William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863-1910

William Randolph Hearst was one of the most colorful and important figures of turn-of-the-century America, The Early Years,
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He was defeated for the governorship by Charles Evans Hughes. Hearst was on the left wing of the Progressive Movement , speaking on behalf of the working class who bought his papers and denouncing the rich and powerful who disdained his editorials. He ran for the Democratic nomination for president in , losing to a conservative New York judge, Alton B.

Tammany Hall exerted its utmost to defeat him.


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His newspapers abstained from endorsing any candidate in and Hearst's last bid for office came in when he was backed by Tammany Hall leaders for the U. Senate nomination in New York. Al Smith vetoed this, earning the lasting enmity of Hearst. Although Hearst shared Smith's opposition to Prohibition , he swung his papers behind Herbert Hoover in the presidential election. Hearst's support for Franklin D.

Anything but Humble: Hearst Castle

Roosevelt at the Democratic National Convention, via his allies William Gibbs McAdoo and John Nance Garner , can also be seen as part of his vendetta against Smith, who was an opponent of Roosevelt's at that convention. They carried the publisher's rambling, vitriolic, all-capital-letters editorials, but he no longer employed the energetic reporters, editors, and columnists who might have made a serious attack. He reached 20 million readers in the mid s, but they included much of the working class that Roosevelt had swept by three-to-one margins in the election.

The Hearst papers—like most major chains—had supported the Republican Alf Landon that year.

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In , after checking with Jewish leaders to ensure a visit would be to their benefit, [48] Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. When Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by the American press, Hearst retorted: Evidence in Louis Pizzitola's book Hearst Over Hollywood indicates that Millicent's mother Hannah Willson ran a Tammany -connected and protected brothel near the headquarters of political power in New York City at the turn of the 20th century.

Millicent bore him five sons: Hearst was the grandfather of Patricia "Patty" Hearst , widely known for being kidnapped by and then joining the Symbionese Liberation Army in her father was Randolph Apperson Hearst, Hearst's fourth son. Conceding an end to his political hopes, Hearst became involved in an affair with the popular film actress and comedian Marion Davies — , former mistress of his friend Paul Block , [51] and from about , he lived openly with her in California.

The affair dominated Davies's life. Millicent separated from Hearst in the mids after tiring of his longtime affair with Davies, but the couple remained legally married until Hearst's death. Millicent built an independent life for herself in New York City as a leading philanthropist, was active in society, and created the Free Milk Fund for the poor in After the death of Patricia Lake , Davies's supposed niece, it was confirmed by Lake's family that she was in fact Hearst's daughter by Davies. Beginning in , Hearst began to build Hearst Castle , which he never completed, on a , acres 97, hectares; square kilometres ranch at San Simeon , California, which he furnished with art, antiques and entire rooms brought from the great houses of Europe.

He also used the ranch for an Arabian horse breeding operation. Dodd on a number of other projects. This home, known as Beverly House, was once perhaps the "most expensive" private home in the U. It has 29 bedrooms, three swimming pools, tennis courts, its own cinema and a nightclub.

William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, by Ben Procter

Lawyer and investor Leonard Ross has owned it since It was the setting for the gruesome scene in the film The Godfather depicting a horse's severed head in the bed of film-producer, Jack Woltz. The character was head of a film company called International, the name of Hearst's early film company. They watched their first film together as a married couple in the mansion's cinema. It was a Hearst-produced film from the s.

In the early s, Hearst began building a mansion on the hills overlooking Pleasanton, California on land purchased by his father a decade earlier. Hearst's mother took over the project, hired Julia Morgan to finish it as her home, and named it Hacienda del Pozo de Verona. Hearst was renowned for his extensive collection of art from around the globe and through the centuries. Most notable in his collection were his Greek vases, Spanish and Italian furniture, Oriental carpets, Renaissance vestments, an extensive library with many books signed by their authors, and paintings and statues from all over.


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    • In addition to collecting pieces of fine art, he also gathered manuscripts, rare books, and autographs. His house was often visited by varied celebrities and politicians as guests who stayed in rooms furnished with pieces of antique furniture and decorated with artwork by several famous artists. Beginning in , Hearst began selling some of his art collection to help relieve the burden he had suffered from the depression.

    The first year he sold 11 million dollars worth. In he put about 20, items up for sale that were a good indication of his wide and varied tastes. Included in the items he put up for sale were paintings by van Dyke, crosiers, chalices, Charles Dickens's sideboard , pulpits, stained glass, arms and armor, George Washington's waistcoat, and Thomas Jefferson's Bible.

    Despite the magnitude of these sales, when Hearst Castle was finally given to the State of California there were still enough items for the whole house to be considered as a museum. After seeing photographs of St. The Great Hall was bought from the Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire and reconstructed brick by brick in its current site at St. From the Bradenstoke Priory he also bought and removed the guest house, Prior's lodging, and great tithe barn; of these, some of the materials became the St.

    Donat's banqueting hall, complete with a sixteenth-century French chimney-piece and windows; also used were a fireplace dated to c. Hearst built 34 green and white marble bathrooms for the many guest suites in the castle, and completed a series of terraced gardens which survive intact today. Hearst and Davies spent much of their time entertaining and held a number of lavish parties, the guests at which included Charlie Chaplin , Douglas Fairbanks , Winston Churchill , and a young John F. Donat's, George Bernard Shaw was quoted as saying: Hearst was particularly interested in the newly emerging technologies relating to aviation and had his first experience of flight in January , in Los Angeles.

