And the Rest Is History (12 page)

When the Nazis goose-stepped into Paris, Gertrude and Alice's friends encouraged them to return to America; Stein refused by explaining, “America is my country, but Paris is my hometown.” As lesbians and Jews, they managed to escape by moving to Bilignin, their country retreat in the south of France, where they were aided by a collaborator. After liberation, Stein wrote to Toklas, “I love you so much more / every war more and more and more and / more.”

In 1946, Stein began to experience stomach pain and was diagnosed with cancer. When the end was near she was taken to a hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. On vigil was Alice, already grieving the remaining empty years. However, like Rick and Ilsa, they would always have Paris.

As Gertrude died, Alice listened to her “deep, full, velvety, contralto's voice for the last time,” ask, “What is the answer?” Alice did not reply. Gertrude then said her last words to her first love, “Then what is the question?”

14

1916

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S
tanding high above the sea and close to the sky, a California castle stands silent sentry. If its walls could talk, it would recall the glory days of yesteryear when Hollywood's elite rushed to San Simeon for a coveted invitation to William Randolph Hearst's pleasure dome. However, its most riveting tale would be of the romance of the tycoon and his showgirl.

Marion Cecilia Douras, born in 1897, was the youngest of five children. At a young age she was bitten by the showbiz bug as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She determined that she would stand on stage one day, and she was not going to let her stutter be an impediment. In order to reinvent herself, after seeing a Brooklyn realty sign, Davies Real Estate, she adopted the name as her own. With her eye on the prize, she traded her native Brooklyn for Broadway. In the end, Marion achieved immortality not for what she did in front of the bright lights, but for her love affair with the man who sat in front of them.

William Randolph Hearst was born with the silverest of spoons as the only son of a millionaire miner. When he was a child, his adoring mother, Phoebe, took him to Europe, where he developed a lifelong passion for fine art and antiques. He attended Harvard (with a ten-thousand-a-month allowance), until his expulsion for presenting several of his professors silver chamber pots engraved with their names. This did not trouble him, as his aspiration lay not with academia but with publishing. His foray into the arena he would come to dominate began when he persuaded his father, Senator George Hearst, to let him run the family-owned
San Francisco Enquirer
. He transformed it into the city's most popular daily, partially through publicity gimmicks such as marching bands, oyster dinners, firework displays, and free boat rides. After he acquired the
New York Journal
, the publishing industry would forever bear his imprint.

His empire grew to encompass dozens of newspapers and magazines (the latter included
Cosmopolitan
,
Town and Country
, and
Harper's Bazaar
). In 1903, the day before his fortieth birthday, William married a twenty-one-year-old chorus girl, Millicent Wilson, with whom he had five sons.

When his adored mother passed away in 1919, William inherited 168,000 acres on a hilltop, La Cuesta Encantada (“The Enchanted Hill”), in San Simeon, California, on which he spent $37 million to build a castle. The walls of its 165 rooms were graced with his $50 million art collection (a quarter of a billion dollars in modern currency); its grounds included a Roman-style pool where
Spartacus
was filmed as well as the largest private zoo in the country. Hearst called San Simeon his “little hideaway.” When he lived on the East Coast his form of relaxation was the theater, where he was to meet the greatest love of his life—one for whom he was to risk his reputation.

The first time Marion met William, the eighteen-year-old Marion was working as one of the chorus girls in the Ziegfeld Follies. As she was cascading down the steps on the stage, she caught the eye, and eventually the heart, of the publishing baron who occupied the front two seats (one was reserved for his hat)—William Randolph Hearst. Afterward, he had bouquets, gloves, candies, and silver boxes delivered to her dressing room and arranged to have her photographed at his studio. During the session, however, she caught only a glimpse of him, as he slipped away before they could talk.

The two crossed paths again a few months later in Palm Beach, when, on the way to an amusement park, she lost control of the brakes on her bicycle and crashed, just missing the car in which William, coincidentally, was sitting. Stunned, as she was lying flat on her back, he asked if he could help. He tied her broken bike to his car and told his chauffeur to take her to the Royal Poinciana Hotel. They recognized each other from the photography session, but no mention of it was made, as Mrs. Hearst would not have been amused. He then stuck his head in the car and asked his wife to walk with him.

Soon after, Marion was at a party in New York City; as she turned to leave, Hearst shook her hand. When he departed, she opened her palm; on it was a diamond wristwatch.

Eventually the fifty-eight-year-old tycoon and the teenaged showgirl began a romantic relationship. When he asked her why she was going with a married man twice her age and the father of five, she replied, “Because I'm a gold digger.” Hearst, forever surrounded by sycophants, found her forthright words refreshing. Besides, he was in the throes of infatuation.

