The Rockefeller family () is the Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) and his brother William Rockefeller (1841–1922).  They are an American industrial, banking, and political family that originally came from Germany.  They made one of the world's largest private fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th century.  This was mainly through the Standard Oil Company.

The family is also known for its long association with and financial interest in the Chase Manhattan Bank, now JPMorgan Chase.  People see them as one of the most powerful groups inside the United States and are well connected to the banking industry.  Their ancestor, Johann Peter Rockefeller, moved to North America in 1723 from what is today Westerwald, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Construction and Restoration of Buildings
The family was heavily involved in many real estate construction projects in the U.S. during the 20th century. Chief among them:
 Rockefeller Center, a multi-building complex built at the start of the Depression in Midtown Manhattan, financed solely by the family
 International House of New York, New York City, 1924 (Junior) {Involvement: John D. 3rd, Abby Aldrich, David & Peggy, David Jr., Abby O'Neill}
 Wren Building, College of William and Mary's, Virginia, from 1927 (Renovation funded by Junior)
 Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, from 1927 onwards (Junior, Abby Aldrich, John D. 3rd and Winthrop), historical restoration
 Museum of Modern Art, New York City, from 1929 (Abby Aldrich, Junior, Blanchette, Nelson, David, David Jr., Sharon Percy Rockefeller)
 Riverside Church, New York City, 1930 (Junior)
 The Cloisters, New York City, from 1934 (Junior)
 The Interchurch Center, New York City, 1948 (Junior)
 Asia Society (Asia House), New York City, 1956 (John D. 3rd)
 One Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York City, 1961 (David)
 Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York, 1962 (Nelson)
 Lincoln Center, New York City, 1962 (John D. 3rd)
 World Trade Center Twin Towers, New York City, 1973-2001 (David and Nelson)
 The Embarcadero Complex, San Francisco, 1974 (David)
 Council of the Americas/Americas Society, New York City, 1985 (David)
 In addition to this is Senior and Junior's involvement in seven major housing developments:
 Forest Hill Estates, Cleveland, Ohio
 City Housing Corporations efforts, Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, New York City
 Thomas Garden Apartments, The Bronx, New York City
 Paul Lawrence Dunbar Housing, Harlem, New York City
 Lavoisier Apartments, Manhattan, New York City
 Van Tassel Apartments, Sleepy Hollow, New York (formerly North Tarrytown)
 A development in Radburn, New Jersey
 A further project involved David Rockefeller in a major middle-income housing development when he was elected in 1947 as chairman of Morningside Heights, Inc., in Manhattan by fourteen major institutions that were based in the area, including Columbia University. The result, in 1951, was the six-building apartment complex known as Morningside Gardens.
 Senior's donations led to the formation of the University of Chicago in 1889, where the first American Nobel Prize in Science was produced in 1907, and notable for the Chicago School of Economics. This was one instance of a long family and Rockefeller Foundation tradition of financially supporting Ivy League and other major colleges and universities over the generations - seventy-five in total. This includes:
 Harvard University
 Dartmouth College
 Princeton University
 Stanford University
 Yale University
 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 Case Western Reserve University
 Brown University
 Columbia University
 Cornell University
 University of Pennsylvania
 This financial assistance extends overseas to institutions such as London School of Economics
 University College London, among many others.
 Senior (and Junior) also created
 Rockefeller University in 1901
 General Education Board in 1902, which later (1923) evolved into the International Education Board
 Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1910
 Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1913 (Junior)
 International Health Commission in 1913
 China Medical Board in 1915.
 In the 1920s, the International Education Board granted important fellowships to pathbreakers in modern mathematics, such as Stefan Banach, Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, and André Weil, which was a formative part of the gradual shift of world mathematics to the US over this period.
 To help promote cooperation between physics and mathematics Rockefeller funds also supported the erection of the new Mathematical Institute at the University of Göttingen between 1926 and 1929
 The rise of probability and mathematical statistics owes much to the creation of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris, partly by the Rockefellers' finances, also around this time.
 Junior also financially supported numerous other major institutions:
 Notable among them his ongoing support for the highly influential foreign policy think tank
 The New York Council on Foreign Relations, established in 1921.
 In 1978 the Rockefeller Foundation initiated the founding of the financial advisory council called the Group of Thirty, as well as many grants to a myriad of universities, think tanks and other institutions.
 Junior was also responsible for the creation and endowment of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which operates the restored historical town at Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the most extensive historic restorations ever undertaken.

Conservation
Beginning with Rockefeller Senior, the family has been a major force in land conservation. Over the generations, it has created more than 20 national parks and open spaces, including the Cloisters, Acadia National Park, Forest Hill Park, the Nature Conservancy, the Rockefeller Forest in California's Humboldt Redwoods State Park (the largest stand of old-growth redwoods), and Grand Teton National Park, among many others. Rockefeller Jr, and his son Laurance (and his son Larry) were particularly prominent in this area.

The National Audubon Society honored the family for its conservation efforts in November, 2005. Over 30 family members attended the event. At the event, the society's president, John Flicker, said: "Cumulatively, no other family in America has made the contribution to conservation that the Rockefeller family has made".

International politics/finance/economics
The family has been awarded the annual UNA-USA's Global Leadership Award, along with other recipients over time, including Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg. Members of the Rockefeller family into the fourth generation (especially the prominent banker and statesman David Rockefeller, who is the present family patriarch) have been heavily involved in international politics, and have donated money, established or been involved in the following major international institutions:

 The Council on Foreign Relations - David, David Jr., Nelson, John D. 3rd, John D. IV (Jay), Peggy Dulany, Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
 The Trilateral Commission - David, Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
 The Bilderberg Group - David, John D. IV.
 The Asia Society - John D. 3rd, John D. IV, Charles, David.
 The Population Council - John D. 3rd.
 The Council of the Americas - David.
 The Group of Thirty - The Rockefeller Foundation.
 The World Economic Forum - David.
 The Brookings Institution - Junior.
 The Peterson Institute (Formerly the Institute for International Economics) - David, Monica.
 The International Executive Service Corps - David.
 The Institute for Pacific Relations - Junior.
 The League of Nations - Junior.
 The United Nations - Junior, John D. 3rd, Nelson, David, Peggy Dulany, Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
 The United Nations Association - David. Monica.

The family archives
The Rockefeller Archive Center, an independent foundation that was until 2008 a part of Rockefeller University, is a vast three-story underground bunker built below the Martha Baird Rockefeller Hillcrest mansion on the family estate at Pocantico (see Kykuit). Along forty-foot-long walls of shelves on rails, maintained by ten full-time archivists, is the entire repository of personal and official papers and correspondence of the complete family and its members, along with historical papers of its numerous foundations, as well as other non-family philanthropic institutions. These include: the Commonwealth Fund, Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust, and the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation.

In total, it holds over 70 million pages of documents and contains the collections of forty-two scientific, cultural, educational and philanthropic organizations.

Only the expurgated records of deceased family members are publicly available to scholars and researchers. All records pertaining to living members are closed to historians. However, as Nelson Rockefeller's researcher, Cary Reich, discovered, in the case of Nelson's voluminous  of papers, only about one-third of these files had been processed and released to researchers up to 1996. He reports that it will be many years before all the papers will be open to the public, despite Nelson having died in 1979.

The Center maintains that this repository of records, covering 140-plus years of the records of the family, in addition to non-Rockefeller philanthropic collections, gives unique insights into United States and world issues and social developments in both the 19th and 20th centuries.

Records in the collection are only available up until the early 1960s, generally 1961.

Family wealth
The combined wealth of the family – their total assets and investments plus the individual wealth of its members – has never been known with any precision. The records of the family archives relating to both the family and individual members' net worth is closed to researchers.

From the outset, and even today, the family wealth has been under the complete control of the male members of the family, through the family office. Despite strong-willed wives who had influence over their husbands' decisions – such as the pivotal female figure Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of Junior – in all cases they received allowances only and were never given even partial responsibility for the family fortune.

Much of the wealth has been locked up in the notable family trust of 1934 (which holds the bulk of the fortune and matures on the death of the fourth generation), and the trust of 1952, both administered by the Chase Manhattan Bank. These trusts have consisted of shares in the successor companies to Standard Oil and other diversified investments, as well as the family's considerable real estate holdings. They are administered by a trust committee that oversees the fortune. It has consisted over time of high-profile individuals, who have included Paul Volcker, William G. Bowen (former president of Princeton University) and John C. Whitehead (retired co-chairman of Goldman Sachs).

