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In 1937, due to the pressure of debt, declining revenues,
looming tax bills, and Hearst’s insatiable, virtually
neurotic, appetite for art and real estate, financial calamity
was no longer merely on the horizon. The wolf was now at the
door.
Washington power broker, and former chairman of the SEC, Joseph
P. Kennedy, was retained to salvage the Hearst empire. Virtually
everywhere he turned, the response was negative. Bankers scoffed
at the bloated and unsound financial structure of WR’s
properties. Investment bankers advised that the general public
would not be persuaded to purchase additional Hearst stock.
Kennedy decided on a strategy of issuing a series of modestly
sized bond floats, each to be secured by a Hearst magazine
or magazines, since public opinion of these had not been contaminated
by the newspapers’ offensive editorial policies of the
‘30s. The bond issues were registered for public view,
as was now required by virtue of the New Deal’s securities
law reforms. When published, the registration statements were
widely attacked by all of Hearst’s enemies and even
by some of his former allies. Time magazine, ever
a close observer and critic of Hearst, denounced the bond
proposal, and so did a former friend, the American Legion.
Critics pointed to the tottering condition of Hearst’s
businesses, some claiming that the registration statements,
in failing to mention the then ongoing, left-inspired boycott
of all Hearst publications, were fraudulently misleading.
At the end of the day, Kennedy was unable to find any normal
means to re-finance the collapsing Hearst enterprise; with
each passing day, bankruptcy and the loss of everything loomed
larger. After fifty years of free-wheeling, no-holds-barred
spending, all supported by maximum debt levels, faced with
Depression-era economic conditions, Hearst’s reputation
was such that no one would trust him with money anymore. The
only way out was for Hearst to give up control of the whole
enterprise. A trustee, Judge Clarence Shearn, was appointed
to have full voting rights over Hearst’s stock for a
ten-year term. Again, Hearst was fortunate. He retained editorial
control of his publications and could look forward to a day
when the American economy would turn positive and permit him
to regain control after repaying the excessive debt now being
carried by his companies. An ordinary firm in the same circumstances
financially as Hearst’s would have been folded into
the bankruptcy system and either liquidated or reorganized
with a complete change of management. In the case of the Hearst
empire, however, different financial dynamics were at work:
being ultimately dependent for direction upon him, the companies
had value almost completely dependent upon Hearst himself.
In bankruptcy, Hearst would probably be stripped of all involvement
in the judicial process; thus the bankers could not expect
to do as well as they might with a trustee overseeing finance
while Hearst continued what he did best, directing the editorial
and personnel policies of the publications.
Marion, learning in late April 1937 of the imminent collapse
of WR’s world, bravely offered her personal assistance,
instructing her business manager to liquidate her own considerable
assets and, with the one million she was able to raise on
the spot, insisting that WR’s financial manager Tom
White accept the money. After considerable resistance, Hearst
accepted Marion’s generous offer in return for a loan
secured by one of the magazines.
Sadly, Hearst was forced to order that all construction be
stopped at San Simeon and that all but the essential maintenance
staff be let go. The zoo was disbanded, its animals sold.
As the Hearst financial crisis reached its peak, the undistinguished
end to Marion’s film career was also playing itself
out. From 1935 to 1937, after leaving MGM for Paramount, Marion
had made three films, all failures. Late in 1937, a fourth
film Ever Since Eve, likewise failed. Hearst, nothing
if not consistent in his wrong-headed views of Marion’s
rightful place in Hollywood, continued to blame studio personnel
for failing to find the right material for her. Marion Davies’
movie career, and with it Hearst’s interests in film-making,
were near their ends. He was now seventy-four and, though
still healthy and active, he must have harbored some strong
sense of disillusionment, disappointment, and regret as everything
to which he had devoted such exceptional energy crashed down
around him.
Though the voting trust arrangement stripped away his financial
control, Hearst maintained active editorial oversight of his
newspapers, subject only to Judge Shearn’s absolute
power over spending. None of the bankers, who were thoroughly
familiar with Hearst’s incontinent spending via the
leftist biographies then circulating, would trust Hearst with
a cent, lest he spend it on art, houses or parties. His annual
salary was deeply cut to $500,000; he was compelled to deed
half of his vast art collection and one of his estates to
the company; and, worst of all perhaps, in order to continue
living at San Simeon he would have to pay rent and the non-business-related
upkeep and maintenance costs of the establishment. The once
seemingly endless flow of guests back and forth between Los
Angeles and San Simeon was virtually dammed up; those guests
who did come were not from the old, high-maintenance, Hollywood
crowd.
