December 30, 2009 • 21 mins
Critics around the world agree that Citizen Kane is one of history's best films -- but who was the basis of this story? Listen in as Sarah and Katie take a look back on the life of William Randolph Hearst in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy and Sarah and
I got an email from a listener named Katia this
morning who was suggesting we do a podcast on William
(00:22):
Randolph Hearst, which was funny because of the time I
was researching that very man. Yeah, Hurst has actually been
on our short list of podcast topics since we talked
about the news Ease a few months ago. If you've
heard of Heirst, it's probably because of a little film
called Citizen Kane, which often tops the list of best
movies ever made. But it's a very hostile depiction of
(00:44):
Hearst as a ruthless, corrupt man who's greedy for power.
And although Hurst was rich and powerful, was he also
permanently damaged and corrupt from that wealth and power. Well
you might also know him for his yellow journalism, sensationalized journalism,
his Hollywood mistress, or for the castle that he named
(01:04):
after himself, but maybe that's not the whole story. In fact,
hl Mankin once wrote Hurst deserves more and better of
his country than he will ever get it is the
fashion to speak of him the contemptuously with dark references
to matters that are nobody's business. I think there's a
great deal of envy and all this. Not many Americans,
even among millionaires, have ever been accused so beautifully. So
(01:27):
what is the truth behind William Randolph? First, we're going
to find out. He was born in April eighteen sixty
three in San Francisco to George and Phoebe Hurst. And
George Hurst was a prospector and minor. He helped develop
the Anaconda copper mine in the Home State gold Mine
and he's also a U S Senator. And George has
a pretty good education. He goes to a nice prep
(01:49):
schools St. Paul's Prep School in New Hampshire, and from
there he goes to Harvard, where he has a pet
alligator named Charlie. We thought this was a nice companion
to Lord Byron's pet, the other guy who always pops
up in our podcast, right, And he goes on academic
probation at Harvard. As far as classes go, he's not fantastic.
As far as social life goes, he's amazing at it.
(02:12):
Because although he is seen as a bit of an
our beast. They do have plenty of money, and he
can buy friends at will can entertain in style. Um,
he joins the Hasty Pudding theater group, and um he
even since chamber pots to his professors, which that's not
going to help you when your own academic probation. No,
but it sings. It's stories like that that he loves
(02:34):
to tell about himself, the childhood pranks where he would
set off fireworks in his own room to get his
parents attention, or also in college when he throw various
huge parties at Harvard. Yeah, he's a real He's a
real econoclast. But William does leave college and he has
to find a way to make his name because that
is important to him. So he decides he'd like to
get into the newspaper business. And luckily for him, his father, George,
(02:56):
had bought the San Francisco Examiner as a way to
curry some poll clitical favor, and William asked for it
and got it at age four. It's a struggling paper,
but he turns it around and manages to make a
profit with it, and not too long after, with money
from his mother, he buys the New York Journal for
a hundred and fifty thousand. Again, this is not a
(03:17):
successful paper until he gets his hands on it, and
he hires the stable of very talented writers and illustrators,
including Stephen Crane and the guy who drew the Yellow
Kid cartoons, who he notoriously hired away from Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World, and he makes this paper very successful too.
They add lots of illustrations, he adds color, crazy headlines,
(03:39):
articles on crime and pseudosciences, kind of more like what
you would think of today is a paper, or at
least as a tabloid, except you've got the addition of
lots of political and foreign affairs kind of stories. And
it's cheap too. It's only a cent, which of course
we touched on in our Newsies podcast. So the circulation
wars between Hurst and Pulletz are go crazy, and it
(04:03):
all becomes about who has the best scoop, who has
the better headline, and who can sell more papers. And
this kind of leads to the rise of yellow journalism.
And as a good example of that, the competitors of
the journal called it a chamber of horrors, a brothel,
a rattle snake, and a moral disease. So they're being
just as sensational as hers. Right. And to give you
(04:25):
an idea of how powerful and influential both Herst hand
pullets are were one Herst biographer Kenneth White compares them
to Google and Microsoft. But in addition to having these
incredibly successful businesses, they were also very politically involved. So
imagine if the Google guys got into politics. Yeah, you know.
And and Hurst puts his full weight behind William Jennings
(04:45):
Bryan and the presidential election of eight and he goes
really populous for this candidate. His paper is actually the
only one who supports Brian right. The other ones were
calling him a rattle painted, vapid Mouther of rotten nous,
among other in saults. So Hurst, compared to them, was
much less sensational, and he came he started at that
(05:05):
point kind of championing the underdog. That was another part
of yellow journalism. And it works because the day after
the election his paper sells over a million copies. A
year before that it had been selling fifty thousand a day.
