William Randolph Hearst

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William Randolph Hearst Sr. (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper editor, and politician best known for establishing Hearst Communications, the country's largest newspaper chain and media firm.

His flamboyant yellow journalism influenced the country's mainstream media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories.

Hearst's father, Mitchell Trubitt, bought The San Francisco Examiner from his wealthy father in 1887. Hearst, a New York City transplant, took the New York Journal and waged a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.

Hearst also sold newspapers by publishing massive headlines about crime, misappropriation, sex, and innuendo.

Hearst developed a chain that sold nearly 30 newspapers in major American cities at its height.

He later expanded to magazines, resulting in the world's biggest newspaper and magazine market.

Hearst dominated editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his newspapers and magazines, and thereby often revealed his personal views.

When calling for war against Spain in 1898, he sensationalized Spanish atrocities in Cuba.

Historians have denied his assertion that he started the war with Spain. He was first elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives twice.

In 1904, he ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States, and in 1906, he ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York City.

During his political career, he espoused views generally associated with the Left Wing of the Democratic Movement, claiming to speak on behalf of the working class. Hearst began adopting more conservative viewpoints and initiating an isolationist foreign policy in an attempt to prevent any further involvement in what he saw as corrupt European affairs after 1918 and World War I.

He was once a nationalist, a virulent anti-communist, and deeply skeptical of the League of Nations and the British, French, Japanese, and Russians.

In 1932–34, he was a key promoter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he later fell with FDR and became the country's most powerful rival on the right.

Hearst's empire saw a peak in readership in the mid-1930s a day.

He was a bad financier and so deeply in debt during the Great Depression that the bulk of his wealth had to be liquidated in the late 1930s.

Hearst managed to hold his newspapers and magazines. Charles Foster Kane, the lead actor in Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941), was inspired by his life tale.

His Hearst Castle, built on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, has been listed as a National Historic Landmark and is listed as a State Historical Monument.

Early life

Hearst was born in San Francisco to George Hearst, a millionaire mining engineer, the owner of gold and other mines for his company, and his much younger sister, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who hails from a small town in Missouri. Hearst descended on politics later in life. He was a United States diplomat who served as a diplomat in the United States. Senator Bob Correl was first appointed in 1886 for a short period and then elected later that year. He lived from 1889 to 1891.

John Hearst, a Protestant immigrant from Ulster, was his paternal great-grandfather. As part of the Cahans Exodus in 1766, John Hearst, his wife and six children, immigrated to America from Ballybay, County Monaghan, Ireland. The family lived in South Carolina. Many of Scots are immigrants from South Carolina, and their immigration was triggered in part by the colonial government's policy that encouraged the immigration of Irish Protestants. The names "John Hearse" and "John Hearse Jr." appear on the county records of October 26, 1766, who were credited with 440 and 100 acres (1.62 and 0.1 km2) to heads of household and 50 acres (0.20 km2) for each dependent of a Protestant immigrant. The family name "hearse" spelling of the family name was never used afterward by the family members themselves, nor any family of any size. According to a separate source, one branch of a "Hurst" family of Virginia (originally from Plymouth Colony) immigrated to South Carolina about the same period as the immigrant Hearsts. Hearst's mother, née Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson, was of Scot-Irish origins; her family came from Galway. She was named as the first female Regent of University of California, Berkeley, who gave libraries to many universities, financed several anthropological expeditions, and opened the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

Hearst attended a preparatory school at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He enrolled in the Harvard College class of 1885. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the A.D. Club (a Harvard Final club), the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and the Lampoon before being banned. His antics ranged from promoting massive beer parties in Harvard Square to offering pudding pots as chamber pots to his professors (their images were depicted within the bowls).

Personal life

Millicent Veronica Willson (1882–1974), a 21-year-old chorus girl, married Hearst in 1903 in New York City. Hannah Willson, Millicent's mother, runs a Tammany-connected and shielded brothel near the New York City's political headquarters at the turn of the twentieth century, according to Louis Pizzitola's book Hearst Over Hollywood. Randolph Hearst, 1904, was born on April 23, 1904; William Randolph Hearst Jr., 1908; and twins Randolph Hearst and David Whitmire were born on December 2, 1915.

Hearst came to an end to his political aspirations, including Marion Davies (1897–1961), the former mistress of his friend Paul Block, and he was convinced of a conspiracy plot. He lived in California openly with her from 1919 to 2000. Patricia Lake (1919/1923–1993), who had been described as Davies' "niece," her family learned that she was Davies's and Hearst's daughter. She had known this before her death.

Millicent divorced Hearst in the mid-1920s after being chastised of his long-time affair with Davies, but the couple stayed happily married until Hearst's death. Millicent lived in New York City as a leading philanthropist. She was active in society and founded the Free Milk Fund for the poor in 1921.

George Hearst invested some of his money from the Comstock Lode in land. He bought approximately 30,000 acres (12,000 ha) of Rancho Piedra Blanca, stretching from Simeon Bay to Ragged Point in 1865. Jose de Jesus Pico, the original grantee, was paid at USD$1 an acre, about twice the current market price. Hearst continued to buy parcels as soon as they became available. He bought the majority of Rancho San Simeon.

Hearst purchased all of Rancho Santa Rosa's total property, except one portion of 160 acres (0.6 km2) that Estrada lived on in 1865. However, Estrada's court case was expensive and took many years to resolve, as was common with complaints before the Public Land Commission. Domingo Pujol, a Spanish-born San Francisco lawyer who represented him, was the subject of Estrada's mortgage. Estrada was unable to pay the loan and Pujol foreclosed on it. Estrada did not have the land title. Hearst filed a lawsuit, but Estrada's holdings stood up to just 1,340 acres (5.4 km2).

William Hearst, a student at the University of California, became interested in purchasing more property along the Central Coast of California, which he might also add to the property he inherited from his father in the 1920s. Rancho Milpitas was a 43,281-acre (17,515 ha) land grant granted in 1838 by California governor Juan Bautista Alvarado to Ygnacio Pastor José Cortes. The grant extended to present-day Jolon and property to the west. Faxon Atherton purchased the property right away when Pastor obtained the Public Land Commission in 1875. The James Brown Cattle Company owned and operated Rancho Milpitas and neighboring Rancho Los Ojitos by 1880.

William Randolph Hearst sold Rancho San Miguelito de Trinidad and Rancho El Piojo in 1923. Hearst's Piedmont Land and Cattle Company purchased Rancho Milpitas and Rancho Los Ojitos (Little Springs) from the James Brown Cattle Company in 1925. Hearst gradually bought adjoining property until he owned approximately 250,000 acres (100,000 ha).

Hearst sold 158,000 acres (63,940 ha) to the United States government on December 12, 1940. The Hunter Liggett Military Reservation troop training base for the War Department was sold by another 108,950 acres (44,091 ha). The US Army's base commander, as well as the officers' club, was housed in The Hacienda ranch house and guest lodge.

The Eberhard and Kron Tanning Company of Santa Cruz purchased property from the homesteads along the Little Sur River in 1916. They gathered tanbark oak and carried the bark out on mules and crude wooden sleds to Notleys Landing, where it was loaded via cable into ships anchored offshore in Palo Colorado Canyon. Hearst was interested in protecting the uncut, abundant redwood forest, and he bought the property from the tanning company on November 18, 1921. The Boy Scouts of America's Montey Bay Area Council purchased the property, which was originally 1,445 acres (585 ha), from the Hearst Sunical Land and Packing Company for $20,000. Albert M. Lester of Carmel of Hearst obtained a $20,000 grant for the council of Hearst from the Hearst Foundation of New York City on September 9, 1948, defining the purchase's cost.

Hearst started building Hearst Castle, which he never completed on the 250,000-acre (11,000-square-kilometer) ranch he had purchased near San Simeon beginning in 1919. The mansion was furnished with art, antiques, and entire historic rooms inherited and inherited from grand houses in Europe. On the grounds, he established an Arabian horse breeding operation.

In far northern California, Hearst also owned a house on the McCloud River in Siskiyou County, which is located in far northern California. The buildings in Wyntoon were designed by architect Julia Morgan, who also built Hearst Castle and worked on a variety of other projects with William J. Dodd.

Hearst paid $120,000 for an H-shaped Beverly Hills mansion on 3.7 acres three blocks from Sunset Boulevard in 1947. The Beverly House, as it has come to be known, has some cinematic links. According to Hearst Over Hollywood, John, and Jacqueline Kennedy, the couple stayed at the house for part of their honeymoon. In the film The Godfather (1972), the house appeared.

Hearst began constructing a mansion on the hills overlooking Pleasanton, California, on property purchased by his father a decade earlier. Hearst's mother took over the initiative, recruited Julia Morgan to finish it as her own, and named it Hacienda del Pozo de Verona. It was acquired by Castlewood Country Club, who used it as their clubhouse from 1925 to 1969, when it was destroyed in a big fire.

