The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (86 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
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By the late 1920S, Hearst owned twenty-six papers in eighteen cities, a large and profitable stable of magazines (including
Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping,
and
Harper’s Bazaar
), a burgeoning radio network, a motion-picture studio, vast property holdings (including many blocks of prime Manhattan real estate), and one of the world’s great art collections. He was also in the early stages of building what would become the country’s most spectacular private residence: a 71,000-square-foot hilltop castle packed with his personal collection of European antiques and art and surrounded by 127,000 acres of gardens, pools, and ranchland above the old Pacific whaling station of San Simeon. It would serve as Hearst’s home for the remainder of his active years. He would continue to spend time in New York, but reluctantly. Manhattan felt to him “like one big office building. . . . [Y]ou do not really get out to breathe good air and get good sunshine until you get at least west of the Mississippi.”
60
Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping,
and
Harper’s Bazaar
), a burgeoning radio network, a motion-picture studio, vast property holdings (including many blocks of prime Manhattan real estate), and one of the world’s great art collections. He was also in the early stages of building what would become the country’s most spectacular private residence: a 71,000-square-foot hilltop castle packed with his personal collection of European antiques and art and surrounded by 127,000 acres of gardens, pools, and ranchland above the old Pacific whaling station of San Simeon. It would serve as Hearst’s home for the remainder of his active years. He would continue to spend time in New York, but reluctantly. Manhattan felt to him “like one big office building. . . . [Y]ou do not really get out to breathe good air and get good sunshine until you get at least west of the Mississippi.”
60
Another reason for Hearst’s bicoastal existence was his complicated personal life. Still a Broadway habitué and a Backstage Johnny at fifty-two, Hearst, in late 1915 or early 1916, met and fell in love with Marion Davies, the Brooklyn-born daughter of a minor politician who had kicked her way into the chorus of the latest Irving Berlin musical. She was eighteen years old, roughly a third of Hearst’s age, willowy, with blonde curls and a delightful stutter. She was soon starring in his motion pictures and taking up what would become permanent residence with him on the West Coast.
Millicent, meanwhile, had matured into a significant personage in her own right, with five sons and a palatial apartment comprising the top five floors of the Clarendon on Riverside Drive. Intelligent, charming, and ambitious, she had followed Phoebe into respectable society and committed herself to an impressive array of philanthropic activities. She knew of her husband’s affair and there were scenes over it, but divorce was out of the question. She began to live an increasingly independent life in New York and would always be known publicly as Mrs. William Randolph Hearst.
By the late 1920s, Hearst was at the zenith of his career in terms of influence and financial might. Certainly no media figure had ever loomed as large—one in four Americans, it was said, got their news from Hearst. Silas Bent, a noted practitioner, professor, and historian of journalism, wrote in
Outlook
magazine of the “imperial glamour” surrounding the man: “No President has ever been more gossiped about: Hearst’s dalliances, his extravagances, his whims, his bursts of generosity and moods of icy wrath, the magnificence of his Riverside Drive apartment and his neckties, the sudden transfer of his subordinates and his incalculable changes of editorial front, afford endless food for small talk.”
61
Outlook
magazine of the “imperial glamour” surrounding the man: “No President has ever been more gossiped about: Hearst’s dalliances, his extravagances, his whims, his bursts of generosity and moods of icy wrath, the magnificence of his Riverside Drive apartment and his neckties, the sudden transfer of his subordinates and his incalculable changes of editorial front, afford endless food for small talk.”
61
Hearst was arguably the most important private citizen in America and he gave no signs of slowing down, yet Bent believed that his best years were already behind him. Never mind the publishing concerns, the movies, the residences, and the spectacle of his life, Hearst was at core a newspaperman, and it was as a newspaperman that Bent judged him. Hearst, he said, was still capable of “virtuosity of showmanship” and some “genuinely praiseworthy” crusades, but his dailies weren’t the same without his constant presence, and his reputation in the business had suffered as a result.
