The Chief

by David Nasaw

  Two weeks later, in a nationwide radio broadcast from San Simeon, Hearst called for “A Homeland for Dispossessed or Persecuted Jews” to be carved out of the former German colonies in Africa that were being administered by the League of Nations. He had earlier demanded that the British keep their promise to the Jews of a homeland in Palestine, but had become convinced by October of 1938 that British indifference and Arab hostility would render that impossible.34

  Fearful that his public pronouncements in the fall of 1934—that he had succeeded in persuading Hitler to stop persecuting the Jews—would come back to haunt him, the Chief, in mid-December of 1938, less than a month after Kristallnacht, asked his London office to locate press clips demonstrating that his visit to Hitler had resulted in an “edict declaring no discrimination between Jews and Aryans in Business or employment.” The London office replied the same day by cable. Regrettably, all it could find was a one-paragraph item from Hearst’s own news service reporting that the German minister of labor, Franz Seldte, had issued a circular letter stating that “non-Aryan workers enjoy the protection of the German government.”35 There was no mention in any other newspaper, English or American, of the beneficial results of Hearst’s 1934 visit.

  The Chief had so committed himself by this point to the position that Hitler was not an aggressor but merely righting the wrongs of Versailles that even after the horrors of Kristallnacht in 1938 and the invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 he continued to argue that peace with Hitler was possible. “Please drive on policy of Grant’s ‘let us have peace,’” he instructed Ed Coblentz in New York in October of 1939, much as he had instructed his editors a quarter-century before, in the early days of what would from this point on be known as the First World War:

  Germany’s terms are not her final terms. The Allies’ terms are not their final terms. Both should put forward sincerely their initial terms and should realize that peace can easily be secured by discussion and compromises.... Everything will be lost by war. Germany will not win the war. France will not win it. Italy will not win it. England will not win it.... Occidental culture and political policies and material advancement will be lost. Only cruel, destructive Asiatic tyranny will triumph.... Let the leaders of the nations stop being stupid and obstinate petty politicians and become broad-minded, farseeing world statesmen and let our president light the path and show the way.36

  The Chief spoke as loudly as ever, but fewer listened. He no longer radiated the personal—and financial—strength that had extended the authority of his editorial voice. Self-exiled from the Democratic party, unwelcomed by Republicans who blamed him for Landon’s defeat, he had no political home, organization, or constituency. When the Republicans nominated Wendell Willkie for president in 1940, Hearst supported him, but without enthusiasm. He was not asked to contribute to the campaign.37

  Still, the old man tried to act as if he mattered. In September of 1940, as England was being bombarded from the air by the Luftwaffe, Hearst telegrammed Lloyd George to propose that the two of them “do something to bring this whole war to a just and reasonable cessation.” Lloyd George’s reply was courteous but not without a tone of amazement at Hearst’s preposterous suggestion that the publisher and former prime minister broker an agreement to end the war: “In complete sympathy with your desire that effort should be made to bring this horrible struggle to a peaceable conclusion, but I am strongly of opinion that this moment inopportune for appeal whilst grim battle now pending has not reached issue. When German plan for invasion definitely checked ... then appeal for peace conference might succeed. Premature intervention would prejudice chances.”38

  The Chief was becoming more an object of ridicule than of fear. Time magazine had already cruelly suggested in its March 1939 cover story that he had been exiled from the corridors of power to Marion’s Santa Monica beach house. Worse was yet to come.

  On December 29, 1940, newspapers across the country carried on their front pages the news that Armand Hammer, the millionaire petroleum executive and art collector, had agreed to organize an exhibit and sale of Hearst’s paintings at a gallery at Saks Fifth Avenue. His other collections would be offered at the Gimbel Brothers department store in Herald Square; the entire fifth floor of the store was to be dedicated to the Hearst sale.39

  “I do think the ... Board ought to have consulted me about the antique sales at Gimbel’s and Saks’,” the Chief wrote Richard Berlin, chairman of Hearst’s board of directors, when he heard the news. “It may not have been necessary, as I have already expressed my opinion of such sales; but it would have been desirable and courteous.” The Gimbel’s sale, Hearst predicted in his six-page letter, was going to prove “a most fatal mistake”:

  You will get nothing from the sale of any consequence ... nothing compared to the injury inflicted upon your remaining art objects by this method of selling them over the bargain counter. In addition, the widespread advertising of these department store sales—advertising which goes through despatches into nearly all the papers of the country—does a very serious injury to the prestige and standing of the institution as a whole, and of those who conspicuously represent it.... I have not advised against these sales at department stores because of any personal pride, but because they are bad business—bad for our antique business, bad for our advertising business, bad for our standing.40

  Hearst was, of course, entirely correct. Unfortunately, the reputation of the old man and his businesses had already been damaged beyond repair. One more embarrassing event was not going to make much difference. For the next few weeks, magazines and newspapers across the country feasted on images of the much touted Hearst collections being sold off in department stores, piece by piece. One New Yorker cartoon pictured two matrons before a pile marked “Pillows 79 cents.” “Are we still in the Hearst collection?” they asked the saleswoman. In another cartoon, Peter Arno drew an angry gentleman in bowler hat with cane, sternly reminding his shopping wife, “If you’re so hell-bent on buying something that belongs to Mr. Hearst, you can get a Journal-American for three cents.”