    Louis Paulhan , a French aviator, took him for an air trip on his Farman biplane. Hearst's crusade against Roosevelt and the New Deal, combined with union strikes and boycotts of his properties, undermined the financial strength of his empire. Circulation of his major publications declined in the mids, while rivals such as the New York Daily News were flourishing. He refused to take effective cost-cutting measures, and instead increased his very expensive art purchases.

    William Randolph Hearst

    His friend Joseph P. Kennedy offered to buy the magazines, but Hearst jealously guarded his empire and refused. Instead he sold some of his heavily mortgaged real estate. Finally his financial advisors realized he was tens of millions in debt, and could not pay the interest on the loans, let alone reduce the principal. The proposed bond sale failed to attract investors, as Hearst's financial crisis became widely known. As Marion Davies's stardom waned, Hearst's movies also began to hemorrhage money. As the crisis deepened, he let go of most of his household staff, sold his exotic animals to the Los Angeles Zoo, and named a trustee to control his finances.

    He still refused to sell his beloved newspapers. He had to pay rent for living in his castle at San Simeon. Legally Hearst avoided bankruptcy, although the public generally saw it as such as appraisers went through the tapestries, paintings, furniture, silver, pottery, buildings, autographs, jewelry, and other collectibles. Items in the thousands were gathered from a five-story warehouse in New York, warehouses near San Simeon containing large amounts of Greek sculpture and ceramics, and the contents of St. His collections were sold off in a series of auctions and private sales in — The market for art and antiques had not recovered from the depression, so Hearst made an overall loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    The old man was humiliated, but not defeated; he threw his energies into the editorials in his numerous publications, especially dealing with the fast-growing crisis in Europe. He still refused to attack Hitler. Fewer people listened, as Hearst for the first time in his career was treated as an outsider, a curiosity.

    He was further embarrassed in early when Time Magazine published a feature which revealed he was at risk of defaulting on his mortgage for San Simeon and losing it to his creditor and publishing rival, Harry Chandler. Another blow came in , as Hearst became a fit topic for ridicule in one of the most famous movies of all time, Citizen Kane , which was released on May 1, After the disastrous financial peril the Hearst Corporation endured during the s, the company returned to profitability during the Second World War as advertising revenues skyrocketed.

    Hearst, after spending much of the war at his estate of Wyntoon , returned to San Simeon full-time in and resumed building works. He also continued collecting, on a reduced scale, and threw himself into philanthropy by donating a great many works to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He died in Beverly Hills on August 14, , at the age of In an amended will, Marion Davies inherited , shares in the Hearst Corporation, which, combined with a trust fund of 30, shares Hearst had established for her in , gave her a controlling interest in the Corporation.

    Like their father, none of Hearst's five sons graduated from college, [63] but they all followed their father into the media business, and Hearst's namesake, William Randolph, Jr. As Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted in their book Unreliable Sources, Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events". This approach discredited " yellow journalism ". Hearst's use of yellow journalism techniques in his New York Journal to whip up popular support for U. A Study of American Journalism.

    William Randolph Hearst : The Early Years, 1863-1910 by Ben Procter (1998, Hardcover)

    According to Sinclair, Hearst's newspapers distorted world events and deliberately tried to discredit Socialists. Another critic, Ferdinand Lundberg , extended the criticism in Imperial Hearst , charging that Hearst papers accepted payments from abroad to slant the news.

    After the war, a further critic, George Seldes , repeated the charges in Facts and Fascism Lundberg described Hearst "the weakest strong man and the strongest weak man in the world today Citizen Kane is loosely based on Hearst's life. Welles and co-writer Herman J. Hearst, enraged at the idea of Citizen Kane being a thinly disguised and very unflattering portrait of him, used his massive influence and resources in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the film from being released-—all without his ever even having seen it.

    Welles and the studio RKO Pictures resisted the pressure, but Hearst and his Hollywood friends ultimately succeeded in pressuring theater chains to limit showings of Citizen Kane, [64] resulting in only moderate box-office numbers and seriously harming Welles' career later on. Hearst is portrayed in the film by James Cromwell. Citizen Kane has twice been ranked No. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

    Hearst, 88, Dies in Beverly Hills" original pub. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Retrieved April 11, Retrieved December 17, Counterpoint — via Google Books.

    The Early Years, 1863-1910

    The King Is Dead". Retrieved June 11, Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies. Retrieved March 17, The Gentle Art of Columning: A Treatise on Comic Journalism. Wallace and Will Irwin. Procter , William Randolph Hearst: The Later Years, Carlisle, "William Randolph Hearst: We have no idea, for example, whether Hearst pursued progressive causes out of true conviction or as a means of mobilizing America's burgeoning urban working class as readers of his newspapers and soldiers marching behind his banner. One fears that the promised second volume will be as frustrating as the first-that we will learn as little about why Hearst swung so sharply to the right in his later years as we do about why he was so progressive early on.

    Procter's biography, like the Hearst newspapers of the period he chronicles, is great reading, but too much on the surface, shedding too little light on the realities underneath. There was a problem adding your email address. Be the first to discover new talent!

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