In the end, a series of auctions were held to dispose of half
of his art collection, a cache of treasures built up over
fifty years of buying, the mere sorting, cataloging and pricing
of which took nearly a year of non-stop effort. Many of the
pieces Hearst had not even seen except in photographs. Commencing
in March 1938 and extending over a two-year period, the auctions
were staged so as not to flood the market; at the last stage
of these sales, when the estate was down to the less valuable
pieces, the trustees arranged for certain department stores
in New York City to display these last pieces for sale to
passing customers in the stores. Made fun of in New Yorker
cartoons, these cheap department store sales were the final
stitches in the garment of public humiliation hung on Hearst.
As his customary good fortune would have it, Marion, retired
from films in 1938, proved to be a loving, comforting companion
for Hearst in his agonies. All reports were of her watchfulness
and anxiety for WR in his time of trouble. On the other hand,
no longer busy with work, Marion now could indulge her drinking
habit ever more assiduously. Nurses whom Hearst hired to oversee
Marion and her alcoholic condition ended up, at Marion’s
constant behest, supplying her with booze.
On top of all his other woes, there was the continuing question
of the boys. Bill, Jr., the second eldest, was the only one
who had found his own way in the world of work. The other
two older sons, George and John, were proving ne’er-do-wells
and were now exposed to ruin since Hearst’s power to
protect them within the organization was severely diminished.
They were at risk of the usual fate befalling men who cannot
keep a job.
Though the public, now fully aware of both Hearst’s
old age and his ongoing business crisis, expected him to fade
away or soon die, and though the bankers fervently hoped for
the same thing in view of his constant meddling in their plans
as chief cog of the entire outfit, Hearst himself had other
plans, soldiering on with complete editorial control of his
publications. The bankers balked at Hearst’s full-throated
use of his bully pulpit to carry on an isolationist, anti-English
crusade as events in Europe raised the question of right and
wrong among the contesting nations of Western Europe. World
War II was not too distant, with Japan on the march in Asia
and Germany asserting itself in defiance of the post-WWI order.
Hearst believed in keeping America out of the ongoing conflicts,
with the added fillip that, contrary to Rooseveltian views,
Germany and Italy could not be blamed for desiring to restore
a balance of power in Europe more appropriate to their rights
as nations than that which had been imposed by the Treaty
of Versailles which England, France, and Roosevelt wished
to maintain. When his bankers protested that a more even-handed
approach, moderating his critique of the British, would be
better for business, Hearst, in high dudgeon, defended his
editorial independence and declined to compromise his editorial
policy. Unlike the financial crisis of 1923, when Hearst did
temporize on the question of municipal ownership of San Francisco
water supplies in order to placate the bankers who could provide
the financing he desperately needed, Hearst did not sacrifice
his personal integrity in 1938-1939. Perhaps, by this time
of his life with Marion, there was no longer any question
of her devotion, no longer any question of desperately needing
millions and millions to sustain an extravagant way of life
for her benefit.
The financial pressure that afflicted WR, his wife and family,
in addition to the poignant dismantling of his flagship, San
Simeon, also resulted in Millicent’s pitiable entreaties
to her husband for an increase in her monthly allowance, usually
in the relatively minor, by their previous standards, amount
of $1,000, entreaties that Hearst was forced to reject. Hearst
himself issued similar letters to the trustees, virtually
begging for an increase in his salary, letters which they
in turn rejected. The boys, even in the Hearst jobs they managed
to keep, were not paid much, certainly too little to live
as heirs to a great fortune. Hearst’s request to the
bosses that Millicent be given a job editing one of the magazines
where he believed she would do well writing about home decorating
and architecture, was also met by rejection by Richard Berlin,
head of the magazine division. Berlin noted that Millicent
was already on payroll for $2,500 a month, somewhat below
the radar of the trustees, but that a request for an increase
might backfire and lead to her being completely cut off. Not
until 1945 would Hearst regain control of his empire.
