by David Nasaw
Zander the Great was released the month after Hearst signed his agreement with Mayer. It was Marion’s twenty-first moving picture and arguably her best. She had by now learned to master silent-screen acting, without histrionics but with just enough exaggeration to demonstrate the requisite emotion. In Zander, her versatility was astonishing. She played Mamie, a freckle-faced, pigtailed orphan who is taken in by a kind woman and her young son, Alexander, or “Zander” for short. When the mother dies, Marion takes Zander on a journey through Arizona to find the boy’s father, meeting up with a series of adventures along the way.
At Hearst’s request, writer Frances Marion added dramatic scenes to the film to show off Marion’s acting talents and invite comparisons with Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish. The references to “Little Mary”—including Pickford’s trademark curls and white dress—were so explicit as to be embarrassing. The film ended with a Griffith-like scene stolen from Orphans of the Storm, in which Marion, like Lillian Gish, is tied to a tree during a punishing desert sandstorm. The reviews were good, the box office solid.23
Marion returned to New York in May of 1925 for the Zander premiere. She was met at the train by her friend Louella Parsons, who described her homecoming in Hearst’s entertainment newspapers as if it were the biggest, perhaps the only, news in town. Miss Davies, Louella wanted her fans to know, was not only one of the screen’s brightest stars, she was also one of its most intelligent.
“‘What are you reading?’ I inquired, wondering which of the new novels she found absorbing enough to clutch so tightly. ‘The Life of Socrates,’ she replied; and then, with her eyes dancing and her face wreathed in smiles, she said mischievously: ‘If you hadn’t known me so well, wouldn’t you, with your years of experience interviewing motion picture actresses, say I was posing for the press by pretending to read highbrow literature?’ ‘Is that why you have hidden [it],’ I inquired. She laughed and naively admitted she did not want anyone to accuse her of pretending to be a bluestocking.” Louella concluded her column with more thoughts on Miss Davies’ knowledge, her quiet, unpretentious ways, her unfailing sense of humor, her brains, her naturalness, her common sense and her ability to see things in their true light, and her talents as an actress.24
Hearst traveled to New York with Marion, though to save Millicent any possible embarrassment he arrived separately and claimed that he had returned for business reasons and to help out Mayor John Hylan, who was running for reelection. (This was the election in which Hylan was defeated in the primary by James Walker.) As was his custom, he was out of town for the premiere of Zander at the Capitol Theater, this time taking the train to Washington, D.C., to consult with his editors and have lunch with President Coolidge, with whom he had become quite friendly. There is, unfortunately, no record of their discussions.25
Since the Clarendon was still being renovated, Hearst moved into the suite at the Ritz-Carlton that had become the de facto family home and served as his New York office. He met here with Alice Head who was in charge of the English edition of Good Housekeeping and Nash ’s, the British magazine he had purchased in 1910. The day after her arrival in New York, Head was summoned to have dinner with Hearst and Millicent at the Ritz-Carlton. She put on her very best white and silver dress, thinking that she had been invited to a formal dinner party, but was instead served a “simple and homely gathering in the Hearst private apartment.” After dinner, she and Hearst sat down to talk together, Head recalled in her autobiography: “He listened with close attention to everything I had to say, made friendly comments, told a few funny stories....In appearance, he is a tall, big man of imposing presence, he has blue eyes (I don’t think they are cold), the most beautiful teeth in the world for a man of his age ... a gentle voice and a ready smile.” Hearst casually informed Miss Head that he was interested in buying “a country home in England, and that if ever Leeds Castle in Kent or St. Donat’s Castle in Wales were for sale, I was to let him know. He had seen pictures of both of them in Country Life, and was interested in purchasing one or the other.”26
Miss Head returned to England and set off to find her Chief a castle. When St. Donat’s, an eleventh-century, 125-room castle on 13,000 acres, fourteen miles west of Cardiff, came on the market, she notified Hearst by telegram and he directed her to buy it. “I felt a kind of sinking when I realized what we had undertaken,” Head recalled. “I knew that the cost of upkeep would be heavy, that the responsibilities in connection with it would be onerous and that I had involved myself in something quite outside the normal duties connected with a publishing house. But I had already begun to acquire something of the Hearst outlook upon life, and to be concerned with the ownership of a beautiful and historic Castle seemed to me to be a tremendous lark"27
Hearst spent very little time in New York that spring. On May 21, Millicent gave a Gypsy Ball for the ambassador to Spain in the Crystal Room of the Ritz-Carlton—which had been redecorated for the occasion by Joseph Urban. There was no mention in the press of W. R. as host or guest. By early June, he and Marion were back in California.28
22. Family Man
IN 1991, forty years after his father’s death, Bill Hearst, Jr. broke the family’s silence about the breakup of his parents’ marriage and W. R.’s relationship with Marion Davies. It was his mother, he said, who precipitated the breakup. Since meeting Marion Davies in 1915, Hearst had been living two separate but adjacent lives: with Millicent and the boys at the Clarendon and San Simeon and with Marion at his suite of rooms at the Bryant Park studios and at her home on Lexington Road in Beverly Hills. He would, it appeared, have been content to continue in this lifestyle had Millicent “not forced him to make a choice: Marion or her. It was an ultimatum. My father then knew he couldn’t have what he wanted—his wife and family, and Marion too.”
