William Randolph Hearst | |
|---|---|
 Hearst,c. 1910 | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's11th district | |
| In office March 4, 1903 – March 3, 1907 | |
| Preceded by | William Sulzer (redistricting) |
| Succeeded by | Charles V. Fornes |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1863-04-29)April 29, 1863 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Died | August 14, 1951(1951-08-14) (aged 88) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Cypress Lawn Memorial Park |
| Political party |
|
| Spouse | |
| Domestic partner | Marion Davies (1917–1951; his death) |
| Children | Known: 5, includingGeorge,William,John,Randolph Alleged:Patricia Lake |
| Parents |
|
| Education | Harvard University |
| Signature |  |
William Randolph Hearst (/hɜːrst/;[1] April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper publisher and politician who developed the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company,Hearst Communications. His extravagant methods ofyellow journalism in violation ofethics and standards influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizingsensationalism andhuman-interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being given control ofThe San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father, SenatorGeorge Hearst.[2]
After moving to New York City, Hearst acquired theNew York Journal and fought a bitter circulation war withJoseph Pulitzer'sNew York World. Hearst sold papers by printing giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, sex, and innuendos. Hearst acquired more newspapers and created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. Hearst controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines, and thereby often published his personal views. He sensationalized Spanish atrocities in Cuba while calling forwar in 1898 against Spain. Historians, however, reject his subsequent claims to have started the war with Spain as overly exaggerated.
He was twice elected as aDemocrat to theU.S. House of Representatives. He ran unsuccessfully forPresident of the United States in1904,Mayor of New York City in1905 and1909, andGovernor of New York in1906. During his political career, he espoused views generally associated with the left wing of theProgressive Movement, claiming to speak on behalf of the working class.
After 1918 and the end of World War I, Hearst gradually began adopting moreconservative views and started promoting anisolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs. He was at once a militant nationalist, a staunch anti-communist after theRussian Revolution, and deeply suspicious of theLeague of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians.[3] Following Hitler's rise to power, Hearst became a supporter of theNazi Party, ordering his journalists to publish favorable coverage of Nazi Germany, and allowing leading Nazis to publish articles in his newspapers.[4] He was a leading supporter ofFranklin D. Roosevelt in 1932–1934, but then broke with FDR and became his mostprominent enemy on the right. Hearst's publication reached a peak circulation of 20 million readers a day in the mid-1930s. He poorly managed finances and was so deeply in debt during theGreat Depression that most of his assets had to be liquidated in the late 1930s. Hearst managed to keep his newspapers and magazines.
His life story was the main inspiration forCharles Foster Kane, the lead character inOrson Welles' filmCitizen Kane (1941).[5] HisHearst Castle, constructed on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean nearSan Simeon, has been preserved as a State Historical Monument and is designated as aNational Historic Landmark.
Hearst was born inSan Francisco toGeorge Hearst on April 29, 1863, a millionaire mining engineer, owner of gold and other mines through his corporation, and his much younger wifePhoebe Apperson Hearst, from a small town in Missouri. The elder Hearst later entered politics. He served as aU.S. Senator, first appointed for a brief period in 1886 and was then elected later that year. He served from 1887 to his death in 1891.
His paternal great-grandfather was John Hearst ofUlster Protestant origin. John Hearst, with his wife and six children, migrated to America fromBallybay, County Monaghan, Ireland, as part of the Cahans Exodus in 1766. The family settled in theProvince of South Carolina. Their immigration there was spurred in part by the colonial government's policy that encouraged the immigration ofIrish Protestants, many of Scots origin.[6] The names "John Hearse" and "John Hearse Jr." appear on the council records of October 26, 1766, being credited with meriting 400 and 100 acres (1.62 and 0.40 km2) of land on the Long Canes in what became Abbeville District, based upon 100 acres (0.40 km2) to heads of household and 50 acres (0.20 km2) for each dependent of aProtestant immigrant; the "Hearse" spelling of the family name was never used afterward by the family members themselves, nor any family of any size. Hearst's mother, née Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson, was also of Scots-Irish ancestry; her family came fromGalway.[7] She was appointed as the first woman Regent ofUniversity of California, Berkeley, donated funds to establish libraries at several universities, funded many anthropological expeditions, and founded thePhoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
Hearst attended preparatory school atSt. Paul's School inConcord, New Hampshire. He gained admission toHarvard College, and began attending in 1885. While there, he was a member ofDelta Kappa Epsilon, theA.D. Club, a HarvardFinal club, theHasty Pudding Theatricals, and theHarvard Lampoon prior to beingexpelled. His antics at Harvard ranged from sponsoring massive beer parties onHarvard Square to sending pudding pots used aschamber pots to his professors with their images depicted within the bowls.[8]
Searching for an occupation, in 1887 Hearst took over management of his father's newspaper, theSan Francisco Examiner, which his father had acquired in 1880 as repayment for a gambling debt.[9] Giving his paper the motto "Monarch of the Dailies", Hearst acquired the most advanced equipment and the most prominent writers of the time, includingAmbrose Bierce,Mark Twain,Jack London, and political cartoonistHomer Davenport. A self-proclaimedpopulist, Hearst reported accounts of municipal and financial corruption, often attacking companies in which his own family held an interest. Within a few years, his paper dominated the San Francisco market.
