Chapter 1: How did H.L. Hunt start his journey to becoming the richest man?
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history. And this week, we are about to start part two of our episodes on the former richest man in the world, H.L. Hunt. And when we left him off, his dad and his beloved older brother had just died. He had been saved by a magical prostitute after proving supernaturally good at sex.
And he's in Arkansas starting a farm, you know, using the money he'd inherited and the money he'd taken from fleecing all of his friends at poker. He is going to try to make something of himself.
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I seen something in the road, I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag, and there was a pool of blood.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Hunt face while farming cotton?
Right. Right. That's just as far as I'm convinced, a pretty universal truth with these these kinds of assholes. I found an article from The Nation from 1964. The author of that article claims the explanation that he gambled to get his first oil field got into print for the first time in 1950 in a British newspaper, but it has been repeated many times since. Hunt denies it all.
And I don't know what the truth is here. Whatever the truth, Hunt is going to continue operating gambling establishments for the next couple decades. He makes a fortune on the Arkansas oil boom and is said to have been worth $600,000 by the time he's 25, which, you know, by the standards, like if you turn that into modern money, he's a multimillionaire pretty much by the time he's in his mid-20s.
Now, he's going to lose all of that money not long after this. They'll make even more back, right? He's not what you'd call a good father at any point in time, especially in this period. I can imagine all that cheating. Yeah. All the cheating. He gambles constantly. He doesn't spend time raising his kids. When he has free time, when he's not working on the farm, he's gambling, right?
And then eventually he's gambling or he's speculating on oil field leases, right? Yeah. But he never just has downtime with the kids. He's always gambling, right?
During the early years before he leaves Arkansas to pursue oil fields in Louisiana and then Texas, his kids tell regular stories of him just being gone all the time and like mom needing to find someone to watch them when she had to do something because he's playing poker, right? And she hates him gambling. She thinks that him gambling is the root of all of their problems.
Now, to be fair, she's not right. Like, she blames him gambling on them going bankrupt, like, two or three times. And he goes bankrupt because of the legitimate businesses. Like, first because of his farm. And then I think, like, a couple of times he's not quite bankrupt, but he loses a lot of money on, like, oil speculation. Gambling is a really reliable way for them to make money. Mm-hmm.
Or at least I should say the card gambling is not what is bad for their finances. His gambling on oil speculation fucks them over a couple of times. Yeah. Right.
But his ego is fed by the gambling. And that's the thing, too, is like that makes him reinforce that he's the most special. And what makes it feel like, yeah, I can go out and sleep with whoever I want and do whatever because I can just.
Exactly. Boom.
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Chapter 3: How did gambling influence Hunt's financial recovery?
But he spends months down in Tampa, you know, searching for more deals, working on that deal. And hanging out a lot with Franny Atai, with this waitress, right? She's a wannabe musician. She's, like, a singer. And so he gets really into writing musicals. He convinces himself that, like, he's a great writer.
And in fact that, like, oh, all these other writers, all these professional writers are idiots. Like, I bet because I'm so smart, I could be the best playwright ever if I just devoted some time to it. So he, like... Becomes convinced he's going to be like the biggest thing on Broadway. He goes to a show on Broadway once around this period of time.
And he's like, I'm going to make the best musical that's ever been made. Has he ever been to New York? He's been once. Yeah, he's been once. He sees a show on Broadway. That's what convinces him he's going to be the greatest musician or the greatest playwright of all time. And so for a while, he gets really into that. And he writes a bunch of songs that sounded terrible.
And they're primarily songs for Frania, right? Because he's in love with her at this point. He marries her on Armistice Day, 1925. Now, you may note, he never divorced his first wife. Nor did he break up with her, nor did he tell her that he was done. Frania, by the way, does not know that he's cheating. She has no idea he has another wife.
He does not tell her he has a wife and multiple children. He's lying to her, too. She does not bear any responsibility here. She thinks she's met a guy and fallen in love with him, and he marries her, and they start having kids together. He buys her a house, and he just starts raising a second secret family in Florida.
Oh, my God.
He and Franny will ultimately have four children.
jamaican i can say that i'm okay a lot of a lot of people do that i know but it's just like one family one family's not enough let's just have two yeah two i really double down on my family neglect look two neglected families makes a non-neglected family that's the way it works right if you neglect enough families it loops around to you being a caring father
Oh, just like a numbers game. It's like his gambling. He's like, at one point, someone's going to have to like me.