  Hearst had accepted with relatively good grace his fall from power; he had even learned to live with the front-page humiliations visited upon him during the Gimbel’s department store sales. What was hardest to adjust to was the permanent cessation of his building projects. His dream of building a new vacation resort on his land near the Grand Canyon ended when the government bought his property from him in 1941, for considerably less than he thought it was worth. Building at San Simeon was out of the question, though Hearst continued to work with his construction supervisor George Loorz on what Loorz referred to as the Chief’s air castles. Hearst was more concerned with Wyntoon, where there was still much to do. “Mr. Hearst is ‘itching’ to start something, but to date it is nothing larger than a barbeque oven,” Loorz’s associate at Wyntoon wrote him during the summer of 1939. With only three carpenters, three stone masons, and two laborers on staff, there was not a great deal that could be accomplished at Wyntoon, but the Chief was delighted that even the smallest building projects were proceeding: “Mr. H. has been jumping around with his program, even more than usual. One day it is one thing and the next day another. I think he tries to get more out of us by heaping on the work.”41

  The Chief had learned to live on a reduced allowance, but he had not become reconciled to it. In September of 1940, he wrote Dick Berlin at his office at 959 Eighth Avenue (where the Hearst Corporation still has its national headquarters) to renew his demand that the corporation pay more for upkeep at San Simeon and Wyntoon: “Will you please relieve me of all electricity charges on the San Simeon ranch when I am not there?...I hope you will not demur about this, Dick, but really do it for me and oblige. P.S. Moreover, Dick, I want some more salary. We paid Brisbane $260,000 a year and while I am willing to take a HALF cut from $500,000 I do not think it is a positive reflection not to pay me as much as Brisbane got.”42

  While W. R. was busy asking Berlin to raise his allowance
, Millicent was making the same request of him. “I sent you a letter some time ago,” Millicent wrote him on May 8, 1941, “asking you if you would increase my allowance by $1,000 a month, but have not yet received an answer. So I am obliged to write you again on this subject—which I assure you I hate having to do. But after trying in every way possible to have this rent [on an apartment in a building owned by a Hearst corporation] reduced, and not being able to do so, I simply must have a larger monthly allowance to live on....I have exhausted my fund at the bank completely, and I am in desperate need as my bills are mounting up too much for me to cope with.”43

  Hearst did not answer Millicent’s first letter and asked one of his advisers in New York to answer her second. He disliked having to say “no” and could not admit that not only did he not have the extra $1,000 a month to give her, but also that he too had tried—and failed—to get his allowance increased.

  “I feel very bad that you did not answer me direct,” Millicent wrote again in June 1941. “I asked you only for what it takes me to live on—and nothing more. I think I am entitled to this as I have always acceded to any request you have ever made of me.” With no money to rent even the “lighthouse” at her former Sands Point estate, she informed her husband that she would “be on the move for the summer months.”44

  In February of 1942, Millicent wrote her husband again. She had, she said, by now given up any hope of regaining her old lifestyle. She was worried only for the boys, especially David, one of the twins, who was too frail to take care of himself:

  Now, W. R., you must do something for the boys while Clare [Shearn] is out West.... I think the boys should have a contract with the company for five years. This would make them safe until we get our affairs in shape, in case (which God forbid) anything should happen to you. As for myself, I cannot expect anything to be done for me. I shall just have to sit back and take it. I do not care about myself, but I do care about the boys. William is about to take a reduction in his salary ... I can assure you that without contracts with the company our boys would be put off the payroll faster than you could wink. This is most important, W. R., and only you can save our boys. Clare S. and the banks are just waiting to wreck us. It must not be “after you the deluge” as long as we can face the problem now and get ready and head them off. I feel strongly about this because I get the organization’s reaction in so many little ways and I know what is waiting for us at the end.... I should like to get your advice about my affairs....I am only looking to the future, because it is so uncertain for us all—young and old alike—and as we are not any longer in the young bracket it is well to face it. As for my own property, most of it had been given over to the banks, and there is nothing left in the trust but a few pieces—and one never can tell when they will go. I shall be able to save a few jewels only (if I can keep them). It is all very sad when you think of it, but as we have lived and seen many happy years, and had a great deal, we cannot kick now.... Hoping that you will enjoy good, good health for a long, long while to come. Affectionately, Millicent.45

  With no more building, no more shopping, nothing to do in Hollywood, and, after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, no possibility of touring the continent, Hearst had plenty of time on his hands. One full-time job—as editorial director of twenty newspapers—might have been enough for other seventy-seven-year-olds, but not for the Chief. And so, on March 10, 1940, he wrote the first installment of a daily newspaper column and sent it to the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner. It appeared, unsigned, on the front page in the space that had been Brisbane’s until his death three years before. Within a few days, Hearst’s “In the News” column was running in all his papers.46

  Though he warned his editors that he did “not want to write with the utmost regularity,” he published nearly a column a day for the next two years. Each one was researched thoroughly, handwritten and corrected once on yellow paper, then neatly typed, edited again by Hearst, and cabled to Los Angeles or San Francisco, then relayed to the other newspapers. Hearst’s copy was printed as he delivered it; no one dared edit it.