The final breakup occurred during the family’s summer vacation at San Simeon. The year was probably 1925. “Pop said that he had to go to Los Angeles on business,” Bill, Jr. recalled in his memoirs, “but someone told Mom that he had seen Marion. After he returned, she had packed and left for New York.”1 This was not the first time that such a scene had been played out.
“When I arrive he is always sweet and charming, but never stays more than a few hours,” Millicent later told Charles Chaplin. “And it’s always the same routine: in the middle of dinner the butler hands him a note, then he excuses himself and leaves the table. When he returns, he sheepishly mentions that some urgent business matter needs his immediate attention in Los Angeles, and we all pretend to believe him. And of course we all know he returns to join Marion.”2
Millicent forced the “Marion” problem into the open and signaled that she would no longer pretend it did not matter to her. This, Bill, Jr. believed, was a fatal mistake. His father had to this point made no commitments to Marion and was not living with her. “It was still possible that Mother could have prevailed. But she would have had to be patient.”3
One sympathizes with Bill, Jr., who loved and respected his parents and, at age eighty-three, was still mourning their breakup sixty-five years earlier. Still, it is difficult to agree with him on this. By 1925, Hearst had been with Marion for almost a decade and had no intention of giving her up. Their relationship was, if anything, stronger than it had been. Forced to choose between his wife and his mistress, Hearst sought a third way. He had no intention of giving Marion up, nor was he prepared to let Millicent go. Divorce he considered out of the question. However amicable, it would have ruined his already precarious financial status by forcing him to yield assets to Millicent. It would also have set off an avalanche of negative publicity. Once the matter reached the courts, there would be no stopping editors and reporters from dragging him, Marion, Millicent, and the boys through the mud.
W. R. got his way. He continued his affair with Marion, but remained married and on remarkably good terms with Millicent. “They didn’t have any formal parting of the ways,” Bill, Jr. recalled in an oral history taken at San Simeon. “There was n
o announcement, there was no divorce, there were no proceedings. There wasn’t anything. There was just that Pop was spending more time away from home ... out in Los Angeles.”4
Outwardly all was peaceable. Millicent never betrayed her hurt or her anger to anyone other than her sister and her parents, who kept her confidence. In the course of the next quarter-century, when Marion came up in conversation, Millicent, her son Bill recalled, “usually refrained from comment. If she was forced to refer to Davies, she called her ‘the woman.’”5
After their decision to lead separate lives, Millicent visited W. R. at San Simeon in October of 1925. Two months later, the family was reunited there for Christmas and their first dinner in Casa Grande. George, who was now twenty-one, took the train from San Francisco where he lived with Bill, Jr., who was attending high school in Berkeley. The two boys made quite a contrast. George was overweight and drinking far too much; Bill was blond, blue-eyed, thin, and very handsome. From New York City came the ten-year-old twins, probably still in short pants, their brother John, who was sixteen, and their mother.
