Jeffrey Potter

Who was Jeffrey Potter?

Jeffrey Potter was an American biographer best known for his 1985 biography of Jackson Pollock, whom he had befriended in 1949. He also published two children’s books and two non-fiction works: one about environmental disaster, and an authorised biography of Dorothy Schiff.

Potter was born to Mary Barton Atterbury and Joseph Wiltsie Fuller Potter, on April 12, 1918, in Manhattan. His father was a Wall Street stockbroker. The young Jeffrey dropped out of Groton School to become a newspaper reporter, factory machinist and seaman. During World War II he joined the American Field Service, where he was attached to the British Indian Army, as an ambulance driver and medic in the Burma Campaign.

While working as a building contractor in the Hamptons in 1949, he befriended painter Jackson Pollock. Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, lived in Springs, near Potter's home in Amagansett, New York. They remained friends until Pollock's death in 1956.

Potter's first biography, Men, Money & Magic: The Story of Dorothy Schiff was published by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in 1976. Much of the book is devoted to Schiff's relationships with her husbands and male friends, including President Franklin D.