Sons in San Francisco

At No. 1 Montgomery St., San Francisco, stands the pillared portico of Crocker First National Bank, a rich, conservative institution that is something of a landmark in West Coast banking. It was founded as a private banking house in 1883 by the late Charles Crocker, one of the quadrumvirate that built Southern Pacific RR.* He wanted to leave his son a bank. Son William Henry Crocker began as a clerk, was made president ten years later. Meantime the bank had taken out a national charter, and for the next 40 years prospered exceedingly on the best West Coast accounts. In 1926 it gained more fat accounts by merging with First National.

One day last week President Crocker's cronies gave him a big luncheon in the Pacific Union Club to celebrate his 75th birthday. As conservative as his bank, old Mr. Crocker is a stanch Republican whose years have been filled with civic duties. He headed the committee that welcomed Charles Evans Hughes when that GOPresidential nominee made his ill-fated visit to California in 1916. He was vice president of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, served on the board of regents of the University of California for two decades. In poor health of late, Mr. Crocker has been spending more & more time on his 523-acre estate with its 67-room house in swank Burlingame.

Day after last week's birthday party Mr. Crocker retired to his bank's chairmanship and his older son was named to succeed him as president. William Willard ("Willie") Crocker became a vice president in 1919 after a year's training tour through Manhattan's Bankers Trust Co. Like his father, he went to Yale (Class of 1915), earned a crew Y, a Phi Beta Kappa key, a tap on the back from Scroll & Keys. After a turn at the Harvard Law School, he drove an ambulance in France, attended a French artillery school, transferred to the U. S. Army after the U. S. entered the War.

Willie Crocker has never been tied to his desk by his duties, though he has not played polo since the 1933 bank moratorium. Now 42, stocky, stoutish, convivial, he romps through his work, has plenty of time for such fun as golf, tennis, visits to Pebble Beach, the snowy Sierras, Tahiti. His home is a 103-acre chunk of his father's original estate equipped with an Italian villa, swimming pool, squash courts, garage with a Cadillac and two Oldsmobiles. Son Crocker also goes in for civic virtue, helped establish the San Francisco Museum of Art, for a while helped run Californians, Inc., booster organization. He was largely responsible for the First National merger, engineering the deal after a few brisk conferences while his father was in Europe.

Crocker First National is a highly personal institution. With the exception of the elder Mr. Crocker, all officials sit on an open raised platform at the end of the marble banking room. Executives wander about, chat at length, wave to customers below. Preferring a little office just off the platform to his luxurious quarters upstairs, old Mr. Crocker trots in & out, beaming through his waggling beard.

Crocker First National never loses money, has resources of $142,000,000, handles in addition to the Crocker oil, real estate and railroad interests such lucrative accounts as Matson Navigation, Pacific Gas & Electric, Standard Oil of California, Hawaiian Pineapple. Its dividend rate is $14 and its stock sells for $300 per share.

On the same day, at the same hour, that Crocker directors were naming Willie Crocker as his father's successor, another meeting was held four blocks away at No. 1 Powell St. to up another banker's son to another banking presidency. The father: Amadeo Peter Giannini. The son : Lawrence Mario Giannini. The presidency: Bank of America's. Except for parentage, promotion and position, the parallel stopped there.

The Giannini bank has more than 400 branches throughout California, has deposits of more than $1,000,000,000, is the biggest U. S. bank outside Manhattan. Mario Giannini is operating head, second-in-command when his famed father is there, chief executive officer when his father is absent, which is about five months of the year. Slight, baldish, Mario Giannini is at 41 a veteran of one of the classic wars of U. S. financial history--the long Depression fight in which old Amadeo Giannini lost, then regained control of Transamerica Corp., owner of Bank of America. Son Mario has a severe Latin countenance, a subtle, acute intelligence, keeps his fingers on every phase of his big bank's operations. Among his associates he is liked and admired but. reserved, taciturn, poor at public relations,, he has gained a host of bitter enemies.

Father Giannini gave his son & heir a thorough grooming for the job he now holds, starting him as a clearing clerk in 1918, marching him from department to department. With no formal college education, Son Mario studied law on the side, earned a degree from Hastings College in 1920. Lame, often ill, he works into the early morning hours at his modest home in Hillsborough about 20 miles from his office. Sometimes he asks businessmen to come out in the morning so that he can talk to them on the way into town. His chauffeur drives his Cadillac at a terrific clip, which is his master's wish. He may not get to his office until 11 a. m. Sometimes he takes a room in the Mark Hopkins hotel, conducts business from bed. His promotion last week was largely a matter of form, for he has long been acknowledged as heir apparent of all the Giannini power.

*Southern Pacific's "Big Four" were Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington.

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