Chapter 2: Leonard Hanna Jr.

The Gentle Giant of the Jolly Set

Leonard Hanna Jr.
1889-1957

To liven the mood at one of Leonard Hanna’s many late-night parties in early 1934, a reveler on the star-studded guest list turned up the volume on the radio in the industrialist’s swanky New York City apartment. The strains of a woeful, country-western tune filled the room to the horror of Cole Porter, who bemoaned the song as sheer drivel with a monotonous melody and senseless lyrics. So the composer of such American-songbook standards of the ‘30s like “Night & Day” and “Don’t Fence Me In” plopped himself in front of Leonard’s sleek, black grand piano and started to improvise his own burlesque version of the ditty.

As Porter revamped the chords and reworked a campy storyline into the song, actor Monty Woolley tiptoed into the master bedroom to retrieve a morning coat from Leonard’s closet. He then picked up a silver tray on a hallway table and made his grand entrance into the living room portraying a butler. By now, he had memorized the lyrics that Porter had just ad-libbed: "Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch to-day-ay, Madam." Everyone burst into gut-splitting laughter and raucous applause.

“Miss Otis Regrets,” about a servant conveying the last words of a proper society lady who’s hanged for murdering her seducer, would become a huge Porter hit by October of that year. And Leonard -- a reserved wallflower at his own soirees -- quietly marveled at the talents of his close-knit collection of fellow gay comrades. “The extraordinary occurrences at his parties were created by other people,” wrote "Cleveland Press" society columnist Winsor French in a 1957 tribute to his longtime companion. “Leonard was no exhibitionist. He merely supplied the background and reveled in what it produced.”

Success and wealth surrounded Leonard all his life. Born on November 5, 1889, on Cleveland’s West Side, Leonard Colton Hanna Jr. was the only child of Leonard Colton Sr. and his second wife, Coralie Walker Hanna. His grandfather, Leonard, and great-uncle, Robert, made millions of dollars in profits in the wholesale grocery trade, then the manufacturing of Lake Erie steamships. His father -- a licensed physician -- and uncles Marcus Alonzo and Howard “Melville” partnered in 1885 to found M.A. Hanna & Company, which became one of the Great Lakes region’s preeminent iron-ore, coal-mining and shipping firms. (Marcus, a staunch Republican, later leaped into politics by managing William McKinley’s successful presidential campaign in 1896 and representing Ohio in the U.S. Senate from 1897 until his death of typhoid fever in 1904.)

The Hanna family fortune allowed Leonard Jr. the luxury of an intensive college-preparatory education at the tony University School in University Heights from 1900 to 1904 and at Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1909. On holiday breaks and during the summer, he retreated to his parents’ 40-room, yellow-brick mansion at 2717 Euclid Ave. on Cleveland’s famed Millionaires’ Row. With its fluted Corinthian pillars, double-armed grand staircase and Chinese gingko trees that swayed on the grounds, the Hanna home stood next to stately manors owned by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, arc-light inventor Charles F. Brush and Western Union Telegraph founder Jeptha Wade. Con artist Cassie Chadwick also lived on the boulevard, even as she passed herself off to bankers as the illegitimate daughter of steel mogul Andrew Carnegie.

In 1909, Leonard entered Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he met Woolley, Porter and one in a parade of Porter’s lovers, Howard Sturges. All three men also came from privileged backgrounds: Woolley was the son of a New York businessman, who owned the chic Marie Antoinette Hotel on Broadway; Porter’s largesse came from his grandfather, who made a killing on the timber industry in Indiana; and Sturges was a Boston-born socialite, who tapped into his family’s treasure chest to afford a Yale education. And they all took advantage of a newfound freedom from their families to immerse themselves in a secretive gay lifestyle.

Because homosexuality was still taboo in mainstream society, Leonard tried to disguise his sexual orientation from straight classmates by joining macho organizations, like the Sword and Gun Club. He pledged membership in Delta Kappa Epsilon, whose candidates “combined the most equal parts of the gentleman, the school and the jolly good fellow.” By his senior year, the Class of 1913 elected him its treasurer. And in a rare display of extroverted frivolity, he once agreed to play a bit part in a fraternity musical that Porter had written.