In the meantime, war and relative poverty forced the closing
of San Simeon and the retreat to their Northern California
estate Wyntoon for WR and Marion. By 1942, Marion had long
since abandoned the party girl life that she had enjoyed during
the 20s and 30s. Now 45, and Hearst over 80, Marion tended
toward more domestic pursuits: making silk ties for WR by
hand and participating in both charitable events and the war-preparedness
activities of the invasion-fearing Californians of the time.
The two kept a passel of dachsunds who were dear to them and
who were their constant companions, as if they were children.
Kane
In 1941, the film Citizen Kane was released by RKO,
the noted stage director Orson Welles making his film directorial
debut. Kane turned out to be an unpopular, money-losing
film, tricked out as fiction but still accepted as an account
of the lives of Hearst and Davies. Under pressure from Hearst’s
representatives, the film had been heavily edited, cut to
make fewer factual references to Hearst’s life. Nonetheless,
it was all but accepted as fact by the public and Hollywood
that Welles had intended the film to reflect Hearst’s
life, and, what is more, to cast Hearst in an unfavorable
light. By today’s sensibilities, we would call the film
a shameless exploitation of two famous people and perhaps
ripe matter for a libel action. It was, in effect, a National
Enquirer piece, blown up into a feature film, with the
important distinction that the ordinary man in the street
often finds National Enquirer material interesting
and stimulating whereas the first viewers of Citizen Kane
came away bored.
When Hearst first became aware that the film depicted the
tycoon’s mistress as an untalented singer on whom he
spent millions to promote her career in opera, all the powers
of his presses were trained on RKO and Welles. Hearst would
have found it quite impossible to stand by and permit Marion
to be publicly humiliated in this fashion. The scheduled opening
of the film at Radio City Music Hall in New York City was
cancelled when Hearst’s long-time faithful agent, Louella
Parsons, personally threatened both to cease press coverage
of the Music Hall and, for the benefit of the Rockefeller
family who owned the Hall, to expose the underside of John
D. Rockefeller’s life should the opening take place.
Welles was attacked ad hominem, particularly for
the active role he then played in the American left, branded
a communist sympathizer in Hearst’s publications. The
record is bare of any active involvement by Welles in communist
party activities, though he was clearly in the most liberal
wing of the Left and consorted with many who were active Party
members. This was enough “proof" for Hearst, who
seems to have taken the view that, if Welles had made an execrable
fiction of Hearst’s reality, then WR would make an execrable
reality from the fiction that Welles was a communist. Not
that there was a moral equivalency here, since Welles’s
treatment of Hearst’s life, though not necessarily in
good taste, was within the bounds of the rules of the communications
game; it was, after all, only a movie which the public could
expect to be fictionalized and exaggerated. Readers of Hearst’s
newspapers, on the other hand, had a right to expect unfictionalized
accounts of events, which, in the case of Hearst’s attacks
on Welles, they did not get. Again, in standard Hearstian
style, when his personal interests, and especially his loving
personal interest in Marion’s welfare, were at stake,
journalistic objectivity suffered.
Adding to the threats emanating from the Hearst side, some
have also claimed that he threatened to put an end to his
newspapers’ hands-off policy concerning the occasional
report of dastardly acts committed in Hollywood, such as rapes
perpetrated by directors and the like, Hearst allegedly providing
dozens of examples of misdeeds that had not been reported
in his papers.
On finally making its heavily edited, low-profile opening,
Citizen Kane proved a popular failure but was praised
by the intelligentsia of the time, who by and large were either
leftist or media competitors of Hearst. By dint of its original
reception by critics as a work of cinematic art, Kane
attained its undeserved cult status as film art. One watches
the film today and is baffled by how far its reputation exceeds
its actualities. Where works for the stage can afford to evoke
gloom and pessimism and to be distractingly complex, qualities
sometimes appealing to an audience of elite modernists, works
for the screen that exhibit these same qualities end up in
the dustbin of film history.
