Elliott Roosevelt (September 23, 1910 – October 27, 1990) was an American aviation official and wartime officer in the United States Army Air Forces, reaching the rank of brigadier general. He was a son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
As a reconnaissance commander, Roosevelt pioneered new techniques in night photography and meteorological data-gathering, but his claims to a distinguished record on combat missions have been largely discounted. After the war ended, he faced an investigation by the United States Congress on charges of corruption, including accusations that he had recommended the purchase of the Hughes F-11 reconnaissance aircraft ahead of a Lockheed model that was believed to be superior. Ultimately, he was found blameless.
Roosevelt published a book about his attendance at several major Allied war conferences and a controversial exposé of his parents' private life. He also wrote 22 mystery novels. Besides writing, his career embraced broadcasting, ranching, politics and business. He served as the 24th mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, from 1965 to 1967.
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Early life
Elliott Roosevelt was a son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962). He was named after his maternal grandfather, Elliott Roosevelt (1860–1894). His siblings were Anna (1906–1975), James (1907–1991), Franklin Jr. (1914–1988), and John (1916–1981).
An older brother, Franklin, died in 1909 as an infant.
Roosevelt attended the Hun School of Princeton and went to Groton School, as did his brothers. He refused to attend Harvard College. Instead, he worked a series of briefly held jobs, beginning with advertising and settling in broadcasting in the 1930s, including a management position in the Hearst radio chain.
Military service
Roosevelt had always been interested in flight, and in 1933 he briefly served as general manager of Gilpin Airlines of Glendale, California, a small airline owned by Rep. Isabella Greenway (D-AZ), a close friend of the family. Later that year he became aviation editor for the William Randolph Hearst newspapers. After controversial involvement in the Air Mail Scandal and a secret attempt to sell bombers in civilian disguise to the USSR, he was hired as vice president of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce (see Aerospace Industries Association), a post he held until 1935. That year, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas and became involved in broadcasting and farming.
Roosevelt received a captain's commission in the United States Army Air Corps on 23 September 1940, his 30th birthday. His appointment in the middle of the 1940 election campaign caused a furious political row, although General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of the Air Corps, asserted that there was no pressure or nepotism involved. After brief service at Wright Field, Ohio, he took an intelligence course and served with the 21st Reconnaissance Squadron at the new U.S. facility in Gander, Newfoundland.
In the summer of 1941, Roosevelt searched for and located air base sites in Labrador, Baffin Island, and Greenland and reported on conditions in Iceland and along the rest of the embryonic North Atlantic ferry route. During this time, he coordinated closely with FDR, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Arnold. Elliott Roosevelt was the first to interest Churchill in American bases in Africa (including Bathurst in the Gambia), a step for which his father was not yet ready. He served as a procurement specialist, navigator, and intelligence and reconnaissance officer and rose to brigadier general by January 1945. Despite having poor eyesight and being classified 4-F (unfit), he also became a pilot and reportedly flew 89 combat missions by the time of his inactivation from the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in August 1945.
While Roosevelt operated from Gander in August 1941, FDR detached him and his brother Franklin Jr. to attend the Atlantic Conference (Atlantic Charter) in Argentia between Churchill and FDR, which was nearby. In January 1943, Roosevelt accompanied FDR as a military attaché to the Casablanca meeting and the subsequent Cairo and Tehran Conferences in November–December 1943. At a dinner during the Tehran Conference, Joseph Stalin proposed to round up and shoot some 50,000 German officers and technicians after the war in order to permanently incapacitate Germany. Roosevelt spoke in favor of the proposal which earned him Stalin's cheers and the vocal and lasting hostility of Churchill who said "I would rather be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself".