Life after graduation proved just as closeted. Leonard returned to Cleveland to work in his father’s office for a few months before learning the ropes of the steel industry with internships at Republic Iron & Steel plants in Youngstown and Birmingham, Alabama. The company also sent him to study ore ranges in both Michigan and the Mesaba region of Minnesota.

But World War I interrupted his training. On June 5, 1917, Leonard began a 20-month enlistment in the U.S. Army for which he was stationed in Europe as a first lieutenant in its aviation division. He was later assigned to its Motor Transport Corps until he was honorably discharged on February 5, 1919, nearly three months after the war officially ended.

Upon his discharge, Leonard’s father and uncles made him a partner in M.A. Hanna, appointing him to the company’s board of directors and giving him managerial duties in its pig-iron division. He eventually held several offices, including vice-president and member of the firm’s executive committee.

On March 23, 1919, Leonard Sr. died, leaving behind a $3.6 million estate. His will bequeathed one-third of the money to Coralie, while the rest was equally divided between his son and two daughters, Jean and Fannie, whom he fathered from his first marriage to the former Fanny Wilson Mann, who died on July 11, 1885. Now that Leonard Jr. was independently wealthy, he stopped making daily treks to Hanna headquarters, although he remained one of its officers for the rest of his life.

He turned his attention to investments, none of which was more important than the stock purchase he made on December 6, 1923. Acting on a hunch, Leonard paid nearly $110,000 for 1,350 common shares of the little-known Computer-Tabulating-Recording Company. A year later, the New York-based firm changed its name to International Business Machines, or IBM. Yes, that IBM. The investment would balloon to $8.8 million by the time of Leonard’s death 34 years later, thanks to dividends, splits and additional purchases of the company’s stock.

On a train ride to New York in 1925, 36-year-old Leonard contemplated his growing net worth. Coincidentally, Cleveland attorney Harold T. Clark, who handled the old man’s estate, was booked on the same train. Leonard called him into his cabin to ask for advice. “I know it’s not going to be good for me to have more money than I need, money which I have not earned,” he told Clark. “I want to set aside some property so I can’t touch it, and it will be best used for good.”

The seed of an idea had sprouted: Leonard would support charities and cultural institutions with his inheritance. The Cleveland Museum of Art would become his first major beneficiary because he had served on its advisory council since 1914 and as one of its trustees since 1920. While the idea was admirable and appreciated, it caught a few insiders, including the museum’s directors, off guard. “He knew nothing about art. He had no training but he became very interested,” said William Robinson, the museum’s curator of modern European art, in a 2008 interview with Salt Lake City public-radio station KUED. “He collected Van Goghs and Cezannes and Picassos. Amazing things. And he was totally self-taught. He became one of the greatest collectors of modern art in the world.”

To say the least. Leonard’s purchase of Picasso’s "Figures in Pink" started him on a lifelong shopping spree. From Seurat’s "Café-concert" and Renoir’s "Mademoiselle la Caux" to El Greco’s "Crucifixion" and Aretino’s "Virgin and Child With Angels," his donations of 70 oil, pastel and watercolor masterpieces through the years collectively formed the foundation of the museum’s 19th-century and early 20th-century collections, particularly the post-Impressionist pieces that caught Leonard’s eye. “Essentially modest in everything he did, he wished no special recognition,” then-director William Milliken wrote in the forward of a 1958 book that the museum published as an homage to its great benefactor. “He merely wished to (help) like many others to the extent he could as one of Cleveland’s citizens working for the same civic ideal.”

By this time, Leonard and his mother had bequeathed their Euclid Avenue mansion to house the original Cleveland Museum of Natural History. They then moved closer to the art museum into a 30-room Florentine-Renaissance home at 10825 East Blvd. Equally as grand as their Millionaires’ Row digs, the 1918-built manse featured hand-painted ceilings, mammoth fireplaces and a super-sized dumbwaiter on which Coralie would often ride. There was also a secret staircase to a third-floor playroom for any children who visited the Hannas.