So do the math. Yeah, and by eight both Hurst
and Pulitzer are selling each about seven fifty thousand papers
a day. So that's Hirst as a newspaperman. But of
(05:29):
course we want to get into some of the great
myths surrounding him. Right. The accepted idea of Hurst is
that he coursened the news. That he was completely shameless,
more so than his competitors, and more sensationalistic and just
interested in these lurid stories. But it was all the
papers who were doing that. He didn't start this, right,
(05:49):
he was just the best at it um. What he
was really good at two was hiring more newsboys. That's
a good way to increase your circulation, more a little
kids out on the street walking your papers. He runs
more additions, and he's an audacious promoter of his papers,
and he's also better at figuring out what the public
wants to read. He knew how to entertain, he knew
(06:11):
how to pique their interests, and he knew how to provoke.
But unlike some of the other newspaper men, he didn't
use ethnic slurs, which is something they were known for.
Charles Dana of the Sun called Pulitzer Joey the Jew
and Judas Pulitzer, and Pulletzer said that Dana was Greek,
which he wasn't and then called the Greek race a
treacherous and drunken one. Yeah. And another charge often leveled
(06:34):
against Hirst is that he stole writers away from Pulitzer,
when in reality a lot of writers just found Pultz
are very hard to work with and came to Hurst
on their own. And Hurst was notoriously good at managing
high strung writers who liked to drink, which, if you've
met any, that's a real talent um. And he's got
(06:57):
a little humanitarian edge to his beverage to a lot
of times they'll um be reporting on a fire or something,
and he'll send people with blankets and food so they
get the scoop. They're fulfilling the demands of yellow journalism,
but they're helping out a little too. But the greatest
charge leveled against Hearst or in favor of him, depending
(07:19):
on which side you are, is that he started the
Spanish American War at least had a major hand in it.
And supposedly he said to someone in a telegram, you
furnish the pictures and all furnish the war. He probably
didn't say this, he himself called it clotted nonsense, which
I think would be a wonderful name for a band,
but he certainly was involved, so let's get a little
(07:40):
context on that. Yeah, so Cuba had been revolting against
Spain for a while. Um Americans were sympathetic, but to
isolationists to want to get involved with it. And although
all the papers are doing a little war drumming, Hearst
is definitely at the front of the pack as far
as that goes. He publishes one head feeding Prisoners two sharks,
(08:02):
that's about Spain. But I'd spend a penny on that,
I totally would. But it's not entirely true. They were
feeding already dead prisoners to sharks, which isn't quite as bad,
but you know, it's still interesting, and he romanticizes it
to his coverage of Adolpho Rodriguez with these beautiful sketches
by Frederick Remington. Really gets people's hearts involved in this
(08:23):
in this story going on in Cuba. Right, there's another
story that's illustrated that's about these naked young American women
being examined by Spanish officers. But again it's exaggerated because
it was female officers who were doing the examining. But
in the story, well, it's so much more sensationalistic if
you have a man doing it. And then we have
the story of Evangelina Si Narrows, who was a seventeen
(08:44):
year old who was involved in the revolutionary movement and
Spain wanted to send her to an African prison for
twenty years, and Hurst, here's the story and thanks Jack Pott.
So he actually puts out a petition to send to
Maria Christina's Spain. And the signeese include President McKinley's mother
for some reason, Julia Ward how who wrote the Battle
(09:06):
Him of the Republic. So all these famous people who
are saying no, you know, she shouldn't be imprisoned a
great story. So they play the story out for as
long as possible and then figured they need to come
to a resolution. So the journal ends up bribing a
bunch of guards, rescuing Evangelina and taking her back to
the United States, branding her the Blameless Flower of Cuba,
making her stay hero. The really big event that hers
(09:30):
gets involved with in the war, though, is the explosion
of the USS main in Havannah's Harbor, which killed two
hundred and sixty six US sailors right, and no one
knew what happened at the time, We're still not entirely sure,
although modern forensics points to it being a problem with
the ship itself. But at the time Hers paper and
(09:51):
other papers jumped on it and said that it was
Spain attacking us, and so we should enter the kind
of thing that gets the war going, right. So Hurst
goes to Cuba himself and reports right in the combat zone.