Management of this fortune today also rests with professional money managers who oversee the principal holding company, Rockefeller Financial Services. It controls all the family's investments. The family sold Rockefeller Center in 1989, and the money made from selling it has been reinvested. The present chairman is David Rockefeller, Jr.

In 1992, it had five main arms:
 Rockefeller & Co. (Money management: Universities have invested some of their endowments in this company);
 Venrock Associates (Venture Capital: an early investment in Apple Computer was one of many it made in Silicon Valley entrepreneurial start-ups);
 Rockefeller Trust Company (Manages hundreds of family trusts);
 Rockefeller Insurance Company (Manages liability insurance for family members);
 Acadia Risk Management (Insurance Broker: Contracts out policies for the family's vast art collections, real estate and private planes.)

Family residences
Over the generations the family members have resided in some notable historic homes. A total of 81 Rockefeller homes are on the National Register of Historic Places. Not including all homes owned by the five brothers, some of the more prominent of these are:

 Kykuit - The landmark six-story home on the vast Westchester County family estate, home to four generations of the family;
 Bassett Hall - The house at Colonial Williamsburg bought by Junior in 1927 and renovated by 1936, it was the favorite residence of both Junior and Abby and is now a house museum at the family-restored Colonial Revival town;
 The Eyrie - A sprawling 100-room summer holiday home on Mount Desert Island in Maine, demolished by family members in 1962;
 Forest Hill - The family's country estate and summer home in Cleveland for four decades. Built and occupied by Senior, it burned down in 1917;
 Golf House at Lakewood, New Jersey - The former three-story clubhouse for the elite Ocean County Hunt and Country Club, which Senior bought in 1902 to play golf on its golf course;
 The Casements - A three-story house at Ormond Beach in Florida, where Senior spent his last winters, from 1919 until his death;
 10 West Fifty-fourth Street - A nine-story single family home, the former residence of Junior before he shifted to 740 Park Avenue, and the largest residence in New York City at the time, it was the home for the five young brothers. It was later given by Junior to the Museum of Modern Art;
 One Beekman Place - The residence of Laurance in New York City;
 740 Park Avenue - Junior and Abby's famed 40-room triplex apartment in the luxury apartment building, which was later sold for a record price;
 The JY Ranch - The landmark ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the holiday resort home built by Junior and later owned by Laurance, it was used by all members of the family and had many prominent visitors, including presidents, until Laurance donated it to the federal government in 2001.

Legacy
A trademark of the dynasty over its 140-plus years has been the remarkable unity it has maintained, despite major divisions that developed in the late 1970s, and unlike other rich families such as the DuPonts and the Mellons. A primary reason has been the lifelong efforts of "Junior" to not only cleanse the name from the opprobrium stemming from the ruthless practices of Standard Oil, but his tireless efforts to forge family unity even as he allowed his five sons to operate independently. This was partly achieved by regular brothers and family meetings, but it was also because of the high value placed on family unity by first Nelson and John 3rd, and later especially with David.

Regarding achievements, in 1972, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy, the Carnegie Corporation, which has had a long association with the family and its institutions, released a public statement on the influence of the family on not just philanthropy but encompassing a much wider field. Summing up a predominant view amongst the international philanthropic world, although one poorly grasped by the public, one sentence of this statement read: "The contributions of the Rockefeller family are staggering in their extraordinary range and in the scope of their contribution to humankind."

John D. Rockefeller gave away US$540 million over his lifetime (in dollar terms of that time), and became the greatest lay benefactor of medicine in history. His son, "Junior" also gave away over $537 million over his lifetime, bringing the total philanthropy of just two generations of the family to over $1 billion from 1860 to 1960. Added to this, the New York Times declared in a report in November, 2006 that David Rockefeller's total charitable benefactions amount to about $900 million over his lifetime.

The combined personal and social connections of the various family members are very great, both in America and throughout the world. The family members know the most powerful politicians, royalty, public figures, and chief businessmen. Notable figures through Standard Oil alone have included Henry Flagler and Henry H. Rogers. Contemporary figures include Henry Kissinger, Nelson Mandela, Richard Parsons (Chairman and CEO of Time Warner), C. Fred Bergsten, Peter G. Peterson (Senior Chairman of the Blackstone Group), and Paul Volcker.

In 1991, the family was presented with the Honor Award from the National Building Museum for four generations worth of preserving and creating some of the U.S.'s most important buildings and places. David accepted the award on the family's behalf. The ceremony coincided with an exhibition on the family's contributions to the built environment, including John Sr.'s preservation efforts for the Hudson River Palisades, the restoration of Williamsburg, Virginia, construction of Rockefeller Center, and Governor Nelson's efforts to construct low- and middle-income housing in New York state.

The Rockefeller name is imprinted on numerous places throughout the United States, most notably in New York City, but also in Cleveland, where the family originates:

 The Rockefeller Center - A landmark 19-building  complex in the center of Manhattan established by Junior: Older section constructed from 1930–1939; Newer section constructed during the 1960s-1970s;
 The Rockefeller University - Renamed in 1965, this is the distinguished Nobel prize-winning graduate/postgraduate medical school (formerly the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, established by Senior in 1901);
 The Rockefeller Foundation - Founded in 1913, this is the famous philanthropic organization set up by Senior and Junior;
 The Rockefeller Brothers Fund - Founded in 1940 by the third-generation's five sons and one daughter of Junior;
 The Rockefeller Family Fund - Founded in 1967 by members of the family's fourth-generation;
 The Rockefeller Group - A private family-run real estate development company based in New York that originally owned, constructed and managed Rockefeller Center, it is now wholly owned by Mitsubishi Estate Co. Ltd;
 The Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors - is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advises donors in their philanthropic endeavors throughout the world;
 The Rockefeller Research Laboratories Building - A major research center into cancer that was established in 1986 and named after Laurance, this is situated at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center;
 The Rockefeller Center - Home of the International Student Services office and department of philosophy, politics and law at the State University of New York at Binghamton;
 The Rockefeller Chapel - Completed in 1928, this is the tallest building on the campus of the University of Chicago, established by Senior in 1889;
 The Rockefeller Hall - Established by Senior in 1906, this building houses the Case Western Reserve University Physics Department;
 The Rockefeller Hall - Established by Senior and completed in 1906, this building houses the Cornell University Physics Department;
 The Rockefeller Hall - Established by Senior in 1887, who granted Vassar College a $100,000 ($2.34 million in 2006 dollars) allowance to build additional, much needed lecture space. The final cost of the facility was $99,998.75. It now houses multi-purpose classrooms and departmental offices for political science, philosophy and math;
 The Rockefeller Hall - Established by Senior and completed in 1886, this is the oldest building on the campus of Spelman College;
 The Rockefeller College - Named after John D. Rockefeller III, this is a residential college at Princeton University;
 The Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center - Completed in 1969 in memory of Nelson Rockefeller's son, this is a cultural center at the State University of New York at Fredonia;
 The Michael C. Rockefeller Collection and the Department of Primitive Art - Completed in 1982 after being initiated by Nelson, this is a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art;
 The David and Peggy Rockefeller Building - A tribute to David's wife, Peggy Rockefeller, this is a new (completed in 2004) six-story building housing the main collection and temporary exhibition galleries of the family's Museum of Modern Art;
 The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden - Completed in 1949 by David, this is a major outdoor feature of the Museum of Modern Art;
 The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum - Opened in 1957 by Junior, this is a leading folk art museum within the complex of Junior's Colonial Williamsburg;
 The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Hall - The freshman residence hall on the campus of Spelman College;
 The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Building - Completed in 1918, it is among other things a student residence hall at Spelman College, after the wife of Senior and after whom the College was named;
 The Rockefeller State Park Preserve - Part of the  family estate in Westchester County, this  preserve was officially handed over to New York State in 1983, although it had previously always been open to the public;
 The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park - Established as a historical museum of conservation by Laurance during the 1990s.
 The John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway - Established in 1972 through Congressional authorization, connecting Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks;
 The Rockefeller Forest - Funded by Junior, this is located within Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California's largest redwood state park;
 Either of two US congressional committees {in 1972 - John D. 3rd and 1975 - Nelson dubbed the Rockefeller Commission}.
 Rockefeller Park, a scenic park featuring gardens dedicated to several world nations along Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. between University Circle and Lake Erie in Cleveland.
 The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute of the University of Arkansas System was established in 2005 with a grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust. The educational center with conference and lodging facilities is located on Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton, Arkansas, on the original grounds of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller's model cattle farm.
 The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
 The Rockefeller Quad at the Loomis Chaffee School
John D Junior, through his son Nelson, purchased and then donated the land upon which sits the UN headquarters, in New York, in 1946. Earlier, in the 1920s, he had also donated a substantial amount towards the restoration and rehabilitation of major buildings in France after World War I, such as the Rheims Cathedral, the Fontainebleau Palace and the Palace of Versailles, for which he was later (1936) awarded France's highest decoration, the Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur (subsequently also awarded decades later to his son, David Rockefeller).

