(6 of 7)
Phantasmagoria. The fantastic pyrotechnics of colored ink and nightmare layouts with which Hearst, ever demure in appearance, staggered public attention in the next few years are still faintly reflected today in his American Weekly (circulation: 6,000,000). Snorting brontosauri with swarms of pterodactyls perched on their backs go gallivanting from the primordial slime across the toes of fabulous princesses, heiresses and actresses who, swooning in ermine negligees with hot love-letters stacked around them, "confess all" under the shadow of Science's latest mechanical star-splitter, a device for laying the centuries end to end-so that they will reach from the pearly minarets of wicked Constantinople to the awesome depths of the profoundest ocean abyss yet plumbed by man ! Editorially the Journals were equally exciting. They flayed Tammany and the Trusts, boomed Bryan, whanged McKinley, eagle-screamed at Spain until they brought on war. Hearst. getting himself commissioned an ensign, leaped pantless from his launch at the battle of Santiago, rounded up 26 dripping Spaniards on the beach, herded them at pistol's point into his chartered steamer and delivered them in person to Admiral Schley.* Nor was this flair for the theatrical a symptom of professional adolescence. In later years, a genius for adventure, he owned a cinema company, promoted aviation, practically leased the Graf Zeppelin for a world flight, and sent Sir Hubert Wilkins to Antarctica to discover Hearstland.
quot;Wicked" Hearst. All these manifestations were simply the performance of a master journalist-showman run away with by his own technique. Strangely mingled in Hearst were patriotism, the sense of power and a desire to sell newspapers, with the last dominant. Hearst always loved to entertain, with his own stories, songs, guitar, clog-dancing as well as lavish parties. His newspaper formula added Money, Sex and Patriotism to the old imperial adage about Bread and Circuses. In 1896 he plumped for Bryan and free silver. After the Spanish war he discovered he had gone too far in his formulistic excoriation of President McKinley as a tool of the Plutocracy. McKinley's assassination was blamed on the Journal's incendiary editorials. Hearst changed the morning Journal's name to American.