He let my swim team train during the winter in his Olympic-sized indoor pool. If you had an AAU ranking, you were invited to wear blue and gold T-shirts and warm-ups emblazoned with “Foxcatcher,” the title he’d give his estate.
John E. du Pont was his name. He was a direct descendant of E. I. du Pont, who founded a gunpowder mill that grew into the huge chemical company that gave the world nylon and Teflon. His father was known as “Stinky Willie” because of his aversion to personal grooming.
John du Pont was awkward and pedantic, the eccentric millionaire next door. He collected seashells and stuffed birds and referred to himself as “America’s golden eagle.”
He called his more prominent relatives “the lesser du Ponts,” but the title probably fit him better. He was worth as much as $200 million, according to one Forbes estimate, and spent lavishly on his passion: amateur freestyle wrestling. He gave more than $3 million to the sport’s governing body, USA Wrestling.
Then he shot and killed one of wrestling’s Olympic stars on the grounds of his estate. He was convicted and sent to prison, where he died four years ago.
Said the man who won a murder conviction against du Pont: “He was just a crackpot, a real crackpot.”
From real life to the silver screen
Now actor Steve Carell has brought the crackpot back to life. There’s Oscar buzz already for “Foxcatcher.” And while wrestling movies aren’t my thing, I simply had to go see the 40-Year-Old Virgin play the Boo Radley of my childhood.
Carell, a “Daily Show” alum beloved for playing Michael Scott in the popular sitcom “The Office,” deserves every bit of the serious-actor praise he’s getting. He could very well follow Nicole Kidman on the path to Oscar glory — a journey that seems to require wearing a prosthetic nose and playing someone awful and tragic.
“Foxcatcher” is a dark movie, and Carell captures this entitled, homicidal nut so well that I completely forgot I was watching a guy who plays it for laughs in Judd Apatow comedies.
–
As Judge Patricia Jenkins put it: He was mad, and he was bad.
End of the journey: prison
Du Pont was sentenced to 13 to 30 years in prison, where he died in December 2010 at the age of 72. He spent what should have been his golden years behind bars.
While he was locked up, du Pont ordered the sign at the estate’s gate changed to read, “Foxcatcher Prison Farm.” On his orders, employees painted the buildings black, including the crime scene, a stone house along Goshen Road. Was he was trying to erase everything that happened there? Or was he signaling that he, too, was in mourning?
People in my old neighborhood had hoped the du Pont place would be maintained as public open space. But it became an eyesore as the weeds sprouted, the horses roamed and the stately Georgian mansion started to fade after standing empty for more than a decade. It sold shortly before du Pont’s death for $28.5 million.
About 125 acres already had gone to Episcopal Academy, a prestigious Main Line prep school that built a new campus there in 2008. A few more acres were turned into a park. And the rest is being developed.
It would have cost too much to restore the mansion to its former glory. So, the Montpelier replica was torn down to make room for upscale suburban houses that sell for upwards of $2 million apiece.
John du Pont is buried at an undisclosed location. Under the terms of his will, he was laid to rest in his Foxcatcher wrestling singlet.