At the same time he's managing to get both Spanish
and English editions of the paper produced. The rebels give
him their flag and appreciation for all that he's done
(10:11):
for them, And we have the competitors, like the Post
even saying that it was Hurst who blew up the
main So this story is just sensational in every respect,
and it's selling two point seven million copies for the
journal every day. So was his coverage of the war exaggerated? Yes, definitely,
And was it dishonest? Maybe? But did the end justify
(10:34):
the means? As the question, because some people have made
the point, including biographer Kenneth White, that three hundred thousand
Cubans died in those last thirty years of Spanish rules,
So really did the US help step in and save them? Aside,
that's up to you. So Hurst wasn't just involved in
(10:54):
the politics of Cuba, though he also had a fairly
unsuccessful career in the US. He was elected to the
House of Representatives from New York in nineteen o two
and re elected in nineteen o four, although to be honest,
he didn't do all that much. He ran for governor
and lost, He ran for New York City near and lost,
and politically throughout his life he's a bit of a
flip flopper. He starts off, like we said, as a
(11:16):
populist and someone who's very anti trust. Later he goes
anti war and kind of pro German for World War One,
and then he turns isolationists in the thirties, but in
the forties becomes this rabid anti communist crusader. But I
think from there we're going to move on to his
personal life, which is full of salacious scandals. Oh yes,
(11:40):
one of them that's not a scandal. He married a
chorus girl named Millicent Wilson in nineteen o three, and
they had five children together, all boys, and remained married
for the rest of his life, although not necessarily together.
But her most famous relationship is not with his wife,
it's with his mistress, Marion Davies, who's born Marian Durross.
(12:02):
They have a thirty four year long relationship. So Marian
becomes a chorus girl at age thirteen and by nineteen
seventeen she meets the fifty four year old Hurst while
she's performing in the zig Field Follies and they start
their relationship that lasts until his death in nineteen fifty one.
And her likes Davies so much because she's kind of
(12:22):
fun and irreverent and doesn't um, doesn't suck up to
him like so many of the people around him. She
calls him Pops or the old bum Um, and he
spends a lot of money trying to launch her film career,
which isn't isn't as successful as UM as it should
have been with how much funding went into it. She
(12:43):
she was good at the comedies though, like she was
in The Patsy and Show People, and those were considered
good and did fairly well. Um, but it's not a
it's not a classic gold digger chorus girls story though. Um.
Towards the end of hers life, when he's offering financial difficulties,
she actually supports him with really sound investment. She made
(13:05):
over the years, gives him a check for a million
dollars right and again. He is going through financial difficulties
at the end, but she stays around. She doesn't leave.
In his bedroom where he spends his final years, it's
very bare, but one thing he does have is a
picture of Marian Davies with an inscription from Romeo and Juliet.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea. My love
(13:26):
is deep. The more I give to thee, the more
I have for both our infinite um. After his death,
though she's rejected by his family and marries UH Sea
captain surprisingly and um and has a has a successful
post Hollywood life. Like I said earlier, she's really good
um at business investments and um. When she dies thirty
(13:50):
two years after her death, this woman, Patricia van Clive
Lake dies. I mean you might be thinking, okay, well,
who is she. She's supposed to have been the child
of Mary, Arian's sister Rose, but Lake's relatives say that
she's the only child of Davies and Hearst, and that
she was supported by them for most of her life.
(14:11):
She was left a lot of money by Davies and
spent a lot of time with the two as well,
which is a pretty cool sidebar. Yeah. But as for
the rest of his life, the parts not involving love affairs,
he had a huge art collection. He spent a ridiculous
amount of money on it. It was a museum quality
everything from paintings to antique ceilings. And in the nineteen
(14:32):
twenties he started building Hurst Castle. But that I think
is a subject that deserves its own podcast, definitely. Hurst
was a bit of a strange character too. He had
some weird habits. Apparently, when he was working at the paper,
he would appear at someone's door and grab both sides
of the frame, and then he would start soft shoeing
(14:52):
until he decided what he wanted to say, which is,
you know, I think a good way to buy some time.
