Most of us know the name Jacuzzi. We’ve seen it on hot tubs, bathtubs, and maybe even enjoyed a soak in one ourselves. But behind that familiar name is the remarkable story of an Italian immigrant family, two brothers who came to America in 1907, and a long history of inventions that had nothing to do with hot tubs. The Jacuzzis built airplanes, developed pumps for farmers, and weathered personal tragedies before arriving at the invention that would make their family name famous.
Our own Montie Montgomery tells the story of Candido Jacuzzi and his young son Kenneth, who suffered from severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. When doctors recommended hydrotherapy to ease the boy’s pain, Candido turned to what he knew best: pumps.
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Lee Habeeb (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb, and this is Our American Stories. And it’s Italian-American Heritage Month all October long. We’re telling the stories of the Italian Americans who made this country what it is, from Columbus to Capra. Up next, the story of a name you all know, but don’t know the story of. Here’s our own Montie Montgomery with the story.
Montie Montgomery (00:35):
To most of us, a Kleenex is a Kleenex is a Kleenex. Your aunt’s slow cooker? Always a crockpot. Got a cut? You probably reach into your medicine drawer and pull out a Band-Aid. Sometimes you corner the market so well that your brand name becomes generic shorthand for the product itself. Kleenex, crockpot, Band-Aid? Prime examples. Legally, these are still trademarks, not generic terms. And companies can get pretty creative trying to remind us of that. It is, after all, a blessing and a curse for them. Xerox, for example, ran a whole ad campaign trying to get people to stop saying Xerox this document and instead say something closer to photocopy this on a Xerox copier.
Archival Xerox advertisement (01:16):
The Xerox 2600, the compact copier that really is just as good as a Xerox.
Montie Montgomery (01:23):
But enough about that. I want to step into some hot water with you today. And talk about another company whose name has become generic in the minds of millions, but whose story is truly one of a kind. The name most of us think about when we think of a bubbling bath. Jacuzzi.
Montie Montgomery (01:43):
The story starts with seven Italian brothers and airplanes. The year is 1907, and two young brothers, Valeriano and Francesco Jacuzzi, leave northern Italy and head west, way west, to the Pacific Northwest in search of work and a piece of the American dream.
Montie Montgomery (02:01):
They came from a huge family. Giovanni, their father, a carpenter, and Teresa, their mother, a homemaker, had 13 children in all, seven sons, six daughters. They were devout Catholics, and according to the family years after the fact, life in northern Italy had the sort of pastoral elegance to it one might picture when picking up a brochure and see the words “Italian countryside”. Vineyards surrounded them. The kids wore wooden shoes during the week and saved their nicer footwear for Mass, which they dutifully attended.
Montie Montgomery (02:32):
But money was tight, so Valeriano and Francesco, they went to America and took whatever work they could find. The brothers only spoke rudimentary English. Paolo Jacuzzi later told the New York Times, “They dug ditches, worked in orange groves, and did everything they could to make a buck and send it back to Italy.” The goal was to get the rest of the family over. Transatlantic travel was expensive, after all. But they made it work, and by 1915 had scraped together enough money to open up their own machine shop. And this is where airplanes finally come into the story. It’s the dawn of aviation in America, and people are enthralled with it. None more so in the Jacuzzi family than their brother Rachele. He went to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and saw airplanes performing stunts for the first time in his life. A moment of genius struck him. He became convinced that he could design a better propeller.
Montie Montgomery (03:29):
So he does. It’s called the toothpick propeller. And get this, the U.S. government agrees that it’s great too. So they contract with this tiny machine shop run by Italian-American immigrants, fresh off the boat, so to speak, to help them build up the arsenal of democracy in World War I. And afterwards, the brothers decide to set their sights even higher, deciding that they should start an airline, and they should build their own plane to be the backbone of it. And not only do they manage to build it, but it’s truly a revolutionary aircraft, huge for its time. It can carry seven people and is fully enclosed.
Montie Montgomery (04:03):
If you were to picture an airplane of these days, a typical airplane, you’d probably picture one with a pilot sitting out in the open with his scarf flapping in the breeze, bugs probably hitting him in the teeth. But the J-7 looked way more like the future. The first single-wing, fully enclosed airplane in history. Any plane you fly on today owes in part its existence to the Jacuzzis. And I know that’s a bit of an overstatement, but that’s essentially what a 737 is today. That’s a huge accomplishment.
Montie Montgomery (04:30):
And it also begs the question, why is the family only associated with bubbling baths today? The unfortunate reality is tragedy struck. A wing broke off the plane, and the plane broke apart mid-flight. Four men were killed, and among them was 26-year-old Giocondo Jacuzzi, one of the seven brothers. For the heartbroken family, the aviation dream was over. But it really wasn’t the brothers’ decision. From the Times: “Fearing the loss of another son, their mother ruled out all further ventures into aviation.” The brothers were grounded and would soon focus on a much more boring endeavor. From the Times again: “After a period of stagnancy facing debts incurred by the loss of their expensive plane, the brothers redirected their focus to the land. They worked on developing irrigation systems for orchards and designed a line of deep well injector pumps, later selling their patents to large corporations in exchange for royalty deals.” It was a worthwhile endeavor, and they were successful at it. Then, tragedy again.
