Darling of the Gods

By 1909, when he was 40, Henry M. Blackmer had developed the habit of getting richer every year. He parted his hair in the middle, wore pince-nez, had a dignified squint in his right eye and cheerfully endured high starched collars which would have turned the blow of a Malay's kris. And he enjoyed spending money almost as much as stuffing it away in bank vaults.

As a young New England lawyer, he had gone to Colorado when gold was pouring out of the fabulous Cripple Creek district. He got his share of the West's wealth, first as a lawyer, then as a financier of railroads, then as a banker, finally as an oilman. It was a heady day, when Denver was awash with new millionaires and old champagne bottles, and Henry Blackmer was the biggest spender and entertainer of all. He earned a reputation for blowing half a million dollars a year for 13 years.

This helped get him an ornate nickname: "The Darling of the Gods." But it didn't strain his expanding fortune. In 1921 he and three oilmen, including flamboyant Harry F. Sinclair, founded the Continental Trading Co., a Canadian corporation. Through Continental, the quartet bought more than twelve million barrels of Texas oil for $1.50 a barrel and then sold it to other corporations in their control for $1.75. This gave them a tidy $3,000,000 profit which they invested in Liberty bonds and whacked up among themselves without informing either their stockholders or the Treasury Department.

Exit in Haste. In 1924, after the U.S. Senate broke the Teapot Dome scandals, Blackmer abruptly abandoned the good life in Colorado, packed up a law library and plenty of money, and fled to France. There was plenty of reason for his flight; Government investigators had discovered that Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall had $230,500 worth of Continental's Liberty bonds, which prosecutors charged had come from Harry Sinclair as a bribe.

The U.S. tried by every possible means to force Blackmer out of his hideout and bring him home to testify in the Teapot Dome trials. All failed. Meanwhile French newspapers, which described him as a multi-millionaire oil king, generated waves of rumor about him--that he had sneaked back to the U.S. as a member of a steamship's crew, that U.S. authorities had tried to kidnap him at the order of President Coolidge.

The Teapot Dome furore finally died; Harry Sinclair served out a total of nine months in jail (for contempt of court and of the Senate investigating committee), and Fall went to prison, later died in disgrace. Exile Blackmer stayed at his chateau in France. Even World War II caused him little inconvenience. He was technically a fugitive from justice and had no passport, but when France fell to the Nazis the Swiss welcomed him, his money and his third wife "Kaja," a buxom Norwegian opera singer.

Return from Exile. Over the years, Blackmer made some overtures of peace to the U.S. In all, he paid $3,671,065 in income taxes, $60,000 in penalties. This summer, after 25 years in exile, Henry Blackmer decided the time for his return had come. Last week he and his wife boarded an Air France plane at Paris and were flown to Boston. As they set out for Denver by train, it was easy to see that time had taken its toll with the Darling of the Gods. He was stooped and almost blind. But he still knew how to handle inquisitive reporters--he chuckled amiably, posed for photographs and said nothing.

This week he stood up in Denver's federal court to face the charges--four indictments for perjury, two for evasion of income tax--which had piled up during his long absence. His attorneys obviously expected an easy out. But Judge Orie L. Phillips insisted that he enter a plea of guilty to the income tax charges, took the perjury counts under advisement, and deferred judgment. Blackmer walked out slowly, lips pursed, black shoes squeaking and was driven away to his son's fashionable Cherry Hills mansion to nurse his hope of forgiveness a little longer.

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