I was I was asking Katie if it would bother
her if I started to dance and snap my fingers
in my cube, which is right next to hers while
I was working. Just let me know, and I'll put
my headphones on first. But let's switch gears just a
little bit. And while the Spanish American War was probably
(15:14):
the biggest I don't know if you'd call it scandal,
but the biggest story of his professional life. The biggest
story of his personal life may have been the death
of a man named Thomas Inns. Yeah, this is a
really strange history mystery. UM. Thomas Ince was a pioneer
American motion picture director. He was he sometimes considered the
(15:35):
father of the Western, but he's more known for his
mysterious death UH that came shortly after an ill fated
trip on Hurst's yacht. UM. Hurst was throwing him a
birthday party, and the guests included Marion Davies, herst mistress
Charlie Chaplin, the columnist Luella Parsons, and Dr Daniel Carson Goodman,
(15:55):
who was hers film production manager. UM. And weirdly enough,
It's actually misses the boat literally for his own. The
yacht leaves without him and he has to join the
group the next day, So Sunday they all party together,
but Monday is taken from the yacht and brought ashore,
(16:16):
accompanied by Dr Goodman, who is a licensed although nonpracticing
position and employee of Hearsts. By Tuesday, in is dead
and Dr Ida Glasgow, who's his personal physician, signed a
death certificate saying that heart failure was the cause. But
Wednesday morning papers say movie producer shot on Hearst yacht
(16:39):
and this is so strange. These headlines, these sensational headlines,
are gone by the evening. The story is totally dropped,
so the implication is that somebody shut it down. No
coroners inquest is held, the body is cremated, so we
can't exhume. Unfortunately, Um and the first stories that one
(17:00):
in her own papers are totally fake. It's you know,
oh Um in Scott's sick visiting hers ranch. But too
many people saw in getting on the on the yacht,
so they can't stick by these stories. And chaplain's secretary
claims that he saw a bullet hole and in his
head as he was removed from the yacht only further
(17:20):
fuels the rumors flying around, so it gets so bad
that the DA of San Diego has to get involved.
The only person who he calls to testify though, is
Dr Daniel Goodman, who is a Hearst employee, and he says,
oh has always been talking about his heart pains and
his heart trouble, so it's been a long established issue
(17:40):
with him. Um. The rumor that gets tossed around is
that Hearst found Marian and Charlie Chaplin together that they
were having an illicit affair or maybe about to start one,
and there's a scuffle, Marian screams. Other people come to
the area because they hear the commotion, and somehow Hearst
(18:01):
shoots in not chaplain. So we might not have an
answer to that one. But as a sketchy kind of
follow up, colonists, Duella Parsons is rewarded a lifetime contract
with the Hearst Corporation and her syndication is expanded. So
maybe miss Parsons knew something she wasn't supposed to know.
(18:22):
I need to go rewatch the cats now. But speaking
of Herst papers, his business dealings weren't just about newspapers.
He also had magazines, He published fiction, he produced movies,
especially one starring his mistress Marion Davies, and nineteen thirty
five was probably the peak of his fortune. Yere right.
He owned twenty eight major papers, eighteen magazines, radio stations,
(18:45):
movie companies, and news services. And he's also an early
pioneer of TV and pretty much started comic strip syndication.
And this is my favorite part. He was really an
early adopter of synergy and every single time I say
this picture Jack Donneghie from thirty Rock, but he was
good at media tie in. So a good example would
(19:05):
be The Perils of Pauline, which if you're into silent
film or film history you've probably heard of. But it
was a silent film cereal that not pioneered but made
the Damsel in distress extremely popular. She fought gypsies, she
fought rats, she was tied to railroad tracks and hung
off of cliffs. Poor Pauline really did have a lot
(19:25):
of perils to get through, but her signed a deal
to distribute the films and promote them in his papers,
So whenever a new episode came out of Pauline, he
would make sure to have some sort of print tie
in in the paper. Yeah, he had this synergy. Even
telling his magazine editors make sure that every story will
be fit for moving pictures sounds a lot like make
(19:46):
sure every article will be fit for seo um. So
he's got Hollywood in mind all the time, right, But
when the Great Depression hits, that's the beginning of the
end for her fortune and also his own extravagant spending habits.
He ends up having to sell off bits of his empire,
and even having to sell a lot of his art,
(20:07):
and by nineteen forty he's on the fringes of that
of his own Hearst Empire that he set up. He
retreats into the collusion basically at the end and dies
at age eighty eight on August fourteenth, nineteen fifty one,
in Beverly Hills. And bringing up Marion Davies again. In
those last years, a lot of the time they would
just watch her old films and he would tear up,
(20:29):
which is so sad. All of his children went into media,
and maybe you've heard of one of his descendants. Her
name is Patty Hearst, and we're going to cover her
in a podcast soon. But I'm sure we haven't covered
everything about William Rendolf's first life, So if there is
a favorite story that you've missed, please email us at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You could
(20:50):
also search for tabloids on our home page at www
dot how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics because how stuff works dot com,
and be sure to check out the stuff you missed
in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot
com home page.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy and Sarah and
I got an email from a listener named Katia this
morning who was suggesting we do a podcast on William
(00:22):
Randolph Hearst, which was funny because of the time I
was researching that very man. Yeah, Hurst has actually been
on our short list of podcast topics since we talked
about the news Ease a few months ago. If you've
heard of Heirst, it's probably because of a little film
called Citizen Kane, which often tops the list of best
movies ever made. But it's a very hostile depiction of
(00:44):
Hearst as a ruthless, corrupt man who's greedy for power.
