmond , a former parade ground.”
Paved fields didn’t appear to be a factor in the George Washington Air Junction(see below). Between December, 1928 and January, 1930, Woodhouse acquired more than 1500 acres of these Mason/Washington lands from ten different landowners. However, by 1935 all the land had been sold by public auction due to unpaid taxes and mortgage foreclosures--except one large parcel that Woodhouse had mortgaged to an airport developer and one smaller parcel that he was able to hold on to. The large parcel was claimed by Fairfax County and eventually became Huntley Meadows Park--now hailed as one of the finest natural areas close to Washington, D.C.
Patron of the Arts
Starting in the mid-1930s, Woodhouse’s name appears in connection with several New York City-based arts organizations. Through these involvements, he might have been humoring the friendship of an elderly rich sponsor, Alice Hunt Vartlett, in return for money to finance his other speculative schemes. Some of the organizations were chaired by the poetry-loving Mrs. Vartlett.
Henry Woodhouse, (almost a) Spy
In the fall of 1953, Woodhouse sent to the US Dept. of Justice 100 documents pertaining to petroleum production in the Middle East. It seems unbelievable that Woodhouse was trying to recycle papers from the Turkish Concessions--a misadventure now 30 years in the past--so it may be that he felt he had some special insight into Middle Eastern politics. He received a polite thank you. In January, 1957, he wrote to President Eisenhower regarding US policy in the Middle East. Again, he received a polite thank you.
Cursed by a Fortune Teller
The last known news item on Woodhouse is in the form of a lawsuit that dragged on for five years (1953-58) between Woodhouse and an erstwhile employee, Tamara Bourkoun. Madame Bourkoun claims that she worked for 46 weeks in Mr. Woodhouse's galleries without any pay. Woodhouse counterclaimed that she was compensated in the form of tuition to the gallery's educational courses; and moreover that Bourkoun was upset only because he refused to allow her access to his prominent clients. He claims it was her intent to offer fortune-telling services, which were outlawed in New York. The suit was eventually settled in Bourkoun's favor, causing Woodhouse to lose the last small parcel of land he had in Virginia.
Henry Woodhouse died January 6, 1970 at his home at 55 Park Avenue, New York City. He left no spouse, and no named relatives. His entire estate went to his housekeeper, from which creditors sought their share, no longer threatened by Woodhouse's litigious nature. When he died, Woodhouse had over thirty-five personal damage lawsuits open against real or imagined threats.
Sources:
Caso, Adolph. They Too Made America Great: Lives of the Italian Americans. Boston: Branden Press, 1978. pp. 126-127. Hamilton, Charles. Great Forgers and Famous Fakes: The Manuscript Forgers of America and How They Duped the Experts. Glenbridge Pub. Ltd., 1996. pp. 66-76. Lowe, James. “Fabrications by Woodhouse”, Autograph Collector, v.10, n. 11, Nov. 2000. pp. 32-33. National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, v. 15, 1916. New York, James T. White & Co. p. 403 New York Times. “Woodhouse Called Ex-Convict in Court”, Sept. 26, 1922 . 4:2 New York Times. “Cannot Hold Air Trophies”, Sept. 27, 1922. 7:2 Who Was Who in America . V. ? Marquis Who’s Who. p. 625-626 Zimmerman, Eric. “ Hybla Valley ’s Going to Have a Boy’s Band!: Henry Woodhouse and the George Washington Air Junction.” Yearbook: The Historical Society of Fairfax County, Virginia. V. 22, 1989-90. pp. 4-25. |