He also funded the notable excavations at Luxor in Egypt, as well as establishing a Classical Studies School in Athens. In addition, he provided the funding for the construction of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem - the Rockefeller Museum.

The family, with its far reaching philanthropy, as well as its oil, real estate, banking, and international institutions, remains a benchmark for extreme wealth ("as rich as Rockefeller"), as "Senior" is still regarded as the wealthiest man who has ever lived, worth over $300 billion in today's figures, easily surpassing Bill Gates, in terms adjusted by inflation indexing.

Generational philanthropy
The members of the Rockefeller family are noted for their philanthropy; a Rockefeller Archive Center study in 2004 documents an incomplete list of 72 major institutions that the family has created and/or endowed up to the present day. Historically, the major focus of their benefactions have been in the educational, health and conservation areas.

Family leaders in both philanthropy and business have included John D. Sr., John D. Jr. ("Junior"), John D. III, Laurance Rockefeller and David Rockefeller, who is the family's current patriarch. Several family members have held high public office, including Vice President of the United States (Nelson Rockefeller), United States Senator (Jay Rockefeller), state governor (Nelson, Jay, and Winthrop Rockefeller), and lieutenant governor (Winthrop Paul Rockefeller). Another noted family member was Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller, an anthropologist who came to media attention after he was presumed killed in New Guinea in 1961.

The corporate, financial and personal affairs of the family - numbering around 150 blood relatives of John D. Rockefeller - are run from the family office, Room 5600, known officially as "Rockefeller Family and Associates". It comprises three floors of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center. All private family legal matters are handled by the family-associated New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Room 5600 is also the base of the current family historian, Peter J. Johnson, who assisted with David Rockefeller's Memoirs, published in 2002.

To distinguish the generations and facilitate communication, the fourth generation is generically known as "The Cousins" (24 in all, with 21 still living) and the younger family members are known as the "Fifth/Sixth" generation. Many if not all of these family members are involved in institutionalized philanthropic pursuits. Family links are solidified through the practice of ritualized family meetings - which started with the regular "brothers' meetings" held in Room 5600 or in their respective private residences, beginning in 1945. Family get-togethers are held today at the "Playhouse", in the Westchester County family estate of Pocantico, in June (the "cousins weekend") and December of each year (see Kykuit).

Members of the Rockefeller family
Ancestors
  Goddard Rockenfeller (1590–1684) (m.1622) Magdalena (1592–1656)  Johannes Rockenfeller (1634–1684) (m.1678) Elizabeth Margaretha Remagen (1634)
 Johann Peter Rockefeller (1681, Prussia–1763, Rocktown, NJ) (Arrived in America 1708)
 Peter Rockefeller (1711–1787) (m.1740) Mary Bellis (1723–1772) (Had nine children in all)
 Godfrey Rockefeller (1745–1818)
 Margaret Rockefeller (1750–1797) (m.late 18th century) George Trumbo (1750–1830)
 William Rockefeller (1750–1793) (m.18th century) Christina Rockefeller (1754–1800) (Distant relative) (Had seven children in all)
 Simon William Rockefeller (1775–1839)
 Godfrey Lewis Rockefeller (1783/1784–1857) (m.1806) Lucy Avery (1786–1867) (Had ten children in all)
 William Avery Rockefeller (1810–1906) (m.1837) Eliza Davison (1813–1889)
 Lucy Rockefeller (1838–1878) (m.1856) Pierson D. Briggs
 John Davison Rockefeller (1839–1937) (m.1864) Laura Celestia Spelman (1839–1915)
 William Rockefeller (1841–1922) (m.1864) Almira Geraldine Goodsell
 Mary Ann Rockefeller (1843–1925) (m.1872) William Cullen Rudd
 Franklin Rockefeller (1845–1917) (m.1870) Helen Elizabeth Scofield
 Francis Rockefeller (1845–1847)
 William W. Rockefeller (1788–1851) (m.early 19th century) Eleanor Kisselbrack (1784–1859)

Descendants of John Davison Rockefeller
To the sixth-generation, with 21 still living in the fourth (the Cousins). The total number of blood relative descendants as of 2006 is about 150.
 Elizabeth "Bessie" Rockefeller Strong (1866–1906) (m.1889) Charles Augustus Strong (1862–1940)
 Margaret Strong (1897–1985) (m.1st.1927) George de Cuevas (1885–1961); (m.2nd.1977) Raimundo de Larrain
 Alice Rockefeller (1869–1870)
 Alta Rockefeller Prentice (1871–1962) (m.1901) Ezra Parmelee Prentice (1863–1955)
 John Rockefeller Prentice (1902–1972) (m.1941) Abra Cantrill (1912–1972)
 Abra Prentice Wilkin (born 1942)
 Mary Adeline Prentice Gilbert (1907–1981) (m.1937) Benjamin Davis Gilbert (1907–1992)
 Spelman Prentice (1911–2000) (m.3rd.1972) Mimi Walters
 Pamela Prentice (born 1938)(m.1st. 1960) Frans H. ten Bos
 Helena ten Bos (born 1962)(m. 1987) Count Frederic de Belloy de Saint-Lienard
 Peter Spelman Prentice (born 1940)
 Alexandra Sartell Prentice (born 1962)
 Peter Parmalee Bens (born 1987)
 Erik Carl Bens (born 1996)
 Sarah Prentice Bens (born 1997)
 Michael Andrew Prentice (born 1964)
 Alta Rockefeller Prentice (born 1942)
 Michael Sartell Prentice (born 1944)
 Edith Rockefeller McCormick (1872–1932) (m.1895) Harold Fowler McCormick
 John Rockefeller McCormick (1897–1901)
 Editha McCormick (1903–1904)
 Harold Fowler McCormick, Jr. (1898–1973) (m.1931) Anne "Fifi" Potter Stillman (1879–1969)
 Muriel McCormick (1902–1959) (m.1931) Elisha Dyer Hubbard (1906–)
 Mathilde McCormick (1905–1947) (m.1923) Max Oser (1877–1942)
 Anita Oser Pauling (d. 2009 in Paris, France) Peter Max Oser (d. 1970 in Geneva, Switzerland)
 John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) (m.1901) Abigail "Abby" Greene Aldrich
 Abby Rockefeller Mauzé (1903–1976)
 Abby Rockefeller Milton O'Neill (born 1928)
 Marilyn Ellen Milton Simpson (1931–1980)
 Laura Knickerbacker Simpson (born 1954)
 Abby Rockefeller Simpson (born 1958)
 John D. Rockefeller III (1906–1978) (m.1932) Blanchette Ferry Hooker
 John Davison ("Jay") Rockefeller IV (born 1937)
 Sandra Rockefeller Ferry (born 1943)
 Hope Aldrich Rockefeller (born 1946)
 Alida Rockefeller Messinger (born 1949)
 Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (1908–1979) (m.1st.1930) Mary Todhunter Clark (m.2nd.1963) Margaretta Fitler Murphy
 Rodman Rockefeller (1932–2000)
 Ann Clark Rockefeller Roberts (born 1934)
 Steven Clark Rockefeller (born 1936)
 Michael Rockefeller (1938–1961)
 Mary Clark Rockefeller (born 1938)
 Nelson Rockefeller, Jr. (born 1964)
 Mark Rockefeller (born 1967)
 Laurance Spelman Rockefeller (1910–2004) (m.1934) Mary French
 Laura Spelman Rockefeller Chasin (born 1936)
 Marion French Rockefeller (born 1938)
 Dr. Lucy Rockefeller Waletzky (born 1941)
 Laurance Rockefeller, Jr. (born 1944) (m. 1982) Wendy Gordon
 Winthrop Rockefeller (1912–1973) (m.1st.1948) Barbara "Bobo" Sears (m.2nd.1956) Jeannette Edris
 Winthrop Paul Rockefeller (1948–2006)
 James E. Rockefeller Noronha (born 1989)(m. 2011) Ashley Gibbs
 David Rockefeller (1915–2017) (m.1940) Margaret McGrath
 David Rockefeller, Jr. (born 1941)
 Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (born 1943)
 Neva Rockefeller Goodwin (born 1944)
 Peggy Dulany (born 1947)
 Richard Gilder Rockefeller (born 1949)
 Eileen Rockefeller Growald (born 1952)

