American politician and businessman from a notable political family, the eldest son of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Tall, thin and premature balding, Roosevelt served six terms as congressman from California. He worked hard as a Social Security lobbyist during the Reagan administration and became a prominent member of the “Democrats for Nixon.” He wrote his autobiography, “My Parents.”
In 1930, he worked in the insurance industry. In 1937, he went to work as his father’s secretary joining the White House staff. James Roosevelt was criticized in the press with using his public office for personal financial gain. He resigned from office and went to Los Angeles. When he attended a motion picture industry gathering at MGM in the fall of 1938, Samuel Goldwyn invited him to his studio and offered him a job as vice-president in the company. On 3 January 1939, Roosevelt went to work at the Manhattan headquarters of United Artists at 729 Seventh Avenue. Goldwyn relished telling his friends that the son of the President of the United States worked for him.
Roosevelt reported to active duty in the Marine headquarters in San Diego, CA during WW II and saw action in the Pacific theater. Post war he lost money on a jukebox business before entering politics in 1946. Though he inherited his dad’s ringing voice he had neither political savvy nor luck. When he ran for Governor of California in 1950, he lost to Earl Warren. As he matured, he became more acceptable to the voters and was elected to the House of Representatives for six terms. He won a congressional seat in California in 1954 despite disclosures of alleged infidelities in his second marriage. Failing in bids for higher office, he left politics in the mid-1960s to pursue a series of unsavory business ventures. In 1965he become a member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council until 1967. He later resigned his post at the U.N. and moved to Switzerland to work with the Investors Overseas Services mutual fund empire. The mutual fund company collapsed after its sale to swindler Robert Vesco in 1971. In 1973, he was dropped from a Securities and Exchange Commission probe. Roosevelt was heavily criticized for his involvement in a direct mail campaign to save Social Security and Medicare in 1983. His National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare raised millions by targeting senior citizens. He retired in 1989.
His first wife was a Boston debutante, Betsey Cushing, whom he married soon after graduating from Harvard. The marriage broke up after he moved to Los Angeles in 1938. He married three more times and had a total of seven children.
While working at the White House in 1937, tension and stress led Roosevelt to suffer from a perforated ulcer and two thirds of his stomach were removed. Roosevelt died on 13 August 1991 at his home in Newport Beach, California, from complications from a stroke and Parkinson’s disease.
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