And although Hurst was rich and powerful, was he also
permanently damaged and corrupt from that wealth and power. Well
you might also know him for his yellow journalism, sensationalized journalism,
his Hollywood mistress, or for the castle that he named
(01:04):
after himself, but maybe that's not the whole story. In fact,
hl Mankin once wrote Hurst deserves more and better of
his country than he will ever get it is the
fashion to speak of him the contemptuously with dark references
to matters that are nobody's business. I think there's a
great deal of envy and all this. Not many Americans,
even among millionaires, have ever been accused so beautifully. So
(01:27):
what is the truth behind William Randolph? First, we're going
to find out. He was born in April eighteen sixty
three in San Francisco to George and Phoebe Hurst. And
George Hurst was a prospector and minor. He helped develop
the Anaconda copper mine in the Home State gold Mine
and he's also a U S Senator. And George has
a pretty good education. He goes to a nice prep
(01:49):
schools St. Paul's Prep School in New Hampshire, and from
there he goes to Harvard, where he has a pet
alligator named Charlie. We thought this was a nice companion
to Lord Byron's pet, the other guy who always pops
up in our podcast, right, And he goes on academic
probation at Harvard. As far as classes go, he's not fantastic.
As far as social life goes, he's amazing at it.
(02:12):
Because although he is seen as a bit of an
our beast. They do have plenty of money, and he
can buy friends at will can entertain in style. Um,
he joins the Hasty Pudding theater group, and um he
even since chamber pots to his professors, which that's not
going to help you when your own academic probation. No,
but it sings. It's stories like that that he loves
(02:34):
to tell about himself, the childhood pranks where he would
set off fireworks in his own room to get his
parents attention, or also in college when he throw various
huge parties at Harvard. Yeah, he's a real He's a
real econoclast. But William does leave college and he has
to find a way to make his name because that
is important to him. So he decides he'd like to
get into the newspaper business. And luckily for him, his father, George,
(02:56):
had bought the San Francisco Examiner as a way to
curry some poll clitical favor, and William asked for it
and got it at age four. It's a struggling paper,
but he turns it around and manages to make a
profit with it, and not too long after, with money
from his mother, he buys the New York Journal for
a hundred and fifty thousand. Again, this is not a
(03:17):
successful paper until he gets his hands on it, and
he hires the stable of very talented writers and illustrators,
including Stephen Crane and the guy who drew the Yellow
Kid cartoons, who he notoriously hired away from Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World, and he makes this paper very successful too.
They add lots of illustrations, he adds color, crazy headlines,
(03:39):
articles on crime and pseudosciences, kind of more like what
you would think of today is a paper, or at
least as a tabloid, except you've got the addition of
lots of political and foreign affairs kind of stories. And
it's cheap too. It's only a cent, which of course
we touched on in our Newsies podcast. So the circulation
wars between Hurst and Pulletz are go crazy, and it
(04:03):
all becomes about who has the best scoop, who has
the better headline, and who can sell more papers. And
this kind of leads to the rise of yellow journalism.
And as a good example of that, the competitors of
the journal called it a chamber of horrors, a brothel,
a rattle snake, and a moral disease. So they're being
just as sensational as hers. Right. And to give you
(04:25):
an idea of how powerful and influential both Herst hand
pullets are were one Herst biographer Kenneth White compares them
to Google and Microsoft. But in addition to having these
incredibly successful businesses, they were also very politically involved. So
imagine if the Google guys got into politics. Yeah, you know.
And and Hurst puts his full weight behind William Jennings
(04:45):
Bryan and the presidential election of eight and he goes
really populous for this candidate. His paper is actually the
only one who supports Brian right. The other ones were
calling him a rattle painted, vapid Mouther of rotten nous,
among other in saults. So Hurst, compared to them, was
much less sensational, and he came he started at that
(05:05):
point kind of championing the underdog. That was another part
of yellow journalism. And it works because the day after
the election his paper sells over a million copies. A
year before that it had been selling fifty thousand a day.