Descendants of William Rockefeller
An article in the New York Times in 1937 stated that William Rockefeller had, at that time, exactly 28 great-grandchildren.
 Lewis Edward Rockefeller (1865–1866)
 Emma Rockefeller McAlpin (1868–1934)
 William Goodsell Rockefeller (1870–1922)
 William Avery Rockefeller (1896–1973)
 William Rockefeller
 Frederick Lincoln Rockefeller
 Elsie Rockefeller
 Godfrey Stillman Rockefeller (1899–1983)
 Godfrey A. Rockefeller (1924–2010)
 Marion Rockefeller
 Audrey Rockefeller
 Lucy Ann Rockefeller
 Anderson Rockefeller
 Peter Rockefeller
 Benjamin Rockefeller
 James Stillman Rockefeller (1902–2004)
 James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr. (born 1926)
 Liv Merlin Rockefeller Hessler (born 1957)
 Ola Stillman Rockefeller (born 1959)
 Nancy Sherlock Carnegie Rockefeller (born 1927)
 Andrew Carnegie Rockefeller (born 1929)
 Georgia Stillman Rockefeller (born 1933) (Married J Harden Rose)
 James Stillman Rose (born 1958)
 Andrew Carnegie Rose (born 1960)
 Georgia Rockefeller Rose (born 1961)
 John Sterling Rockefeller (1904–1988)
 Christina Rockefeller
 Almira Geraldine Rockefeller (1907–1997) (The wife of MacRoy Jackson, Samuel Weston Scott, and later Hardie Scott.)
 Macroy Jackson
 John Davison Rockefeller (1872–1877)
 Percy Avery Rockefeller (1878–1934)
 Isabel Rockefeller Lincoln (1902–1980) m. Frederic Walker Lincoln, Jr.
 Avery Rockefeller (1903–1986)
 Winifred Rockefeller Emeny (1904–1951)
 Faith Rockefeller Model (1909–1960)
 Robert Model (born 1942)
 Gladys Rockefeller Underhill (born 1910)
 Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge (1882–1973)
 Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr. (1908–1930)
 Monica Rockefeller (born 1993)

Spouses
 Laura Celestia Spelman "Cettie" (1839–1915) - John D. Rockefeller.
 Abby Greene Aldrich (1874–1948) - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
 Martha Baird Allen (1895–1971) - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
 Mary Todhunter Clark "Tod" (1907–1999) - Nelson Rockefeller.
 Margaretta Fitler Murphy "Happy" (born 1926) - Nelson Rockefeller.
 Anne Marie Rasmussen - Steven C. Rockefeller.
 Blanchette Ferry Hooker (1909–1992) - John D. Rockefeller 3rd.
 Sharon Percy - John D. "Jay" Rockefeller, IV.
 Mary French (1910–1997) - Laurance Rockefeller.
 Wendy Gordon - Laurance "Larry" Rockefeller.
 Barbara "Bobo" Sears (1916– 2008) - Winthrop Rockefeller.
 Jeannette Edris (1918–1997) - Winthrop Rockefeller.
 Lisenne Dudderar - Winthrop Paul Rockefeller.
 Margaret "Peggy" McGrath (1915–1996) - David Rockefeller.
 Diana Newell Rowan - David Rockefeller, Jr.
 Nancy King - Richard Gilder Rockefeller.
 Elizabeth "Bessie" Rockefeller (1866–1906).
 Alta Rockefeller (1871–1962).
 Edith Rockefeller (1872–1932).
 Elsie Stillman Rockefeller (1872–1935).
 Isabel Stillman Rockefeller (1876–1935''').

Select bibliography
 Abels, Jules. The Rockefeller Billions: The Story of the World's Most Stupendous Fortune. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965.
 Aldrich, Nelson W. Jr. Old Money: The Mythology of America's Upper Class. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
 Allen, Gary. The Rockefeller File. Seal Beach, California: 1976 Press, 1976.
 Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
 Brown, E. Richard. Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
 Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Vintage, 1975.
 Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. London: Warner Books, 1998.
 Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz. The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976.
 Elmer, Isabel Lincoln. Cinderella Rockefeller: A Life of Wealth Beyond All Knowing. New York: Freundlich Books, 1987.
 Ernst, Joseph W., editor. "Dear Father"/"Dear Son:" Correspondence of John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. New York: Fordham University Press, with the Rockefeller Archive Center, 1994.
 Flynn, John T. God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932.
 Fosdick, Raymond B. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956.
 Fosdick, Raymond B. The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation. New York: Transaction Publishers, Reprint, 1989.
 Gates, Frederick Taylor. Chapters in My Life. New York: The Free Press, 1977.
 Gitelman, Howard M. Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
 Gonzales, Donald J., Chronicled by. The Rockefellers at Williamsburg: Backstage with the Founders, Restorers and World-Renowned Guests. McLean, Virginia: EPM Publications, Inc., 1991.
 Hanson, Elizabeth. The Rockefeller University Achievements: A Century of Science for the Benefit of Humankind, 1901-2001. New York: The Rockefeller University Press, 2000.
 Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.
 Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Conscience: An American Family in Public and in Private. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991.
 Hawke, David Freeman. John D.: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
 Hidy, Ralph W. and Muriel E. Hidy. Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882-1911. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955.
 Jonas, Gerald. The Circuit Riders: Rockefeller Money and the Rise of Modern Science. New York: W.W.Norton and Co., 1989.
 Josephson, Emanuel M. The Federal Reserve Conspiracy and the Rockefellers: Their Gold Corner. New York: Chedney Press, 1968.
 Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons. London: Harcourt, 1962.
 Kert, Bernice. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 2003.
 Klein, Henry H. Dynastic America and Those Who Own It. New York: Kessinger Publishing, [1921] Reprint, 2003.
 Kutz, Myer. Rockefeller Power: America's Chosen Family. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.
 Lundberg, Ferdinand. America's Sixty Families. New York: Vanguard Press, 1937.
 Lundberg, Ferdinand. The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1968.
 Lundberg, Ferdinand. The Rockefeller Syndrome. Secaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1975.
 Manchester, William R. A Rockefeller Family Portrait: From John D. to Nelson. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1959.
 Moscow, Alvin. The Rockefeller Inheritance. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1977.
 Nevins, Allan. John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940.
 Nevins, Allan. Study In Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.
 Okrent, Daniel. Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center. New York: Viking Press, 2003.
 Reich, Cary. The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
 Roberts, Ann Rockefeller. The Rockefeller Family Home: Kykuit. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 1998.
 Rockefeller, David. Memoirs. New York: Random House, 2002.
 Rockefeller, Henry Oscar, ed. Rockefeller Genealogy. 4 vols. 1910 - ca.1950.
 Rockefeller, John D. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events. New York: Doubleday, 1908; London: W. Heinemann. 1909; Sleepy Hollow Press and Rockefeller Archive Center, (Reprint) 1984.
 Roussel, Christine. The Art of Rockefeller Center. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006.
 Scheiffarth, Engelbert. Der New Yorker Gouverneur Nelson A. Rockefeller und die Rockenfeller im Neuwieder Raum Genealogisches Jahrbuch, Vol 9, 1969, p16-41.
 Sealander, Judith. Private Wealth and Public Life: Foundation Philanthropy and the Reshaping of American Social Policy, from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
 Siegmund-Schultze, Reinhard. Rockefeller and the Internationalization of Mathematics Between the Two World Wars: Documents and Studies for the Social History of Mathematics in the 20th Century. Boston: Birkhauser Verlag, 2001.
 Stasz, Clarice. The Rockefeller Women: Dynasty of Piety, Privacy, and Service. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.
 Tarbell, Ida M. The History of the Standard Oil Company. New York: Phillips & Company, 1904.
 Winks, Robin W. Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997.
 Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
 Young, Edgar B. Lincoln Center: The Building of an Institution. New York: New York University Press, 1980.