Warplanes purchasing scandal
In August 1943, Colonel Roosevelt was asked by the Chief of the Army Air Forces, General Henry H. Arnold, to investigate several reconnaissance aircraft under development to select a successor to the Lockheed P-38 Lightning (F-4 and F-5 in the recon version), but the reason for Arnold's choice of Roosevelt was not made public. Roosevelt assembled a group of five air officers, including veteran RAF reconnaissance pilot Wing Commander D.W. Steventon. Upon their arrival in Los Angeles, Roosevelt and his group were met by eight limousines arranged by John W. Meyer, a publicist and former nightclub owner who was employed by Hughes Aircraft Company. On his first day in town, Roosevelt was taken by Meyer to the Hollywood film studio of Warner Bros. and introduced to Faye Emerson, an actress with whom Roosevelt was linked romantically (the two would eventually marry). Over the next three days, Roosevelt and his group were seen with Meyer in Hollywood nightclubs and at parties in luxurious mansions in the company of aspiring actresses paid $100–400 per night by Meyer (equivalent to $1861–$7442 in 2025).
On August 11, Howard Hughes showed the group his Culver City aircraft factory, then personally flew them to see the private-venture Hughes D-2, an experimental twin-engine wooden aircraft then being test-flown at a Hughes facility at Harper Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. The aircraft had already been turned down ten months earlier by Chief of Army Air Forces Material Division Oliver P. Echols, for being inadequate for military service; it was considered unlikely to become successful for numerous reasons, wooden construction and Hughes's limited facilities among them. Roosevelt and his committee, however, fervently recommended the D-2. When Roosevelt returned to the East Coast of the United States, Meyer hosted another round of parties and nightclub outings in Manhattan and arranged for Faye Emerson to accompany Roosevelt. Among many favors, Meyer gave Emerson $132 (equivalent to $2,456 in 2025) worth of nylon stockings, a rare treat during wartime rationing.
On August 20, Roosevelt sent a report to General Arnold recommending immediate purchase of the D-2. On September 1, Arnold ordered Echols to contract with Hughes for an all-metal reconnaissance aircraft "against my better judgment and the advice of my staff." During these two weeks, Arnold, Elliott Roosevelt, and FDR conferred frequently at the White House, and it is documented that Elliott Roosevelt complained to his father about Arnold's reluctance to order the aircraft.
Political career
Roosevelt was active in the Democratic Party as early as 1932, when he attended the Democratic National Convention that nominated his father for president. He was later elected a delegate to the 1936 and 1940 DNCs representing Texas, and at the latter convention attempted to secure the nomination of fellow Texan Jesse H. Jones for vice president.
After his father's death, Roosevelt began to drift away from the Democratic Party. In 1946, he endorsed American Laborite Eugene P. Connolly over Democrat Daniel Flynn for Congress in New York's 21st district. In 1947, he gave a speech at a sold-out "Crisis Meeting" hosted by the Progressive Citizens of America at Madison Square Garden in which he attacked the Truman Doctrine for threatening world peace. He further criticized Truman's domestic policies as leading the nation toward another depression, and encouraged PCA members to storm the 1948 DNC and nominate former Vice President Henry A. Wallace for president.
In March 1948 however, Roosevelt abruptly changed course and joined the Draft Eisenhower movement alongside his brother Franklin, denouncing Wallace's proposed third party. Journalist Curtis D. MacDougall posits this sudden shift in opinion was likely the result of "economic pressure" from his mother.
Later life
After FDR's death in 1945, Roosevelt and his family moved to Top Cottage to be near his mother, who considered him her favorite child. She gave him financial assistance throughout her life. In 1947, Eleanor bought from the FDR estate Val-Kill farms, the home she lived in after FDR's death, and deeded the property to Elliott Roosevelt. After he moved to Miami Beach and Havana with his fourth wife in 1952, his brother John bought the Hyde Park tract. Later, the property became the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.
Roosevelt pursued many different careers during his life, including owning a pre-war radio station network (Texas State Network) in Texas and living as a rancher. He again moved to Florida and was elected mayor of Miami Beach in 1965, then was unseated two years later. After a business career marked by ties to the national crime syndicate, he was investigated by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) under Senator Henry M. Jackson in 1973.
