JAMES SCRIPPS BOOTH

Eldest son and number two child of George and Ellen Booth; is described in The Cranbrook Booth Family of  America, pg 20 as follows: “artist, engineer, writer, philosopher, and inventor”. He was a true polymath. James married Jean Alice McLaughlin in Detroit in June 1910. Soon after their wedding the couple embarked on an extended trip to Europe. On this trip they were occasionally joined by Ralph and Mary Booth during their own extended European sabbatical. It is during these joint travels that James becomes Mary Booth’s favorite Booth in-law.

• First conceived in 1908 James designed and built in 1913 (possibly with assistance from his younger brother Warren Scripps Booth) the very first V-8 engine in Detroit which he installed in his Bi-Autogo, a prototype two wheel car which resembles a huge motorcycle with small training wheels. The Bi-Autogo is now in the collection of The Detroit Historical Museum.
• In 1912 along with JOHN BATTERMAN, younger brother of Mary B. Booth, James and John build and drove across country a prototype two seat chain belt-driven cycle automobile or “cyclecar” known as the “J.B. Rocket” , so named for James Booth and John Batterman. The “Rocket” is now in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum. 
• Following the successful test run of the Rocket cyclecar, in 1913 James Scripps with the financial help of relatives founds the Scripps-Booth Motor Car Company becoming its chief designer and engineer. The company  continues in business until it is purchased by William Durant’s Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1917. Scripps-Booth continued as an independent design and production division of first Chevrolet and then after 1918 with General Motors until 1923 when the name was discontinued. In addition, to designing all the Scripps-Booth automobiles, James handled all of the Company’s graphic design work and advertising.
  NOTE: Ralph Booth invested in Scripps Booth Motor Car Company in 1916 when the company purchased a supplier. Ralph then cashed out these shares when the company was purchased in 1917 by Chevrolet. Approximately 60,000 Scripps-Booth automobiles were produced, with very few surviving.
  
• James Scripps resigned from the Scripps Booth Motor Car Company in 1916 following a disagreement with the Board of Directors who wanted to build heavier automobiles, a move away from the light weight speedsters championed by James. James’s place as chief designer was filled by WILLIAM BUSHNELL STOUT, who relocated to Detroit to work at Scripps-Booth.
• NOTE:  Bill Stout left Scripps-Booth to become chief engineer for the Packard Motor Company’s aviation division. He became famous as Henry Ford’s aviation designer engineer who was responsible for the designing the famous all metal Ford Tri-Motor airplane).
• James Scripps continued to design and invent automobile improvements the decade of the 1920’s and is a member of the Automobile Hall of Fame. His drawings and plans for his prototype masterpiece automobile which he called “The Da Vinci” which he began in 1921and shopped to various car manufacturers were later misappropriated by the Stutz resulting in a patent infringement lawsuit filed in 1925 but not resolved until 1935 when the Stutz Company was nearly bankrupt. James was awarded $40,000, just enough to pay his legal fees.

James Booth married in 1910 and, just like Ralph Booth, he and his wife spent the year 1911 and 1912 travelling abroad, living for a time in Paris where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and took drawing lessons in pastels from the Michigan artist Myron Barlow who was living in Etaples, France. Thereafter pastel were James favorite drawing medium. Following his resignation for Scripps Booth, in 1917 James relocated his family to California building a lovely Spanish colonial style house and studio in Pasadena, called “Linda Vista House”. It was here that his painting really took off. James also maintained a large apartment in the Detroit Towers overlooking the Detroit River and Belle Isle located on Jefferson Avenue.

While James and his wife Jean were traveling and living in Europe, Ralph and Mary Booth joined them on several occasions. James was on excellent terms with his Uncle Ralph and Aunt Mary, who was quite taken with James. 

The heirs of James Scripps donated a large collection of his painting to the Cranbrook Educational Community. Most of these pictures are large scale pastels.

James’s first wife Jean and the mother of his three children died in 1942. The following year James married Ellen Norlen.  They moved to Norwalk, Connecticut, where they named their home “Sun House”.   Here James died in 1954.