Cleveland Amory – American activist and writer
Cleveland Amory was an American writer, who devoted his life to defending animal rights. He is best known as the author of books about his cat Polar Bear, whom Amory saved on Christmas 1977 in Manhattan.
Cleveland Amory was born on September 2, 1917 in Nahant, Massachusetts to an old Boston family.
Amory attended Harvard University, where he became editor of The Harvard Crimson. After graduation he became the youngest editor ever to join The Saturday Evening Post.
During the Second World from 1941 to 1943 Amory served in the US Army military intelligence. He was one of the founders of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). In 1967 he founded the Fund for Animals. Also from 1987 until his death in 1998 he was a president of the New England Anti-vivisection Society (NEAVS).
From 1963 to 1976, Amory served as a senior editor and columnist for Saturday Review magazine.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s Amory worked as a critic for TV Guide. Stars like Doris Day, Angie Dickinson and Mary Tyler Moore took part in his campaign against fur clothing. He bought the first ocean-going vessel for Paul Watson, founder of the society for the protection of marine fauna – Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Watson used the ship in his first confrontation with Japanese whalers.
In 1975, Amory published ManKind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife, using humor, sarcasm, and graphic rhetoric to attack hunters, trappers, and other exploiters of wild animals.
In 1987, he wrote The Cat Who Came for Christmas, a book about a stray cat he rescued from the streets of New York, which became a national best seller. This was followed by its sequels The Cat and the Curmudgeon, and The Best Cat Ever.
In 2005, HSUS formed a united corporation with the Fund for Animals. Currently HSUS has Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch, animal shelter in Texas.
Cleveland Amory died on October 14, 1998. He was buried near his beloved cat Polar Bear in Black Beauty Ranch in Texas.
Animal protection was his passion and his life’s work.
In 2006, Julie Hoffman Marshall published Amory’s biography Making Burros Fly.