Early in his career at theSan Francisco Examiner, Hearst envisioned running a large newspaper chain and "always knew that his dream of a nation-spanning, multi-paper news operation was impossible without a triumph in New York".[10] In 1895, with the financial support of his widowed mother (his father had died in 1891), Hearst bought the then failingNew York Morning Journal, hiring writers such asStephen Crane andJulian Hawthorne and entering into a head-to-head circulation war withJoseph Pulitzer, owner and publisher of theNew York World. Hearst "stole" cartoonistRichard F. Outcault along with all of Pulitzer's Sunday staff.[11] Another prominent hire wasJames J. Montague, who came from thePortland Oregonian and started his well-known "More Truth Than Poetry" column at the Hearst-ownedNew York Evening Journal.[12]
When Hearst purchased the "penny paper", so called because its copies sold for a penny apiece, theJournal was competing with New York's 16 other major dailies. It had a strong focus on Democratic Party politics.[13] Hearst imported his best managers from theSan Francisco Examiner and "quickly established himself as the most attractive employer" among New York newspapers. He was seen as generous, paid more than his competitors, and gave credit to his writers with page-one bylines. Further, he was unfailingly polite, unassuming, "impeccably calm", and indulgent of "prima donnas, eccentrics, bohemians, drunks, or reprobates so long as they had useful talents" according to historian Kenneth Whyte.[14]
Hearst's activist approach to journalism can be summarized by the motto, "While others Talk, theJournal Acts."
TheNew York Journal and its chief rival, theNew York World, mastered a style of popular journalism that came to be derided as "yellow journalism", so named after Outcault'sYellow Kid comic. Pulitzer'sWorld had pushed the boundaries of mass appeal for newspapers through bold headlines, aggressive news gathering, generous use of cartoons and illustrations, populist politics, progressive crusades, an exuberant public spirit and dramatic crime and human-interest stories. Hearst'sJournal used the same recipe for success, forcing Pulitzer to drop the price of theWorld from two cents to a penny. Soon the two papers were locked in a fierce, often spiteful competition for readers in which both papers spent large sums of money and saw huge gains in circulation.
Within a few months of purchasing theJournal, Hearst hired away Pulitzer's three top editors: Sunday editor Morrill Goddard, who greatly expanded the scope and appeal of the American Sunday newspaper; Solomon Carvalho; and a youngArthur Brisbane, who became managing editor of the Hearst newspaper empire and a well-known columnist. Contrary to popular assumption, they were not lured away by higher pay—rather, each man had grown tired of the office environment that Pulitzer encouraged.[15]
While Hearst's many critics attribute theJournal's incredible success to cheap sensationalism, Kenneth Whyte noted inThe Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst: "Rather than racing to the bottom, he [Hearst] drove theJournal and the penny press upmarket. TheJournal was a demanding, sophisticated paper by contemporary standards."[16] Though yellow journalism would be much maligned, Whyte said, "All good yellow journalists ... sought the human in every story and edited without fear of emotion or drama. They wore their feelings on their pages, believing it was an honest and wholesome way to communicate with readers", but, as Whyte pointed out: "This appeal to feelings is not an end in itself... [they believed] our emotions tend to ignite our intellects: a story catering to a reader's feelings is more likely than a dry treatise to stimulate thought."[17]
The two papers finally declared a truce in late 1898, after both lost vast amounts of money covering theSpanish–American War. Hearst probably lost several million dollars in his first three years as publisher of theJournal (figures are impossible to verify), but the paper began turning a profit after it ended its fight with theWorld.[18]
Under Hearst, theJournal remained loyal to the populist or left wing of the Democratic Party. It was the only major publication in the East to supportWilliam Jennings Bryan in 1896. Its coverage of that election was probably the most important of any newspaper in the country, attacking relentlessly the unprecedented role of money in theRepublican campaign and the dominating role played byWilliam McKinley's political and financial manager,Mark Hanna, the first national party 'boss' in American history.[19] A year after taking over the paper, Hearst could boast that sales of theJournal's post-election issue (including the evening and German-language editions) topped 1.5 million, a record "unparalleled in the history of the world."[20]
