The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst by Kenneth Whyte Page A
Authors: Kenneth Whyte
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boundless resources, sat the great editors themselves. Only presidential candidates and Shakespearean actors rivaled them in fame. They were towering, intimidating figures. Young Theodore Dreiser, not lacking in confidence or ambition, was so impressed by the auras of Dana and Pulitzer, so cowed by their “air of assurance and righteousness and authority and superiority as well as general condescension toward all,” that the mere mention of their names frightened him. “Something about [these dailies] as yet overawed me,” he wrote, “especially the World, the owner and editor of which had begun his meteoric career in St. Louis years before, and which since had become the foremost paper in New York. . . . It had become the ‘biggest’ and most daring in point of news and action, and this tempted me.” 57
Dreiser had once walked up and down Park Row, gazing up at the newspaper buildings as Hearst had done on purchasing the Journal. He longed for the opportunities these offices represented, but he could not bring himself to even step inside the World ’s door. When finally he did, his courage failed him and he turned around and walked out. Dreiser uses the word “overawed” four times in his memoir as he discusses Pulitzer and his newspaper. 58
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN HEARST, TOO, was in awe of Pulitzer. Hearst had held the World in high esteem from its first appearance, telling his friends on the Harvard Lampoon that it was the best paper in America. His letters to his father abound with explications of Pulitzer’s methods and success. He liked the World ’s energy and enterprise, its emotional charge and its intellectual bite. He liked its social conscience, its sympathy for the underdog, and its promotional style. He broadly shared its politics, prosecuting on campus a small-scale version of the lonely 1884 Cleveland campaign that Pulitzer fought in New York. Hearst befriended a number of Pulitzer’s key staffers, including Ballard Smith, John Cockerill, and business manager George W. Turner, extracting whatever he could of their ideas, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge.
It was probably regard for Pulitzer that led Hearst to locate the Examiner ’s East Coast bureau under the World ’s dome. It made practical sense—the Pulitzer Building was new, well-equipped space in the thumping heart of the New York publishing community. But Hearst also understood all that Pulitzer’s skyscraper signified: in terms of readership, influence, and profits, the World was the most successful daily on the planet. Its building was a gold-topped monument to that triumph, to its supplanting of the Sun, to the immigrant Pulitzer’s enormous personal prestige, to the rise of a popular new form of crusading journalism, and to the commercial and cultural vitality of the newspaper industry in the Gilded Age. In simplest terms, the Pulitzer Building symbolized everything Hearst wanted for himself. And as the delighted owner of the New York Journal, he now had means to pursue it.
CHAPTER THREE
A Great Deal More Than Money
T he Hoffman House was the grandest of Manhattan’s grand hotels and a favorite haunt of the city’s social and Democratic elite. Under the coffered ceilings of its cavernous lobby was a great mahogany bar staffed by seventeen bartenders. The cocktail of choice was the razzle dazzle. A buffet of sixty dishes was free to patrons. The tragedian Maurice Barrymore stopped by on occasion to recite Shakespeare from table tops and to brawl with his critics, but he took second billing at the Hoffman House to another work of art. Lit by a crystal chandelier and reflected in a large mirror over the bar was Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr, featuring in its central grouping four of the most ravishing demigoddesses ever to frolic on canvas. They were so beautiful, so voluptuous, and so gloriously naked that a steady flow of tourists wandered through the lobby for a glimpse. The painting cut
Dreiser had once walked up and down Park Row, gazing up at the newspaper buildings as Hearst had done on purchasing the Journal. He longed for the opportunities these offices represented, but he could not bring himself to even step inside the World ’s door. When finally he did, his courage failed him and he turned around and walked out. Dreiser uses the word “overawed” four times in his memoir as he discusses Pulitzer and his newspaper. 58
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN HEARST, TOO, was in awe of Pulitzer. Hearst had held the World in high esteem from its first appearance, telling his friends on the Harvard Lampoon that it was the best paper in America. His letters to his father abound with explications of Pulitzer’s methods and success. He liked the World ’s energy and enterprise, its emotional charge and its intellectual bite. He liked its social conscience, its sympathy for the underdog, and its promotional style. He broadly shared its politics, prosecuting on campus a small-scale version of the lonely 1884 Cleveland campaign that Pulitzer fought in New York. Hearst befriended a number of Pulitzer’s key staffers, including Ballard Smith, John Cockerill, and business manager George W. Turner, extracting whatever he could of their ideas, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge.
It was probably regard for Pulitzer that led Hearst to locate the Examiner ’s East Coast bureau under the World ’s dome. It made practical sense—the Pulitzer Building was new, well-equipped space in the thumping heart of the New York publishing community. But Hearst also understood all that Pulitzer’s skyscraper signified: in terms of readership, influence, and profits, the World was the most successful daily on the planet. Its building was a gold-topped monument to that triumph, to its supplanting of the Sun, to the immigrant Pulitzer’s enormous personal prestige, to the rise of a popular new form of crusading journalism, and to the commercial and cultural vitality of the newspaper industry in the Gilded Age. In simplest terms, the Pulitzer Building symbolized everything Hearst wanted for himself. And as the delighted owner of the New York Journal, he now had means to pursue it.
CHAPTER THREE
A Great Deal More Than Money
T he Hoffman House was the grandest of Manhattan’s grand hotels and a favorite haunt of the city’s social and Democratic elite. Under the coffered ceilings of its cavernous lobby was a great mahogany bar staffed by seventeen bartenders. The cocktail of choice was the razzle dazzle. A buffet of sixty dishes was free to patrons. The tragedian Maurice Barrymore stopped by on occasion to recite Shakespeare from table tops and to brawl with his critics, but he took second billing at the Hoffman House to another work of art. Lit by a crystal chandelier and reflected in a large mirror over the bar was Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr, featuring in its central grouping four of the most ravishing demigoddesses ever to frolic on canvas. They were so beautiful, so voluptuous, and so gloriously naked that a steady flow of tourists wandered through the lobby for a glimpse. The painting cut
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