One of the most powerful figures in American publishing in the 20th century, Walter Annenberg, who was also influential in the Republican party as a backer of President Reagan, died last Tuesday, aged 94.
He was a major collector of art and a philanthropist who sold his media empire to Rupert Murdoch for $3 billion in 1988.
He was also briefly and memorably US ambassador to Britain in the early 1970s. The irony of his brief career as a diplomat in London was that this deeply Anglophile publisher acquired an immediate reputation as an amiable bumbler barely able to speak the language.
In a television documentary, he was shown telling Queen Elizabeth that he lived in the embassy "subject to some discomfiture as a result of the need for elements of refurbishing". This tormented prose dogged his five-year stint in London from 1969.
That image was flawed. He was an extremely shrewd and powerful figure in America, who pulled not only the strings of the family magazine empire, but those of the federal government. In politics, he played a highly significant role in Ronald Reagan's accession to the presidency. In business, his greatest coup was to sell his Triangle Publishing Company to Rupert Murdoch at the top of the market in 1988.
The $3 billion price came near to sinking the Australian's media empire.
The family fortune was started by his father, Moses, who arrived in Chicago as an East Prussian immigrant and clawed his way up the business ladder of the Hearst newspaper chain. Moses then started his own business by buying a racing paper and expanded into providing telegraphed racing results to illegal bookmakers all over the US. Any one running such activities in the Chicago of the 1930s was likely to make odd friends. The FBI moved in on Moses Annenberg's racing wire monopoly and closed it down in 1939. He was simultaneously convicted of income-tax evasion and died two years later in prison.
At 31, Walter, the only son among 10 children, was left to pay off $ 4 million in tax liabilities and rescue what he could of the Triangle company, whose assets included the Philadelphia Inquirer. He moved into the expanding world of broadcasting and, over the next decade, bought 19 radio and TV stations.
With Triangle on a sound footing, he demonstrated his media acumen in 1944 with the creation of Seventeen, a teen magazine edited by his sister. It was widely derided as "The Acne And The Ecstasy", but opened an immensely profitable, untapped market for advertisers and brought in money by the barrow load.
His next coup came in 1953 with the launch of TV Guide. Dismissed by industry experts as irrelevant, it became the first US magazine to achieve 1 million circulation and now sells 17 million and brings in well over $100m a year.
Annenberg's soaring income allowed him two major indulgences. He started to finance right-wing politicians and he moved heavily into the fine art market. He became a large contributor to Richard Nixon's campaigns and his appointment to the London embassy was one of the rewards.
He was a dreadful ambassador and his gaffes were legendary, but he contributed generously to such local British causes as the rehabilitation of the prime minister's country residence at Chequers and, later, to the National Gallery. This philanthropy was recognised in 1976 with an honorary knighthood.
His political patronage extended to a former head of the American Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan. With the Colorado brewer Joseph Coors and the department store owner Alfred Bloomingdale, Annenberg bought Reagan his California ranch and helped finance his successful campaign for the governorship of California.
At the end of Reagan's gubernatorial term in 1974, the trio planned his assault on the White House. They were playing for high stakes and did so patiently. Reagan's initial run in the 1976 primaries was simply to establish him on the national scene. During Jimmy Carter's presidency, Annenberg and other backers financed Reagan's four years of appearances on the "rubber chicken circuit" and built up his vital campaign infrastructure. Helped by the visible inadequacies of the Democratic incumbent, Reagan romped home to the presidency in 1980.
Some of the kitchen cabinet's rewards became visible over the next eight years. The Environmental Protection Agency was, for all practical purposes, gifted to Joe Coors, who had a severe problem disposing of toxic wastes from his breweries. His proteges were eventually driven from office in a welter of scandal, but not before wreaking havoc with the environmental laws.
Other benefits were less apparent. President Reagan spent each new year with the Annenbergs on their palatial estate in Palm Springs, California. It became evident that all aspects of national policy were discussed at these and other social sessions.
Mrs Annenberg became the White House chief of protocol and Walter contributed tax-free funds to a scheme organised by Mrs Reagan. None of it was illegal, but it was certainly influence-peddling of a high order.
Annenberg disposed of his publishing empire, by then one of the largest in the world, in 1988, taking a personal share of about $1 billion. He had spent much of his life building a vast collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. These, conservatively valued at $1 billion, will now go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York instead of to the Museum of Art in his home town of Philadelphia. "I happen to believe that strength should go to strength," he said.
He was listed by Forbes magazine in 2002 as the world's 87th richest person, with a personal fortune of $4 billion. Among awards given to him were the Medal of Freedom in 1986 from President Reagan and the Alfred Dupont Award for pioneering education via television.
He had a son, Roger, and daughter, Wallis, with his first wife, Veronica, whom he divorced in 1950. Their son died in 1962. His second wife, Leonore, was at his bedside when he died this week.
Walter Hubert Annenberg: born March 13th, 1908; died October 1st, 2002