TheJournal's political coverage, however, was not entirely one-sided. Kenneth Whyte says that most editors of the time "believed their papers should speak with one voice on political matters"; by contrast, in New York, Hearst "helped to usher in the multi-perspective approach we identify with the modern op-ed page".[21] At first he supported theRussian Revolution of 1917 but later he turned against it. Hearst fought hard againstWilsonian internationalism, theLeague of Nations, and the World Court, thereby appealing to anisolationist audience.[22]
TheMorning Journal's daily circulation routinely climbed above the one million mark after the sinking of theMaine and U.S. entry into the Spanish–American War, a war that some called "theJournal's War", due to the paper's immense influence in provoking American outrage against Spain.[23] Much of the coverage leading up to the war, beginning with the outbreak of theCuban Revolution in 1895, was tainted by rumor, propaganda, and sensationalism, with the "yellow" papers regarded as the worst offenders. TheJournal and other New York newspapers were so one-sided and full of errors in their reporting that coverage of the Cuban crisis and the ensuing Spanish–American War is often cited as one of the most significant milestones in the rise of yellow journalism's hold over the mainstream media.[24] Huge headlines in theJournal assigned blame for theMaine's destruction on sabotage, which was based on no evidence. This reporting stoked outrage and indignation against Spain among the paper's readers in New York.
TheJournal's crusade against Spanish rule in Cuba was not due to mere jingoism, although "the democratic ideals and humanitarianism that inspired their coverage are largely lost to history," as are their "heroic efforts to find the truth on the island under unusually difficult circumstances."[25] TheJournal's journalistic activism in support of the Cuban rebels, rather, was centered around Hearst's political and business ambitions.[24]
Perhaps the best known myth in American journalism is the claim, without any contemporary evidence, that the illustratorFrederic Remington, sent by Hearst to Cuba to cover theCuban War of Independence,[24] cabled Hearst to tell him all was quiet in Cuba. Hearst, in this canard, is said to have responded, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."[26][27]
Hearst was personally dedicated to the cause of the Cuban rebels, and theJournal did some of the most important and courageous reporting on the conflict—as well as some of the most sensationalized. Their stories on the Cuban rebellion and Spain's atrocities on the island—many of which turned out to be untrue[24]—were motivated primarily by Hearst's outrage at Spain's brutal policies on the island. These had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Cubans. The most well-known story involved the imprisonment and escape of Cuban prisonerEvangelina Cisneros.[24][28]
While Hearst and the yellow press did not directly cause America's war with Spain, they inflamed public opinion in New York City to a fever pitch. New York's elites read other papers, such as theTimes andSun, which were far more restrained. TheJournal and theWorld were local papers oriented to a very large working class audience in New York City. They were not among the top ten sources of news in papers in other cities, and their stories did not make a splash outside New York City.[29] Outrage across the country came from evidence of what Spain was doing in Cuba, a major influence in the decision by Congress to declare war. According to a 21st-century historian, war was declared by Congress because public opinion was sickened by the bloodshed, and because leaders like McKinley realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba.[30] These factors weighed more on the president's mind than the melodramas in theNew York Journal.[31]
Hearst sailed to Cuba with a small army ofJournal reporters to cover the Spanish–American War;[32] they brought along portable printing equipment, which was used to print a single-edition newspaper in Cuba after the fighting had ended. Two of theJournal's correspondents, James Creelman and Edward Marshall, were wounded in the fighting. A leader of the Cuban rebels, Gen.Calixto García, gave Hearst a Cuban flag that had been riddled with bullets as a gift, in appreciation of Hearst's major role in Cuba's liberation.[33]
In part to aid in his political ambitions, Hearst opened newspapers in other cities, among them Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston. In 1915, he foundedInternational Film Service, ananimation studio designed to exploit the popularity of the comic strips he controlled. The creation of his Chicago paper was requested by theDemocratic National Committee. Hearst used this as an excuse for his mother Phoebe Hearst to transfer him the necessary start-up funds. By the mid-1920s he had a nationwide string of 28 newspapers, among them theLos Angeles Examiner, theBoston American, theAtlanta Georgian, theChicago Examiner, theDetroit Times, theSeattle Post-Intelligencer, theWashington Times-Herald, theWashington Herald, and his flagship, theSan Francisco Examiner.
