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James Roosevelt, the son of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, was born on December 23, 1907 in New York City. The oldest son, he was the second of the Roosevelts' six children, only five of whom survived to adulthood; their third child, named Franklin, Jr. (as was their fifth child and fourth of five sons), was born on March 18, 1909 but died on November 7th of that year.
Following in the footsteps of his father, he was educated at the Groton School (Class of 1926) and Harvard College ('30). (He worked a stint in a Canadian paper mill in the summer between Groton and Harvard.) After graduating from Harvard, he enrolled in the Boston University School of Law and worked as peddling insurance. He eventually abandoned his law studies as he was making a huge amount of money as an insurance agent, founding his own agency, Roosevelt & Sargent. He also served as a radio announcer in 1933.
James was close to his father and throughout his life, serving as a political adviser and a campaign manager for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts during FDR's first presidential bid in 1932. In April 1936, he left his business interests behind (though retained his half-interest in his agency) to take over some of the duties of his father's secretary, Louis McHenry Howell, who had died. James essentially functioned as his father's press secretary. He was officially appointed administrative assistant to the President in January 1937 and was appointed Secretary to the President in July of that year. (The position of Secretary to the President was akin to the modern position of White House Chief of Staff.)
James Roosevelt resigned his position after the November 1938 elections, after being buffeted by allegations that he had steered business to his insurance agency while working at the White House. At the time, most politicians (including FDR's Vice President John Nance Garner) and Americans considered FDR a "lame duck" due to the informal "two term limit" for presidents, so there didn't seem much future in Washington.
James moved to Los Angeles, California to work for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn, serving as a vice president of Samuel Goldwyn productions. He eventually established his own production company, "Globe Productions", in 1939 while still with Goldwyn. Globe primarily produced shorts, but in 1941, he produced through Globe a feature film based on a radio show, Pot o' Gold (1941), starring James Stewart and Paulette Goddard. (He had quit Goldwyn in late 1940.)
In November 1936, Roosevelt had been commissioned a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel so he could serve as a military aide to his father. As the war clouds lowered upon Europe, he resigned the commission in 1939 to become a captain in the Marines Corps Reserves. World War Two convinced his father to run for a third term. Before the U.S. entered the war, James served as a liaison officer with British forces fighting the Axis powers in the Middle East, then served with Wild Bill Donovan, FDR's Coordinator of Information who was overseeing the integration of the intelligence services.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the U.S. into the Second World War, the Marines Corps honored James's request to be placed on combat duty. He became part of the Corps' commando force, the Marine Raiders, eventually serving as second-in-command of the 2nd Raider Battalion. He earned the Navy Cross, the second-highest military medal for gallantry, in the August 1942 raid on Makin atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Subsequently, he commanded the newly created 4th Marine Raiders, but was taken off of combat duty due to medical problems in February 1943, being assigned staff positions. He won the Silver Star while part of the U.S. Army invasion of Makin in November 1943. He had obtained the rank of full colonel when he went off active duty in October 1945, but continued as a member of the Marine Corps Reserves. He retired from the Reserves in 1959 with the rank of Brigadier General.
After the war, Roosevelt moved back to California and briefly returned to radio broadcasting, going on the air as a commentator in 1946. That same year, he reentered politics in the Golden State as chairman of the California Democratic Party. He eventually was ousted as chairman when he wooed General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower to run against President 'Harry S Truman', his father's successor, for the 1948 Democratic Presidential nomination.
After that debacle, another one loomed when he tried his hand in elective politics, just like his younger brother Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who had successfully won a seat in Congress from New York in a special election in 1949. James Roosevelt won the 1950 California Democratic gubernatorial nomination but was beaten by popular incumbent Earl Warren in a two-to-one landslide. Four years later, he was luckier when he ran for Congress in the safely Democratic 26th District, getting elected to the first of six consecutive terms. In Congress, the liberal Democrat denounced red-baiter Joseph McCarthy at a time when few were willing to do so and was the sole Congressman to vote against funding the House Un-American Activities Committee. His proudest achievement in his career in the House was working for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, lobbying for the inclusion of fair employment protections.
While still a a member of Congress, he challenged incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, a conservative, in the Democratic primary, but lost. He resigned his seat in October 1965, in the first year of his sixth two-year term, after President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him as a a delegate to UNESCO. He quit UNESCO in December 1966 to take a position as vice president and director Investors Overseas Services Management Co. (IOS), Bernard Cornfeld's very successful Switzerland-based mutual fund company.
While living in Geneva, Switzerland in 1969, his third wife Gladys stabbed him while they were arguing. IOS eventually collapsed in a welter of fraud and he was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (an organization set up by his father). The lawsuit was dismissed in 1973 when he pledged in a court order not to violate securities laws. As part of the settlement with the SEC, he claimed he had committed no wrongdoing while at IOS.
The previous year, he had angered many Democrats when he endorsed the reelection of Richard Nixon, though he later campaigned for Jimmy Carter in '76. Eight years later, the backslid Roosevelt endorsed the reelection of former Democrat 'Ronald Reagan', a man who had revered his father.
He courted controversy again in the late 1980s when he headed the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an organization that claimed a membership of 1.8 million. Critics claimed that the Committee used scare tactics while soliciting contributions from senior citizens, and Roosevelt went to Washington in 1987 to defend the organization before Congress.
James Roosevelt married four times (one less than his brother FDR, Jr.) and had seven children. Suffering from Parkinson's disease and the effects of a stroke, he died on August 13, 1991 in Newport Beach, California at the age of 83, the last surviving issue of Franklin and Eleanor.
