by David Nasaw
In early 1928, Hearst tried to remedy the failures in his newspaper division by making wholesale personnel changes. He shifted Victor Watson from the New York American to the New York Mirror, hired Frank Knox, a Michigan editor who had done an excellent job with the Hearst papers in Boston, to replace Bradford Merrill as general manager of the newspaper division, and asked Arthur Brisbane to take over the New York American.
Brisbane was reluctant to take on a new assignment. He had more than enough to occupy him with his daily column and his real estate deals. (He had just bought the Warwick Hotel on 54th Street and Sixth Avenue with Hearst. They also owned jointly several parcels of land on Columbus Circle and the Ritz Tower apartment house/hotel on East 57th Street.) Still, he could not say no to the Chief, who let him write almost anything he wanted in his front-page column and had made him, he claimed often to friends and colleagues, the highest-paid journalist in the nation, at $250,000 a year (equivalent in today’s currency to about $2.5 million).
Exhilarated by the prospect of remaking his flagship paper with his oldest friend and colleague, Hearst invited Brisbane to San Simeon to discuss their new venture and deluged him with telegrams, at least four of which were sent to Kansas City to coincide with Brisbane’s stopover there at ten fifty-five P.M.
In the coming weeks, the Chief would suggest changes in the front page, the layout, and almost every section of the New York American. He wanted better Sunday comics, a front-page “cartoon with editorial under it—such cartoon of course expressing the essence of editorial, a half-page daily serial of book of moment ... set in large readable type ... with some explanatory introduction and some comments,” a full eight-page sports section during the summer months, an ongoing crusade to improve the public schools, a new “highly illustrated” front page for section two, more “paragraphic gossip and personal mention” in the society section, additional space for drama and moving pictures, a “women’s page” with better fashions and “more class to interest best readers and impress advertisers,” and a new “round the world” stunt, if possible with Lindbergh and Rickenbacker or Ruth Elder (the champion swimmer) competing against one another.26
If his morning papers were losing ground to the competition, his Sunday papers were holding their own. The Hearst color comics were still the best in the business. And his American Weekly Sunday supplement continued to attract readers with odd pseudo-scientific pieces like “Why Intelligent Children’s Parents Ought to Have Intelligent Children; Interesting Experiments with Rats Seem to Settle the Long-Standing Scientific Dispute as to Whether Highly Developed Brains Can Be Inherited and If ‘Dumb’ Couples Are Likely to Have Rather Stupid Children” and its general-interest features on “How the Mysterious Mayans Made War” and the Prussian actress who “Played Suicide Role at the Theatre—Kills Herself Same Way.”27
To broaden the appeal of his Sunday papers and enhance their reputation, Hearst added a new “March of Events” section in 1928. “The main purpose of the section,” he advised T. V. Ranck, his Sunday editor, “is to create prestige.”28
Week after week, the Sunday “March of Events” featured “Noted Writers” on “World Topics.” Hearst paid top dollar for contributors and the dollar was strong, so that he was able to enlist almost anyone he wanted to write for him—especially retired European politicians. Hearst was not the first publisher to print columns like this—the Scripps-Howard syndicate had been buying and marketing articles by former English prime minister David Lloyd George and others since 1921—but he was the first to create a Sunday section to feature them. From 1928 through the middle 1930s, Hearst bought, syndicated, and featured in his Sunday papers essays by Benito Mussolini, the former journalist who was now the Italian premier; English politicians, usually David Lloyd George or Winston Churchill; French statesmen, occasionally Aristide Briand but more often the former premier Edouard Herriot; and German political leaders, among them the former Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, Hermann Goering, Franz von Papen, and Adolf Hitler.