Hearst also diversified his publishing interests into book publishing and magazines. Several of the latter are still in circulation, including such periodicals asCosmopolitan,Good Housekeeping,Town and Country, andHarper's Bazaar.
In 1924, Hearst opened theNew York Daily Mirror, a racytabloid frankly imitating theNew York Daily News. Among his other holdings were two news services, Universal News andInternational News Service, or INS, the latter of which he founded in 1909.[34] He also owned INS companion radio stationWINS in New York;King Features Syndicate, which still owns the copyrights of a number of popular comics characters; a film company,Cosmopolitan Productions; extensive New York City real estate; and thousands of acres of land in California and Mexico, along with timber and mining interests inherited from his father.
Hearst promoted writers and cartoonists despite the lack of any apparent demand for them by his readers. The press criticA. J. Liebling reminds us how many of Hearst's stars would not have been deemed employable elsewhere. One Hearst favorite,George Herriman, was the inventor of the dizzy comic stripKrazy Kat. Not especially popular with either readers or editors when it was first published, in the 21st century it is considered a classic, a belief once held only by Hearst himself.
In 1929, he became one of the sponsors of the first round-the-world voyage in an airship, theLZ 127Graf Zeppelin from Germany. His sponsorship was conditional on the trip starting atLakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey. The ship's captain,Dr. Hugo Eckener, first flew theGraf Zeppelin across the Atlantic from Germany to pick up Hearst's photographer and at least three Hearst correspondents. One of them,Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay, by that flight became the first woman to travel around the world by air.[35]
The Hearst news empire reached a revenue peak about 1928, but the economic collapse of theGreat Depression in the United States and the vast over-extension of his empire cost him control of his holdings. It is unlikely that the newspapers ever paid their own way; mining, ranching and forestry provided whatever dividends the Hearst Corporation paid out. When the collapse came, all Hearst properties were hit hard, but none more so than the papers. Hearst's conservative politics, increasingly at odds with those of his readers, worsened matters for the once great Hearst media chain. Having been refused the right to sell another round of bonds to unsuspecting investors, the shaky empire tottered. Unable to service its existing debts, Hearst Corporation faced a court-mandated reorganization in 1937.
From that point, Hearst was reduced to being an employee, subject to the directives of an outside manager.[36] Newspapers and other properties were liquidated, the film company shut down; there was even a well-publicized sale of art and antiquities. While World War II restored circulation and advertising revenues, his great days were over. TheHearst Corporation continues to this day as a large, privately heldmedia conglomerate based in New York City.
Hearst won two elections toCongress, then lost a series of elections. He narrowly failed in attempts to become mayor of New York City in both1905 and1909 andgovernor of New York in1906, nominally remaining a Democrat while also creating theIndependence Party. He was defeated for the governorship byCharles Evans Hughes.[37] Hearst's unsuccessful campaigns for office after his tenure in the House of Representatives earned him the unflattering but short-lived nickname of "William 'Also-Randolph' Hearst",[38] which was coined byWallace Irwin.[39]
Hearst was on the left wing of theProgressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class (who bought his papers) and denouncing the rich and powerful (who disdained his editorials).[40] With the support ofTammany Hall (the regular Democratic organization in Manhattan), Hearst was elected to Congress from New York in 1902 and 1904. He made a major effort to winthe 1904 Democratic nomination for president, losing to conservativeAlton B. Parker.[41] Breaking with Tammany in 1907, Hearst ran for mayor of New York City under a third party of his own creation, theMunicipal Ownership League. Tammany Hall exerted its utmost to defeat him.[42][43]
An opponent of theBritish Empire, Hearst opposed American involvement in the First World War and attacked the formation of theLeague of Nations. His newspapers abstained from endorsing any candidate in 1920 and 1924. Hearst's last bid for office came in 1922, when he was backed byTammany Hall leaders for the U.S. Senate nomination in New York.Al Smith vetoed this, earning the lasting enmity of Hearst. Although Hearst shared Smith's opposition toProhibition, he swung his papers behindHerbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election.[44]
