|
|
|
|
Aristotle Onassis
|
| |
|
| |
Aristotle Sokratis "Ari"/"Aristo" Onassis (Aristoteles Onases) (January 15 1906 – March 15 1975) was one of the prominent shipping magnates of the 20th century. Some sources say he was born in 1900 and later changed his age to 16 so as to avoid deportation from Turkey.
sis was born in Karatass, a suburb of Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now Izmir, Turkey) to Socrates and Penelope Onassis.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Aristotle Onassis' Start a new discussion about 'Aristotle Onassis' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Aristotle Sokratis "Ari"/"Aristo" Onassis (Aristoteles Onases) (January 15 1906 – March 15 1975) was one of the prominent shipping magnates of the 20th century. Some sources say he was born in 1900 and later changed his age to 16 so as to avoid deportation from Turkey.
Early life
Onassis was born in Karatass, a suburb of Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now Izmir, Turkey) to Socrates and Penelope Onassis. At the time of his birth, Smyrna had a very significant and prosperous Greek population.
Aristotle's father had a fleet of 10 ships with 40 sailors. This enterprise was a financial success enabling him to send Onassis and his sisters to prestigious schools. At the age of 16, Aristotle spoke four languages: Spanish, Turkish, English and Greek.
After being briefly occupied by Greece (1919–1922) in the aftermath of the allied victory in World War I, Smyrna was re-captured by Turkey; the Onassis substantial family holdings were lost, causing them to become refugees fleeing to Greece. During this period Ari lost three uncles and one aunt with her husband Chrysostomos Konialidis and their daughter, who burned to death when the Turks set fire to a church in Thyatira where 500 Christians were seeking shelter.
In 1923, Aristotle Onassis left his country to go to Buenos Aires, Argentina with allegedly only $63. He once said: "It is hard to maintain vitality when you are always hungry". He finally got his first job in the British United River Plate Telephone Company.
Business
Argentina
After hearing from an Argentine film distributor and a senior executive at Paramount in New York reporting the film star Rudolph Valentino saying that everything from the Orient was in evidence at that moment, Onassis had the idea of importing tobacco from Turkey with help from his father Socrates. The tobacco was softer than the Cuban variety, and he was sure it would appeal to women more. After the failure of a contract with Juan Gaona, the director of a huge Argentine company, he turned to making his own cigarettes. After some time managing this business and his job in British United River, he made a considerable amount of money.
His power and influence rapidly increased; he was present at important social events, and in 1925 he received Argentine and Greek citizenships.
According to Peter Evans (his official biographer) and Christian Cafarakis (a former employee) a considerable part of the tobacco was smuggled, which would explain the speed with which he made his first million dollars. In 1928, Onassis traded with Greece US$2,800,000 just four years after his arrival in Argentina. This was due to other illegitimate activities he undertook, like sabotaging his competitor and using the same name of a famous cigarette company: Bis. This last was profitable but ended once the real Bis company sued him.
In 1929 the Greek government announced a 1000% increase in tax of imported products from countries with no trade agreement with their country; this could have ruined Onassis' South American business, as Argentina had little commercial relationships with Greece. With the help of his confidante, Costa Gratsos, a former student of the London School of Economics and descendant of a rich family - the Dracoulis - he wrote a letter to the prime minister of Greece Eleutherios Venizelos. The text was a warning about the damage that the increase in tax could cause to the Greek merchant navy, once 80% of it was used in transport between Europe and Argentina.
The letter made a good impression on the prime minister and he sent Onassis to speak with the foreign minister Andreas Michalakopoulos. The meeting, however, did not go well. Andreas, who purportedly brushed his nails throughout the meeting, simply rejoindered:
Mr. Onassis, I'm listening to what you say, but this type of thing needs time. I will strongly consider what you have said. You can count on that.
During the next few weeks, Onassis and Michalakopoulos met several times more, and Onassis's hospitality, which usually included generous bribes, finally won Michalakopoulos's support. Onassis once said never to trust a person who did not accept a bribe.
Due to this new friendship Onassis returned to Argentina with a new passport and the encouragement to move his business forward. The Greek government promised not to apply heavy taxes to Argentine trades.
In 1931 again with Michalakopoulos's help, Onassis's connections in Argentina were recognized and he was granted with the freight ships, the title of Vice Consul.
This title took Onassis's business to sky-high levels once he got the status he was hungry for, and most importantly, access to an incredible amount of money that he exchanged in the black market, in spite of Gratsos's disapproval.
Success
In 1954, the FBI investigated Onassis for fraud against the U.S. government. He was charged with violating the citizenship provision of the shipping laws which require that all ships displaying the U.S. flag be owned by U.S. citizens. Onassis entered a guilty plea and paid $7 million. He founded Olympic Airways (today Olympic Airlines), the Greek national carrier, in 1957.
To finance his ships he used a method that he, in his own words, described as utilizing the formula OPM (other people's money). And, much in the same way, he closed contracts to transport ore in ships he did not yet have, and closed several contracts to transport oil on tankers that had not been built yet.
While the big petroleum companies like Mobil, Socony, and Texaco were signing contracts with long terms and fixed prices, and with Onassis then having trouble in managing their own fleet with high cost due to USA flags, Aristotle made huge amounts of money.
Onassis's fleet had Panama flags and sailed with no tax and low costs. With all this Onassis could profit in every business, despite of having one of the lowest prices in the merchant navy market, and his tankers "paid for themselves" with a simple six-month contract. The other 20 years of these ships' life cycle were purely profits.