So do the math. Yeah, and by eight both Hurst
and Pulitzer are selling each about seven fifty thousand papers
a day. So that's Hirst as a newspaperman. But of
(05:29):
course we want to get into some of the great
myths surrounding him. Right. The accepted idea of Hurst is
that he coursened the news. That he was completely shameless,
more so than his competitors, and more sensationalistic and just
interested in these lurid stories. But it was all the
papers who were doing that. He didn't start this, right,
(05:49):
he was just the best at it um. What he
was really good at two was hiring more newsboys. That's
a good way to increase your circulation, more a little
kids out on the street walking your papers. He runs
more additions, and he's an audacious promoter of his papers,
and he's also better at figuring out what the public
wants to read. He knew how to entertain, he knew
(06:11):
how to pique their interests, and he knew how to provoke.
But unlike some of the other newspaper men, he didn't
use ethnic slurs, which is something they were known for.
Charles Dana of the Sun called Pulitzer Joey the Jew
and Judas Pulitzer, and Pulletzer said that Dana was Greek,
which he wasn't and then called the Greek race a
treacherous and drunken one. Yeah. And another charge often leveled
(06:34):
against Hirst is that he stole writers away from Pulitzer,
when in reality a lot of writers just found Pultz
are very hard to work with and came to Hurst
on their own. And Hurst was notoriously good at managing
high strung writers who liked to drink, which, if you've
met any, that's a real talent um. And he's got
(06:57):
a little humanitarian edge to his beverage to a lot
of times they'll um be reporting on a fire or something,
and he'll send people with blankets and food so they
get the scoop. They're fulfilling the demands of yellow journalism,
but they're helping out a little too. But the greatest
charge leveled against Hearst or in favor of him, depending
(07:19):
on which side you are, is that he started the
Spanish American War at least had a major hand in it.
And supposedly he said to someone in a telegram, you
furnish the pictures and all furnish the war. He probably
didn't say this, he himself called it clotted nonsense, which
I think would be a wonderful name for a band,
but he certainly was involved, so let's get a little
(07:40):
context on that. Yeah, so Cuba had been revolting against
Spain for a while. Um Americans were sympathetic, but to
isolationists to want to get involved with it. And although
all the papers are doing a little war drumming, Hearst
is definitely at the front of the pack as far
as that goes. He publishes one head feeding Prisoners two sharks,
(08:02):
that's about Spain. But I'd spend a penny on that,
I totally would. But it's not entirely true. They were
feeding already dead prisoners to sharks, which isn't quite as bad,
but you know, it's still interesting, and he romanticizes it
to his coverage of Adolpho Rodriguez with these beautiful sketches
by Frederick Remington. Really gets people's hearts involved in this
(08:23):
in this story going on in Cuba. Right, there's another
story that's illustrated that's about these naked young American women
being examined by Spanish officers. But again it's exaggerated because
it was female officers who were doing the examining. But
in the story, well, it's so much more sensationalistic if
you have a man doing it. And then we have
the story of Evangelina Si Narrows, who was a seventeen
(08:44):
year old who was involved in the revolutionary movement and
Spain wanted to send her to an African prison for
twenty years, and Hurst, here's the story and thanks Jack Pott.
So he actually puts out a petition to send to
Maria Christina's Spain. And the signeese include President McKinley's mother
for some reason, Julia Ward how who wrote the Battle
(09:06):
Him of the Republic. So all these famous people who
are saying no, you know, she shouldn't be imprisoned a
great story. So they play the story out for as
long as possible and then figured they need to come
to a resolution. So the journal ends up bribing a
bunch of guards, rescuing Evangelina and taking her back to
the United States, branding her the Blameless Flower of Cuba,
making her stay hero. The really big event that hers
(09:30):
gets involved with in the war, though, is the explosion
of the USS main in Havannah's Harbor, which killed two
hundred and sixty six US sailors right, and no one
knew what happened at the time, We're still not entirely sure,
although modern forensics points to it being a problem with
the ship itself. But at the time Hers paper and
(09:51):
other papers jumped on it and said that it was
Spain attacking us, and so we should enter the kind
of thing that gets the war going, right. So Hurst
goes to Cuba himself and reports right in the combat zone.