During the 1920s Hearst was aJeffersonian democrat. He warned citizens against the dangers of big government and against unchecked federal power that could infringe on individual rights. When unemployment was near 25 percent, it appeared that Hoover would lose his bid for reelection in 1932, so Hearst sought to block the nomination ofFranklin D. Roosevelt as the Democratic challenger. While continuing to oppose Smith,[44] he promoted the rival candidacy ofSpeaker of the House,John Nance Garner, a Texan "whose guiding motto is ‘America First'" and who, in his own words, saw "the gravest possible menace" facing the country as "the constantly increasing tendency toward socialism and communism".[45]
At the Democratic Party Convention in 1932, with control of delegations from his own state of California and from Garner's home state of Texas, Hearst had enough influence to ensure that the triumphant Roosevelt picked Garner as his running mate. In the anticipation that Roosevelt would turn out to be, in his words, "properly conservative", Hearst supported his election. But the rapprochement with Roosevelt did not last the year. The New Deal's program of unemployment relief, in Hearst's view, was "more communistic than the communist" and "un-American to the core".[44] More and more often, Hearst newspapers supported business over organized labor and condemned higher income tax legislation.[46]
Hearst broke with FDR in spring 1935 when the president vetoed the PatmanBonus Bill for veterans and tried to enter theWorld Court.[47] His papers 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-1930s. They included much of the working class which Roosevelt had attracted by three-to-one margins in the 1936 election. The Hearst papers—like most major chains—had supported the RepublicanAlf Landon that year.[48][49]
While campaigning against Roosevelt's policy of developing formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, in 1935 Hearst ordered his editors to reprint eyewitness accounts of the Ukrainian famine (theHolodomor, which occurred in 1932–1933).[50] These had been supplied in 1933 by Welsh freelance journalistGareth Jones,[51][52] and by the disillusionedAmerican CommunistFred Beal.[53]The New York Times, content with what it has since conceded was "tendentious" reporting of Soviet achievements, printed the blanket denials of itsPulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondentWalter Duranty.[54] Duranty, who was widely credited with facilitating the rapprochement with Moscow, dismissed the Hearst-circulated reports of man-made starvation as a politically motivated "scare story".[55]
In the articles, written by Thomas Walker, to better serve Hearst's editorial line against Roosevelt's Soviet policy the famine was "updated": the impression was created of the famine continuing into 1934. In response,Louis Fischer wrote an article inThe Nation accusing Walker of "pure invention" because Fischer had been to Ukraine in 1934 and claimed that he had not seen famine. He framed the story as an attempt by Hearst to "spoil Soviet-American relations" as part of "an anti-red campaign".[56]
According to Rodney Carlisle, "Hearst condemned the domestic practices of Nazism, but he believed that German demands for boundary revision were legitimate. While he was not pro-Nazi, he accepted more German positions and propaganda than did some other editors and publishers."[57]
With "AMERICA FIRST" emblazoned on his newspaper masthead, Hearst celebrated the "great achievement" of the newNazi regime in Germany—a lesson to all "liberty-loving people." In 1934, after checking with Jewish leaders,[58] Hearst visited Berlin to interviewAdolf Hitler. When Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by the American press, Hearst retorted: "Because Americans believe in democracy, and are averse to dictatorship."[59] William Randolph Hearst instructed his reporters in Germany to give positive coverage of the Nazis, and fired journalists who refused to write stories favourable of German fascism.[4] Hearst's papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leaderHermann Göring,Alfred Rosenberg,[4] and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin America.[60] After the systematic massive Nazi attacks on Jews known asKristallnacht (November 9–10, 1938), the Hearst press, like all major American newspapers, blamed Hitler and the Nazis: "The entire civilized world is shocked and shamed by Germany's brutal oppression of the Jewish people," read an editorial in all Hearst papers. "You [Hitler] are making the flag of National Socialism a symbol of national savagery," read an editorial written by Hearst.[61]
During 1934, Japan / U.S. relations were unstable. In an attempt to remedy this, PrinceTokugawa Iesato travelled throughout the United States on a goodwill visit. During his visit, Prince Iesato and his delegation met with William Randolph Hearst with the hope of improving relations between the two nations.