62
62
Bent might have added that the business of newspapering itself was drastically changed. Hearst had reached the top of the heap when the heap was highest: newspapers would never again be so expansive, competitive, and influential as they were in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The twentieth century brought an extended (and ongoing) era of profit-taking and consolidation. Advertising came to dwarf circulation as a source of newspaper revenue, and advertisers found it more cost-effective to reach a whole reading public with one or two ad placements than with many. The big papers got richer, the smaller ones disappeared, to the point where many metropolitan dailies enjoyed local monopolies. With reduced competition, newspapers lowered their voices and brought in their elbows. The aggressive, crusading, politically charged, self-promoting, polarizing, audience-building antics of the old warrior owner-editors gave way to the relatively bland consensual habits of the business manager who wanted only as many readers as would keep his advertisers happy. Papers relied less on their ability to move the hearts and minds of the public and more on the utilitarian attractions of basic news coverage, sports scores, show times, grocery prices, and classifieds. The belief that a newspaper ought to cater to the tastes and sentiments of the people lost ground to the new imperatives of objectivity and detachment. Whereas the Victorian era had brought a flurry of innovations aimed at pleasing readers (women’s sections, sports sections, op-ed sections, signature columnists, illustrated supplements, color comics, flexible typography, photo-illustration, photo-journalism, humor sections, games, and bigger and better stunts and crusades) the twentieth century’s principal contribution to newspapering was the advertising environment (real estate, food, travel, and auto sections). As a newspaper-chain owner, Hearst had helped to drive the changes and he had reaped enormous profits from them, but as an editor he was a victim of the shifting priorities and values. Adherents of the new journalism looked with contempt upon Hearst and his anachronistic ways. As Bent wrote: “[His] life is now an anticlimax. Its apex was reached in his middle thirties, and has been a steady decline since then. Only an incorrigible appetite for power in its spectacular manifestations drives him on. The spectacle never quite comes off. He has never since approached that peak, when he stood on a battlefield in Cuba and received as his personal souvenir a shell-torn Spanish standard. . . . [It] is safe to say that this was the proudest moment of his life, his dramatic apex of power.”
63
63
Hearst, who always considered newspapering his principal occupation, would probably have accepted Bent’s conclusion. Several years before his death in 1951, while writing a regular column for his own dailies, he looked back at his early years as a practicing journalist with a wistful pride:
Those were the wonderful days, and happy achievements of youth. No grandiose performance of later years ever equaled them in satisfaction.Life was not “one damn thing after another” then. It was one wonderful adventure after another.The competition of journalism was a glad sport; and yet back of it all was a due sense of responsibility—a genuine desire to use the powers and opportunities of the press to serve and to save.There was delight in work, happiness in service, joy in life—for we were young.
64
NOTES
1
Don C. Seitz,
Joseph Pulitzer: His Life & Letters
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924), 187-188, 289; Richard O’Connor,
The Scandalous Mr. Bennett
(Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1962), 241.
Don C. Seitz,
Joseph Pulitzer: His Life & Letters
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924), 187-188, 289; Richard O’Connor,
The Scandalous Mr. Bennett
(Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1962), 241.
2
Mrs. Fremont Older,
William Randolph Hearst: American
(New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1936), 165-166.
Mrs. Fremont Older,
William Randolph Hearst: American
(New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1936), 165-166.
3
Eric Hofman,
The Steam Yachts
(Tuckahoe: John De Graff Inc., 1970), 4-19; Richard M. Mitchell,
The Steam Launch
(Portland: Elliot Bay Press, 1994), 26-36; Ross MacTaggart,
The Golden Century: Classic Motor Yachts, 1830-1930
(New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).
Eric Hofman,
The Steam Yachts
(Tuckahoe: John De Graff Inc., 1970), 4-19; Richard M. Mitchell,
The Steam Launch
(Portland: Elliot Bay Press, 1994), 26-36; Ross MacTaggart,
The Golden Century: Classic Motor Yachts, 1830-1930
(New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).
4
Judith Robinson,
The Hearsts: An American Dynasty
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 248.
Judith Robinson,
The Hearsts: An American Dynasty
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 248.
1
Theodore Dreiser,
Newspaper Days: An Autobiography,
ed. T.D. Nostwich (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 2000), 436.
Theodore Dreiser,
Newspaper Days: An Autobiography,
ed. T.D. Nostwich (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 2000), 436.
2
The Journalist,
February 19, 1887
The Journalist,
February 19, 1887
3
Older,
William Randolph Hearst,
op. cit., 96-97; John K. Winkler,
William Randolph Hearst: A New Appraisal
(New York: Hastings House, 1955), 59.
Older,
William Randolph Hearst,
op. cit., 96-97; John K. Winkler,
William Randolph Hearst: A New Appraisal
(New York: Hastings House, 1955), 59.
4
Robinson, op. cit., 224.
Robinson, op. cit., 224.
5
William Randolph Hearst (WRH) to his father, George Hearst (GH), undated, Hearst family papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; hereafter cited as Bancroft Papers.
William Randolph Hearst (WRH) to his father, George Hearst (GH), undated, Hearst family papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; hereafter cited as Bancroft Papers.
6
Robinson, op. cit., 221.
Robinson, op. cit., 221.
7
Ibid., 235.
Ibid., 235.
8
Ibid., 248-249.
Ibid., 248-249.
9
New York Times,
March 1, 1891.
New York Times,
March 1, 1891.
10
Ibid.; Robinson, op. cit., 235.
Ibid.; Robinson, op. cit., 235.
11
David Nasaw,
The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 7, 22, 24, 41, 61.
David Nasaw,
The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 7, 22, 24, 41, 61.
12
New York Times,
June 25, 1886.
New York Times,
June 25, 1886.
13
Washington Post,
February 20, 1889; Robinson, op. cit., 230-231.