At the same time he's managing to get both Spanish
and English editions of the paper produced. The rebels give
him their flag and appreciation for all that he's done
(10:11):
for them, And we have the competitors, like the Post
even saying that it was Hurst who blew up the
main So this story is just sensational in every respect,
and it's selling two point seven million copies for the
journal every day. So was his coverage of the war exaggerated? Yes, definitely,
And was it dishonest? Maybe? But did the end justify
(10:34):
the means? As the question, because some people have made
the point, including biographer Kenneth White, that three hundred thousand
Cubans died in those last thirty years of Spanish rules,
So really did the US help step in and save them? Aside,
that's up to you. So Hurst wasn't just involved in
(10:54):
the politics of Cuba, though he also had a fairly
unsuccessful career in the US. He was elected to the
House of Representatives from New York in nineteen o two
and re elected in nineteen o four, although to be honest,
he didn't do all that much. He ran for governor
and lost, He ran for New York City near and lost,
and politically throughout his life he's a bit of a
flip flopper. He starts off, like we said, as a
(11:16):
populist and someone who's very anti trust. Later he goes
anti war and kind of pro German for World War One,
and then he turns isolationists in the thirties, but in
the forties becomes this rabid anti communist crusader. But I
think from there we're going to move on to his
personal life, which is full of salacious scandals. Oh yes,
(11:40):
one of them that's not a scandal. He married a
chorus girl named Millicent Wilson in nineteen o three, and
they had five children together, all boys, and remained married
for the rest of his life, although not necessarily together.
But her most famous relationship is not with his wife,
it's with his mistress, Marion Davies, who's born Marian Durross.
(12:02):
They have a thirty four year long relationship. So Marian
becomes a chorus girl at age thirteen and by nineteen
seventeen she meets the fifty four year old Hurst while
she's performing in the zig Field Follies and they start
their relationship that lasts until his death in nineteen fifty one.
And her likes Davies so much because she's kind of
(12:22):
fun and irreverent and doesn't um, doesn't suck up to
him like so many of the people around him. She
calls him Pops or the old bum Um, and he
spends a lot of money trying to launch her film career,
which isn't isn't as successful as UM as it should
have been with how much funding went into it. She
(12:43):
she was good at the comedies though, like she was
in The Patsy and Show People, and those were considered
good and did fairly well. Um, but it's not a
it's not a classic gold digger chorus girls story though. Um.
Towards the end of hers life, when he's offering financial difficulties,
she actually supports him with really sound investment. She made
(13:05):
over the years, gives him a check for a million
dollars right and again. He is going through financial difficulties
at the end, but she stays around. She doesn't leave.
In his bedroom where he spends his final years, it's
very bare, but one thing he does have is a
picture of Marian Davies with an inscription from Romeo and Juliet.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea. My love
(13:26):
is deep. The more I give to thee, the more
I have for both our infinite um. After his death,
though she's rejected by his family and marries UH Sea
captain surprisingly and um and has a has a successful
post Hollywood life. Like I said earlier, she's really good
um at business investments and um. When she dies thirty
(13:50):
two years after her death, this woman, Patricia van Clive
Lake dies. I mean you might be thinking, okay, well,
who is she. She's supposed to have been the child
of Mary, Arian's sister Rose, but Lake's relatives say that
she's the only child of Davies and Hearst, and that
she was supported by them for most of her life.
(14:11):
She was left a lot of money by Davies and
spent a lot of time with the two as well,
which is a pretty cool sidebar. Yeah. But as for
the rest of his life, the parts not involving love affairs,
he had a huge art collection. He spent a ridiculous
amount of money on it. It was a museum quality
everything from paintings to antique ceilings. And in the nineteen
(14:32):
twenties he started building Hurst Castle. But that I think
is a subject that deserves its own podcast, definitely. Hurst
was a bit of a strange character too. He had
some weird habits. Apparently, when he was working at the paper,
he would appear at someone's door and grab both sides
of the frame, and then he would start soft shoeing
(14:52):
until he decided what he wanted to say, which is,
you know, I think a good way to buy some time.
