WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST
'DEATH VALLEY DAYS'
"THE PAPER DYNASTY"
From Wikipedia:
William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper publisher who built the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company Hearst Communications and whose flamboyant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that sold papers by giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, graphics, sex, and innuendo. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, and ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1904, Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for Governor of New York in 1906. Politically he espoused the Progressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class. He controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines and thereby exercised enormous political influence. He also called for war in 1898 against Spain—as did many other newspaper editors—but he did it in sensational fashion. After 1918, he called for an isolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs. He was at once a militant nationalist, a fierce anti-communist, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians. He was a leading supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932–34, but then broke with FDR and became his most prominent enemy on the right. His peak circulation reached 20 million readers a day in the mid-1930s, but he was a bad money manager and was so deeply in debt that most of his assets had to be liquidated in the late 1930s; he managed to keep his newspapers and magazines.
His life story was the main inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in Orson Welles's film "Citizen Kane". His famous mansion, Hearst Castle, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark.
James Hampton played Hearst in the 1964 episode "The Paper Dynasty" of the syndicated western television series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Hearst struggles to turn a profit despite increased circulation of The San Francisco Examiner. James Lanphier (1920–1969) plays Ambrose Bierce; Robert O. Cornthwaite, as Sam Chamberlain.
Other portrayals in the greater TV Universe:
- Hearst is played by Bill Ewing in the 1979 Episode "The Odyssey" of the television series 'Little House on the Prairie' where he is depicted as a friendly and talented young San Francisco journalist.
- In the 1997 television film "Rough Riders", Hearst is played by George Hamilton, and is depicted as travelling to Cuba with a small band of journalists to personally cover the Spanish–American War.
- Kevin Tighe played Hearst in the 1998 HBO movie "Winchell".
- James Cromwell portrayed Hearst in HBO's "RKO 281" from 1999. It was about the making of "Citizen Kane" with Liev Schreiber as Orson Welles.
Neither portrayal gives a hint of the ruthless, perhaps even murderous, media magnate to come......
BCnU!
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