Though the bylines were impressive, the contents were less so. His editors, aware that Hearst was going to review every article they sent him, made sure that there were no surprises. Every article, as a result, came out sounding as if Hearst himself had written it. On September 23,1928, David Lloyd George argued that the Allies should evacuate the Rhineland and stop violating Germany’s sovereign rights. That same Sunday, the section carried an excerpt from Emil Ludwig’s anti-war book, Five Tragic Weeks. The following September, the “March of Events” published another antiwar excerpt, this time from Leon Trotsky’s My Stormy Life; an anti–World Court article by Senator Arthur Vandenberg; and an anti–League of Nations commentary by Benito Mussolini. “Speeches continue year after year in a never ending flow of oratory with beautiful platitudes recurring again and again,” Mussolini reported of the tenth annual meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations. “This is indeed a decade of marathons ... There have been dance marathons, piano playing marathons, coffee drinking marathons and so on. Geneva is the diplomatic and oratorical marathon.”29
As part of his attempt to boost the reputation of his papers, Hearst also ran articles on Sunday and occasionally on his editorial pages by H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Fannie Hurst, Will Rogers, Henry Morgenthau, and, for a short time after her husband’s election to the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Of all the illustrious names that crowded Hearst’s pages, none appeared more often than that of George Bernard Shaw—in large measure because his opinions on so many subjects were close to Hearst’s. In 1906 and 1907, Hearst had reprinted Shaw’s articles on women’s suffrage, which they both supported, on religion, which they distrusted, and on Fabian socialism, whose basic tenets they both championed—at least at that time. During the Great War, their collaboration had been strengthened, since Shaw could be counted on to reinforce what Hearst himself had written about the follies of war. Between 1914 and 1921 alone, the New York American published over sixty articles by Shaw; seven more appeared in Hearst’s Magazine. Through the 1920s, Shaw continued to write regularly for Hearst’s morning newspapers and his magazines—on literature, the theater, boxing, Irish home rule, inhumane prisons, capital punishment, and on one of Hearst’s favorite topics, the idiocies of English life and government.30
In 1927, Shaw decided to put together a series of articles commemorating the 100th anniversary of Beethoven’s death and inquired of Hearst about publishing them in the United States. “Centenary of Beethoven’s death on twenty-sixth demands article in every civilized newspaper,” he wrote Hearst at San Simeon. “Brilliant articles by Arnold Bennett, Romain Rolland, myself, and others are going begging in America. Editors say, who is Beethoven anyway? Is he a Dutch Babe Ruth? Merrill [the executive in charge of Hearst’s newspapers] handsomely promises not to bear malice against me for my foolish offer. Meanwhile Wireless [radio] prepares bushels of Beethoven. Can you do nothing to save the credit of American culture?”31
Hearst wrote back at once that he would be delighted to publish the series—at whatever price Shaw had proposed—and invited Shaw to visit him at San Simeon: “When can you come to America? You really should come. Let me herewith extend you formal and fervent invitation to be my guest and ride the range with me in California.”32
Shaw declined: “If you had a nice desert island I should be with you by the next boat but I dare not face America just now as I am hard pressed with work so let us postpone. Thousand Thanks.”33
Unable to accept no as an answer, Hearst wrote Shaw that he was “extremely sorry you cannot come now but am encouraged by your message and will try to find nice desert island but feel sure ranch is sufficiently isolated to be almost as satisfactory as desert island. Hope to have you visit us later.”34
Shaw did visit Hearst at San Simeon, in 1933.
