Behind the Scenes Minis: Unmentioned Pulitzer

Holly and Tracy cover some of the details that were cut from the Pulitzer two-parter, including more information about his brother, artist George Luks, and a story of the Pulitzer family's home burning down.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday, Am Polly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We sure did talk
about Joseph Pulitzer all week for the whole week, and

(00:21):
we sure did still have to leave out an awful lot. Um.
You could do a whole podcast series on Pulitzer because
his name touches so many things, and also there was
just a lot that went on in his life that
is sometimes fascinating, sometimes weird. We'll talk about a few
of those things today. We mentioned that when William Randolph

(00:47):
Hurst bought The New York Journal that Pulitzer's brother Albert
was sort of involved sort of UM, and we had
mentioned that Albert came over after Pultzer sort of gotten settled.
There is kind of a sad story because Albert also
went into publishing, was actually pretty good at it by
most accounts, but he just didn't have like the drive

(01:09):
an ambition of his brother, so he really didn't, you know,
he kind of fades in the background historically, UM, and
the two were definitely in a situation where their relationship
was quite strained because of the competition between them. Which stinks.
But um Albert had owned the New York Journal, he

(01:31):
sold it to a man named John McClean, not from
die Hard obviously, and then John McClean turned around and
sold it to Hearst. So there's also an interesting like
just through line there of that having been Albert's paper
that Hearst then used to drive down the World's numbers,
which had to have been an extra layer of insult,
probably related to the Hearst thing, and specifically the Yellow Kid,

(01:56):
the artist that we mentioned that Pullets are hired to
replace Cult who his name I have heard pronounced many ways.
We went with that pronunciation because it seems like most
American UM journalists that cover this story say it that way.
If that's not the way you say it, I'm sorry.
But the artists were actually talking about is George Luck,
who replaced him at the World and started doing Hogan's

(02:18):
Alley there. George Luck has this completely compelling painting career
that I he's another one that's on the list for
me now because uh, he's just he fascinates me. There's
a photograph of him where what really struck me was
that it looks like every artist photograph any of my
friends that like work in art or in comics would

(02:40):
have taken today, like the expression is there that kind
of rye smart alecky but wonderful, really charming expression. I'm
sort of obsessed with George Luck Now. Um, we didn't
mention it in the the show, but the St. Louis
Post Dispatch, which poets are left after that whole shooting incident,
he he didn't sell it. He still had the Post Dispatch,

(03:02):
And in our Shape and Episode we mentioned that he
went to St. Louis for a while and worked there. Um,
and that actually stayed in the Pulitzer family for a
long time, like almost up until the twenty first century.
So just know that that wasn't an abandoned thing. We
also didn't talk about this thing that happened again. We
had to take I had to take so much out

(03:23):
because it was just ballooning. In nineteen hundred, Pulitzer's house
in Manhattan burned essentially to the ground. He was not
home at the time. Um Kate was home and she
had like run back into the burning building like a
couple of times to get the kids out. One of

(03:45):
their governesses died in the fire because she had gone
back in to get Christmas presents that she had left inside.
It was like a big tragedy. It's an interesting point
for me in that I will say I I was
reading about it and I had that moment of but
then I was like, oh, um, so Kate and the

(04:07):
children then went to a fancy pants unicorn hotel to
stay while they figured out their next house, and they
put up the staff in a boarding house, and I
was like, of course the staff might to a boarding house. Um.
But then the Pulletzers did some pretty interesting things in
that Kate then had a tailor make all new wardrobes

(04:29):
for all of the staff. Um and Pulletzer donated a
lot of money to the emergency services that had responded
to the fire and tried to take care of people
that were tangentially impacted by it. Like I think that
I don't quote me on this, I think that governess
is family got a substantial amount of money. Yeah, it's

(04:52):
kind of interesting, Like they were pretty benevolent in the
way they handled everything in the aftermath. Still very scary
and easy to do when you're richer than Yeah, you know. Yeah.
One of the things I had noticed when trying to
find a picture to put on our social media, needing
two pictures because we have two parts. Uh is there