“It was a very festive occasion,” Bill, Jr. said of that first dinner in the big house. “The guests, surprised and even stunned by the array of great art, were swept up in the beauty of the room.... That was the last Christmas we had dinner together as a family. My mother had a big Christmas party for local youngsters before we returned to New York. Then Marion Davies moved in openly.”6
In the end, Millicent and W. R. were in accord. She too understood the way the press worked. Once divorce papers were filed, the daily papers would be given legal cover to dig into every corner of her, Marion’s, and W. R.’s past. To save the children and herself from the embarrassment that would inevitably follow, she agreed to Hearst’s terms.
There were, of course, enormous advantages to remaining Mrs. William Randolph Hearst. To mention only the most obvious, as Mrs. Hearst, the former Millicent Willson had access to the society pages of the New York American. Her Boswell was Maury H. Biddle Paul of the Philadelphia Biddles, who wrote Hearst’s society columns under the name Cholly Knickerbocker. Paul boosted Millicent’s career in society with the same persistence that Louella Parsons boosted Marion’s in Hollywood. Because Hearst’s papers combined society and film news in the same section, the Paul and Parsons columns appeared on the same page, with Paul providing news of Millicent’s latest benefit for her Milk Fund and Parsons the latest talk of Marion’s triumphs in Hollywood. To forestall any embarrassing juxtaposition of stories, Hearst’s editors made sure that Millicent’s and Marion’s name never appeared together on the same page on the same day. In April of 1925, for example, items on Marion’s new film ran on April 9 and 17; items about Millicent’s Milk Fund appeared on April 10,15, and 16.
“My mother’s outlook took two different roads” after the separation, Bill, Jr. recalled in his memoirs. “She began to spend money lavishly and sought a new life as a matron of New York society.” Millicent had been enlisted into charity work during the Great War to bolster her husband’s deteriorating reputation. But she found that she was good at it and, in the postwar years, devoted more and more time to it. Her pet project was the Free Milk Fund for Babies, which had been founded under her name in 1918. With her husband’s help—and Maury Paul’s frequent mentions in his society columns—Millicent was able to raise a good deal of money at theater benefits. The funds were used to buy pasteurized milk and during the summer months, when unspoiled milk was at a premium, dispense it from milk booths to anemic children.7
With her five boys now out of the house—George and Bill in San Francisco, John, Randolph, and David in preparatory schools in the East—Millicent had more time to devote to her charities and to spending money, her best revenge on her husband, who continued to pay all her bills. One of her closer friends during this period and for the rest of her life was the celebrated hostess Elsa Maxwell. For thirty years, Millicent said nothing about the humiliation she had suffered when W. R. left her for Marion. Several years after W. R.’s death, while dining with Millicent and Elsa, Cole Porter told the story of his first sighting of Millicent, a quarter-century before, at Tiffany’s buying a string of pearls for a sum running to six figures. Millicent confirmed the story. “‘I bought the pearls,’” she told Porter and Maxwell. “‘Some women buy a new hat when they’re angry. I bought the finest string of pearls in New York. You see,’ she added with a wistful smile, ‘I was awfully angry, but I got over it a long, long time ago.’”8
From 1925 until W. R.’s death in 1951, he and Millicent remained husband and wife, raised their children together, communicated by telephone, telegram, and cable, saw each other on a regular basis, and jointly entertained friends and business associates. In April of 1926, only months after their Christmas dinner together at Casa Grande, Hearst took the train East and hosted a gala dinner with Millicent for his publishing executives. Two weeks later, the two held a party at the Clarendon to celebrate their twenty-third wedding anniversary and his sixty-third birthday. Hearst would return to New York in December of 1926 and 1927 to spend Christmas at the Clarendon.9
Though Millicent would not let the boys visit San Simeon after Marion moved in, she continued to vacation at the ranch, carefully coordinating her visits so as not to intrude on W. R.’s life with Marion. “The co-existence between Marion and Mrs. Hearst was mutually understood,” Charles Chaplin remembered. “When it was nearing time for Mrs. Hearst’s arrival, Marion and the rest of us would discreetly leave or return to [Los Angeles]. Millicent had no illusions.... She often talked confidentially with me about the relationship of Marion and W. R., but never with bitterness. ‘He still acts as though nothing had ever happened between us and as if Marion doesn’t exist,’ she said.”10
