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Lawyer Neylan has won William Randolph Hearst's confidence more completely than anyone ever has 'before. To him the 71 -year-old publisher is a "great American," a real Progressive, an unappreciated genius, a master of English prose, an extravagant, wilful client. But Lawyer Neylan's intense loyalties never beget humility. No yessing Hearstling, he some-times lectures Mr. Hearst as if he were a small boy. Visitors at the Hearst castle at San Simeon tell of the wistful note in the querulous Hearst voice: "I'd like to buy it, but Mr. Neylan won't let me." He usually buys it anyway, and Chancellor of Exchequer Neylan finds the money. Periodically Chancellor Neylan threatens to resign. The fact that he does not has nothing to do with the fat Hearst retainer. From many another client rich Jack Neylan is making all the money he needs to provide for all he cares about — his wife and daughter, Jane Frances (now a senior at University of California), and his handsome estate at Woodside on the San Mateo Peninsula, for which he wrote a check for $160,000 five years ago.
So strong is Lawyer Neylan's influence with Hearst that he is reputed to have persuaded the publisher in 1932 that Franklin Roosevelt was a satisfactory choice for the Democratic nomination, thus starting the break from Garner which put the President across (TIME, July 11, 1932). But many a would-be Neylan client would be surprised to learn that the real reason his business was refused was that Neylan suspected him of trying to buy Hearst influence. At every opportunity he insists that anyone who claims an ability to deliver Hearst is a faker.
Lawyer Neylan has a real affection for his client, and Hearst often sneaks up on this blindly sentimental side when debates between them become warm. Dopesters predict that when the aging publisher dies, Jack Neylan will head the regency that tells Hearst's sons and Hearst's editors what to do. Yet some of his warmest admirers regret the Hearst connection, feel that Neylan's own capacities would have carried him farther, less equivocally.