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Portrait of Governor Culbert Olson

Culbert Olson

29th Governor, Democrat
(1939-1943)

- Short Biography
- Administration
- Personal information
- This Time in California

 

Biography*
Born in Utah in 1876, politics was in Culbert Olson's blood. His suffragette mother was the first female elected official in Utah, and his cousin was a Congressman. Prior to his election as Governor, Olson was a farmhand, construction laborer, railroad worker, telegraph operator, newspaper editor, lawyer, U.S. Senator and State Senator. One of Olson's Hollywood friends once said, "If you'd called Central Casting foràgovernors, Culbert Olson is what they'd have sent you," but while he looked the part, he was not suited for it. As Olson told Earl Warren, "If you want to know what Hell is like, just be Governor." He tried (but failed) to manage the legislature (he even installed a "hot line" phone to the Speaker's rostrum). Olson made humanitarian changes in the penal system and pardoned Tom Mooney, the controversial labor martyr convicted 20 years earlier.

top Administration under Governor Culbert Olson

- Inaugural Address - January 2, 1939

top The Life of Governor Culbert Olson

Born
November 7, 1876
Fillmore, Utah

Died
April 13, 1962
Los Angeles, California

Family
First Lady: Kate Jeremy
Children: 3 sons

top This Time in California, the Nation, the World
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943
  State population - 6,907,387.

 

  Japanese Americans relocated

 

 
         
WW II begins in Europe

 

       


* All Biographies excerpted fromThe Governors of California and their Portraits (see credits)
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