Leonard’s dark side would emerge in the house’s hallowed halls. Between 1925 and 1927, he carried on a relationship with C. Reese Abednago, a 23-year-old orchestra musician who roomed at 17707 Euclid Ave. On the night of September 17, 1927, a violent fight erupted. Abednago’s attorney, Raymond J. Logan, filed a $50,000 lawsuit more than a month later, claiming that Leonard severely beat his client after breaking off their affair. “Abednago has been under Hanna’s influence for two years, but got mad when Hanna reversed the ‘humiliating act,’” a "Cleveland Press" reporter wrote in his notebook. The case never made it to trial, and there’s no surviving document to prove if Leonard settled out of court with his jilted paramour.

With the thwarted brush of public scrutiny about his homosexuality behind him, Leonard remained low-key for the next decade, except to join his mother in 1931 to make a $750,000 donation to University Hospitals to build Hanna House -- an in-patient rehab center -- as a tribute to his medically trained dad. He also began a quiet romance in the mid-’30s with the 31-year-old Winsor. The pair had much in common: They both adored the finer things in life, including art, theater and overseas travel. And together, they were generous, thoughtful and gracious to everybody they met. The only difference between the pair was that Leonard guarded his privacy while Winsor thrived on being the center of attention.

When Leonard’s mother died on December 3, 1936, he inherited yet another $4 million from her estate. His philanthropic kindness exploded. He donated the East Boulevard mansion to the Western Reserve Historical Society. And in honor of Coralie -- a Kentucky-bred belle who cherished the arts -- he started to make sizeable donations to institutions like the Cleveland Play House and Karamu House, the nation’s first theater devoted to performing the works of African-American playwrights. “He believed in art expression as a great social force,” Karamu co-founder Russell Jelliffe once told the "Plain Dealer." “He thought it helped people keep their heads up and their ambitions pointed, that it made for strong social order.”

Leonard also treated himself to some of the money. He rented a trendy apartment on East 49th Street in New York’s exclusive Amster Yards district. With its black walls, white throw rugs and draperies made of white pigskin, its modern-day touches dramatically contrasted with the elegant Victorian interiors to which Leonard had grown accustomed in his parents’ Cleveland homes. He also decorated the walls with 40 works of art he acquired on his around-the-world expeditions for the art museum.

While he was in the Big Apple, Leonard developed into a creature of the night. He never awoke before noon, always sleeping with black patches over his eyes to keep out the sunlight. After he drank his first cup of coffee, he planned his evenings that usually included a Yankees baseball game or club-hopping between the Century and 21 nightspots. He relished spicy food and became giddy when he discovered a new restaurant he liked. And his apartment turned into party central for the rich and famous, gay and straight.

On August 21, 1941, Leonard established the Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund with $1.2 million in M.A. Hanna stock for nonprofit and education-based organizations. He showered theaters, museums and hospitals with grants to expand their operations. And to keep the fund financially afloat, he continued to buy stock in no more than 11 companies, such as General Electric, General Motors and IBM. Financial advisers today would cringe at his modus operandi, since diversification -- investing one’s money in several companies in a variety of industries -- was not in his vocabulary. Leonard also dubbed his venture “the Hanna Fun” because of the joy that philanthropy provided him. “You could work with him,” said Henry Sayles, the art museum’s curator of paintings, prints and drawings from 1929 to 1967, in an early-1970s interview at his New Hampshire retirement home. “I used to go constantly to him about the various purchases we wanted to make. And so often, he would buy them outright.”

Leonard then made a startling announcement: He was going to volunteer for the American Red Cross for two years to establish rec centers for American airmen stationed in England during World War II. By early 1944, he had set up nearly 100 clubs before he asked to be transferred to the European continent as the war progressed across the English Channel. But a crippling illness forced him to return to the U.S. in May of 1944. The setback marked the beginning of years of deteriorating health.

To keep his mind off his aches and pains, Leonard focused on a real-estate project that would consume much of his time in the mid-’40s. In 1945, he paid more than $1 million for a 316-acre spread in Kirtland Hills. The estate featured a three-story Tudor home of brick and stucco that was built in England in 1472 and moved brick by brick to Northeast Ohio in 1924. Considered the oldest existing home in the state, the 7,600-square-foot main house was flanked by a gatehouse, caretakers’ quarters, barn, greenhouses, pool, bathhouse, stables and, of all things, a pig sty. Leonard christened the compound “Hilo” because of the rolling hills that surrounded the property. “When he first bought it, he once told me he used to walk barefoot at night through the meadows, almost unable to believe the soil he could feel beneath his feet was his own,” Winsor recalled in one of his columns.