(05:14):
was a surprising lack of like publicly available photos of him,
which surprised me based on when he lived in his prominence,
like usually somebody who was around at this point and
was as prominent as he was. There's just a wealth
of photographs and formal portraits and all of this other stuff,
and there were just a lot fewer of them than

(05:37):
I expected. And many of the ones that were there
are like scans of something that was printed in a
book that obviously looks like a late nineteenth century book
scan and not something like an actual print of a photograph.
And you had told me this is probably why. Yeah,
a lot of things were destroyed in that fire. A

(05:57):
lot of art that they had collected was destroyed in
that fire. Um, portraits, there were definitely portraits mentioned, both
photographic portraits and some paintings of both Joseph and Kate
and I think they're children that were destroyed in that fire.
I had also mentioned to you that, Um, there are
places that you know have archives of Pulitzer material, and

(06:21):
in some cases, if they've scanned the actual material, you
will see that it has burnt edges, or in some
cases half of the document is burned away, and it's
kind of been pieced together by archivists what it likely
said in the spaces that didn't exist. So we did
lose a lot of details about him, and I wonder
if that doesn't contribute to some degree to that sort

(06:42):
of gap of understanding about his health. It's really interesting
to read about his health because it always seems that
everyone who was close to him, I don't want to
say they ignored his issues or his mentions of it,
but no one thought he was in like an imminent

(07:06):
health crisis. Like, no one was like he could go
at any moment, we need to be on constant watch.
It was like, yes, he's always kind of had these issues,
but he's fine. That's just how he is. Um. Which
makes it interesting that Kate was imp impressed upon enough
by that that telegram she got the day before he died.

(07:26):
I think it was the day he died where she
was like, I have to get to South Carolina. Yeah.
We mentioned also that their marriage was not awesome. Um,
there was. I did not follow down this rabbit hole
because it wasn't that interesting to me and I don't
like to Um, it just didn't feel right to like

(07:47):
go through the salacious, gossipy parts. Although this is pretty
well verified that Kate had for a while Ben romantically
involved with one of the editors that worked for Pulitzer. Um,
you know, clearly, like there's was not a relationship of
like constant affection at all. Um, he was gone so much.

(08:09):
I think, you know, it's not surprising that they became
romantically attached to others. She did, for sure. I don't
know that he ever did. He was romantically attached to
his work, is what I think. We also didn't talk

(08:31):
about the code book in this episode, which is pretty interesting,
but like it came up in Chapins, So I felt
like that in particularly was in particular felt like retreading
old ground where he had this whole codebook of words
that he would use to communicate with his editors so
that if someone intercepted a telegram or something, they wouldn't

(08:52):
know what was really going on. And that one of
the things that I read that was kind of charming
was that like it was considered, you know, a badge
of honor for an employee to have a copy of
that codebook because it was like, I'm in the inner circle.
Now I know what all the missives really mean. UM,
which is kind of fascinating. You know, people get very

(09:14):
attached to their jobs and they become their identities, and
achievement at their job becomes what makes them feel important.
I'm not saying you shouldn't feel good about doing good jobs.
I don't know. I just have feelings on that issue
that aren't necessary necessarily what everyone else would have. UM.
We didn't talk a lot about Lucille's death either, which

(09:37):
was again, she was seventeen, so she was old enough
that you know, she was a significant part of the family,
and her health had been kind of up and down
for several months, and they were scared she was going
to die on Christmas Eve and she didn't, and she
you know, had even made sure that everybody had presents
and stuff, and then she rallied, but she I had

(10:00):
on New Year's Eve. UM. And one biography I read
made made a really interesting point that like Joseph Pulitzer
had grown up with his siblings dying and his father
dying and just like burying one family member after another,
and then it kind of seemed like he had made
this for the most part insulated world. They had lost

(10:22):
that one child when she was a toddler, but other
than that, you know, into his adult life he had
really kind of, for lack of a better phrase, kept
himself safe from that kind of heartache again. And there
really is a moment where, like after Lucille dies, which
I think we had said was eight seven, he seemed
like he became more withdrawn from everyone else again, Like