One of the cornerstones of Hearst’s campaign to revive circulation was promotion. As he confessed to Arthur Brisbane, he had become “a nut on publicity ... I think the promotion o
f our various newspapers should be watched almost as carefully as their news and editorial columns.” Since taking over his father’s San Francisco daily in the 1880s, he had employed every conceivable medium and device to promote his publications: billboards and posters, newsreels and serial films, stunts, service features, and contests. But these techniques belonged to the past; the future, as he tried to convince his editors and publishers, was in radio. Hearst’s objective was to blanket the country with Hearst-affiliated radio stations and programs that would broadcast the Hearst brand name in news and entertainment to listeners who were not yet readers.35
“Let’s have some one paper—preferably the Chicago Herald-Examiner—go into the radio promotion on as big a scale as possible and see what the results are,” he proposed in June 1926 to the members of the executive council he had set up to coordinate the management of his newspaper empire. “I personally believe that radio promotion is the greatest promotion in the world today. Los Angeles is actually centered on the disappearance of Mrs. McPherson [Aimee Semple McPherson, the radio evangelist], whom nobody knows except over the radio.”36
Hearst’s enthusiasm was not contagious. When none of the publishers on his executive council were willing to divert even part of their promotion budgets to radio, the Chief focused his attention on his West Coast publishers, with whom he was in closer contact. “I think the Examiner should develop a really great radio program,” he telegrammed the publisher of the Los Angeles Examiner in November 1926, “and should report all games and events of importance, and give bulletin news and lectures by important and amusing people, in addition to the best music in Los Angeles, not only from regular orchestras, but from special performers. I cannot get anybody to do what I think a newspaper should do on the radio. I hoped the Examiner here would show the way.”37
Try as he might, the Chief was unable to galvanize his newspaper executives into sharing his opinion about radio broadcasting. “Our institution is years behind the times in radio,” he warned the publishers on his executive council again in September of 1927:
I wish council would devote sufficient number of serious sessions to radio to solve problem finally for our papers. Howard [Roy Howard, the head of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain] paid twenty-five thousand dollars for exclusive right to radio Dempsey Tunney fight. Every radio in the United States listened in and all heard as much about the Scripps-Howard papers as about the fight. This was the greatest advertisement I know of. It is astonishing how many people talked about it even people who did not know much about newspapers. The effect on ... advertisers must have been very great. I don’t have to dilate on value to those who understand universality of radio especially with younger generation. We must constantly use radio especially for big occasions of all kinds. It must be as much a part of our service as our wire service or our picture service.... Employ best announcers and make our service attractive feature in every home. The first things to cover are news events. After that we can enlarge scope and add important musical features, etcetera. Please answer.38
Because sports programming was relatively cheap to produce, promised the largest national audience, and was a natural complement to the sports coverage in the evening papers, Hearst believed this was the best place to begin: “I would like to have all of our papers broadcast the world series. You can probably arrange with some local station to broadcast series for you but if not Howard Hogan of Herald-Examiner, Chicago, can make arrangements for you. Quick action is necessary so please don’t delay.”39
It took him almost two years, but by mid-1928, the Chief was beginning to see the results of his continual prodding, if only on the West Coast. Not only had his newspapers there bought local radio stations, but they had tied them together into a statewide Hearst Radio Service that was effectively promoting the Chief’s newspapers—and his politics. In September of 1928, the five Hearst radio stations on the West Coast proudly presented a full program of “G.O.P. oratory” as a public news service for his readers:
Turn on your radio this afternoon, twist the dial to KPLA and come with us behind the scenes of a great national political contest ... For the first time in history the American public, to all intents and purposes, will be admitted to the inner sanctum of the party chiefs to see how campaigning is carried on, what a big job it is to make a president.... The program will be short, the speeches vigorous, straight-from-the-shoulder and very much to the point.40
The daily newspaper, as Hearst tried to convince his publishers, could not expect to maintain its monopoly over cheap news and entertainment without going out of its way to attract new readers. “Our publishers themselves may not be interested in radio,” he warned his newspaper executives in early January of 1930, “but certainly their children are, and the publisher should learn from his children what an important part radio plays in the life of the nation today. It is an effort to read a newspaper; it is no effort to listen to a radio.”41