The essential difference between reality and art in Kane
is that, though Welles vented his leftist spleen in portraying
his “fictional" tycoon as an empty, disillusioned,
and foolish loser, the flesh and blood Hearst was a towering
optimist, regardless of circumstance, a devoted lover and
one of the great winners in American history. Alas, Kane’s
view of an untalented mistress with a career propped up by
her lover’s unlimited financial support does tend to
hit rather close to the mark, rather more closely than generally
acknowledged. Certainly, Marion herself would not have denied
the resemblance, though, as a matter of fact, neither she
nor Hearst ever saw the film. When a copy was sent to him
by RKO to enable his review of the edited version, the canister
containing the film was returned unopened. As Hearst always
advised Marion, “never pay any attention to the bad
reviews."
Welles had quixotically believed that taking up the life of
Hearst in a muckraking manner would advance his career. Of
course, nothing could have been further from the truth; had
he been less the romantic idealist and more like Marion’s
putative suitors, who might coo and bill with her in the Chief’s
absence, but who scurried away like rats when Hearst was afoot,
his career might have prospered instead of evolving into an
undignified magic act on television.
Risorgimento and Decline
With the advent of World War II and the subsequent revival
of the American economy, the Hearst media empire began generating
sufficient revenues to dig itself out of the its financial
morass. Advertising income rose and a new source of revenue
was born, the licensing of Hearst cartoon characters from
the Sunday supplements. At the age of 82, in 1945, WR got
back control of what remained from the crisis: seventeen newspapers,
nine magazines, four radio stations, the Sunday supplement,
and two news/feature services. Marion and WR returned to San
Simeon and resumed the long-delayed construction projects
that Hearst was so fond of, much as if the events of 1937-1944
had never happened. Rounds of partying resumed as well though
on a more subdued basis, smaller in scale, perhaps reflecting
WR’s being 83 and Marion herself 48 in 1945.
By 1947, Hearst was no longer in the best of health, suffering
heart problems sufficiently serious to necessitate their leaving
San Simeon and setting up their establishment in Beverly Hills,
closer to health care facilities that he might need. He could
no longer use stairs easily and his daily editorial work,
once astoundingly rigorous, gradually began to decline.
By 1948, having trouble using the phone late at night to call
his New York editors, and thus requiring Marion’s help,
the Chief still bubbled over with thoughts, ideas, suggestions,
and guidance, as he had for more than sixty years. He still
didn’t care about his editors’ sleep requirements,
but his physical limitations were beginning to multiply. Marion’s
role in purportedly conveying the Chief’s instructions
to his editors became problematic; with even her admitting
that, from time to time, she liked to inject her own “two
cents" into editorial matters. At one point, she directed
the Los Angeles Examiner staff to mount an editorial
defense of film star Ingrid Bergman, who was then under public
scrutiny due to her openly conducted love affair with Roberto
Rosellini and her giving birth to his child while still married
to another man. When the editorial was pulled by one of the
attorneys, Hearst personally called the lawyer responsible
to advise him never again to disobey an instruction from Marion.
As matters wore on, no one on his editorial staffs could tell
whether the instructions, written or telephonic, they received
in the Chief’s name were actually his or some diluted,
contaminated version.
With death clearly on the horizon, Hearst set about extending
his life-long goals even beyond the grave: first, he sought
to bequeath his properties in such a manner that Millicent
and the boys would not be tempted to divvy up the empire and
sell its parts for the immediate cash required to support
their well-demonstrated tendency, endemic among the Hearsts,
to spend money like very well-off drunken sailors. His second
goal was to provide the maximum amount of comfort for Marion,
whom Hearst knew would be scorned by all after his death.
The first postmortem ambition, maintaining the integrity of
his empire, was effected in 1947 with the drafting of a complex
will establishing trusteeships, to be composed of five family
members and eight independent trustees, trusts that would
not dissolve until the death of the last grandchild alive
at Hearst’s death. Millicent and the boys were provided
for separately, by means of other trusts holding enough preferred
Hearst stock to provide modest but sufficient income to them
for the rest of their lives.
As for Marion, the 1947 instrument granted her a trust holding
30,000 shares of income-generating preferred stock, the same
amount that the five boys received together. She was also
given the Beverly Hills mansion.