  The Chief adopted a different tone in his daily columns than he had employed in his signed editorials. The Old Testament patriarch was replaced by a kindly, wise grandfather who had something to say—at great length—about everything under the sun. With the help of researchers and librarians and full access to his newspaper morgues, he was able to write—fairly knowledgeably—about just about everything.

  He had always been fascinated by the uses and abuses of power and now indulged himself in long multipart historical narratives on this theme. He did not study the past for its own sake, but to find clues there that would enable him—and his readers—to understand current events. In September and October of 1941, he published a ten-part series on Russian history, centered on the exploits of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. He began the series with the exhortation that “we Americans ought to have all the information we can glean and gain about Russia, the great political octopus, which has affixed itself to us as OUR ally in ITS plan to control and communize the world.” He ended with the thought that would characterize every succeeding piece in the series, that Russia was a “queer land ... and a queer assortment of people—all basically Asiatic in thought and temperament—in character and conduct.... Russian Communism is an Asiatic creed.” The moral was clear: the United States had no business allying in any way with the Asiatic nation that, under the reign of Peter the Great, had robbed the Occidental nations of a lot of territory and was trying to repeat that history once again.47

  In February and March of 1942, after Pearl Harbor, he published a series of columns on Japanese culture, religion, and history, followed a few months later by a series on Roman history, Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra. Regrettably, considering the time, effort, and resources that went into them, many of these columns were almost unreadable. The major problem was their inordinate length. Newspaper layout and typography—small print in single columns, continued over several pages—do not make for easy reading of history, even when the prose flowed as gently as Hearst’s.

  When he wasn’t immersed in one of his historical series, Hearst displayed the full contents of a mind filled to overflowing with useful tidbits of advice for his readers. It was impossible to know what to expect from day to day: essays on the American navy or the Battle of New Orleans or John Paul Jones; literary criticism comparing California poet Joaquin Miller to Lord Byron and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; autobiographical fragments; calls to build up the nation’s armed forces; recipes for Welsh rarebit from Wales; a celebration of “Oh Susannah,” the song, and his father’s Forty-Niner generation that sang it; articles praising Shirley Temple for being Shirley Temple, Charles Lederer (not identified as Marion’s nephew) for singing aloud to himself, Emma Goldman for turning against Communism, and Hollywood stars like Carole Lombard and Clark Gable for honoring their friends at Christmas by sending gifts in their names to “those less fortunate”; advice on how to care for one’s heart; a comparison of California and French wines; antivivisection preachments; several lengthy pastoral poems and some humorous verse; an extended meditation on the question, “Do women dress for men or for other women or for themselves?”

  Hearst also used his “In the News” column to publish political commentary in the style of Arthur Krock, Walter Lippmann, and Drew Pearson. Even as political commentator, Hearst’s voice was unique, his messages entirely unpredictable. When in March of 1940, Martin Dies announced that he was bringing his congressional committee to Hollywood to investigate “un-American affairs” there, Hearst warned him not to expect “a nest of Communists.... Genuine Communism [was] dead in Hollywood,” he proclaimed, having been killed by Stalin’s nonaggression pact with Hitler. All that were left were some publicity-hungry “parlor pinks and society socialists [and] a few thoroughly worthy Jewish people somewhat favorable to Stalin ... BECAUSE he was a foe of Hitler’s.”48

  If Hearst was softer on American Communists than ear
lier, he was as belligerent as ever on the subject of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, he was convinced, was doing all he could to provoke war. In the spring of 1940, when the Germans invaded western Europe, Hearst cautioned against any precipitous action and opposed American aid to the Allies. In September of that year, when Roosevelt proposed sending American destroyers to aid the British, the Chief argued that this was tantamount to a declaration of war against the Germans:

  Well folks, as your columnist foretold, we are in the war. We have delivered fifty destroyers from our navy to one of the combatants, and that, of course, is an act of aggression and participation.... The first move of the Axis Powers will probably be to make a defensive and offensive alliance with Japan.... So the good people on the Pacific Coast would better begin digging bomb-proof cellars because they may have Oriental visitors. Your columnist is thinking of moving his china and glassware from the hilltop at San Simeon over into the Nacimiento Valley and would not feel entirely sure about his more fragile possessions even there. We all have in the neighborhood of three weeks, according to our admirals, in which to prepare to repel boarders ... The deed is done—the die is cast—Mr. Roosevelt has his wish at last. His heart’s desire had been to get us into war before the election, and apparently he has realized it.49