After wintering in New York, Leonard spent his summers at Hilo, where he entertained a steady stream of celebrities, politicians and athletes, who collectively became known as “the Jolly Set.” At his lavish weekend parties, it was not unheard of to catch gay actor Clifton Webb talking sports with boxing champ Gene Tunney and baseball great Tris Speaker. Nor was it unusual to see silver-screen siblings Dorothy and Lillian Gish fawn over Pulitzer Prize-winner author Louis Bromfield. College buddies Woolley, Porter and Sturges even planted trees on the grounds to celebrate the prized home purchase. Above all else, if you were invited to the estate once, you had a standing invitation to stop by anytime.

Leonard again channeled his energy to the Hanna Fund. By 1953, he was making frequent and substantial contributions to at least 35 museums, schools and health agencies. He also maintained memberships in several social groups, such as the Tavern, Union and Mayfield Country clubs as well as the Cleveland chapter of the Yale Alumni Association, for which he served as its president in 1927.

But by October 27, 1953, Leonard sensed his failing health wasn’t going to correct itself. So he fired off a one-page missive to the fund’s board of trustees with directions for the “ultimate disposition” of his money after his death. The letter stipulated that the trustees should give the highest priority to the art museum, Hanna House and Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine. It also specifically directed them to “remove discrimination in colored and white relations.”

One of Leonard’s last public appearances took place on July 14, 1956, when he attended the laying of a cornerstone for the art museum’s new $9 million wing to which he contributed half of its construction costs. His vision to turn the museum into one of the country’s foremost showplaces of important art had come true. “No one had done more than he to bring that dream to reality,” Milliken said after the ceremony. “But whatever he did was always done with complete and self-effacing modesty.”

Leonard wouldn’t live to see the opening of the wing in the spring of 1958. On Saturday, October 5, 1957, he died of natural causes at Hilo. He was survived by Winsor, his two half-sisters, eight nephews and nieces and 25 great-nephews and great-nieces, all of whom attended a private memorial service at the estate two days later. Naturally, the mourners eulogized his charitable work. “He had, so to speak, listening posts, and from them, he would learn, perhaps, that some youngster needed an artificial leg or that a brilliant, promising young student was going to have to withdraw from college unless given financial help,” Winsor wrote. “Actresses who had seen happier times were mercifully snatched from the greased skids. Drunks were rehabilitated, serious operations paid for and hospital expenses absorbed. He was convinced that you could find shreds of dignity worth retrieving in the most tattered skid-row bum.”

By all accounts, Leonard gave away $93 million during his lifetime, with one-third of the cash donated to the art museum. And an inventory of the estate valued the Hanna Fund at $29.4 million, with the bulk of the money invested in IBM, du Pont and both A and B classes of M.A. Hanna stock. Even his personal checking account at National City Bank contained more than $257,000 on the day he died.

Leonard’s will, dated November 7, 1952, told an even clearer story of his wealth. Filed in Lake County Probate Court, it listed an additional $10 million in assets. The art museum would get 70 percent of the money as well as the $1.5 million art collection in his Manhattan apartment. It left $500,000 each to Yale University and University Hospitals. And the Cleveland Foundation’s Community Fund received $250,000.

Other gifts included $100,000 in trust for each of his nephews and nieces. A cousin in Kentucky received $25,000. And bequests worth between $500 and $5,000 went to each of Leonard’s domestic staff members based on length of service. After all the disbursements were made, it became obvious that he was just as generous in death as he was in life. “I spent winters with him in Florida and California, traveled with him from Rome to Tahiti,” Winsor wrote in his final tribute. “Should a stranger ask me what sort of person Leonard was, I think I would tell him he was the most soft-spoken, truly tolerant and liberal man I have ever known.”

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Leonard Hanna Jr. requested that his remains be scattered at his Hilo estate at the corner of Little Mountain and Hart roads in Kirtland Hills. He was 67 years old.

Copyright 2010 Cris Glaser