Secretly, in 1950, and probably prompted by the increasing
level of conflict between Marion and the boys over her alleged
meddling in Hearst’s instructions, a lawyer separate
from the Hearst family legal team was hired to establish a
trust that would give Marion sole voting rights over the stock
held in the trust established in 1947, thereby devolving upon
Marion the same rights to control editorial policy, hire and
fire and make financial decisions that Hearst himself enjoyed
while he lived. This arrangement, when it became known for
the first time in 1951, on Hearst’s death, stunned Hearst’s
family and business associates who, even in death, could not
rid themselves of Marion and the primacy she held in the heart
of William Randolph Hearst.
Final Days
By 1950, Hearst’s failing health and Marion’s
ambiguous role in the editorial process were creating chaos.
Infamous in the 1930s and 1940s for their anticommunist tirades,
the Hearst editors in 1950 were allying themselves with Senator
Joe McCarthy, offering Hearst reporters to assist him and
sharing Hearst files with the Senator’s staff.
In April of that year, a cable with WR’s signature was
sent out to his principal editors stating that, in view of
their newspapers’ “hammering" communism
for so long and irritating readers, it was time to moderate
coverage of the left for awhile and take stock of the “international
situation." Given WR’s lifelong, steadfast pursuit
of strongly anticommunist policies, we are hard pressed to
understand the motivation for this communiqué. Historians
have attributed to Hearst a change of heart, some kind of
deathbed conversion. Much more likely, especially in view
of that notorious occasion in 1923 when Hearst similarly issued
a “moderation" directive regarding the fight over
ownership of water supplies in San Francisco, the directive
having as its principal aim to mollify the bankers he needed
to save his ailing empire, some external pressure on Hearst
must have induced him to alter his course on the subject of
communism. And the probable source of that outside influence
would have been Marion. Her extensive network of Hollywood
friendships, her only support outside of the aging Hearst,
would no doubt have importuned her to persuade Hearst to let
up on the papers’ participation in the McCarthy anti-communist
crusade. Hollywood was ground zero in the Senator’s
bombardment of the left, making it quite possible that Marion’s
numerous friends in that milieu would have turned to her for
help on the public relations front. All that being said, the
record itself is bare of evidence that Marion played any role
in the reversal of stance by Hearst; however, not every important
historical event, such as sometimes vitally significant private
conversations among lovers, friends and business associates,
is fixed in writing. A mysterious event like Hearst’s
“lay off the communists" memo of 1950 can sometimes
only be explained, if explicable at all, by a reconstruction
of the private motives and conversations of the historical
actors. Marion’s memoirs The Times We Had show
us she herself had no political inclinations, that she was
almost purely a social creature who took her opinions, to
the extent that she held any fixed views, from her immediate
circle. In this case, the pain caused to her Hollywood intimates
by McCarthy’s persecution in the press and on the floor
of the Senate would have caused her to suffer empathetically.
Combined with her already established emotional influence
over Hearst, especially as his powers were reaching their
nadir, there is a high probability that it was Marion herself
and not the old but enfeebled warrior Hearst who was the responsible
party.
In any event, Hearst’s son Bill, Jr. took it upon himself
to intervene in the controversy, and, after a personal meeting
with WR, issued a “clarifying" note to the effect
that the earlier instructions from his father did not, in
fact, carry the implication that the newspapers should make
any material alteration to their existing editorial policies.
This sequence of events, marking the first time in editorial
memory that a Hearst order had been effectively countermanded,
established in the minds of Hearst editors that, though he
indeed remained as lord of his domain, he was no longer to
be regarded as controlling their editorial direction.
Hearst’s invalid condition worsened throughout the rest
of 1950 and 1951. He had difficulty speaking and stopped attending
Marion’s dinners downstairs, meals which by this time
were but the palest imitations of the grand affairs of days
gone by. Marion suffered her own incapacities: she was drunk
most of the time.
Intermittently, Hearst could issue lucid editorial guidance
that was clearly his own work and not Marion’s. Once,
however, having given his Los Angeles editors an order to
write a piece on the Pasadena Playhouse (Marion’s suggestion?),
he angrily called the responsible editor to the mansion in
Beverly Hills to berate him for failing to publish the asked-for
article. The editor, no doubt scared stiff, gently showed
Hearst the edition containing the piece as ordered. The old
Chief apologized, blaming old age and illness for his mistake.
He was 88 and virtually on his deathbed.
