Gerhard Melvin Dahl

Gerhard Melvin Dahl (June 8, 1876 – December 29, 1953) was an American financier.

He was born in Fort Howard, Brown County, Wisconsin, to Theodor Halvorson Dahl, a Lutheran minister, and Rebekka Oline (Gjertsen) Dahl, who immigrated from Norway in 1865. Dahl was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.

In the late 1920s, Dahl took to gambling and joined the Sons of Hope (always hoping to improve their hands), a group of prominent wealthy men who met to drink and gamble. The table limit was $2,000.00. In John F. Kennedy’s book, Why England Slept, he described an epic poker battle between Dahl and New York journalist Herbert Bayard Swope as “a battle to the death between the two greatest extraverts of the Western World.” At this time in his life, his assets were worth about $5,000,000.00. Frederick K. Strauss, a man of Wall Street, once told a mutual friend, “In dealing with him (Dahl), you are dealing with the most arrogant man in New York.”

Around the time of the stock market crash and into the Great Depression, Dahl had huge loans with Chase National Bank, at one time reaching $4,758,000.00. On June 15, 1932, he owed Chase $3,183,358.19 which was written down to $615,000.00. Chase National Bank held Dahl’s BMT stock as collateral. In early June 1932, Chase sold 55,000 of those shares before the price dropped drastically. This was before insider stock trading became illegal. Dahl was innocent and in fact protested against the sale, but Albert H. Wiggin, President of Chase, was also part of BMT and used the insider information to maximize their stock sale value. (See The causes of the 1929 stock market crash: a speculative orgy or a new era? by Harold Bierman and Privileged Characters book by Morris Robert Werner.)

After the death of his wife in 1949, Dahl became addicted to alcohol and barbiturates. His world collapsed until he had about $10.50 in the bank and he checked himself into Bellevue Hospital to kick the habits at age 74. Dahl married a second time to Mary E. Echevarria in 1952.

Dahl died at Brooklyn Hospital on December 29, 1953. A private funeral was held for him two days later in Manhattan.