While Hearst struggled with his newspapers, his magazines continued to build circulation and churn out revenues. Good Housekeeping, the number one magazine in its field, had between 1920 and 1928 tripled its circulation to almost 1.5 million. Hearst was proud of his magazines, not only because they were moneymakers, but because, like his morning newspapers and Marion’s moving pictures, they were patronized by a relatively upscale audience. He was also proud of their editorial independence. In June of 1929, David Town, an executive at his magazine division, suggested that an antitobacco article scheduled for Good Housekeeping, “The Attempt to Make Smokers of Girls,” be canceled because it would generate “unfavorable reaction from an advertising standpoint.” Hearst overruled him. “I have no objection to the article on cigarettes in Good Housekeeping,” the Chief telegrammed Town from San Simeon. “In fact, I am glad that Good Housekeeping has the independence to print such an article, and I think the extravagant effort of the cigarette makers to sell their stuff to men, women, and children is bound to bring a popular reaction.”42
Cosmopolitan, though with a smaller circulation than Good Housekeeping, remained the flagship publication of Hearst’s magazine division. With the era of muckraking long past, Cosmopolitan had turned increasingly to short fiction, articles by famous people, and political memoirs, like those Calvin Coolidge published on leaving the White House in 1929. It was resolutely middle-brow, and Hearst was determined to keep it that way. In August of 1929, he telegrammed the editor, Ray Long:
In dummy just received there is article headed “Has An Unmarried Woman Right to a Child?” This article gives me cold chill. I think it will lose us many readers of better class. Don’t think it has any place in Cosmopolitan and if not too late will you please cut it out. Never mind any inconvenience or expense necessary to omit article. I think it does not do any good to print articles that attract the more reputable and wholesome readers and then when we get them with Coolidge articles, offend them with articles of illegitimate child kind. You and I planned out entirely different kind of magazine.... Please try to get rid of that obnoxious article.43
The following day, he wrote Long a letter on the same subject:
I hope we can agree on definite plan to make high grade magazine free from this kind of sensationalism. It’s important to have consistent policy or we fall between two stools. I think we can succeed by being consistently entertaining and wholesome and Macfadden [publisher of the Daily Graphic and True Story] can succeed by being consistently sensational but I don’t think we can mix sensationalism and conservatism and get anywhere. Of the two forms of success I would much rather have the more wholesome and reputable kind ... I would like to see Cosmopolitan make circulation with its fiction and reputation with its special articles.44
The program Hearst had outlined for Cosmopolitan, the magazine, was identical to the one he had established for Cosmopolitan, the film company. He was interested in producing high-quality, high-priced features for the upper end of the moving-picture market. The commercial success he and Marion had enjoyed wit
h Knighthood and Little Old New York had convinced him that there was a substantial audience for middle-brow costume dramas. Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, his head of production at Culver City, apparently agreed. In Lights of Old Broadway, Marion played an Irish immigrant in nineteenth-century New York; in Beverly of Graustark, she was a wealthy girl who is sent abroad to visit her cousin, a crown prince; in The Red Mill, based on a Victor Herbert musical comedy, she played a Cinderella character in Dutch costume.
After the The Red Mill lost money, Irving Thalberg proposed that Marion’s next picture be set in the present-day. He suggested an adaptation of The Fair Co-Ed, the musical which had starred Elsie Janis on Broadway. Hearst agreed and asked that George Ade, who had written the Broadway show, be brought in to adapt it and that Sidney Franklin, who had done a fine job on Beverly of Graustark, be hired as director.45
When Hearst discovered that Thalberg had rewritten Ade’s treatment and hired Sam Wood, a “B” director, instead of the more respected and higher-priced Franklin, he was outraged. “Sorry you thought I was cranky yesterday,” he telegrammed Mayer at the studio on July 14, 1927, a day after he had visited to complain in person, “but I was much disturbed.... I felt I was an orphan and nobody cared for the poor darned little thing [Marion’s next picture] so I was going stay up here on ranch rest of my life and let you feel sorry when I died. However I have talked to Irving this morning and feel little more cheerful. Can’t we make definite arrangement about Franklin that will allow Marion to have him ... Won’t you please let me hire him. Be a good old fellow and let me do this.”46