Word: donner
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Strictly speaking, Figure Wizard Donner did not succeed "Red" Curtice, the whiz-bang salesman, production and styling expert. In the shift, Curtice's job and power were split. Donner was named board chairman (succeeding Albert Bradley) and chief executive officer. For the presidency, the board picked a dark-horse candidate from G.M.'s executive pool: lean (160 Ibs.), baldish John Franklin Gordon, 58, who had been vice president for the body and assembly divisions. Fred Donner will continue to work from New York, watch G.M.'s pocketbook, speak for the company on broad policy. Jack Gordon will...
Despite 32 years of service with G.M., Donner is a man almost no one knows. He has made neither speeches nor cars. All he knows about the corporation-and it is a great deal-he learned not in the shops, like Curtice, Wilson, William S. Knudsen and Sloan, but from executive meetings, balance sheets and reports...
Corsets & Buggy Whips. Like Curtice and Wilson, Donner was born in a small Midwestern town. His father was accountant for the only plant-a featherbone factory making corsets and buggy whips-in tiny (pop. 1,500) Three Oaks, Mich. Donner went regularly to the Congregational Sunday School, shied from athletics, read voraciously, mostly history. His life was orderly. Remembered a childhood friend last week: "He had a routine even as a boy. So much time for work, so much for play and so much for study." Donner's parents put him through the University of Michigan because, explained...
...Much Do We Pay?" In 1926 Fred Donner joined G.M.'s New York office, was assigned to prepare monthly sales forecasts and annual pricing studies. His rise was steady. He became assistant treasurer, general assistant treasurer and, in 1941, at 38, one of G.M.'s youngest vice presidents. As such he supervised the corporation's financial affairs, chairmaned some of its most important committees. When Curtice went to Washington to testify before Congress, Donner, well supplied with figures and reports, was usually sitting quietly at his side...
...Donner today plays a little golf, reads history, has few other interests. As can be said of most top U.S. executives, a co-worker said of him last week: "What he really thinks about all the time, day and night, is this corporation." Almost always, it is in financial terms. Meeting young G.M. executives for the first time, he is likely to ask afterwards: "How much are we paying that...