(10:46):
that's really when he kind of starts living on the
yacht most of the time and like kind of putting
himself in this own cone of silence even when he's
not with the family. And I, um, I feel like
he is one of those people that would have been
a fitted so deeply from talking to a mental health professional.
Well I you know, all of the resources on earth

(11:09):
could not have helped him at the well and that
that whole incident in his newsroom, Like as I was
reading that, I was like, therapy. I think all of you,
I know, therapy today versus when they were living not
quite the very different thing. But also man, the fact
that that that that whole bickering scenario was like all

(11:33):
of you needed to talk to somebody about how to
deal with your angry feelings. It was honestly like reading
those newspaper jabs at each other back and forth, felt
like reading social media, just a slower version where I
was like, you guys are all very special and important.
You don't have to fight. You're all very valid good boys.

(11:56):
I don't I don't know. I just the amount of
bickering the led to somebody getting killed. Um, that's where
I'm like, I will say this, Cockerel had a history
of gun violence, so it's not real surprising that he
was ready to shoot sleep back. Um, he had been

(12:18):
in duels and whatnot before. He was very quick to
challenge people to duels. That was never satisfactorily solved isn't
the right word because it wasn't considered like an investigative case.
But it's kind of like, you know, the Panama Canal.
Things futtered out. There was never any conclusive determination, and
it it was like, yeah, there's no evidence, so I

(12:39):
guess this didn't happen, or it's it's gone if it did.
There was just so much drama and scandal and strife
around the Panama Canal and it has come up over
I mean just decades of history and multiple different episodes
of the show, and I'm not sure if prior host

(13:00):
sever did something that was like more of a comprehensive
look at it. Seems like there's something that has like
is like way back in the archive that's also related,
but it's just just whole saga of the Panama Canal. Yeah,
it's it's hard to keep track of everything because so
many people eventually had a stake in it, and they

(13:20):
were all trying to protect their own interests in ways
that led them to lie about things that like, untangling
that particular mess is very, very difficult. I will tell
you a funny thing end this on a more hilarious note.
I don't often do this, but particularly in thinking about

(13:45):
Pulitzer and Hearst without intending to, I cast actors in
my head of who they are. Love this and I
realized I have always thought of this actor as Pulitzer
or no reason I can figure out, and it's Guy Pierce.
I don't know why. Hurst is a little bit of

(14:08):
a thing where my brain knows better but still keeps
making this same casting choice, which is Gerald McCraney, who
I love, but he played George Hurst in Deadwood. But
my brain just went Hirst, Hirst, Hirst, and so he's
always William Randolph Hurst, even though he only ever played

(14:29):
William's father George. So those are those are the two
men who are battling it out in my head when
I envisioned these two titans of publishing fighting with each other.
That's awesome. So if anybody ever writes a Pulitzer biopic
or directs it, please do everything you can to cast

(14:49):
Guy Pierced in the role. That would be great for
my my mental well being and uh would delight me
on multiple levels. So much Pulletzer, I feel like we
could never cover all of Pulletzer, just like the Panama Canal.
There's just too much. But that's those are two big
pieces of his life that I think covered the bigger

(15:12):
moments in broad strokes. There are lots of other little
business dealings and whatnot that merit investigation and discussion, but
they can all go into in a week of show.
That's what's up. Um. If this is the end of
your week, your work week, and you have some time
off ahead marvelous, I hope it goes spectacularly well and
that you m think about media bias when you go

(15:38):
through the world, because that kind of cracked me up
that Pulitzer was all about unbiased journalism, because you're unbiased
if you agree with me. Um. If you don't have
time off and you had to do some work, I
hope you also have at least some some restive moments
sometimes where you can chill out and be with yourself
in your cone of silence. If you design here and

(16:01):
we will be right back here tomorrow with the classic,
and then on Monday there will be another new episode,
so we'll see you right back here. Stuff you missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
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(16:21):
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