William Randolph Hearst Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Financial disaster === Hearst's crusade against Roosevelt and the New Deal, combined with union strikes and boycotts of his properties, undermined the financial strength of his empire. Circulation of his major publications declined in the mid-1930s, while rivals such as the New York ''Daily News'' were flourishing. He refused to take effective cost-cutting measures, and instead increased his very expensive art purchases. His friend [[Joseph P. Kennedy]] offered to buy the magazines, but Hearst jealously guarded his empire and refused. Instead, he sold some of his heavily mortgaged real estate. San Simeon itself was mortgaged to ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' owner [[Harry Chandler]] in 1933 for $600,000.<ref name="Victoria Kastner 2000">{{cite book| title=Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House| first=Victoria| last=Kastner| publisher=Harry N. Abrams| year=2000| page=183}}</ref> Finally his financial advisors realized he was tens of millions of dollars in debt, and could not pay the interest on the loans, let alone reduce the principal. The proposed bond sale failed to attract investors when Hearst's financial crisis became widely known. Marion Davies's stardom waned and Hearst's movies also began to hemorrhage money. As the crisis deepened he let go of most of his household staff, sold his exotic animals to the Los Angeles Zoo and named a trustee to control his finances. He still refused to sell his beloved newspapers. At one point, to avoid outright bankruptcy, he had to accept a $1 million loan from Marion Davies, who sold all her jewelry, stocks and bonds to raise the cash for him.<ref name="Victoria Kastner 2000" /> Davies also managed to raise him another million as a loan from ''[[Washington Herald]]'' owner [[Cissy Patterson]]. The trustee cut Hearst's annual salary to $500,000, and stopped the annual payment of $700,000 in dividends. He had to pay rent for living in his castle at San Simeon. Legally Hearst avoided bankruptcy although the public generally saw it as such, since appraisers went through the tapestries, paintings, furniture, silver, pottery, buildings, autographs, jewelry, and other collectibles. Items in the thousands were gathered from a five-story warehouse in New York, warehouses near San Simeon containing large amounts of Greek sculpture and ceramics, and the contents of St. Donat's. His collections were sold off in a series of auctions and private sales in 1938β39. John D. Rockefeller, Junior, bought $100,000 of antique silver for his new museum at [[Colonial Williamsburg]]. The market for art and antiques had not recovered from the depression, so Hearst made an overall loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.<ref name="Victoria Kastner 2000" /> During this time, Hearst's friend George Loorz commented sarcastically: "He would like to start work on the outside pool [at San Simeon], start a new reservoir etc. but told me yesterday 'I want so many things but haven't got the money.' Poor fellow, let's take up a collection."<ref name="Victoria Kastner 2000" /> He was embarrassed in early 1939 when ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine published a feature which revealed he was at risk of defaulting on his mortgage for San Simeon and losing it to his creditor and publishing rival, Harry Chandler.<ref name="Victoria Kastner 2000" /> This, however, was averted, as Chandler agreed to extend the repayment. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page