The Greek Colonel Affair
Four days after his marriage with Jacqueline, Onassis was in close discussions with Colonel George Papadopoulos . Onassis employees called this encounter "the second honey moon". Papadopoulos was on Onassis' extensive bribe list, and had received in "comodatus" a huge vilage in Lagonissi.
Onassis and Papadopolus were planning what they called the "greatest business" of Greece. This project involved building an oil refinery, shipyards, power plants, and several aluminum facilities. This project was officially named the Omega Project.
The Omega Project was heavily criticized by people like Helen Vilachos, a journalist from Athens who said that Greece was being sold as a "genuine bargain".
By this time, and after his last marriage Onassis had lost any sense of proportion. In the words of an executive high up in Alcoa, "He seems to think that we have to agree with anything in order to receive a dinner invite with him and Jacqueline aboard the Christina. Obviously he saw in that marriage a way to boost his career."
The negotiations lasted for months and ended with Onassis losing part of the project to his arch enemy Niarchos.
Partly the failure was due to Onassis OPM formula which created opposition from important people like Ioannis-Orlandos Rodinos, Deputy Minister of the National Economy, who severely opposed Onassis' offers in preference to Niarchos' ones.
Personal life
Marriages and family
Athina Livanos
Onassis married Athina Livanos, daughter of shipping magnate Stavros Livanos, on December 28 1946; their son, Alexander (April 30 1948 – January 23 1973), and daughter Christina (December 11 1950 – November 19 1988), were both born in New York City..
To Onassis this marriage was more than just a dream come true. It was a punch in the stomach for his father-in-law and the rest of the traditional Greeks who held Onassis in very low esteem due to his commercial tactics, like sailing with a Panama flag.
During the wedding Costa Gratsos said:
- "Now you’re avenged"
- "It’s not enough, Costa," said Ari, "I want to smash these son**" (talking about the richest Greeks of the world that were present at the party.) This type of behavior and competitiveness was typical of him, evident throughout his entire life.
After their divorce, Athina married John Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford. She later married Stavros Niarchos, her late sister's widower and Onassis's arch shipping rival.
Onassis later married Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
Maria Callas
Despite the fact they were both married, Onassis and opera diva Maria Callas embarked on a notorious affair. They met each other in 1957 during a party in Venice promoted by Elsa Maxwell. After this first encounter, Ari said to Spyros Skouras: "There [was] just a natural curiosity; after all, we were the most famous Greeks alive in the world". According to Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis by Nicholas Gage, Callas gave birth to their child, a boy, who died hours later on March 30 1960.
That Callas was really the love of his life is suggested by the short-lived happiness he experienced with Kennedy (he tried to end the marriage early but was unable to without committing an egregious offense, according to Greek law at the time), and by the many times he tried to see Callas while married to Kennedy. He flew to Paris to see Callas after the death of his son Alexander in an airplane crash. Callas responded, "If only our son had lived," referring to the child they are believed to have had together in 1960. Onassis never recovered from the death of his son.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Onassis ended his relationship with Callas to marry Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy, on October 20 1968. It was said that Kennedy insisted on marriage rather than an affair so as to avoid upsetting her children.
According to Peter Evans, Jacqueline received US$3 million for her and $1m for each son. Using a tax of 8% a year it would be equivalent to $65m and $22m respectively in 2008 value. After Onassis's death she would receive $150,000 ($3.25m using the same calculus) each year until the end of her life. The whole marital contract was discussed with Teddy Kennedy and later reviewed by André Meyer, Jacqueline's financial consultant.
Ari used to broadcast his sexual life with Jacqueline, as seen by this statement made to a close friend in Athens right after their marriage
Five times in one night... She's superior to every woman that I've already met.
Sexuality
In a 2007 interview, director Franco Zeffirelli said that Onassis was bisexual, allegedly making a pass at him. Peter Evans in his 1986 version of Onassis' biography (a project halted when the latter married Jacqueline Kennedy, and revived right before Onassis' death in 1975), mentions a similar occurrence during Onassis' early life in Smyrna, where he supposedly got sexually involved with a male lieutenant from the Turkish army.
Death and legacy
Onassis died at age 69, on March 15 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, of bronchial pneumonia, a complication of the myasthenia gravis that he had been suffering from during the last years of his life. According to his will, his daughter Christina was to inherit 55% of the Onassis fortune while the other 45% were used as funds for the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation set up to honor his son Alexander Onassis. This 45% was the share that his son Alexander would have inherited, had he not died in 1973. Jackie Kennedy also received her share of the estate settling for a reported $10,000,000 ($26 million according to other sources) which was negotiated by her former brother-in-law Teddy Kennedy (this amount would later grow to several hundred million under the financial stewardship of her companion Maurice Tempelsman). Christina's share has since passed to her only child Athina, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world.
Popular culture
During his lifetime Onassis was one of the richest men in the world and one of the most famous. Just like Rockefeller his name has become synonymous with "a rich person". He is referenced in the Tintin album Flight 714, where billionaire Lazlo Carreidas is bidding (over the telephone) up against Onassis at an art auction. He does this by telephone. In The Simpsons episode "Homer Defined", Mr. Burns introduces Homer to his Greek billionaire friend Aristotle "Ari" Amadopoulos, another reference to Onassis. Greek author Panos Karnezis modelled the protagonist of his 2007 novel The Birthday Party, Marco Timoleon, on Onassis.
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