I was I was asking Katie if it would bother
her if I started to dance and snap my fingers
in my cube, which is right next to hers while
I was working. Just let me know, and I'll put
my headphones on first. But let's switch gears just a
little bit. And while the Spanish American War was probably
(15:14):
the biggest I don't know if you'd call it scandal,
but the biggest story of his professional life. The biggest
story of his personal life may have been the death
of a man named Thomas Inns. Yeah, this is a
really strange history mystery. UM. Thomas Ince was a pioneer
American motion picture director. He was he sometimes considered the
(15:35):
father of the Western, but he's more known for his
mysterious death UH that came shortly after an ill fated
trip on Hurst's yacht. UM. Hurst was throwing him a
birthday party, and the guests included Marion Davies, herst mistress
Charlie Chaplin, the columnist Luella Parsons, and Dr Daniel Carson Goodman,
(15:55):
who was hers film production manager. UM. And weirdly enough,
It's actually misses the boat literally for his own. The
yacht leaves without him and he has to join the
group the next day, So Sunday they all party together,
but Monday is taken from the yacht and brought ashore,
(16:16):
accompanied by Dr Goodman, who is a licensed although nonpracticing
position and employee of Hearsts. By Tuesday, in is dead
and Dr Ida Glasgow, who's his personal physician, signed a
death certificate saying that heart failure was the cause. But
Wednesday morning papers say movie producer shot on Hearst yacht
(16:39):
and this is so strange. These headlines, these sensational headlines,
are gone by the evening. The story is totally dropped,
so the implication is that somebody shut it down. No
coroners inquest is held, the body is cremated, so we
can't exhume. Unfortunately, Um and the first stories that one
(17:00):
in her own papers are totally fake. It's you know,
oh Um in Scott's sick visiting hers ranch. But too
many people saw in getting on the on the yacht,
so they can't stick by these stories. And chaplain's secretary
claims that he saw a bullet hole and in his
head as he was removed from the yacht only further
(17:20):
fuels the rumors flying around, so it gets so bad
that the DA of San Diego has to get involved.
The only person who he calls to testify though, is
Dr Daniel Goodman, who is a Hearst employee, and he says,
oh has always been talking about his heart pains and
his heart trouble, so it's been a long established issue
(17:40):
with him. Um. The rumor that gets tossed around is
that Hearst found Marian and Charlie Chaplin together that they
were having an illicit affair or maybe about to start one,
and there's a scuffle, Marian screams. Other people come to
the area because they hear the commotion, and somehow Hearst
(18:01):
shoots in not chaplain. So we might not have an
answer to that one. But as a sketchy kind of
follow up, colonists, Duella Parsons is rewarded a lifetime contract
with the Hearst Corporation and her syndication is expanded. So
maybe miss Parsons knew something she wasn't supposed to know.
(18:22):
I need to go rewatch the cats now. But speaking
of Herst papers, his business dealings weren't just about newspapers.
He also had magazines, He published fiction, he produced movies,
especially one starring his mistress Marion Davies, and nineteen thirty
five was probably the peak of his fortune. Yere right.
He owned twenty eight major papers, eighteen magazines, radio stations,
(18:45):
movie companies, and news services. And he's also an early
pioneer of TV and pretty much started comic strip syndication.
And this is my favorite part. He was really an
early adopter of synergy and every single time I say
this picture Jack Donneghie from thirty Rock, but he was
good at media tie in. So a good example would
(19:05):
be The Perils of Pauline, which if you're into silent
film or film history you've probably heard of. But it
was a silent film cereal that not pioneered but made
the Damsel in distress extremely popular. She fought gypsies, she
fought rats, she was tied to railroad tracks and hung
off of cliffs. Poor Pauline really did have a lot
(19:25):
of perils to get through, but her signed a deal
to distribute the films and promote them in his papers,
So whenever a new episode came out of Pauline, he
would make sure to have some sort of print tie
in in the paper. Yeah, he had this synergy. Even
telling his magazine editors make sure that every story will
be fit for moving pictures sounds a lot like make
(19:46):
sure every article will be fit for seo um. So
he's got Hollywood in mind all the time, right, But
when the Great Depression hits, that's the beginning of the
end for her fortune and also his own extravagant spending habits.
He ends up having to sell off bits of his empire,
and even having to sell a lot of his art,
(20:07):
and by nineteen forty he's on the fringes of that
of his own Hearst Empire that he set up. He
retreats into the collusion basically at the end and dies
at age eighty eight on August fourteenth, nineteen fifty one,
in Beverly Hills. And bringing up Marion Davies again. In
those last years, a lot of the time they would
just watch her old films and he would tear up,
(20:29):
which is so sad. All of his children went into media,
and maybe you've heard of one of his descendants. Her
name is Patty Hearst, and we're going to cover her
in a podcast soon. But I'm sure we haven't covered
everything about William Rendolf's first life, So if there is
a favorite story that you've missed, please email us at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You could
(20:50):
also search for tabloids on our home page at www
dot how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics because how stuff works dot com,
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