Montie Montgomery (05:44):
Candido, the youngest of the original seven brothers, his son Kenneth, got sick. Very sick.
Kenneth Jacuzzi (archival audio) (05:50):
Just before I turned two years old, I contracted strep throat. The strep throat evolved into rheumatic fever. The rheumatic fever evolved into juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. My folks were told when I contracted the arthritis that I wouldn’t live to be three years old.
Montie Montgomery (06:09):
From the New York Times again: “Devastated, Candido and his wife tried everything, including a full-body cast, in an attempt to coax his limbs to grow straight.” None of it worked. But their introduction to hydrotherapy by way of the Hubbard tank at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley that gave them a glimmer of hope. The Hubbard tank was an oval-shaped vessel with a wooden bench through which water would swirl and pummel the patient’s body to relieve stiffness and improve flexibility. For Ken, those treatments really mattered. The warm water helped get his body and joints more flexible. But the problem was getting there. Candido’s wife was taking her very sick little boy for hydrotherapy treatments again and again and again, twice a week. And travel itself was becoming excruciating for him and her.
Kenneth Jacuzzi (archival audio) (07:04):
So she asked my dad, “Can you come and take a look at this thing? Maybe you can make something for the bathtub at home.”
Montie Montgomery (07:10):
Candido went to the hospital, looked at the hydrotherapy equipment, and realized that, mechanically speaking, it was pumps. And if there was one thing the Jacuzzi family knew at this point, it was pumps. So Candido went to work.
Kenneth Jacuzzi (archival audio) (07:25):
He designed a unit for our home bathtub.
Montie Montgomery (07:27):
He took the same principles his family had been using to move water through California farms and began adapting them to move warm water around his son. The goal at this point wasn’t luxury. It was a desperate father trying to make his little boy hurt less.
Kenneth Jacuzzi (archival audio) (07:43):
He invited the doctor to our house to see the unit, and he said, “This is great.” He said, “Why don’t you make them and market them for other people who could benefit from hydrotherapy?”
Montie Montgomery (07:56):
Eventually, all that work became the J-300. In 1956, Jacuzzi began marketing it. At first, the pitch was still therapeutic, and then people made a rather predictable discovery.
Kenneth Jacuzzi (archival audio) (08:07):
It really feels good.
Montie Montgomery (08:10):
You didn’t actually have to have arthritis to enjoy sitting in warm, bubbling water. And the brand began showing up in celebrity homes, too. Jacuzzi itself counts people like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and George Burns among its early famous customers. Suddenly, the thing Candido had built because his little boy was in pain was becoming a consumer product and a status symbol.
Montie Montgomery (08:32):
A luxury. There was still one problem, though. The original J-300 was a separate piece of equipment that you had to put into the bathtub, a powered machine around water. Not exactly a sentence that inspires confidence.
Montie Montgomery (08:47):
Enter Roy Jacuzzi. Roy realized that the hydromassage system could simply become part of the tub. Jacuzzi introduced the Roman. The tub itself was the machine. That is the birth of the Jacuzzi most of us would recognize today. It made the tubs deeper. The tubs got bigger, large enough for several people, even entire families. Americans loved it. And in the 1980s, it finally moved outside and on to patios and then backyards.
Roy Jacuzzi (archival audio) (09:15):
By developing a product larger and larger, I outstripped the conventional hot water heater, which, in homes in those days, was 25 or 30 gallons. I stuck a heater and a filter on a large tub developing the first portable spa.
Montie Montgomery (09:30):
From the New York Times: “By the end of the 20th century, it was a given that even a middling hotel, chalet, or fitness club would have a Jacuzzi. Its crater-like form has been featured in teen dramas, ’70s crime movies, and ’80s soap operas. A time-traveling hot tub was the basis for an entire movie. Like stretched limousines, it has come to represent the aspirational lifestyle of a recent past. Its ubiquity seemed to make it less of a luxury. As the market grew, similar designs emerged, which all became known as Jacuzzis.”
Montie Montgomery (10:01):
Which brings us back to Ken. That little boy who doctors weren’t sure would live to see his eighth birthday? He did, and then some, and died more than six decades after his father looked at a hospital hydrotherapy tank and wondered whether or not he could build something better at home. The Jacuzzi wasn’t invented because someone wanted a fancier bathtub. It was invented because a father had a little boy who was hurting, and his family happened to know an awful lot about pumps.
Lee Habeeb (10:35):
The story of Jacuzzi, the story of the family that invented it, here on Our American Stories.
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