Related pages

 AIG
 Asia Society
 Bilderberg Group
 Brookings Institution
 Carnegie Corporation
 Chase Manhattan Bank
 Citibank
 Colonial Williamsburg
 Council of the Americas
 Council on Foreign Relations
 ExxonMobil
 Ford family
 GE
 General Education Board
 Grand Teton National Park
 Institute for Pacific Relations
 Kykuit
 Lincoln Center
 List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
 Ludlow massacre
 MacArthur Foundation
 Montgomery Burns
 Museum of Modern Art
 Population Council

 Rainbow Room
 RCA
 Rockefeller Brothers Fund
 Rockefeller Center
 Rockefeller Foundation
 Rockefeller University
 Rothschild family
 Spelman College
 Standard Oil
 Trilateral Commission
 United Nations Association
 University of Chicago
 Venrock Associates

 Gianni Agnelli
 William Adams Delano (Delano & Aldrich)
 J. Richardson Dilworth
 Allen Dulles
 John Foster Dulles
 Henry Morrison Flagler
 Frederick Taylor Gates
 Wallace Harrison
 Richard Holbrooke
 Henry Kissinger
 Ivy Lee
 William Lyon Mackenzie King
 John J. McCloy
 Richard Parsons
 Charles Pratt
 Henry H. Rogers
 George Shultz
 Jerry Speyer
 Ida Tarbell
 Paul Volcker
 John C. Whitehead
 James Wolfensohn
 Owen D. Young
 William Zeckendorf

Notes

References
 Rose, Kenneth W., Select Rockefeller Philanthropies, Booklet (pdf, 23 pages) of the Rockefeller Archive Center, 2004.
 Origin of Rockenfeld, in German
 Descendants of Goddard Rockenfeller
 Listing of University of Chicago Nobel Laureates, News Office, University of Chicago website, undated.
 Depalma, Anthony, They Saved Land Like Rockefellers, The New York Times Archive, November 15, 2005.
 Carnegie Corporation of New York, Celebrating 100 years of Andrew Carnegie's Philanthropy - awarding the inaugural Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy to David and Laurance Rockefeller, 2001.
 The Rockefeller Archive Center, John D. Rockefeller, Junior, 1874–1960, Overview of his life and philanthropy, 1997.
 Strom, Stephanie, Manhattan: A Rockefeller Plans a Huge Bequest, The New York Times Archive, November 21, 2006.
 O'Connell, Dennis, Top 10 Richest Men Of All Time'', AskMen.com, undated.

Rockefeller family


Mazu, also known as Matsu, is a popular Taoist and Chinese Buddhist goddess. She is the goddess and patroness of the sea. She is believed to protect fisherman and sailors. Mazu is widely worshiped in southern China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Zhejiang, Fuijian, Guangdong and Hainan. She is popularly known as Empress of Heaven and Holy Mother Empress of Heaven. Her other popular titles are Holy Mother Empress of the Heavens above, Heavenly Imperial Concubine, Lady Mazu, Heavenly Princess consort and Heavenly Holy Mother.

Life and Death
Mazu was born on 23 March  906. According to legend when she did not cry when she was born, so she was thereafter named Lin Moniang which means Silent girl or silent young female. She had a mysterious ability to predict weather and often she warned others to not make journeys to the sea. She became a very good swimmer and would often rescue people from the sea even in the harshest weather. There are at least 2 versions of her death.

 One legend tells that Mazu went out into the sea during a storm to try to find her lost father. Hours passed but still she could not find her father and later died of exhaustion.

 Another legend tells that Mazu climbed a mountain alone and flew into the heavens and became a goddess.

Worship
After her death, her family and many other families of sailors and fishermen started to pray for her heroic acts to try to save those at sea. Soon her worship spread quickly to other parts of Asia. Starting from Fuijian, worship of Mazu spread to neighboring coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Guandong, and thence to all coastal areas of mainland China. Later, due to Chinese immigrants, the worship of Mazu further spread to Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Ryuku Islands, and parts of Southeast Asia. Many people soon began to build temples dedicated to Mazu all over the world.

Appearance
Mazu is usually shown sitting on a throne between two demons known as "Thousand Miles eye" (, Qianli Yan) and "With-the-Wind Ear" ( Shunfeng Er). According to legend, both of them were conquered by Mazu and then both of them fell in love with her. Mazu said she would marry the one that defeats her. Using her martial art skills, Mazu defeats them both and they become her friends. She is usually dressed in a red robe in paintings and murals, but in sculptures she is clothed in jewel-festooned robes of an empress holding a ceremonial tablet or a jeweled staff whilst wearing the easily recognized flat-topped imperial cap with hanging beads at the front and back.

Taoism
Buddhist gods and goddesses
Chinese gods and goddesses
Gods and goddesses of water

Mazu (goddess)


Notorious is a 1946 American spy film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation.

The film follows U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin (Grant), who enlists the help of Alicia Huberman (Bergman), the daughter of a German war criminal, to infiltrate a circle of executives of IG Farben hiding out in Rio de Janeiro after World War II. The situation becomes complicated when the two fall in love as Huberman is instructed to seduce Alex Sebastian (Rains), a Farben executive who had previously been infatuated with her. It was shot in late 1945 and early 1946, and was released by RKO Radio Pictures in August 1946.

Notorious is considered by critics and scholars to mark a watershed for Hitchcock artistically, and to represent a heightened thematic maturity. His biographer, Donald Spoto, writes that "Notorious is in fact Alfred Hitchcock's first attempt—at the age of forty-six—to bring his talents to the creation of a serious love story, and its story of two men in love with Ingrid Bergman could only have been made at this stage of his life." In 2006, Notorious was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot
In April 1946, Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, is recruited by government agent T. R. Devlin to infiltrate an organization of Nazis who have escaped to Brazil after World War II. When Alicia refuses to help the authorities, Devlin plays recordings of her fighting with her father and insisting that she loves America.

While awaiting the details of her assignment in Rio de Janeiro, Alicia and Devlin fall in love, though his feelings are complicated by his knowledge of her promiscuous past. When Devlin gets instructions to persuade her to seduce Alex Sebastian, one of her father's friends and a leading member of the Farben executives, Devlin fails to convince his superiors that Alicia is not fit for the job. Devlin is also informed that Sebastian once was in love with Alicia. Devlin puts up a stoic front when he informs Alicia about the mission. Alicia infers, mistakenly, that he was merely pretending to love her as part of his job.

Devlin contrives to have Alicia meet Sebastian at a riding club. He recognizes her and invites her to dinner where he says that he always knew they would be reunited. Sebastian quickly invites Alicia to dinner the following night at his home, where he will host a few business acquaintances. Devlin and Captain Paul Prescott of the US Secret Service tell Alicia to memorize the names and nationalities of everyone there. At dinner, Alicia notices that a guest becomes agitated at the sight of a certain wine bottle, and is ushered quickly from the room. When the gentlemen are alone at the end of the dinner, this guest apologizes and tries to go home, but another insists on driving him, implying that he will kill him.

Soon Alicia reports to Devlin, "You can add Sebastian's name to my list of playmates." When Sebastian proposes, Alicia informs Devlin; he coldly tells her to do whatever she wants. Deeply disappointed, she marries Sebastian.

After she returns from her honeymoon, Alicia is able to tell Devlin that the key ring her husband gave her lacks the key to the wine cellar. Devlin suggests that Alicia give a grand party and invite him, so he can investigate. Alicia secretly steals the key from Sebastian's ring, and Devlin and Alicia search the cellar. Devlin accidentally breaks a bottle; inside is black sand, later proven to be uranium ore. Devlin takes a sample, cleans up, and locks the door as Sebastian comes down for more champagne. Sebastian is shocked and dismayed to see the two of them alone together. Devlin pretends to be drunk and tells Sebastian that in his drunken state he insisted that Alicia come down to the cellar with him.  She confirms this story and adds that she acquiesced in order to prevent Devlin from making an embarrassing scene in front of the party guests. Devlin congratulates Sebastian on having won Alicia's love and respect, and makes an exit.

Sebastian realizes that the cellar key is missing from his key-ring, but the next morning he sees that Alicia has reattached it during the night. Thoroughly alarmed, he returns to the cellar, he finds the glass and sand from the broken bottle.

