June
16, 2006
Randolph
Hearst: The Media Mogul
Last week we talked about Walt
Disney, the builder of the ‘happiest place
on earth’. Let us consider this week another
great American, Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), the
media mogul who built the monumental Hearst Castle.
Next week we shall make a comparative study of the
two.
A bundle of contradictions, Hearst was born into
wealth, had an overwhelming passion for pelf, power
and position; yet, he denounced the rich and always
upheld the causes of the downtrodden. He married
a pedigree-less, stage dancer who bore him five
sons, no daughter. Subsequently, he was infatuated
with an actress, Marion Davies, who remained his
mistress for decades till his death. He was indifferent,
if not disdainful, towards the bourgeois concepts
of respectability.
Randolph went to Harvard for higher studies, but
did not take to academic pursuits. He was found
responsible for several cases of indiscipline. Once,
he placed a donkey in the room of a teacher with
a plaque around its neck saying: “Now there
are two of you”. Expelled from college, he
had to return home to take up a vocation. His father
offered him the money-minting mines and his enormous
ranch in Mexico. But, Randolph wanted to have only
the insignificant paper: The San Francisco Examiner.
Every one thought it impossible to turn the paper
into a viable financial entity. But, impossible
was a word that did not exist in his lexicon. Impossible,
he maintained, was a little more difficult than
possible. To prove this right, he would be found
frequently driven by seizures of furious energy.
He refused to let obstacles deter him. When he wanted
some thing, he wanted it desperately and he worked
for it with full force day and night.
In the very first year under his direction, the
Examiner launched over a dozen crusades against
incompetent and expensive public services. Sensationalism
was Hearst’s major tool - to startle, amaze,
stupefy, and convulse his readers with excitement.
“Hearst was not a newsman at all in the conventional
sense”, wrote his biographer W.A. Swanberg.
“He was an inventor, a producer, an arranger.
He lived in a childlike dream world, imagining wonderful
stories and then going out and creating them so
that the line between fact and fancy was apt to
be fuzzy”.
Having honed his skills at the Examiner, he decided
to move to New York at age 32 seeking a larger playground
for the exercise of his talents. He bought the Journal
and started competing with the renowned, though
blind, Joseph Pulitzer of daily World. The competition
between the two gave birth to what came to be known
as yellow journalism. For, both had used yellow
posters in that city against each other. Subsequently,
Hearst came to be called the king of yellow journalism.
He started expanding his ownership of newspapers
and magazines.
His worldwide publishing empire eventually included
32 newspapers, 13 magazines, King Feature Syndicate,
radio and TV stations, Metrotone News, several movie
and book companies.
The power he thus acquired turned him into an unprecedented
manipulator of men and events. One of his biographers,
Ben Porter, commented, “Few individuals in
American history - with the exception of certain
Presidents - have affected or helped to shape the
course of this nation’s history over a 50-year
period, either favorably or wrongly, more than William
Randolph Hearst.”
He would cry at the death of a dog and would not
let his gardeners poison the field mice, but he
had no compunction in provoking, through the constant
hammering of his papers, the Spanish-American war
that took innumerable lives. His scathing and relentless
criticism of President William McKinley is often
thought to have incited the assassin to shoot him
down.
On a visit to London as a young boy, he asked his
mother to buy the Windsor Castle for his residence,
and a museum whose objects d’art had enamored
him. The dream of a castle furnished with statutes,
paintings, ornate carpets, draperies, and other
exhibits never left him, but it had to wait till
he had acquired his publishing empire and could
afford to build a castle fit for a king. The construction
that commenced in 1919 took almost thirty years
to complete the world famous Hearst Castle.
It is located on California Highway 1 about half
way between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It comprises
a 115-room main building surrounded by guesthouses,
pools, gardens, playgrounds located over a quarter
of a million acres of Hearst holdings that he used
to call “my ranch”. He owned the entire
area that a human eye could see in all directions
from the main building. He was the king of all he
saw. The Castle stands as a tribute to his genius,
his ambition, his achievements and also a manifestation
of his vanity. It is now a museum. It struck me
as a manifestation of his indigestion of wealth.
His guests at the Castle included President Calvin
Coolidge, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw,
Charles Lindberg, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable and
an array of other show business stars.
Hearst thus had his castle where he owned all that
he perceived; outside he had his media empire where
he employed over 30,000 persons including a hundred
executives, but his political ambitions to be the
Mayor of New York, Governor of that state and even
be nominated for Presidency were thwarted by the
electorate. For, his public image left much to be
desired. The voters did not seem to trust him. He
reminded the voters of his fake and sensational
stories that subsequently turned out to be incorrect.
The seamy side of his persona was depicted by Orson
Wells is his 1941 film “Citizen Kane”.
I saw the film before writing this piece, particularly
as it was considered by many critics as one of the
great films of the twentieth century. I did not,
however, find it in good taste.
Mr. Hearst was no doubt a self-centered person –
perhaps a megalomaniac - but he was nevertheless
a great man as reflected in his great achievements.
(arifhussaini@hotmail.com Phone: 714-921-9634)
