Herbert Bayard Swope Jr. 

(1915-2008)

This was one of Swope's favorite photos from his Hollywood years where he directed television and played croquet with the likes of Harpo Marx, Louis Jourdan and Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979).  Swope was married to stage, television and screen actress, Margaret Hayes best known for her performance in The Blackboard Jungle (1955).  She once had a screen test for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind though the part was given to Vivian Leigh .. and the rest is GWTW history!

Darryl F. Zanuck playing croquet.

Margaret Hayes was born Florette Regina Ottenheimer.  She and Herbert had 2 children, Herbert B. "Rusty" Swope, III and Tracy Brooks Swope. They married in 1947 and divorced in 1973. She was known as Maggie to her many friends.  

Margaret Hayes

Bob Alman (1939-2022) and Herbert Swope by the Swope pool at his home on the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach.

Alman was a master promoter and organizer of croquet in the United States. He always said "croquet is my life".  Alman devoted his life to the game of croquet.  He was appointed the first manager of the USA's National Croquet Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.  Alman aught and promoted croquet in South Florida, an area with the largest population of croquet playrs in the United States.  He continued to edit the website almost single-handedly until shortly before his passing in 2022.

The essential distinguishing features of today's American Rules for croquet were first popularized in the early 20s largely through Swope's father and his circle of friends and employees popularly known as the "Algonquin Round Table." The group often dined at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC located at 59 W. 44th Street.

Herbert Bayard Swope, Jr. was a handsome man of imposing stature and bearing. These qualities served him well as a television producer in New York and Hollywood in the 50s and 60s.  His baritone voice was regularly heard over the airwaves in the 70s and 80s when he made a second career in South Florida as a radio and television personality.  In the 90s he mostly contented himself with columns and occasional writings in the local Palm Beach press.  His image was perfect Hollywood casting for an accomplished man of means.  

The "Junior" is well named for Herbert learned the lessons of life at his father's knee.  Herbert Swope Sr. lived the life he wanted to live and made no distinction between work and play between friends and co-workers or even between night and day.  It was a charmed life, an enlightened approach to life and Herbert Swope Jr. grew up familiar with that style to lead a charmed life of his own which came to rest in Palm Beach, permanently in 1976 where Swope soon had a broadcasting and journalism career.

The great game of croquet was always played over the weekends and you'd have badminton with one group, croquet with another.  In those days, croquet was totally informal as opposed to today.  There were no measured lawns and no close-cut grass.  We played with the great trees on the lawns and various obstacles without boundaries.  

Herbert Bayard Swope, Sr.

Herbert Swope Jr. was a child when the weekend croquet became well established in the mid 20s.  He learned the game by watching and was eventually invited to play with the adults. By the time he was 12 or 13, he played a respectable game of golf, but his father still kept him around on the weekends because he was also becoming a good croquet player and one of the best in the group. During this time in Herbert's young life one of the closest neighbors were Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald partied at the Swope home often perhaps that home and others in the area were the basis for the homes in the novel and movie, The Great Gatsby.  In the novel, Tom and Daisy Buchanan's East Egg house, a central Gatsby "character" is described as "a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay" yet many have felt it was modeled on the all-white Swope estate in Sands Point on Long Island.

Sidenote:  During my years in Palm Beach County I was given the opportunity to meet Mr. Swope after entering a contest organized by WPBR Radio (1340 AM) located near Lake Worth Beach.  The WPBR broadcast studios had a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean.  I was a regular listener of his radio show heard weekday afternoons.  The contest winners were taken, by bus, with Mr. Swope to the beautiful Hialeah Racetrack in Hialeah, Florida.  It was a special outing I remember to this day. While reading about his life as a young boy on Long Island with Scott Fitzgerald as a neighbor, it seemed like a scene right out of the film, The Great Gatsby. Perhaps it was!