During the PSI hearings on corruption, Roosevelt was accused of involvement in a 1968 plot to assassinate Bahamian prime minister Lynden Pindling as revenge for Pindling's refusal to grant a gambling license to a criminal associate of Roosevelt and mob boss Meyer Lansky. Roosevelt and "alleged mobster front man" Michael McLaney (another known associate of Lansky) offered Florida Mafia figure and purported hitman Louis Mastriana the sum of US$100,000 (equivalent to $926,000 in 2025) to assassinate Pindling.
Roosevelt gave Mastriana a signed check for US$10,000 (equivalent to $93,000 in 2025) as a down payment on the hit. Mastriana taped all of his conversation with Roosevelt, allegedly using equipment from the U.S. Postal Service. Roosevelt maintained that he was innocent and that Mastriana was lying.
Roosevelt emigrated to Portugal in 1972, but left for England after the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in 1974. He moved back to the United States, living in Bellevue, Washington; Indian Wells, California; and Scottsdale, Arizona. As Roosevelt approached his eightieth year, his final ambition was to "outlive James." However, Roosevelt died at age 80 of heart and liver failure. Brother James died 10 months later in August 1991.
Author and biographer
Elliott authored numerous books, including a mystery series in which his mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, is the detective, as Murder and the First Lady (1984).
Roosevelt described his experiences with his father during five important war conferences in his best-selling book As He Saw It. He also edited FDR: His Personal Letters, published after the war in four volumes. With James Brough, Roosevelt wrote a highly personal book about his parents called The Roosevelts of Hyde Park: An Untold Story, in which he revealed details about the sexual lives of his parents, including his father's relationships with mistress Lucy Mercer and secretary Marguerite ("Missy") LeHand as well as graphic details surrounding the 1921 paralytic illness that crippled his father. Published in 1973, the biography also contains valuable insights into FDR's run for vice-president, his rise to the governorship of New York, and his capture of the presidency in 1932, particularly with the help of Louis McHenry Howe. A sequel to An Untold Story with James Brough, published in 1975 and titled A Rendezvous With Destiny, carried the Roosevelt saga to the end of World War II. Mother R.: Eleanor Roosevelt's Untold Story, also with Brough, was published in 1977; The Conservators, a political book, in 1982. Eleanor Roosevelt, with Love: A Centenary Remembrance, came out in 1984.
Marriages and children
Roosevelt was married five times:
On January 16, 1932, he married Elizabeth Browning Donner (1911–1980), daughter of William Henry Donner. They had one son, William Donner Roosevelt (1932–2003), an investment banker and philanthropist. On July 17, 1933, Donner filed a cross petition charging Roosevelt with "extreme cruelty" to a court at Minden, Nevada, and they were divorced.
On July 22, 1933, in Burlington, Iowa, he married Ruth Josephine Googins (1908–1974). They had three children: Ruth Chandler Roosevelt (1934–2018), Elliott Roosevelt Jr. (b. 1936), a Texas oilman, and David Boynton Roosevelt (1942–2022). Roosevelt and Googins were divorced in March 1944. She married Harry T. Eidson on June 23, 1944.
On December 3, 1944, at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, he married actress Faye Emerson. They were divorced on January 17, 1950. She died of stomach cancer in 1983 in Spain.
On March 15, 1951, in Miami Beach, Florida, he married Minnewa Bell (Gray Burnside Ross). They were divorced in 1960. Minnewa died in 1983.
On November 3, 1960, in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, he married Patricia Peabody Whitehead. Her four children, James M. Whitehead, Ford Whitehead, Gretchen Whitehead, and David Macauley Whitehead, were all adopted by Roosevelt. The couple's only child together, Livingston Delano Roosevelt, died in 1962 as an infant.
Military awards
Roosevelt's military decorations and awards include: