And the Rest Is History

by Marlene Wagman-Geller

  William Randolph Hearst was born with the silverest of spoons as the only son of a millionaire miner. When he was a child, his adoring mother, Phoebe, took him to Europe, where he developed a lifelong passion for fine art and antiques. He attended Harvard (with a ten-thousand-a-month allowance), until his expulsion for presenting several of his professors silver chamber pots engraved with their names. This did not trouble him, as his aspiration lay not with academia but with publishing. His foray into the arena he would come to dominate began when he persuaded his father, Senator George Hearst, to let him run the family-owned San Francisco Enquirer. He transformed it into the city’s most popular daily, partially through publicity gimmicks such as marching bands, oyster dinners, firework displays, and free boat rides. After he acquired the New York Journal, the publishing industry would forever bear his imprint.

  His empire grew to encompass dozens of newspapers and magazines (the latter included Cosmopolitan, Town and Country, and Harper’s Bazaar). In 1903, the day before his fortieth birthday, William married a twenty-one-year-old chorus girl, Millicent Wilson, with whom he had five sons.

  When his adored mother passed away in 1919, William inherited 168,000 acres on a hilltop, La Cuesta Encantada (“The Enchanted Hill”), in San Simeon, California, on which he spent $37 million to build a castle. The walls of its 165 rooms were graced with his $50 million art collection (a quarter of a billion dollars in modern currency); its grounds included a Roman-style pool where Spartacus was filmed as well as the largest private zoo in the country. Hearst called San Simeon his “little hideaway.” When he lived on the East Coast his form of relaxation was the theater, where he was to meet the greatest love of his life—one for whom he was to risk his reputation.

  The first time Marion met William, the eighteen-year-old Marion was working as one of the chorus girls in the Ziegfeld Follies. As she was cascading down the steps on the stage, she caught the eye, and eventually the heart, of the publishing baron who occupied the front two seats (one was reserved for his hat)—William Randolph Hearst. Afterward, he had bouquets, gloves, candies, and silver boxes delivered to her dressing room and arranged to have her photographed at his studio. During the session, however, she caught only a glimpse of him, as he slipped away before they could talk.

  The two crossed paths again a few months later in Palm Beach, when, on the way to an amusement park, she lost control of the brakes on her bicycle and crashed, just missing the car in which William, coincidentally, was sitting. Stunned, as she was lying flat on her back, he asked if he could help. He tied her broken bike to his car and told his chauffeur to take her to the Royal Poinciana Hotel. They recognized each other from the photography session, but no mention of it was made, as Mrs. Hearst would not have been amused. He then stuck his head in the car and asked his wife to walk with him.

  Soon after, Marion was at a party in New York City; as she turned to leave, Hearst shook her hand. When he departed, she opened her palm; on it was a diamond wristwatch.

  Eventually the fifty-eight-year-old tycoon and the teenaged showgirl began a romantic relationship. When he asked her why she was going with a married man twice her age and the father of five, she replied, “Because I’m a gold digger.” Hearst, forever surrounded by sycophants, found her forthright words refreshing. Besides, he was in the throes of infatuation.

  As time went by, despite their huge differences, the two fell in love. William felt pain that he could not make her Mrs. Hearst; to comfort W. R., as she called him, she said, “Love is not always created at the altar. Love doesn’t need a wedding ring.” She felt they were together and that was all that mattered. William became Marion’s Svengali, and his tabloids praised her skills as an actress; she was once described as the bubbles in champagne. Marion’s comment on her lover’s promotion was, “With me it was 5% talent and 95% publicity.” In her autobiography she stated that had it not been for Hearst, she would have ended up as a Bertha, a sewing-machine girl.

  Soon the newsman himself became the news, and the public felt Ziegfeld’s folly had become Hearst’s own.

  Mrs. Hearst was enraged at her husband’s public display of adultery, which had become Hollywood’s worst-kept secret. However, the former showgirl had established herself as the grande dame of Manhattan and felt that her social position would not be enhanced with a divorce. Soon she absented herself from the West Coast, and Marion became the official belle of Hearst’s castle, which drew European blue bloods such as Winston Churchill and American royalty such as Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, John F. Kennedy, and Charles Lindbergh. Marion would later immortalize these heady days in her autobiography, The Times We Had.

  Hearst was a generous man, and when it came to Marion his largesse knew no limit. After spying a photograph of St. Donat’s Castle in Wales, he bought the property in 1925 and presented it as a token of his love. George Bernard Shaw told Hearst that his castle was “what heaven would be like if God had your money.” The titan also purchased for Marion a 118-room Santa Monica home, Ocean House (dubbed “the Versailles of Hollywood”), which today is worth $165 million. Anybody who was anyone, such as Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo, coveted invitations to Marion’s three-day, on-the-beach, stop-the-band-at-four-a.m. soirees. Hearst showered her with jewels, perhaps in guilt over never being able to give her the one jewel they both wished she could have worn: a wedding band.

  Unlike most “other women,” Marion never demanded that the mistress become the wife. She told him, “You are one of the most important men in the world. Now it’s all right for you to have a blonde ex-Follies girl for your mistress. That’s all right. But you divorce the wife and mother of your five sons to marry a much younger blonde, and you’re an old fool.” Marion knew she was W. R.’s wife of his heart; with that she was content.

  Although Hearst was omnipotent in his publishing empire, there were some things that even the Chief (the name his employees called him) could not control. Orson Welles’s movie Citizen Kane was a roman à clef based on the mogul; it portrayed his love interest as Sally, a talentless, drunken opportunist whose own ambitions were curtailed by her tycoon’s megalomania. Herman J. Mankiewicz, co-writer of Citizen Kane, heard the name Rosebud from the actress Louise Brooks at San Simeon; apparently it was Hearst’s pet name for a certain part of Marion’s anatomy. Citizen Hearst was not impressed. Marion was equally defensive; she told a reporter, “I don’t care what you say about me, but don’t hurt him. He’s a wonderful man.” Welles later commented on his film, “Kane was better than Hearst but Marion was better than Susan.”

  In 1937, the unthinkable happened: Hearst had run out of money. However, Marion came to his rescue. She liquidated everything she owned and presented W. R. with a check for a million dollars. Overcome with emotion, he asked why she made the sacrifice. Her answer was that the gold digger had fallen in love. Not only did Marion make the sacrifice of money; she also gave up her career to be with the man who now needed her more than ever. She explained, “I thought that the least I could do for a man who had been so wonderful and great ... was to be a companion to him.” She proved that her love had not been merely dollars deep.

  In his eighth decade, Hearst rebounded financially, and the couple returned to the castle. In their evenings in the home, they sat together in their screening room, where tears came to William’s eyes as he watched Marion’s movies. In the morning she woke up to poems he had penned for her; a cherished one ended, “But no beauty of earth is so fair a sight / As the girl who lies by my side at night.”

  In 1951, the unthinkable happened once more; Hearst had run out of time. In failing health, he was taken to his Beverly Hills home to be near medical care. His mansion’s bedroom was emptied of all the treasures he had spent a lifetime acquiring; they all remained at the only place Hearst cared about, the home on the Enchanted Hill. His only personal effect was a photograph, on a desk beside his massive canopied bed, of Marion, who had been his faithful companion for thirty-four yea
rs. On it she had written a quotation from Romeo and Juliet: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea / My love as deep; the more I give thee / The more I have, for both are infinite.”

  Citizen Kane’s final whispered word, “Rosebud,” held the elusive key to the life of the prince of publishing. Hearst departed the world with no recorded last words; however, if he had, there is no doubt which name would have been on his lips.

  Postscript

  When Hearst passed away, his body was flown to San Francisco. The funeral was fittingly ornate; however, Marion Davies was barred from attending by Millicent and her children. Hearst was entombed with his parents at Cypress Lawn Cemetery outside San Francisco.

  Marion died in Hollywood in 1961 of cancer of the jaw. Her funeral was attended by former president Herbert Hoover, Bing Crosby, Mary Pickford, Mrs. Clark Gable, and Joseph Kennedy. Patricia Lake was later buried beside her. She was Marion’s niece; there are persistent rumors that she was the daughter of Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst.

  15

  F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre

  1918

  Scott and Zelda, after nine decades, remain the golden couple of a golden age, their romance immortalized in Fitzgerald’s flawless prose. They serve as legends of their era, the embodiment of the triumph and tragedy of the Roaring Twenties, dwelling, for a time, this side of paradise.

  Zelda Sayre was born in Montgomery, Alabama, into a prominent family; her father was a justice of the supreme court of Alabama. Her indulgent mother named her after a gypsy princess from a romance novel; it was to prove an apt moniker. She had an unappeasable appetite for attention; for example, the teenager (the antithesis of Southern propriety) wore a tight, flesh-colored bathing suit to fuel rumors that she swam nude. Not surprisingly, she and her childhood friend Tallulah Bankhead left Montgomery with no shortage of gossip. Her high school yearbook encapsulated her philosophy : “Let’s think only of today and not worry about tomorrow.” Even the imaginative girl could not have envisioned what a roller coaster her tomorrow would hold when her life merged with a self-proclaimed romantic egotist.

  Zelda’s destiny, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, was born into an Irish Roman Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota. A disinterested student, he dropped out of Princeton to enlist in World War I, hoping the experience would provide material for the novels he aspired to pen. Ironically, his stint in the army introduced him to the passion that would drive his books, many of which were to become American classics.

  The first time Zelda met Scott was when he was stationed at Camp Sheridan and received a coveted invitation to an exclusive country club, where he saw a “golden girl.” She was swaying to the song “Dance of the Hours,” and the twenty-one-year-old first lieutenant was mesmerized. He asked her to dance, of which experience she would later say, “He smelled like new goods ... being close to him with my face in the space between his ears and his stiff army collar was like being initiated into the subterranean reserves of a fine fabric store.”

  Scott attempted to impress her by telling her that one day he would be a famous writer and she his novel’s heroine, and that he was named after his famous second cousin twice removed, Francis Scott Key, who had composed “The Star-Spangled Banner.” However, as Zelda thirsted for more material tangibles, Scott departed for New York City to establish a career. Before he left, Zelda presented him with a silver hip flask engraved with the words Forget-me-not .

  After obtaining employment at an advertising agency, Scott sent Zelda his mother’s ring. Zelda, however, did what mice do when the cat’s away and resumed her flirtations, one with a university star quarterback. Involved with the two men, she sent them both her autographed picture; however, she placed them in the wrong envelopes and Scott was enraged to receive her photograph inscribed to another. Zelda claimed she had done so accidentally; however, it may have been a ruse to incite jealousy. The result was a violent argument, and they ended their relationship. He told his friend, “I wouldn’t care if she died, but I couldn’t stand to have anyone else marry her.”

  Nevertheless, desperate to win her back, Scott revised his manuscript The Romantic Egotist and recast it as This Side of Paradise. The twenty-three-year-old author wrote his publisher, Maxwell Perkins, imploring for its immediate release: “I have so many things dependent on its success—including of course a girl.” Their engagement was resumed, and Zelda wrote her fiancé, “Both of us are very splashy, vivid pictures, those kind with the details left out. But I know our colors will blend.”

  On April 30, 1920, before a small wedding party in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Scott finally possessed the embodiment of his ideal. He told a reporter, “I married the heroine of my stories.” They honeymooned in the city’s Biltmore Hotel, where, because of noise complaints, they were asked to leave.

  After their nuptials, the Fitzgeralds became the enfants terribles of the Jazz Age because of their hedonistic lifestyle, unconventionality, and commitment to the pursuit of happiness. As literary celebrities they rubbed shoulders with Gloria Swanson and Douglas Fairbanks. Every one of their outrageous, drunken escapades (despite Prohibition) became tabloid fodder, such as the time Zelda jumped into the fountain at the Plaza Hotel. When Dorothy Parker first met them, when they were sitting atop a taxi (which is how they often rode down Fifth Avenue), she said, “They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun; their youth was striking.” William Randolph Hearst enlisted a reporter to write solely about them. Actress Lillian Gish said, “They didn’t make the 20s; they were the 20s.” For a time, the Fitzgeralds basked in the limelight; always at Scott’s side was the woman he had termed “the first American flapper.”

  On Valentine’s Day, 1921, while Scott was working on The Beautiful and the Damned, their only daughter, Frances Scott (“Scottie”) was born. This did not turn Zelda into a domestic diva. When a magazine asked her to contribute an article for Famous Recipes from Famous People, she supplied one for burnt toast. Her lack of household skills posed no problem, as the Fitzgeralds employed a cook, a housekeeper, and a nanny.

  Tragically, the Fitzgeralds’ relationship began to unravel, as they were beset by problems. Although This Side of Paradise brought in staggering royalties, they spent it as quickly as it came in. The situation was exacerbated by their chronic drinking: Scott employed his own personal bootlegger, and Zelda did her utmost to keep up. Soon, instead of riding atop taxis, inebriated they were brought home in one. Their relationship no longer blended; instead, it had become a folie à deux. Desperate for money, Scott, though he felt he was prostituting his talent, took to writing for magazines.

  Of their mounting marital tensions Zelda stated, “When we meet in the hall, we walk around each other like a pair of stiff-legged terriers spoiling for a fight.” Still devoted to each other despite their tensions, they decided to join the American expatriate community in France, which Gertrude Stein christened the Lost Generation. Zelda was thrilled at the prospect. Their daughter Scottie later said of her mother that she “never liked a room without an open suitcase in it.”

  In Paris the pair socialized with Pablo Picasso and Cole Porter and were frequent visitors in Gertrude Stein’s salon. Scott and Hemingway forged a bond as writers and fellow drinkers and frequented the American Bar. Hemingway, after meeting Zelda, in his customary terse style, pronounced her insane. His advice to Scott was to forgo his emotionally draining marriage for an alternative agenda of “hard drink and easy sex.” For her part, jealous of his time with her husband, she accused Hemingway and Scott of being lovers and goaded Scott by calling him a fairy.

  Despite the domestic turbulence, Scott was able to complete his magnum opus, The Great Gatsby, thereby fulfilling his initial pledge to Zelda to one day make her the heroine of his novel. Its dedication: Once Again to Zelda. She, however, felt he had exploited her to create his characters and told a magazine that apparently “plagiarism begins at home.” Moreover, bored while he was writing, Zelda began an affair with a you
ng French pilot, Edouard Jozan. Scott responded by locking her in the house; bereft, he wrote, “That September of 1924, I knew that something had happened that could never be repaired.”

  Zelda matched her husband in jealousy as well as alcohol. One evening, while dining, Scott was introduced to Isadora Duncan. Ever dramatic, he dropped to his knees at her feet, whereby she began to stroke his hair and called him “my centurion.” This was too much for Zelda, and she threw herself down a series of stone steps. Of the unreal haze that hovered over their lives, Scott wrote, “Sometimes I don’t know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels.”

  Finally perceiving what was apparent to all else, a devastated Scott admitted Zelda into a series of psychiatric hospitals, where she would spend most of the remainder of her life. Her sorrow is laid bare in her words, “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” Scott’s heartache was evident: “I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda’s sanatorium.” While in one of the hospitals, Zelda wrote Save Me the Waltz. Two years later Fitzgerald wrote Tender Is the Night; the two books provide contrasting portrayals of their legendary marriage.

  Although they were never to live together again, their bond remained strong. Scott moved to Hollywood and wrote screenplays he despised to keep Zelda from the horror of state-run institutions. He visited regularly and sent a letter calling her “the finest, loveliest, tenderest, most beautiful person I have ever known.” She described him as “the best friend a person could have been to me.”