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Chapter 4: What role did Hunt's family dynamics play in his life?
That is going to make a lot of money. Jesus.
He's going to be so annoying.
He's going to be so fucking annoying. This is going to really allow him to be a lot more of a piece of shit. And we'll talk about that. But you know who else is a piece of shit? Nope. I love our sponsors. Here they are. Killing me.
Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy? Not quite.
On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their Between Songs banter.
Who's the worst singer in the group? The worst? yeah me is there anything to the idea that because you're from harvard uh you only got in because your parents made a huge donation to the group the yard birds right that's the name the harvard yard but they're open do you have a name suggestion we're open since you guys are middle-aged uh one erection
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You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program.
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Chapter 5: How did Hunt transition from farming to oil speculation?
Wow. If you want a little hint about, by the time the U.S. enters, how fucked the Axis is from the start of that portion of World War II, one guy in the U.S. has more oil than all of the Axis powers have access to. One guy. Once that, they could never have won once the U.S. got involved. Yeah.
When you get the US and Russia, so all of the money and resources and all of the people, these people were so fucking fucked. HL Hunt has more oil than all of your asses.
Just drop him on the board, just like, we have a Hulk, we have a Hunt.
We've got our fucking Hunt, yeah. Now, that also, by the way, should answer the question. I shouldn't have to explain at this point. How did this guy become the richest man in the world? When World War Two started, he owned all of the oil. How do you think that worked for him? Yeah, that's my that's my like business hack advice is own all of the oil on Earth when a world war starts.
Write that down, everyone. That'll well, when that world war starts. Might not help you the same way if a third one kicks off, folks. So I would be remiss if I didn't point out, though, that owning the most productive oil wells on Earth during World War II was not Hunt's only business in the early to mid-1940s. His FBI file notes that...
As of 1943, he was alleged to be the operator of a private horse race and gambling bookie establishment near his office in Dallas. So he continues running a casino, but at this point it's just for fun, right? It's love of the game.
He doesn't need the money.
Vibes. Like he absolutely and he'll get in trouble a couple of times. There'll be some like investigations because he stays involved in a lot of illegal gambling stuff as an adult. He'll nearly get in trouble a couple of times, but it's just for it's just for shits and giggles at this stage. Now, obviously.
Up to this point, this is like a dude who I don't think is very pleasant, but there's not enough to make him a bastard. You know, at this stage in the oil and gas industry, he doesn't know about climate change. That's certainly not like the widespread scientific consensus. So we can't really get him on that. He hasn't done anything. He's a shitty dad and he's bigamously married.
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Chapter 6: What strategies did Hunt use to accumulate wealth in the oil industry?
But in this case, they are literally in play. But I love it. I do love how it's like they have like his son ends up doing like a rival oil company the same way, like his brother and his dad had the rival banks. It's just like fathers and sons. Yeah.
Great succession. Exactly. It's so Murdoch coded the way that he was like, yeah, I'm just going to absorb you into the coalition, whether you want to be independent or not. It's so Murdoch.
Oh, you don't have any choice in this. Yeah.
Yeah.
So he winds up, Hassy winds up in a military hospital. And when his dad comes for a visit, Hassy like charges him and tries to beat him up. Like he basically rushes his dad. As soon as his dad like walks into the room and tries to assault him, he has to be restrained by guards. H.L. Hunt tells his wife after this, the boy is too high spirited, too sensitive.
He's always been too sensitive and reckless. Why? There's nothing wrong with the genes in that boy. He comes from the finest stock. Problem is, his genes are good. They come from me. It's got to be that, you know, he made his personality. He made choices to be too sensitive. You know, that's what's wrong with him.
And when he says this, his daughter, Margaret, his oldest child, who's there, turns to him and replies, you destroyed Hassy. Nobody but you. You've gotten away with a kind of murder. And it's time you faced up to that.
eldest daughter that's some good fan fiction right there that's it that's got his ass oh living up to the margaret name we love it yeah living up to that margaret name and you know who else is named margaret not the sponsors of our podcast maybe but we don't know they could be what if it's a promo for cool people do cool stuff again they could be could be not impossible no way to know here's that it's possible be cool
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