Millicent was reluctant to give up the pretense that she and her husband were still living together. On January 12,1926, an article about Millicent appeared in the New York American stating that she had “passed the autumn and early winter at her estate, ‘Las Estrellas,’ at San Simeon, California.” Hearst wrote Joseph Moore in New York with an angry reprimand and correction. “I do not like the article....I do not know who wrote it, but I would like to know, and also why it was written in the way it was. It says that Mrs. Hearst has ‘passed the autumn and early winter at her estate, ‘Las Estrellas,’ at San Simeon, California.’ In the first place, the name of the estate is not ‘Las Estrellas.’ In the second place, it is not Mrs. Hearst’s estate. It is peculiarly mine, free even from community ownership under the laws of California because it is my inheritance. However, I have not, of course, any objections to having it referred to as ‘our estate,’ but I do not like to be so wholly excluded from it.” Moore apologized, telegramming Hearst that the offending captions had been “practically dictated” by Mrs. Hearst.11
W. R. and Millicent were never out of reach of one another. “There was hardly a week,” Bill, Jr. recalled, “that he didn’t write a letter, send a telegram, or speak with Mother on the phone.” They exchanged greetings and gifts on one another’s birthdays. “Hope you have happy birthday,” Hearst telegrammed Millicent from Los Angeles on July 16,1926. “Do you want pick out a present at the shops or do you want me to send a check? Think latter is more sensible under circumstances.”12
Millicent, it appeared, never quite accepted the fact that she had been permanently replaced by Marion. And Hearst, it is just as clear, never wanted her to. In September of 1926, Millicent asked that a portrait of Hearst be taken out of storage in the Bronx and hung in the library on the ninth floor of the Clarendon. In early 1927, she telegrammed Hearst from Palm Beach, where she was vacationing, to suggest that they travel to Europe together. “Allie Mcintosh [one of Millicent’s society friends] would like us to take Lady Mountbatten’s house for May and June in London. One thousand weekly. Thinks we would have interesting time. What do you say?” That same day, W. R. received a telegram from another of Millicent’s friends, Marjorie Jones: “Millicent and I have decided that you must ta
ke us abroad as promised for May and June. Lots of love. Please answer.”13
In the end, Millicent had to tour Europe alone. Her vacation ended abruptly when she caught typhoid fever in Paris. “Heavenly day, where have you been to get typhoid,” W. R. cabled her from San Simeon. “Let us know how you are getting on. Everybody well and send love.”14
Like two old friends, husband and wife continued over the years to chat long-distance about family, acquaintances, real estate, politics, even sports. When Gene Tunney defeated Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight boxing championship in September 1926, W. R. telegrammed Millicent in New York, “Wasn’t it wonderful to have a good loyal Marine win instead of a slacker?”15
Millicent continued to take an interest in the family business, serving as a roving ambassador of sorts during her frequent travels in Europe. In the summer of 1927, when she visited Rome, Hearst asked her to give his regards to Mussolini, whom he was trying to recruit to write for his newspapers. During her visit, Millicent must have asked Il Duce for his help in finding Italian marble and marble carvers for San Simeon. On July 18,1927, Hearst telegrammed Julia Morgan to ask her to relocate the draftsmen who were working in the Bay Area on the drawings for the marble work so that he could meet with them at San Simeon: “These have been hanging fire for some time. We can finish them here quickly and send them to Mussolini and get all the finished material back by April 1 and begin erecting them this coming spring.”16
Though he had separated himself by three thousand miles from his wife and children, W. R. was not prepared to let go of them entirely. He had chosen not to live with Millicent anymore, but he still cared for her. This is not to say that he acquiesced to her every demand. While paying her bills and settling a munificent allowance on her, he continued to insist that she learn to live within her budget—something he had never managed to do. He also scolded her for abusing her position and asking for too many special favors. He telegrammed her in Paris in the summer of 1926 to demand that she stop asking Hearst officials abroad to pay any bills: “They are not authorized to do this and [it] embarrasses them greatly. I will pay return steamer reservations ... You are being supplied with ample funds for other requirements. Love.” In 1930, when she innocently asked for copies of Charlie Chaplin’s photograph for the boys, he replied angrily, “That is a ridiculous request. We have overtaxed the courtesy of the various companies by getting pictures for myself, yourself, George, William, John and everybody connected with the family. We will have to stop what amounts to an imposition.”17