Very shortly after this last incident, the top staff members
and Bill, Jr. took matters into their own hands, setting up
shop in the Beverly Hills mansion, bringing with them a retinue
of doctors, nurses, various family members, friends and children.
The formally polite, and sometimes friendly, relations that
had marked Marion’s relations with the Hearst boys came
to an end. Open conflict broke out, with Marion incensed at
all the noise and hubbub that she felt was interfering with
WR’s rest and peace, while the family was outraged in
turn with her drinking and her meddling in the newspapers’
affairs.
On August 14, 1951, following a particularly vile argument
between the warring sides, Marion was sedated. While she lay
unconscious, her lover of thirty-four eventful years, William
Randolph Hearst, greatest of the American newspaper magnates,
88 years of age, died at 9:50 on that morning.
An incisive summary of Hearst’s inimitable career was
provided by Alva Johnson, writing in 1932, and contrasting
Hearst as journalist with another great publisher of the era,
Adolph Ochs of the New York Times. Where Ochs viewed
himself as a purveyor of information, Hearst had come before
his readers “as a minstrel and sage, ethical guide,
social coach, financial advisor, confidant and strategist
in affairs of the heart, culinary tutor, educator, house mother,
prophet, purveyor of warm data on high life….Every day
of his life, he strives to exert his influence to the utmost."
Marion was still unconscious when he died; she woke up later
in the day to an empty house: the entire encampment had picked
up and left, taking Hearst’s body with them to San Francisco
for burial. She was devastated at the icy treatment visited
upon her by people she had known intimately for more than
thirty years. She must have taken some comfort, even in her
grief at losing Hearst and at essentially being left for dead
herself, that, unknown to the Hearst cabal, she was now their
boss. By the terms of the 1950 secret trust agreement, she
was now legally in control of the Hearst empire. Had the cabal
been aware of this inconvenient fact, perhaps they would have
shown her at least the minimal respect due the woman who had
loved the Chief, cared for him devotedly as he was dying and
even once sacrificed her own personal wealth to save his companies
from ruin.
Once the mid-August funeral, with its lying-in-state and huge
procession of dignitaries, was complete, Marion arranged for
her friend Hedda Hopper to make it public that Marion had
become heir to Hearst’s controlling interest in the
vast media empire, a bombshell announcement unhinging the
clique of family and friends whose only aim was to cut Marion
out as soon as possible. Soon, the big legal guns were brought
out.
There were two legal questions and at least one very large
practical question, the latter being, of course, how someone
of Marion’s background, education, capacities and interests
would fare when placed directly in the shoes of the titanic
W.R. Hearst. Marion herself never failed to minimize her own
talents; according to her, she was surely no newspaperwoman
and barely an actress. The enormous, unbridgeable chasm between
Marion qua Marion and the role of press baron, obvious to
all including the lady in question herself, provided a good
basis to discuss settling the dispute between Marion and the
family without resort to the courts. No doubt when the secret
trust had been drawn up, Hearst would have assured Marion
that he indeed was aware that she would never actually take
his place at the helm, but that the bequest would give her
the leverage necessary to extract concessions from the family,
especially with respect to that part of his main will giving
her the Beverly Hills mansion and the large block of preferred
stock. Hearst and Marion could envision a battle in probate
concerning possible “undue influence" exercised
by her on Hearst. Given the spectacular effect that the secret
trust would have on Marion’s foes in the family when
it became public, Hearst could well have calculated that the
family would be happy not to oppose those terms favorable
to Marion in the main will if that was the cost of avoiding
loss of the entire empire. There may also have been a legal
challenge to the unusual long-term trusts that Hearst had
set up to maintain the integrity of his media organization;
by their agreement with Marion not to challenge the main will,
the other heirs would have given up any challenge to the other
trust arrangements as well. Since Hearst seldom, if ever,
revealed his inner thoughts or intentions in any written form,
we can only speculate on all the strategies he employed in
his testamentary dispositions. We can conclude, however, that
the strategies all succeeded. Both Marion and the empire would
be secure.
