He later majored in English literature at Harvard University. After his graduation from Harvard in 1934, he went to work at A&P headquarters in New York in the statistical department. He lived on a trust fund that generated about $1.5 million per year. On 10 November 1936, he purchased the sailing ship Joseph Conrad from Alan Villiers which he converted to a private yacht, and donated to the U.S. Maritime Commission as a sail training ship in 1939. Career In 1940, Hartford invested $100,000 to help start a newspaper, PM, with Marshall Field III and worked as a reporter for the publication. An avid sailor, he donated his yacht to the Coast Guard at the start of World War II. During the war he was commissioned in the Coast Guard and commanded the Army supply ship FS-179, commissioned in May 1944, in the Pacific Theater. Hartford twice accidentally ran the ship aground. After the war, he moved to Los Angeles and attempted to purchase Republic Pictures and RKO Studios from Howard Hughes. Huntington also started a modeling agency and an artists' colony, and opened a theater. In the 1950s, Hartford purchased a penthouse duplex on the 13th and 14th floors of One Beekman Place in the 1950s after moving from an apartment at the River House in New York City. He owned a home called "Pompano" on 240 El Vedado Drive in Palm Beach, a estate in Mahwah, New Jersey called "Melody Farm", a Hollywood estate known as "The Pines" (also known as Runyon Canyon Park), a townhouse in London, a home in Juan-les-Pins in France, and a house on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Hartford owned Huntington Hartford Productions which produced several films including the Abbott and Costello film, Africa Screams, in 1949. In 1950, Hartford produced Hello Out There, the last film of James Whale, the acclaimed director of the 1931 version of Frankenstein. He produced several films starring Marjorie Steele and encouraged her to become an artist. In 1955, Hartford founded the Oil Shale Corporation, later known as Tosco, and was its majority shareholder and chairman. Tosco was later acquired by ConocoPhillips. He also set up the Denver Research Institute at the University of Denver to find alternate methods of oil extraction. During this period, he also wrote and produced The Master of Thornfield, a stage adaptation of Jane Eyre that ran for two weeks in Cincinnati