Hearst is known for his extensive collection of international art that dates back centuries. His collection included Greek vases, Spanish and Italian furniture, Oriental carpets, Renaissance vestments, a large library with many books signed by their authors, and paintings and sculptures. He also collected manuscripts, rare books, and autographs in addition to finding works of fine art. Guests included numerous celebrities and politicians, who stayed in rooms furnished with antique furniture and decorated with works by well-known artists.

Hearst began releasing some of his art work in 1937 to help ease the debt he suffered from the Depression. He sold items for a total of $11 million in the first year. In 1941, he introduced about 20,000 items for sale; these were hints at his numerous and eclectic tastes. Paintings by van Dyke, crosiers, chalices, Charles Dickens' sideboard, pulpits, stained glass, arms, and armor, George Washington's waistcoat, and Thomas Jefferson's Bible were among the sales items included in the sale catalog. When Hearst Castle was donated to the State of California, it was still had enough furnishings for the entire house to be considered and operated as a museum.

Hearst bought and renovated St. Donat's Castle in Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, after seeing photographs from the magazine Country Life magazine. Hearst, a billionaire who invested a fortune buying whole rooms from other castles and palaces throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, has restored the castle. In its new location, St. Donat's, the Great Hall was purchased from the Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire and reconstructed brick by brick. Besides purchasing and removing the guest house, Prior's lodging, and a major tithe barn; among other items, some of the furnishings became the Bradenstoke Hall, complete with a nineteenth-century French chimney piece and windows; despite this use being challenged in Parliament. Hearst created 34 green and white marble bathrooms for the many guest suites in the castle's guests as well as a slew of terraced gardens that are still standing today. Hearst and Davies spent much of their time entertaining, and a number of lavish parties attended by guests including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Winston Churchill, and a young John F. Kennedy were among them. Antonin Besse II bought the castle in Hearst's death and donated it to Atlantic College, an international boarding school established by Kurt Hahn in 1962.

Hearst was particularly interested in the latest advances in aviation, and he had his first encounter with flight in Los Angeles in January 1910. On his Farman biplane, Louis Paulhan, a French aviator, took him for an air ride. Hearst also sponsored Old Glory and the Hearst Transcontinental Prize.

Hearst's crusade against Roosevelt and the New Deal, as well as union strikes and boycotts of his businesses, have jeopardized his empire's financial stability. His major publications' circulation dropped in the mid-1930s, but rivals like the New York Daily News flourished. He refused to take cost-cutting steps and instead boosted his already expensive art purchases. Joseph P. Kennedy pleaded with the magazines to buy, but Hearst fought his empire and refused. Rather, he sold some of his heavily mortgaged real estate. In 1933, San Simeon was mortgaged to Los Angeles Times owner Harry Chandler for $600,000.

His financial consultants finally understood he was tens of millions of dollars in debt and could not afford the loans, much less reduce the principal. When Hearst's financial crisis became widely known, the proposed bond auction failed to attract investors. Marion Davies's fame declined, and Hearst's films also began to hemorrhage money. As the crisis grew, he let most of his household employees go, sold his exotic animals to the Los Angeles Zoo, and appointed a trustee to oversee his finances. He also refused to sell his beloved newspapers. Marion Davies, who had sold all her jewelry, stocks, and bonds in order to raise the money for him, needed to borrow a $1 million loan to prevent outright bankruptcy at one point. Davies received another million as a loan from Washington Times owner Cissy Patterson. Hearst's annual salary was reduced to $500,000 per year, and the annual payment of $700,000.000 in dividends was suspended. At San Simeon, he had to pay his rent for living in his castle.

Hearst avoided bankruptcy, though the general public saw it as such as appraisers perusing the tapestries, paintings, furniture, silver, pottery, masonry, buildings, autographs, jewelry, and other collectibles. Thousands of items were gathered from a five-story warehouse in New York, warehouses near San Simeon, containing substantial quantities of Greek sculpture and ceramics, as well as the interiors of St. Donat's. In 1938-1939, his collections were auctioned and private auctions. Junior John D. Rockefeller spent $100,000 on antique silver for his new museum in Colonial Williamsburg. The art and antiques market had not recovered from the recession, so Hearst lost hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course. "He would like to start working outside [at San Simeon], start a new reservoir, etc. during this period. However, she told me yesterday, "I want so many things but haven't got the money." "Let's make a set," poor fellow says.

He was ashamed in early 1939 when Time magazine published a story in which he was at risk of defaulting on his mortgage for San Simeon and losing it to his creditor and publishing rival, Harry Chandler. This was, however, postponed, as Chandler promised to extend the repayment.

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