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Walter Annenberg, media tycoon and ambassador, died October 1st, aged 94
ONE of the eternal mysteries of life is why so many men with pots of money want to have more of it. With Walter Annenberg, the better question was why he should have wanted to give the stuff away. This he did, by the shovelful.
Still, he had to make it first. Although he started out, as he said himself, "with an awful lot handed to me", it was not all in the form of dollar bills. The silver spoon bequeathed by his rags-to-riches father was laden with debt by the time the old man died. Worse, it was stained by disgrace: in 1940, Moses Annenberg had been sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion. Walter was haunted by the memory for the rest of his days--not least perhaps because the government, in return for a plea of guilty from the father, dropped similar charges against the son.
In any event, as a minus-millionaire on a grand scale--the net $2.9m owed by his father's estate in 1942 would be worth $32m today--Mr Annenberg had every reason to get his act together. And this he did. Though he had dropped out of university, he had already been quick in paying off his father's unpaid taxes. Now he was to transform his father's businesses, among them the Philadelphia...