In 1903, 40-year-old Hearst marriedMillicent Veronica Willson (1882–1974), a 21-year-old chorus girl, in New York City. The couple had five sons:George Randolph Hearst, born on April 23, 1904;William Randolph Hearst Jr., born on January 27, 1908;John Randolph Hearst, born September 26, 1909; and twinsRandolph Apperson Hearst and David Whitmire (né Elbert Willson) Hearst,[62] born on December 2, 1915.
Millicent separated from Hearst in the mid-1920s after tiring of his longtime affair withMarion Davies, but the couple remained legally married until Hearst's death. As a leadingphilanthropist, Millicent built an independent life for herself in New York City. She was active in society and in 1921 founded the Free Milk Fund for Babies. For decades, the fund provided New York's poverty-stricken families with free milk for children.[63]
Conceding an end to his political hopes, Hearst became involved in an affair with the film actress and comedianMarion Davies (1897–1961), former mistress of his friendPaul Block.[64] From about 1919, he lived openly with her in California.
After the death ofPatricia Lake (1919/1923–1993), who had been presented as Davies's "niece," her family confirmed that she was Davies and Hearst's daughter. She had acknowledged this before her death.[63]
George Hearst invested some of his fortune from theComstock Lode in land. In 1865 he purchased about 30,000 acres (12,000 ha), part ofRancho Piedra Blanca stretching from Simeon Bay and reached to Ragged Point. He paid the original grantee Jose de Jesus Pico USD$1 an acre, about twice the current market price.[65] Hearst continued to buy parcels whenever they became available, includingRancho San Simeon.[66]
In 1865, Hearst bought all ofRancho Santa Rosa totaling 13,184 acres (5,335 ha) except one section of 160 acres (0.6 km2) that Estrada lived on. However, as was common with claims before thePublic Land Commission, Estrada's legal claim was costly and took many years to resolve. Estrada mortgaged the ranch to Domingo Pujol, a Spanish-born San Francisco lawyer, who represented him. Estrada was unable to pay the loan and Pujol foreclosed on it. Estrada did not have the title to the land.[67] Hearst sued, but ended up with only 1,340 acres (5.4 km2) of Estrada's holdings.[citation needed]
Rancho Milpitas was a 43,281-acre (17,515 ha) land grant given in 1838 by California governorJuan Bautista Alvarado to Ygnacio Pastor.[68] The grant encompassed present-dayJolon and land to the west.[69] When Pastor obtained title from the Public Land Commission in 1875,Faxon Atherton immediately purchased the land. By 1880, the James Brown Cattle Company owned and operatedRancho Milpitas and neighboringRancho Los Ojitos.
In 1923,Newhall Land soldRancho San Miguelito de Trinidad andRancho El Piojo to William Randolph Hearst.[70] In 1925, Hearst's Piedmont Land and Cattle Company bought Rancho Milpitas and Rancho Los Ojitos (Little Springs) from the James Brown Cattle Company.[71] Hearst gradually bought adjoining land until he owned about 250,000 acres (100,000 ha).[72]
On December 12, 1940, Hearst sold 158,000 acres (63,940 ha), including the Rancho Milpitas, to the United States government.[73] Neighboring landowners sold another 108,950 acres (44,091 ha) to create the 266,950-acre (108,031 ha)Hunter Liggett Military Reservation troop training base for theWar Department. The US Army used a ranch house and guest lodge namedThe Hacienda as housing for the base commander, for visiting officers, and for the officers' club.[73][74]
In 1916, the Eberhard and Kron Tanning Company of Santa Cruz purchased land from the homesteaders along theLittle Sur River. They harvested tanbark oak and brought the bark out on mules and crude wooden sleds known as "go-devils" toNotleys Landing at the mouth ofPalo Colorado Canyon, where it was loaded via cable onto ships anchored offshore. Hearst was interested in preserving the uncut, abundant redwood forest, and on November 18, 1921, he purchased the land from the tanning company for about $50,000.[75] On July 23, 1948, the Monterey Bay Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America purchased the property, originally 1,445 acres (585 ha), from theHearst Sunical Land and Packing Company for $20,000. On September 9, 1948, Albert M. Lester of Carmel obtained a grant for the council of $20,000 from Hearst through the Hearst Foundation of New York City, offsetting the cost of the purchase.[76]
Beginning in 1919, Hearst began to buildHearst Castle, which he never completed, on the 250,000-acre (100,000-hectare; 1,000-square-kilometer) ranch he had acquired nearSan Simeon. He furnished the mansion with art,antiques, and entire historic rooms purchased and brought from great houses in Europe. He established anArabian horse breeding operation on the grounds.