Now Sebastian has a problem: he must silence Alicia, but cannot expose her without revealing his own blunder to the rest of the Nazi emigres, who will certainly kill him if they learn that he has married an American agent. When Sebastian discusses the situation with his mother, she suggests that Alicia "die slowly" by poisoning. They poison her coffee and she soon falls ill. Her illness worsens until she collapses and is taken to her room, where the telephone has been removed. Too weak to leave, she perceives that her husband is slowly poisoning her to death.

Devlin, alarmed by Alicia's continuing absence, sneaks into Alicia's room, where she tells him that Sebastian and his mother are poisoning her. Shocked into honesty by Alicia's peril, he finally confesses his love for her, and carries her out of the mansion in full view of Sebastian's co-conspirators. Sebastian and his mother go along with Devlin's story that Alicia must go to the hospital, but the conspirators are not convinced. Outside, Sebastian begs Devlin and Alicia to take him with them, but they contemptuously drive away, leaving him behind to suffer a grim fate at the hands of his fellow Nazis.

Cast

Cast notes

Biographer Patrick McGilligan writes that "Hitchcock rarely managed to pull together a dream cast for any of his 1940s films, but Notorious was a glorious exception." Indeed, with a story of smuggled uranium as a backdrop, "[t]he romantic pairing of Grant and Bergman promised a box office bang comparable to an atomic blast."

Not everyone saw it that way, however, most notably the project's original producer David O. Selznick. After he sold the property to RKO to raise some quick cash, Selznick lobbied hard to get Grant replaced with Joseph Cotten; the United States had just dropped atomic bombs on Japan and Selznick argued that the first film out about atomic weaponry would be the most successful—and Grant was not available for three months. Selznick also believed that Grant would be difficult to manage and make high salary demands, but most telling of all—Selznick owned Cotten's contract. Hitchcock and RKO production executive William Dozier invoked a clause in the project sale contract and blocked Selznick's attempts; Grant was signed to play opposite Bergman by late August 1945.

Hitchcock had wanted Clifton Webb to play Alexander Sebastian. Selznick pressed for Claude Rains in typical Selznick memo-heavy style: "Rains offers 'an opportunity to build the gross of Notorious enormously... . [D]o not lose a day trying to get the Rains' deal nailed down.'" Whether they were thinking in Selznick's box office terms or in more artistic ones, Dozier and Hitchcock agreed, and Rains' performance transformed Sebastian into a classic Hitchcock villain: sympathetic, nuanced, in some ways as admirable as the protagonist.

The final major casting decision was Mme. Sebastian, Alex's mother. "The spidery, tyrannical Nazi matron demanded a stronger, older presence", and when attempts to obtain Ethel Barrymore and Mildred Natwick fell through, German actor Reinhold Schünzel suggested Leopoldine Konstantin to Hitchcock and Dozier. Konstantin had been one of pre-war Germany's greatest actresses. Notorious was Konstantin's only American film appearance, and "one of the unforgettable portraits in Hitchcock's films".

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearance, a signature occurrence in his films, takes place at the party in Sebastian's mansion. At 1:04:43 (1:01:50 on European DVDs and 64:28 of the edited cut) into the film, Hitchcock is seen drinking a glass of champagne as Grant and Bergman approach. He sets his glass down and quickly departs.

Production

Pre-Production
Notorious started life as a David O. Selznick production, but by the time it hit American screens in August 1946, it bore the RKO studio's logo. Alfred Hitchcock became the producer, but as on all his subsequent films, he limited his screen credits to "Directed by" and his possessive credit above the title.

Its first glimmer occurred some two years previously, in August 1944, over lunch between Hitchcock and Selznick's story editor, Margaret McDonell. Her memo to Selznick said that Hitchcock was "very anxious to do a story about confidence tricks on a grand scale [with] Ingrid Bergman [as] the woman ... Her training would be as elaborate as the training of a Mata Hari." Hitchcock continued his conversation a few weeks later, this time dining at Chasen's with William Dozier, an RKO studio executive, and pitching it as "the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement". By this time, he had one of the single-word titles he preferred: Notorious. The pitch was convincing: Dozier quickly entered into talks with Selznick, offering to buy the property and its personnel for production at RKO.

Dozier's interest rekindled Selznick's, which up to that point had only been tepid. Perhaps what started Hitchcock's mind rolling was "The Song of the Dragon", a short story by John Taintor Foote which had appeared as a two-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1921; Selznick, who owned the rights to it, had passed it on to Hitchcock from his unproduced story file during the filming of Spellbound. Set during World War I in New York, "The Song of the Dragon" told the tale of a theatrical producer approached by federal agents, who want his assistance in recruiting an actress he once had a relationship with to seduce the leader of a gang of enemy saboteurs. Although the story was a nominal starting point that "offered some inspiration, the final narrative was pure Hitchcock".

Hitchcock travelled to England for Christmas 1944, and when he returned, he had an outline for Selznick's perusal. The producer approved development of a script, and Hitchcock decamped for Nyack, New York, for three weeks of collaboration with Ben Hecht, whom he had just worked with on Spellbound. The two would work at Hecht's house, with Hitchcock repairing at night to the St. Regis New York. The two had an extraordinarily smooth and fruitful working partnership, partly because Hecht did not really care how much Hitchcock rewrote his work:

Hitchcock delivered his and Hecht's screenplay to Selznick in late March, but the producer was getting drawn deeper into the roiling problems of his western epic Duel in the Sun. At first he ordered story conferences at his home, typically with start times of eleven p.m., to both Hecht's and Hitchcock's profound annoyance. The two would dine at Romanoff's and "pool their defenses about what Hitchcock thought was a first class script". Shortly, though, Duels problems won out and Selznick relegated Notorious to his mental back burner.

Among the many changes to the original story was the introduction of a MacGuffin: a cache of uranium being held in Sebastian's wine cellar by the Nazis. At the time, it was not common knowledge that uranium was being used in the development of the atomic bomb, and Selznick had trouble understanding its use as a plot device. Indeed, Hitchcock later claimed he was followed by the FBI for several months after he and Hecht discussed uranium with Robert Millikan at Caltech in mid-1945. In any event, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the release of details of the Manhattan Project, removed any doubts about its use.

By June 1945, Notorious reached its turning point. Selznick "was losing faith in a film that never really interested him"; the MacGuffin still bothered him, as did the Devlin character, and he worried that audiences would dislike the Alicia character. More worrisome, though, was the drain on his cash reserves imposed by the voracious Duel in the Sun. Finally, he agreed to sell the Notorious package to RKO: script, Bergman and Hitchcock.

The deal was a win-win-win situation: Selznick got $800,000 cash, plus 50% of the profits, RKO obtained a prestige production with an ascendant star and an emerging director, and Hitchcock, though he received no money, did escape from under Selznick's stifling thumb. He also got to be his own producer for the first time, an important step for him: "supervising everything from the polishing of the script to the negotiation of myriad post-production details, the director could demonstrate to the industry at large his skill as an executive." RKO assumed the project in mid-July 1945, and furnished office space, studio space, distribution—and freedom.

There was no getting away from Selznick completely, though. He contended that his 50% stake in the profits still entitled him to input into the project. He still dictated sheaves of memos about the script, and tried to oust Cary Grant from the cast in favor of his contractee, Joseph Cotten. When the United States detonated two atomic bombs over Japan in August, the memos commenced anew and centered mainly on Selznick's continuing dissatisfaction with the script. Hitchcock was abroad, so Dozier called on playwright Clifford Odets, who previously wrote None But the Lonely Heart for RKO and Grant, to do a rewrite. With Hitchcock and Selznick both busy, Selznick's script assistant Barbara Keon would be his only contact.

Odets's script tried to bring more atmosphere to the story than had previously been present. "Extending the characters' emotional range, he heightened the passion of Devlin and Alicia and the aristocratic ennui of Alex Sebastian. He also added a soupçon of high culture to soften Alicia: She quotes French poetry from memory and sings Schubert." But his draft did nothing for Selznick, who still thought the characters lacked dimension, that Devlin still lacked charm, and that the couple's sleeping together "may cheapen her in the eyes of the audience". Ben Hecht's appraisal, handwritten in the margin, was straightforward: "This is really loose crap." In the end, the Odets script was a blind alley: Hitchcock apparently used none of it.

What he did have in his hand, though, was the script for "... a consummate Hitchcock film, in every sense filled with passion and textures and levels of meaning".