The two strictly legal questions regarding Marion’s
rights were as follows: first, whether the 1950 trust, established
in the midst of the considerable physical suffering that Hearst
was experiencing, may have been the product of undue influence
on Marion’s part, and, second, whether Millicent, still
Hearst’s legal wife, had an overriding community property
claim under California law. Both of these questions could
very well have been litigated to uncertain results for many
years. Marion, never a fighter to begin with, graciously yielded
her claims under the 1950 trust in exchange for the parties’
agreeing not to contest the 1947 will, together with Marion’s
being hired on for some time as a consultant for the film
side of the business. We can be certain, that whatever Marion’s
duties would be as consultant, they surely would not involve
the editorial policies of the newspapers.
Marion’s financial future was secure, just as old Hearst
would have wished; she kept the mansion and the $150,000 in
annual income that would be generated by her block of preferred
stock.
Somewhat oddly, the next day after announcement of the settlement,
October 31, 1951, Marion married. The Las Vegas wedding, virtually
an elopement, was held very late at night, with the license
showing her age as 45 though she was in fact 54 years old.
The misstatement of fact was either a remnant of the lifelong
charade that she and Hearst had carried out to obscure their
true age difference when he courted her as a teen, or it was
simply a lady’s wile to keep her suitor in the dark
on the question of age. Perhaps it served both purposes. The
lucky man had started out courting Marion’s sister Rose
but had not succeeded in that endeavor, subsequently becoming
friends with, and a regular visitor to, both Marion and Hearst.
His name was Horace G. Brown III, a merchant marine captain
who, Marion mendaciously asserted, was a Hearst cousin. The
marriage took place barely two months after Hearst’s
death, widow’s weeds apparently not being one of Marion’s
preferred costumes.
Having just lived in an unmarried state for some forty years,
the hasty marriage to Captain Brown cannot readily be explained
as necessitated by Marion’s strong preference for marriage
per se. So what were her reasons for doing so? And
for making the legal union such a public event? Had Brown
been her lover even before Hearst died? He was a fairly constant
presence at the mansion, making that a possibility; on the
other hand, they could easily have remained unmarried lovers
for some time to provide a decent-looking mourning period
for Marion. Did she intend to figuratively slap the Hearsts
in the face by disrespecting their beloved pater familias
and thus gain some measure of revenge for the family’s
studied, ice-cold rejection of the part she had played in
WR’s life? By the timing of the marriage, one day after
settlement of the estate, we can suppose that Marion knew
the hasty marriage would aggravate the Hearsts and endanger
the final settlement of the estate in her favor. Therefore,
she might well have taken this step out of spite. It is also
possible that Brown himself was a kind of fortune hunter and
eager to lasso Marion into the earliest possible marriage.
This, however, seems highly unlikely in view of the fact that
the initial object of his affections had been Marion’s
sister Rose, a woman without substantial means of her own.
For an ordinary man like Brown, it proved difficult to be
married to a woman who had been spectacularly spoiled and
pampered her whole life and who was far richer than he was.
Though they stayed together until Marion’s death, it
was a volatile relationship. Her huge social life, the remains
of a life composed almost wholly of rounds of parties, particularly
annoyed him. And, of course, like Hearst, he was not of the
Hollywood tribe and probably a very poor air-kisser.
Marion augmented her wealth with real estate projects and
watched her old friends die. She must not have carried forward
the spendthrift ways of her life with Hearst, since her estate
was valued at twenty million when she died. Joseph Kennedy,
always an admirer and friend, kindly invited Marion and her
husband to attend all the Kennedy family weddings. Her own
health slipped away quickly during the 50s, a process culminating
with the discovery of bone cancer in 1959. She was admitted
to a hospital in May 1961 and put under the care of three
cancer specialists flown out to Los Angeles from the East
Coast by Joe Kennedy. Notwithstanding, she died in her hospital
bed on September 22, 1961. She was sixty-four years old. Her
daughter by Hearst, their secret child, Patricia Van Cleve
Lake, was at her bedside.
Marion is remembered, among other ways, by the Marion Davies
Clinic, a treatment center in West Los Angeles that she had
funded while she lived.
As for San Simeon, their palatial castle of love, it is today
a popular and profitable tourist site run by the State of
California; there is always a waiting list to visit the mansion.
Except for the 100,000 acres bought by the U.S. government
during the war, the immense “ranch" surrounding
La Cuesta Encantada continues on as a cattle ranch.
March 2006
From guest contributor Joe Leibowitz
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