John Cheever Cowdin (March 17, 1889 – September 16, 1960) was an American financier and polo champion who was a head of Universal Pictures, Standard Capital Corporation of New York City, and was chairman of Ideal Chemicals.
[1] In 1936, Cowdin's Standard Capital was part of the lending group who had to exercise their rights to the shares held as loan collateral of the financially strapped Universal Pictures Corp. from Carl Laemmle.
A director of Curtiss-Wright, Cowdin was considered a leader in aviation financing, notably associated with fellow financier George Newell Armsby in the investment house of Blair & Co., which merged with BancAmerica to form Bancamerica-Blair in 1931.
[4] As a prominent American, the TIME magazine reported Cowdin's 1929 marriage to Manhattan socialite divorcee, Mrs. Katherine McCutcheon Abbott, in Bristol, Maine, during a cruise on his yacht, Surf.
He was termed by Esquire Magazine not only one of the best-dressed men of his era, but "one of the Big Four of polo from the time of the great Tommy Hitchcock."