father's insistence, he enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley. Business career Simon left Berkeley after just six weeks to start a sheet metal distribution company. He enjoyed early success and invested $7,000 in 1927 in an orange juice bottling plant in Fullerton, California, which was insolvent, and renamed it Val Vita Food Products Company. He soon added other fruit and vegetables to the product lines and purchased canning equipment. As one of the first of his significant corporate moves, Simon sold Val Vita to Hunt's Foods in return for a controlling interest in the combined business. By 1943 he changed the company's name to Hunt Food and Industries and ran it with strict cost-controls and an unorthodox approach to marketing. During and after World War II, Simon focused on product visibility. Uncharacteristically for a food company at the time, he acquired full page advertisements in Vogue and Life magazines with full-color photos of Hunt's ketchup bottles and tomato sauce cans. His aggressive advertising ensured the company's slogan "Hunt for the best" was prominent. His marketing strategy worked, and by 1945 Hunt Foods became a household name and one of the largest food processing businesses on the West Coast. With the growing profits from Hunt Foods, he began buying stock in other undervalued companies with growth potential, many of which were still undervalued following the loss of confidence in equities after the Great Depression. He diversified through acquisition into well known businesses such as McCall's Publishing, the Saturday Review of Literature, Canada Dry Corporation, Max Factor cosmetics, the television production company Talent Associates, and Avis Car Rental, through his holding company Norton Simon Inc. Norton Simon Inc. was formed in 1968 through the merger of Hunt, McCalls, and Canada Dry. Many of these businesses had extensive interests outside the United States. Norton Simon Inc. was later acquired by Esmark in 1983, which merged with Beatrice Foods the next year. Beatrice was sold to ConAgra Foods, Inc. in 1990. Art collection Simon accumulated a significant private art collection which included works of the Impressionists, Old Masters, modern and native art. In the 1960s, he spent $6 million on artworks – an inventory of slightly less than 800 objects – and real estate – a building at 18 East 79th Street – from the Duveen Gallery in Manhattan, which specialized in old masters. Scholars including the critic Clement Greenberg and the Metropolitan