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She was glad that he had managed to keep active, mentally at least, almost to the end. "He wrote three editorials in this last month—one on Eisenhower in Europe, one on Korea and I forget the other." When he entered his final coma, she sat all night by his bed until the small hours of morning, finally agreed to let the attending doctor give her a sedative, was asleep when death came.
When she awakened, Hearst's sons had already removed their father's body, and the Hearst sons and retainers, summoned for the great man's end, had vanished. Said Marion Davies: "They didn't even let me say goodbye." Most of Hearst's effects were removed at the same time. On the bedside desk remained only a calling card (General of the Army Douglas MacArthur), and a large photograph of Miss Davies, which he had always kept beside him. It was inscribed "To W.R. from Marion," with a quotation from Romeo and Juliet:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite.
Only a few days before, she had been The Chief's principal link with his empire, relaying his telephoned commands: "The Chief suggests . . ." The Hearst-papers had chronicled her every move. Now they stopped mentioning her. Even her courier-delivered daily copies of the two Los Angeles Hearstpapers were summarily cut off.
The New Order. This sudden change in the old order of things was quickly manifested in other ways. Within 20 minutes of The Chief's death, Richard E. Berlin, top operating boss of the Hearst chain, swept into the Davies home, told the guards and nurses: "You are all working for me now." Berlin, now second only to William Randolph Hearst Jr. in power, was likely to take a bigger share of command all down the empire's line. Both Hearst and Berlin well knew the empire was ailing; in 1951's first six months, even the profits of its major newspaper operating company had shown a disturbing drop from $3,599,800 to $1,322,700, due partly to dwindling advertising in the onetime money-coining Sunday supplement American Weekly (circ. 9,374,850).
One casualty was the Weekly's editor, aging (69) Walter Howey, prototype of The Front Page's Managing Editor Walter Burns. Just four days before his death, Hearst removed Howey and replaced him with mild Ken McCaleb, 50, who had done an able job of sparking up the New York Mirror's Sunday magazine. Howey, himself one of the eight executors named in Hearst's will,* remains as an "editorial consultant" and editor of the Boston Hearstpapers, but reportedly his power is on the wane.
Those closest to young Hearst predict that he will soon drop such Hearstian acts as antivivisection campaigns, try to get a note of restraint into editorials. Young Bill has a tough job; the Hearst chain, long faltering, was saved mainly by the lush advertising of World War II and the ensuing boom, plus stringent economies. Most of the top brass is now 60 or over, and new blood is needed in the top command. In Hearst shops, the talk is that young Bill will want some changes made.