Hearst also owned property on theMcCloud River inSiskiyou County, in far northern California, calledWyntoon.[a] The buildings at Wyntoon were designed by architectJulia Morgan, who also designed Hearst Castle and worked in collaboration withWilliam J. Dodd on a number of other projects.
In 1947, Hearst paid $120,000 for an H-shaped Beverly Hills mansion, (located at 1011 N. Beverly Dr.), on 3.7 acres three blocks fromSunset Boulevard. TheBeverly House, as it has come to be known, has some cinematic connections. According toHearst Over Hollywood,John andJacqueline Kennedy stayed at the house for part of their honeymoon. The house appeared in the filmThe Godfather (1972).[further explanation needed][77]
In the early 1890s, 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 itHacienda del Pozo de Verona.[78] After her death, it was acquired by Castlewood Country Club, which used it as their clubhouse from 1925 to 1969, when it was destroyed in a major fire.
Hearst was renowned for his extensive collection of international art that spanned 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. In addition to collecting pieces of fine art, he also gathered manuscripts, rare books, and autographs.[79] His guests included varied celebrities and politicians, who stayed in rooms furnished with pieces of antique furniture and decorated with artwork by famous artists.[79]
Beginning in 1937, Hearst began selling some of his art collection to help relieve the debt burden he had suffered from the Depression. The first year he sold items for a total of $11 million. In 1941 he put about 20,000 items up for sale; these were evidence of his wide and varied tastes. Included in the sale items were paintings byvan Dyke, crosiers, chalices,Charles Dickens'ssideboard, pulpits, stained glass, arms and armor,George Washington's waistcoat, andThomas Jefferson's Bible. When Hearst Castle was donated to the State of California, it was still sufficiently furnished for the whole house to be considered and operated as a museum.[79]
After seeing photographs inCountry Life magazine ofSt. Donat's Castle in theVale of Glamorgan, Wales, Hearst bought and renovated it in 1925 as a gift to his mistress Marion Davies.[80] The Castle was restored by Hearst, who spent a fortune buying entire rooms from other castles and palaces across the UK and Europe. The Great Hall was bought from theBradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire and reconstructed brick by brick in its current site at St. Donat's. 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. 1514 and a fourteenth-century roof, which became part of the Bradenstoke Hall, despite this use being questioned in Parliament. 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 attended by guests includingCharlie Chaplin,Douglas Fairbanks,Winston Churchill, and a youngJohn F. Kennedy. When Hearst died, the castle was purchased by Antonin Besse II and donated toAtlantic College, an international boarding school founded byKurt Hahn in 1962, which still uses it.
Hearst was particularly interested in the newly emerging technologies relating to aviation and had his first experience of flight in January 1910, in Los Angeles.Louis Paulhan, a French aviator, took him for an air trip on his Farman biplane.[81][82] Hearst also sponsoredOld Glory as well as theHearst Transcontinental Prize.
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 mid-1930s, while rivals such as the New YorkDaily News were flourishing. He refused to take effective cost-cutting measures, and instead increased his very expensive art purchases. His friendJoseph 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. San Simeon itself was mortgaged toLos Angeles Times ownerHarry Chandler in 1933 for $600,000.[83]
Finally his financial advisors realized he was tens of millions of dollars in debt, and could not pay the interest on the loans, let alone reduce the principal. The proposed bond sale failed to attract investors when Hearst's financial crisis became widely known. Marion Davies's stardom waned and 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. At one point, to avoid outright bankruptcy, he had to accept a $1 million loan from Marion Davies, who sold all her jewelry, stocks and bonds to raise the cash for him.[83] Davies also managed to raise him another million as a loan fromWashington Herald ownerCissy Patterson. The trustee cut Hearst's annual salary to $500,000, and stopped the annual payment of $700,000 in dividends. 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, since 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. Donat's. His collections were sold off in a series of auctions and private sales in 1938–39. John D. Rockefeller, Junior, bought $100,000 of antique silver for his new museum atColonial Williamsburg. The market for art and antiques had not recovered from the depression, so Hearst made an overall loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.[83] During this time, Hearst's friend George Loorz commented sarcastically: "He would like to start work on the outside pool [at San Simeon], start a new reservoir etc. but told me yesterday 'I want so many things but haven't got the money.' Poor fellow, let's take up a collection."[83]
He was embarrassed in early 1939 whenTime 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.[83] This, however, was averted, as Chandler agreed to extend the repayment.