As time went by, despite their huge differences, the two fell in love. William felt pain that he could not make her Mrs. Hearst; to comfort W. R., as she called him, she said, “Love is not always created at the altar. Love doesn't need a wedding ring.” She felt they were together and that was all that mattered. William became Marion's Svengali, and his tabloids praised her skills as an actress; she was once described as the bubbles in champagne. Marion's comment on her lover's promotion was, “With me it was 5% talent and 95% publicity.” In her autobiography she stated that had it not been for Hearst, she would have ended up as a Bertha, a sewing-machine girl.

Soon the newsman himself became the news, and the public felt Ziegfeld's folly had become Hearst's own.

Mrs. Hearst was enraged at her husband's public display of adultery, which had become Hollywood's worst-kept secret. However, the former showgirl had established herself as the grande dame of Manhattan and felt that her social position would not be enhanced with a divorce. Soon she absented herself from the West Coast, and Marion became the official belle of Hearst's castle, which drew European blue bloods such as Winston Churchill and American royalty such as Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, John F. Kennedy, and Charles Lindbergh. Marion would later immortalize these heady days in her autobiography,
The Times We Had.

Hearst was a generous man, and when it came to Marion his largesse knew no limit. After spying a photograph of St. Donat's Castle in Wales, he bought the property in 1925 and presented it as a token of his love. George Bernard Shaw told Hearst that his castle was “what heaven would be like if God had your money.” The titan also purchased for Marion a 118-room Santa Monica home, Ocean House (dubbed “the Versailles of Hollywood”), which today is worth $165 million. Anybody who was anyone, such as Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo, coveted invitations to Marion's three-day, on-the-beach, stop-the-band-at-four-a.m. soirees. Hearst showered her with jewels, perhaps in guilt over never being able to give her the one jewel they both wished she could have worn: a wedding band.

Unlike most “other women,” Marion never demanded that the mistress become the wife. She told him, “You are one of the most important men in the world. Now it's all right for you to have a blonde ex-Follies girl for your mistress. That's all right. But you divorce the wife and mother of your five sons to marry a much younger blonde, and you're an old fool.” Marion knew she was W. R.'s wife of his heart; with that she was content.

Although Hearst was omnipotent in his publishing empire, there were some things that even the Chief (the name his employees called him) could not control. Orson Welles's movie
Citizen Kane
was a roman à clef based on the mogul; it portrayed his love interest as Sally, a talentless, drunken opportunist whose own ambitions were curtailed by her tycoon's megalomania. Herman J. Mankiewicz, co-writer of
Citizen Kane
, heard the name Rosebud from the actress Louise Brooks at San Simeon; apparently it was Hearst's pet name for a certain part of Marion's anatomy. Citizen Hearst was not impressed. Marion was equally defensive; she told a reporter, “I don't care what you say about me, but don't hurt him. He's a wonderful man.” Welles later commented on his film, “Kane was better than Hearst but Marion was better than Susan.”

In 1937, the unthinkable happened: Hearst had run out of money. However, Marion came to his rescue. She liquidated everything she owned and presented W. R. with a check for a million dollars. Overcome with emotion, he asked why she made the sacrifice. Her answer was that the gold digger had fallen in love. Not only did Marion make the sacrifice of money; she also gave up her career to be with the man who now needed her more than ever. She explained, “I thought that the least I could do for a man who had been so wonderful and great ... was to be a companion to him.” She proved that her love had not been merely dollars deep.

In his eighth decade, Hearst rebounded financially, and the couple returned to the castle. In their evenings in the home, they sat together in their screening room, where tears came to William's eyes as he watched Marion's movies. In the morning she woke up to poems he had penned for her; a cherished one ended, “But no beauty of earth is so fair a sight / As the girl who lies by my side at night.”

In 1951, the unthinkable happened once more; Hearst had run out of time. In failing health, he was taken to his Beverly Hills home to be near medical care. His mansion's bedroom was emptied of all the treasures he had spent a lifetime acquiring; they all remained at the only place Hearst cared about, the home on the Enchanted Hill. His only personal effect was a photograph, on a desk beside his massive canopied bed, of Marion, who had been his faithful companion for thirty-four years. On it she had written a quotation from
Romeo and Juliet
: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea / My love as deep; the more I give thee / The more I have, for both are infinite.”

Citizen Kane's final whispered word, “Rosebud,” held the elusive key to the life of the prince of publishing. Hearst departed the world with no recorded last words; however, if he had, there is no doubt which name would have been on his lips.