Production
Principal photography for Notorious began on October 22, 1945 and wrapped in February 1946. Production was structured the way Hitchcock preferred it: with almost all shooting done indoors, on RKO sound stages, even seeming "exterior" scenes achieved with rear projection process shots. This gave him maximum control of his filmmaking through the day; in the evenings he exercised similar control over the nightly soirées at his Bellagio Road home. The only scene requiring outdoor filming was the one at the riding club where Devlin and Alicia contrive to meet Alexander Sebastian on horseback; this scene was shot at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, California. Second unit crews shot establishing exteriors and rear-projection footage in Miami, Rio de Janeiro and at the Santa Anita Park racetrack.

With everything stage-bound, production was smooth and problems were few, and small—for instance, Claude Rains, who stood three or four inches shorter than Ingrid Bergman. "[There's] this business of you being a midget with a wife, Miss Bergman, who is very tall", the director kidded with Rains, a good friend. For the scenes where Rains and Bergman were to walk hand-in-hand, Hitchcock devised a system of ramps that boosted Rains's height yet were unseen by the camera. He also suggested Rains try elevator shoes: "Walk in them, sleep in them, be comfortable in them." Rains did, and used them thereafter. Hitchcock gave Rains the choice of playing Sebastian with a German or his English accent; Rains chose the latter.

Ingrid Bergman's gowns were by Edith Head, in one of her many collaborations with Hitchcock.

One of the signature scenes in Notorious is the two-and-a-half-minute kiss that Hitchcock interrupted every three seconds to slip the scene through the three-second-rule crack in the Production Code. "The two stars worried about how strange it felt", writes biographer McGilligan. "Walking along, nuzzling each other with the camera trailing behind them, seemed 'very awkward' to the actors during filming, according to Bergman. 'Don't worry', Hitchcock assured her. 'It'll look right on the screen.

Although the production proceeded smoothly it was not without some unusual aspects. The first was the helpfulness of Cary Grant toward Ingrid Bergman, in a way that "was remarkably calm and pointedly unusual for him". Although this was Bergman's second outing with Hitchcock (the first was the just-finished Spellbound), she was nervous and insecure early on. The often moody, sometimes withdrawn Grant, though, "came to Notorious full of bounce" and coached her through her initial period of adjustment, rehearsing her the way Devlin rehearses Alicia. This began a lifetime friendship for the two.

There were two passionate turmoils going on on-set, and both served to inform the final product: one was Hitchcock's growing infatuation with Bergman, and the other was her torturous affair with Robert Capa, the celebrity battlefield photographer. As a result of this simpatico connection, and "to accomplish the deepest logic of Notorious, Hitchcock did something unprecedented in his career: he made Ingrid his closest collaborator on the picture":

When production wrapped in February 1946, Hitchcock had in the can what François Truffaut later told him "gets a maximum of effect from a minimum of elements ... Of all your pictures, this is the one in which one feels the most perfect correlation between what you are aiming at and what appears on the screen ... To the eye, the ensemble is as perfect as an animated cartoon ..."

Music
The music for Notorious is the least celebrated of the major Hitchcock scores, writes film scholar Jack Sullivan, one that few writers or fans talk about. "The neglect is unfortunate, for Roy Webb composed one of the most deftly designed scores of any Hitchcock film. It weaves a unique spell, one Hitchcock had not conjured before, and the hip, swingy source music is novel as well."

The composer was Roy Webb, a staff composer at RKO, who had most recently scored the dark films of director Val Lewton for that studio. He wrote the fight song for Columbia University while he was there in the 1920s, then served as assistant to film composer Max Steiner until 1935; his reputation was "reliable, but unglamorous". Hitchcock had tried to get Bernard Herrmann for Notorious, but Herrmann was unavailable; Webb too was a Herrmann fan: "Benny writes the best music in Hollywood, with the fewest notes", he said.

Before the sale of the property to RKO, Selznick attempted, with typical Selznick gusto, to steer the course of the music. He was miffed that no hit pop song had come out of his previous Hitchcock picture Spellbound, so he considered eighteen "gooey, sentimental songs" like "Love Nest", "Don't Give Any More Beer to My Father" and "In A Little Love Nest Way Up on a Hill" for inclusion in Notorious. However, the sale removed Selznick as the decision-maker.

Hitchcock was glad to be out from under Selznick's thumb. There would be "no sudsy violins in big love scenes, no more recycling of Selznick's favorite cues from past movies. He made sure there were no south-of-the-border cliches." Selznick's exit also brought Hitchcock and Webb together into their natural sympatico. "Selznick deplored 'Hitchcock's goddamned jigsaw cutting', the dreamlike, jagged images that create his signature subjectivity. But Webb didn't mind jigsaw cutting at all. It complemented his fragmented musical architecture, just as the blocked passions of the film's characters reflect his unresolved harmonies. Like Hitchcock, Webb favored atmosphere and tonal nuance over broad gestures. Both men were classicists dealing in darkness and chaos." They featured complementary personalities, too: "Webb had a modest ego, a handy trait when working for a control addict like Hitchcock." Notorious was, however, their only film together.

Alicia and Devlin fall quickly in love once they arrive in Rio, and Webb uses tambourines, guitars, drums and Brazilian trumpets swinging into Brazilian dance music to provide "sensuous foreplay for the tumultuous love affair". Numbers include "Carnaval no Rio", "Meu Barco", "Guanabara" and two sambas "Ya Ya Me Leva" and "Bright Samba". Yet understatement and atypical use are everywhere:

Often, Webb and Hitchcock use no music at all to undergird a romantic scene. The two-and-a-half minute kiss begins with distant music when it commences out on the balcony, but goes silent when the couple move inside. Other times, they flout conventional wisdom: when Alicia asks the band to stop playing stuffy waltzes and liven things up with Brazilian music to cover her trip to the wine cellar with Devlin, Latin dance tunes replace the expected suspense cue.

Aspects of Hitchcockian humor are present: When Alicia first enters the Sebastian mansion, loaded with sinister Nazis, Schumann is playing. "Wicked they may be, but these terrorists have artistic sensibilities and impeccable taste."

Cinematography

Roger Ebert described Notorious as having "some of the most effective camera shots in his—or anyone's—work". Hitchcock played off Grant's star power in his first scene, introducing his character with shots of the back of the actor's head showing him observing Alicia carefully. The excess of her drinking is reinforced the next morning with a close-up and zoom out from a glass of fizzing aspirin beside her bed. The camera switches to her point of view and the viewer sees Grant as Devlin, backlit and upside down. The film also contains a tracking shot at Sebastian's mansion in Rio de Janeiro: starting high above the entrance hall, the camera tracks all the way down to Alicia's hand, showing her nervously twisting the key there.

Production credits
The production credits on the film were as follows:
 Director - Alfred Hitchcock
 Screenplay - Ben Hecht
 Director of photography - Ted Tetzlaff
 Art direction - Albert S. D'Agostino and Carroll Clark (art directors); Darrell Silvera and Claude E. Carpenter (set decorations)
 Special effects - Vernon L. Walker and Paul Eagler
 Music - Roy Webb (music), Constantin Bakaleinikoff (musical director), Gil Grau (orchestral arrangements)
 Editor - Theron Warth
 Sound - John E. Tribby and Terry Kellum
 Costumes - Edith Head (design of Ingrid Bergman's gowns)
 Assistant director - William Dorfman
 Production assistant - Barbara Keon

Themes and motifs
The predominant theme in Notorious is trust—trust withheld, or given too freely. T. R. Devlin is a long time finding his trust, while Alexander Sebastian offers his up easily—and ultimately pays a big price for it. Likewise, the film addresses a woman's need to be trusted, and a man's need to open himself to love.

Hitchcock the raconteur positioned it in terms of classic conflict. He told Truffaut that

Sullivan writes that Devlin sets up Alicia as sexual bait, refuses to take any responsibility for his role, then feels devastated when she does a superb job. Alicia finds herself coldly manipulated by the man she loves, sees her notorious behavior exploited for political purposes, then fears abandonment by the lover who put her in the excruciating predicament of spying on her late father's Nazi colleague by sleeping with him—a man who genuinely loves her, perhaps more than Devlin does. Alex is Hitchcock's most painfully sympathetic villain, driven by his profound jealousy and rage—not to mention his enthrallment to an emasculating mother—culminating in an abrupt, absolute imperative to kill the love of his life.