After the disastrous financial losses of the 1930s, the Hearst Company returned to profitability during the Second World War, when advertising revenues skyrocketed. Hearst, after spending much of the war at his estate ofWyntoon, returned to San Simeon full-time in 1945 and resumed building works. He also continued collecting, on a reduced scale. He threw himself into philanthropy by donating a great many works to theLos Angeles County Museum of Art.[83]
In 1947, Hearst left his San Simeon estate to seek medical care, which was unavailable in the remote location. He died in Beverly Hills on August 14, 1951, at the age of 88.[84] He was interred in the Hearst family mausoleum at theCypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California, which his parents had established.
His will established two charitable trusts, the Hearst Foundation and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. By his amended will, Marion Davies inherited 170,000 shares in the Hearst Corporation, which, combined with atrust fund of 30,000 shares that Hearst had established for her in 1950, gave her a controlling interest in the corporation.[83] This was short-lived, as she relinquished the 170,000 shares to the Corporation on October 30, 1951, retaining her original 30,000 shares and a role as an advisor. Like their father, none of Hearst's five sons graduated from college.[85] They all followed their father into the media business, and Hearst's namesake,William Randolph Jr., became aPulitzer Prize–winning newspaper reporter.
In the 1890s, the already existing anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in San Francisco were further fanned by Hearst's anti-non-European descents, which were reflected in the rhetoric and the focus in theExaminer and one of his own signed editorials.[86] These prejudices continued to be the mainstays throughout his journalistic career to galvanize his readers’ fears.[86] Hearst staunchly supported theJapanese-American internment duringWWII and used his media power to negatively portray Japanese Americans and to garner support for the internment of Japanese-Americans.[87]
Some media outlets have attempted to bring attention to Hearst's involvement in the prohibition of cannabis in the United States. Hearst collaborated withHarry J. Anslinger to banhemp due to the threat that the burgeoninghemp paper industry posed to his major investment and market share in thepaper milling industry. Due to their efforts, hemp would remain illegal to grow in the US for almost a century, not being legalized until 2018.[88][89][90]
AsMartin Lee andNorman Solomon noted in their 1990 bookUnreliable Sources, Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events".
Hearst's use of yellow journalism techniques in hisNew York Journal to whip up popular support for U.S. military adventurism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898 was also criticized inUpton Sinclair's 1919 book,The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism. According to Sinclair, Hearst's newspapers distorted world events and deliberately tried to discredit socialists. Another critic,Ferdinand Lundberg, extended the criticism inImperial Hearst (1936), charging that Hearst papers accepted payments from abroad to slant the news. After the Second World War, a further critic,George Seldes, repeated the charges inFacts and Fascism (1947). Lundberg described Hearst as "the weakest strong man and the strongest weak man in the world today... a giant with feet of clay."[83]
The filmCitizen Kane (released on May 1, 1941) is loosely based on Hearst's life.[91] Welles and his collaborator, screenwriterHerman J. Mankiewicz, created Kane as acomposite character, among themHarold Fowler McCormick,Samuel Insull andHoward Hughes. Hearst, enraged at the idea ofCitizen Kane being a thinly disguised and very unflattering portrait of him, used his massive influence and resources to prevent the film from being released—all without even having seen it. Welles and the studioRKO Pictures resisted the pressure but Hearst and his Hollywood friends ultimately succeeded in pressuring theater chains to limit showings ofCitizen Kane, resulting in only moderate box-office numbers and seriously impairing Welles's career prospects.[92] The fight over the film was documented in theAcademy Award-nominated documentary,The Battle Over Citizen Kane, and nearly 60 years later,HBO offered a fictionalized version of Hearst's efforts in its original productionRKO 281 (1999), in whichJames Cromwell portrays Hearst.Citizen Kane has twice been ranked No. 1 onAFI's 100 Years...100 Movies: in 1998 and 2007. In 2020,David Fincher directedMank, starringGary Oldman as Mankiewicz, as he interacts with Hearst prior to the writing ofCitizen Kane's screenplay.Charles Dance portrays Hearst in the film.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's 11th congressional district 1903–1907 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forGovernor of New York 1906 | Succeeded by |
