James Hugh Angleton (centre) with US Ambassador William Phillips (left) at the Milan Trade Fair, 1937 (source: @Pagina Milano scomparsa, FaceBook group, post 12 January 2021).
The life of James Hugh Angleton exemplifies the challenges faced and opportunities seized by middle-class Americans in the 20th century. Born into a modest family in Illinois, he embodied the American dream of a ‘self-made man’, a shining example of the opportunities offered by the American system to its citizens.
His life is marked by professional choices that lead him to become a successful entrepreneur and a major player in trade between the United States and Italy, particularly during a period of political turmoil and war. His path is also intrinsically linked to that of his son James Angleton, future head of counter-espionage during the Cold War and a much-discussed figure in that world.
And not least, he was to be one of the protagonists of the arrival in Italy of the American-style supermarket, that Supermarkets which, under the name of Esselunga, was to change the habits and social customs of the whole of Italy from the early post-war period onwards.
James Hugh Angleton was born on 8 December 1888 in Sharpsburgh, Illinois, to James William, a farmer who during his long life (he died at the age of 91 in 1957) served as an alderman, police officer, school board director and town highway commissioner. His wife, Maggie Dell Alexander, is a housewife, and dies in 1935 from the after-effects of a stomach operation. James Hugh is the eldest son, and he has eight brothers and sisters, a generation of children who must have cost their parents hard work and sacrifice, but also a great deal of satisfaction, because like them they go to school and come to occupy roles of some importance in a small rural community: if some of the males, Jay, William, Keith and Kenton, work in professions from county supervisor to mechanic, and one of the females, Blanche, is a housewife, James – it is his first job -, Amy, Gladys and Faye are all teachers in the lower schools.
For three years, James Hugh teaches public school in Christian County, the county where his township is located. He moved to Idaho, and for a few years worked as a candy salesman at Idaho Wholesale Candy Manufacturing, from which he resigned to enlist in the Idaho National Guard, stationed at a US military base in Nogales, Arizona. There he met Carmen Moreno, born in Mexico but a naturalised US citizen – love at first sight, it seems – and married her in 1916, before his departure for Europe where the Great War was being fought. In 1917, the first of their children, James Jesus, future head of CIA counter-espionage, was born. Three more children would follow, a boy, Hugh Rolla, and two girls, Carmen Mercedes and Dolores Magdalena.
On his return from Europe, James Hugh finds work at NCR – National Cash Register Company, the first and most important American manufacturer of cash registers [future supplier to Esselunga]. This is where his real life begins, his career as an American-style ‘self-made man’, hard work but also undoubted skills to be used and put to good use.
An excellent salesman (he travelled halfway around the world to place his machines, from almost the whole of Europe to Soviet Russia, from South America to Cuba to islands and archipelagos as far as Trinidad, Tobago, Bermuda and Jamaica), he was quickly promoted to management positions for the West Coast offices, until he was appointed Vice-President. NCR is now a multinational company, and in 1933 James Hugh is sent to head the branch for Italy and its colonies in Milan. The entire Angleton family crosses the ocean and goes to live in one of Milan’s most beautiful palaces, Palazzo Castiglioni, at Corso Venezia 47. The sons are sent to the best schools in Europe: two to England, including James Jesus, the two daughters to Milan and then to Switzerland.
James Hugh became President of the US Chamber of Commerce in Italy, which led him to be one of the closest people to the American Consul in Milan. Clients and visitors from all over Europe arrive at his office in Via Dante, at the Rotary Club he meets financiers and industrialists, and as a member of the Knights of Malta he is able to reach the high hierarchies of the Catholic Church. A declared Freemason, he is constantly informed about every development in Italian politics thanks to his brothers’ contacts. According to his military records, he never learned Italian well, which was limited to a business language and little more. But in his position, this must have been no small matter.
From his military file, an invaluable source fortunately desecreted and available online, a small portrait of the man James Hugh also emerges: he does not drink much (Europe taught him to appreciate wine with meals), he is quite sporty (he likes riding, golfing, hunting, fishing, like most Americans), but to these ‘traditional’ activities he adds the pleasure of composing poetry, decorating his home and ‘demonstrating a cash register functions’. When work also becomes a pastime..
Angleton’s story is linked, in Italy, to that of Marco Brunelli the entrepreneur who was to become one of the protagonists of large-scale distribution in Italy was born as an antiquarian, and one of the most highly regarded in Milan. His is the organisation of a memorable exhibition at the Villa Reale, in 1955, dedicated to the ‘Venetian 18th century’; among the lenders of the works were the most beautiful names in the city and beyond, including my grandmother Marianne [Maire in Caprotti]. And among the most important art collectors of the period who were also Brunelli’s clients was James Hugh Angleton, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy…
…It was James Hugh Angleton, a key man in commercial relations between Italy and the United States, an art collector as well as the father of James Jesus, the first head of the CIA station in Rome, who spoke to Brunelli about the American tycoon’s idea of opening a chain of supermarkets in Italy [the future Esselunga] as he had already done in other parts of the world. Rockefeller, among others, founded IBEC in 1947, a company whose aim was to combine the goal of fair profit for investors with the philanthropic one of helping the poorest countries in the development of the basic economy, in order to improve their bleak living conditions…
Bibliography:
U.S. ARCHIVE.ORG, James Hugh Angleton OSS Personnel File, 10 October 1945.
GENEANET – T. DOWLING, Family Tree of James Hugh Angleton.
J. MORLEY, The Ghost. The secret life of CIA spymaster James Angleton, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Spartacus Educational, James Angleton.
@FaceBook group, post 12 January 2021.
G. CAPROTTI, Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana, Milan, 2024/3.
ID., Le Ossa dei Caprotti. The Caprottis and the Supermarkets: James Hugh Angleton, father of James Jesus, 1960s. Cues from the book.
ID., Le Ossa dei Caprotti. The Caprottis, the birth of Esselunga and US counter-espionage: James Hugh and James Jesus Angleton. Cues from the book.
ID., James Hugh Angleton, the spy who facilitated the birth of Esselunga, 17/11/23.
ID., Le Ossa dei Caprotti. An Italian story, beyond the false myth of Esselunga’s founder, 09/02/2024.
