“I started watching Succession and I had to turn it off,” says Armie’s aunt Casey Hammer, “because it was like, ‘Oh, my God. While there, he married a Russian singer named Olga and together they had a son named Julian-Armie’s grandfather.īy the 1950s, Armand had divorced Olga as well as a second wife, Angela, who had told the court that, due to his time in Russia and his medical training, “ causes him no pain to see the sufferings of others.” He moved to Los Angeles, married a wealthy woman named Frances Barrett Tolman in 1956, invested her money in the then failing Occidental Petroleum, and drove the company to incredible success.
According to Epstein, Vladimir Lenin sent a message to Joseph Stalin encouraging “particular support” for Armand, telling him, “This is a small path to the American ‘business’ world and this path should be made use of in every way.” Armand moved to the Soviet Union in 1921 for about a decade to fortify family connections. With Julius in prison, his 22-year-old son, Armand Hammer (Armie’s namesake), abandoned a medical career to take over his father’s other business, Allied Drug.