Hitchcock's own mother had died in September 1942, and Notorious is the first time he addresses his mother issues head-on. "In Notorious, the role of mother is at last fully introduced and examined. No longer relegated to mere conversation, she appears here as a major character in a Hitchcock picture, and all at once—as later, through Psycho, The Birds and Marnie—Hitchcock began to make the mother figure a personal repository of his anger, guilt, resentment, and a sad yearning." At the same time, he blurred mother-love with erotic love, and poignantly, in both the film and in its director's life, "both kinds of love were in fact limited to longing and fantasy and unfulfilled expectations".

The theme of drinking weaves its way through the film from beginning to end: for Alicia it is an escape from guilt and pain, or even downright poisonous. When a guest at the opening party tells her she has had enough, she scoffs: "The important drinking hasn't started yet." She camouflages emotional rejection with whiskey, at the opening party, the outdoor cafe in Rio, the apartment in Rio, then drinking becomes even more dangerous as the Sebastians administer their poison through Alicia's coffee. Even the MacGuffin comes packaged in a wine bottle. "All the drinking is valueless and finally dangerous."

Coming as it did on the heels of World War II, the theme of patriotism—and the limits thereof—makes it "astonishing that the movie was produced at all (and that it was such an immediate success), since it contains such blunt dialogue about government-sponsored prostitution: The sexual blackmail is the idea of American intelligence agents, who are blithely willing to exploit a woman (and even to let her die) to serve their own ends. The depiction of the moral murkiness of American officials was unprecedented in Hollywood—especially in 1945, when the Allied victory ushered in an era of understandable, but ultimately dangerous, chauvinism in American life."

Notorious is notable among Hitchcock's films in that even though it is a spy thriller involving assassinations and attempts at assassination, no physical violence at all is shown on screen, except for the serving of poisoned coffee, and occasional gentle slaps.

Reception
The film was the official selection of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. Notorious had its premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on August 15, 1946, with Hitchcock, Bergman, and Grant in attendance.

Box office
The film made $4.85 million in theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada on its first release, making it one of the highest-grossing films of the year. Overseas, it earned $2.3 million, for worldwide rentals of $7.15 million, generating RKO a profit of $1,010,000.

Reviews
Writing in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther praised the film, writing, "Mr. Hecht has written, and Mr. Hitchcock has directed in brilliant style, a romantic melodrama which is just about as thrilling as they come—velvet smooth in dramatic action, sharp and sure in its characters, and heavily charged with the intensity of warm emotional appeal." Leslie Halliwell, usually terse, almost glowed about Notorious: "Superb romantic suspenser containing some of Hitchcock's best work." Decades later, Roger Ebert also praised the film, adding it to his "Great Movies" list and calling it "the most elegant expression of the master's visual style". On the website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall positive rating of 96%, with an average rating of 8.9/10 based on 48 reviews, with a consensus of: "Sublime direction from Hitchcock, and terrific central performances from Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant make this a bona-fide classic worthy of a re-visit." As of January 2023, Notorious is one of only nine films with a 100 (perfect) score on the movie critic aggregator website, Metacritic (two other Hitchcock films, Vertigo and Rear Window, are also on the list).

Notorious was Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell's favorite of her father's pictures. "What a perfect film!", she told her father's biographer, Charlotte Chandler. "The more I see Notorious, the more I like it."

Claude Rains was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Ben Hecht was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.

Legacy
Film critic Roger Ebert included Notorious in his Ten Greatest Films of All Time list in 1991, citing it as his favorite of Hitchcock's films. Entertainment Weekly voted it at No. 66 on their list of The Greatest Films of All Time in 1999. The Village Voice ranked Notorious at No. 77 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. In 2005, Hecht's screenplay was voted by the Writers Guild of America as one of the 101 best ever written.
The following year, Notorious was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". American Film Institute included the film as No. 38 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills and as No. 86 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions. Time magazine listed it among the All-TIME 100 films (a list of the greatest films since the magazine's inception) as chosen by Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel. The film was voted at No. 38 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008. Notorious was ranked 68th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films. In 2022, Time Out magazine ranked the film at No. 34 on their list of "The 100 best thriller films of all time".

Adaptations

 The silent film Convoy (1927), co-produced by Victor Halperin, was based on the same Saturday Evening Post story.
 A Lux Radio Theater adaptation was broadcast on January 26, 1948, with Ingrid Bergman reprising her role as Alicia Huberman and Joseph Cotten taking Cary Grant's role of T. R. Devlin. Another radio adaptation was produced for The Screen Guild Theater, again starring Ingrid Bergman, although this time with John Hodiak, and was broadcast on January 6, 1949.
 The film was remade in 1992 as the TV film Notorious directed by Colin Bucksey, with John Shea as Devlin, Jenny Robertson as Alicia Velorus, Jean-Pierre Cassel as Sebastian, and Marisa Berenson as Katarina.
 In the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars the season two episode "Senate Spy" is a "compressed" adaptation of Notorious, even going so far as to frame the final shot of the episode the same way as the movie.
 Mission: Impossible 2 paid strong homage to Notorious, but the plot is about a deadly virus instead of uranium, with the core story, many of the scenes, and some of the dialogue from Notorious being used.
 The operatic adaption Notorious by Hans Gefors was premiered in Gothenburg in September 2015, starring Nina Stemme as Alicia Huberman.

Tribute to Hitchcock
On March 7, 1979, the American Film Institute honored Hitchcock with its Life Achievement Award. At the tribute dinner, Ingrid Bergman presented him with the original ÚNICA key to the wine cellar - the single most notable prop in Notorious. After filming had ended, Cary Grant had kept it. A few years later he gave the key to Bergman, saying that it had given him luck and hoped it would do the same for her. When presenting it to Hitchcock, to his surprise and delight, she expressed the hope that it would be lucky for him as well.

References

Sources

 Brown, Curtis F. The Pictorial History of Film Stars – Ingrid Bergman. New York: Galahad Books, 1973. , p. 76–81

 Humphries, Patrick. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Crescent Books, a Random House company, 1994 revised edition. , p. 88–93

External links

 Notorious an essay by William Rothman at the Criterion Collection
 Reprints of historic reviews, photo gallery at CaryGrant.net

Streaming audio
 Notorious radio adaptation on MP3 aired January 26, 1948 on Lux Radio Theatre (59 minutes, with Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten)
 Notorious on Screen Guild Theater: January 6, 1949

1946 films
1940s romantic thriller films
1940s political thriller films
1940s spy thriller films
American black-and-white films
American romantic thriller films
American spy thriller films
1940s English-language films
Film noir
Films scored by Roy Webb
Films directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Films produced by Alfred Hitchcock
Films set in Rio de Janeiro (city)
American political thriller films
RKO Pictures films
United States National Film Registry films
Films about nuclear war and weapons
Films adapted into operas
Films set in 1946
Films set in country houses
Films with screenplays by Ben Hecht
1940s American films

Notorious (1946 film)


Carbon diet is the process of reducing the production of greenhouse gas, primarily carbon dioxide, to reduce effects on climate change and global warming.

Carbon dioxide is produced from heating, driving and consuming products.

The production of carbon dioxide can be reduced by decreasing the intake of carbon, and eventually reduces the effects of climate change.

According to Deborah Jones, her family undergoes carbon diet. They are already in week two of the Globe and Mail assignment. The purpose of this assignment is to see how her family can reduces the emissions of greenhouse gas to reach the provincial goal of 33 percent reduction. It is different from a low carbon diet which is done by choosing what to eat to reduce greenhouse gas discharge.

Etymology
Carbon is from Latin word carbo "coal" is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years.

The term "carbon diet" is used in book Gore:A Political Life. There are steps in carbon diet:
 Calculate a carbon footprint to understand the amount of carbon dioxide emissions

 Measure the carbon footprint against peers (e.g., similar company size or for individuals, a national average)

 Determine the ideal carbon footprint

 Identify the source of the most significant carbon dioxide emissions [3]

 Reduce carbon dioxide emissions by starting with the most significant sources first

References
 Zelnick, Robert (1999). Gore: a political life. Washington, DC: Regnery Pub.. pp. 330. ISBN 0-89526-326-2.
 Deborah Jones, "Stepping Towards Greener Pastures: Part 2 of BC family's carbon diet focuses on transportation," The Globe and Mail, March 30, 2007
 Data and studies on CO2 emissions from common goods and services are at CO2List.org

Environment
Green politics

Carbon diet