Washington Post,
February 20, 1889; Robinson, op. cit., 230-231.
14
San Francisco Examiner,
March 16, 1891.
San Francisco Examiner,
March 16, 1891.
15
Ibid.
Ibid.
16
New York Times,
March 27, 1891.
New York Times,
March 27, 1891.
17
Robinson, op. cit., 238.
Robinson, op. cit., 238.
18
Ibid., 242.
Ibid., 242.
19
WRH to GH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to GH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
20
New York Times,
June 25, 1886.
New York Times,
June 25, 1886.
21
Discussion of the timing and records of Hearst’s birth in Robinson, op. cit., 60.
Discussion of the timing and records of Hearst’s birth in Robinson, op. cit., 60.
22
Phoebe Apperson Hearst (PAH) to GH, June 29, 1873, PAH papers, Bancroft Papers.
Phoebe Apperson Hearst (PAH) to GH, June 29, 1873, PAH papers, Bancroft Papers.
23
PAH to GH, August 6, 1889, Bancroft Papers.
PAH to GH, August 6, 1889, Bancroft Papers.
24
PAH to Orrin Peck, April 8, 1896, Orrin Peck Papers, Huntington Library; hereafter cited as Peck Papers; Robinson, op. cit., 257.
PAH to Orrin Peck, April 8, 1896, Orrin Peck Papers, Huntington Library; hereafter cited as Peck Papers; Robinson, op. cit., 257.
25
PAH to GH, January 4, 1885, Bancroft Papers.
PAH to GH, January 4, 1885, Bancroft Papers.
26
Robinson, op. cit., 229.
Robinson, op. cit., 229.
27
Robinson, op. cit., 228-230.
Robinson, op. cit., 228-230.
28
Robinson, op. cit., 216-217.
Robinson, op. cit., 216-217.
29
Ibid., 89.
Ibid., 89.
30
Ibid., 97-98.
Ibid., 97-98.
31
PAH to GH, June 5, 1873, Bancroft Papers; PAH to Orrin Peck, April 8, 1896, Peck Papers.
PAH to GH, June 5, 1873, Bancroft Papers; PAH to Orrin Peck, April 8, 1896, Peck Papers.
32
Robinson, op. cit., 162.
Robinson, op. cit., 162.
33
Edward D. Coblentz,
William Randolph Hearst: A Portrait in His Own Words
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952), 9-10; Robinson, op. cit., 84.
Edward D. Coblentz,
William Randolph Hearst: A Portrait in His Own Words
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952), 9-10; Robinson, op. cit., 84.
34
Coblentz, ibid., 9-19; Robinson, ibid., 159.
Coblentz, ibid., 9-19; Robinson, ibid., 159.
35
Robinson, op. cit., 163.
Robinson, op. cit., 163.
36
Nasaw, op. cit., 320.
Nasaw, op. cit., 320.
37
Nasaw, op. cit., 33.
Nasaw, op. cit., 33.
38
New York Press,
undated, WRH papers, Bancroft Papers.
New York Press,
undated, WRH papers, Bancroft Papers.
39
WRH to PAH, April 27, 1884, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to PAH, April 27, 1884, Bancroft Papers.
40
WRH to PAH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to PAH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
41
PAH to GH, November 12, 1885, Bancroft Papers.
PAH to GH, November 12, 1885, Bancroft Papers.
42
PAH to WRH, November 10, 1884, PAH papers, Bancroft Papers.
PAH to WRH, November 10, 1884, PAH papers, Bancroft Papers.
43
A.A. Wheeler to WRH, March 15, 1885, WRH papers, Bancroft Papers.
A.A. Wheeler to WRH, March 15, 1885, WRH papers, Bancroft Papers.
44
WRH to PAH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to PAH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
45
Ibid.
Ibid.
46
Nasaw, op. cit., 42.
Nasaw, op. cit., 42.
47
WRH to GH, November 23, 1885, WRH papers, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to GH, November 23, 1885, WRH papers, Bancroft Papers.
48
WRH to GH, December 30, 1882, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to GH, December 30, 1882, Bancroft Papers.
49
WRH to GH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to GH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
50
GH to PAH, December 16, 1882, Bancroft Papers.
GH to PAH, December 16, 1882, Bancroft Papers.
51
WRH to PAH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to PAH, undated, Bancroft Papers.
52
Lincoln Steffens, “Hearst, the Man of Mystery,”
The American Magazine
63 (November 1906): 10-11.
Lincoln Steffens, “Hearst, the Man of Mystery,”
The American Magazine
63 (November 1906): 10-11.
53
Ibid.
Ibid.
54
WRH to GH, January 26, 1886, Bancroft Papers; WRH to GH, January 4, 1885, Bancroft Papers.
WRH to GH, January 26, 1886, Bancroft Papers; WRH to GH, January 4, 1885, Bancroft Papers.
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