William Randolph Hearst…

was born on this date in 1863. Was Hearst the model for Charles Foster Kane? Here is what Orson Welles had to say in 1975 (written to promote a book about Hearst and actress Marion Davies).

When Frederick Remington was dispatched to the Cuban front to provide the Hearst newspapers with sketches of our first small step into American imperialism, the noted artist complained by telegram that there wasn’t really enough shooting to keep him busy. “You make the pictures,” Hearst wired back, “I’ll make the war.” This can be recognized not only as the true voice of power but also as a line of dialogue from a movie. In fact, it is the only purely Hearstian element in Citizen Kane.

There are parallels, but these can be just as misleading as comparisons. If San Simeon hadn’t existed, it would have been necessary for the authors of the movie to invent it. Except for the telegram already noted and the crazy art collection (much too good to resist), In Kane everything was invented.

Let the incredulous take note of the facts.

William Randolph Hearst was born rich. He was the pampered son of an adoring mother. That is the decisive fact about him. Charles Foster Kane was born poor and was raised by a bank. There is no room here for details, but the differences between the real man and the character in the film are far greater than those between the shipowner and the newspaper tycoon.

And what of Susan Alexander? What indeed.

It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story, but the man was not Hearst. Susan, Kane’s second wife, is not even based on the real-life soprano. Like most fictional characters, Susan’s resemblance to other fictional characters is quite startling. To Marion Davies she bears no resemblance at all.

Kane picked up Susan on a street corner—from nowhere—where the poor girl herself thought she belonged. Marion Davies was no dim shop-girl; she was a famous beauty who had her choice of rich, powerful and attractive beaux before Hearst sent his first bouquet to her stage door. That Susan was Kane’s wife and Marion was Hearst’s mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today’s changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. Hearst built more than one castle, and Marion was the hostess in all of them: they were pleasure domes indeed, and the Beautiful People of the day fought for invitations. Xanadu was a lonely fortress, and Susan was quite right to escape from it. The mistress was never one of Hearst’s possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than thirty years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane.

Susan was forced into a singing career because Kane had been forced out of politics. She was pushed from one public disaster to another by the bitter frustration of the man who believed that because he had married her and raised her up out of obscurity she was his to use as he might will. There is hatred in that.

Hearst put up the money for many of the movies in which Marion Davies was starred and, more importantly, backed her with publicity. But this was less of a favor than might appear. That vast publicity machine was all too visible; and finally, instead of helping, it cast a shadow—a shadow of doubt. Could the star have existed without the machine? The question darkened an otherwise brilliant career.

As one who shares much of the blame for casting another shadow—the shadow of Susan Alexander Kane—I rejoice in this opportunity to record something which today is all but forgotten except for those lucky enough to have seen a few of her pictures: Marion Davies was one of the most delightfully accomplished comediennes in the whole history of the screen. She would have been a star if Hearst had never happened. She was also a delightful and very considerable person.

Calling the shots

From Sideline Chatter

Punter Jeff Feagles, formerly known as No. 10 in your New York Giants program, has agreed to switch to No. 17 this season so top draft pick Eli Manning can wear 10.

“Had Feagles balked at the offer,” speculated Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Archie Manning would probably have ordered the Giants to trade Feagles to the San Diego Chargers.”

But Archie isn’t the only Manning manning the phone lines.

“I received a call from Eli Manning the other day,” reader Dominador Nazareno told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He told me not to draft him for my fantasy football team.”

Reading list

Circulating among the blogs that are not consumed with whether Vietnam medals are the same as ribbons, is a list of authors and works from literature. The idea is to highlight those you’ve read and post the list so that the world can see that you are a person of substance — or not.

NewMexiKen provides his version of the list below; if I wasn’t sure, I didn’t mark it, though I wouldn’t want to take a quiz on any. Alas, I seem to have read more of these works while I was in high school and the first few years of college than in all the years since.

Continue reading Reading list

Three Weeks with My Brother

NewMexiKen read Three Weeks with My Brother last night. It’s a memoir framed within a three-week around-the-world trip novelist Nicholas Sparks took with his brother Micah early in 2003. As it says on the jacket, “It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at thirty-seven and thirty-eight respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family.”

NewMexiKen expected a travel narrative, but—while there is a bit of descriptive material—the story is much more a memoir of growing up in the Sparks family. As such, it is funny, enlightening in a way, and emotionally moving. I can’t compare it to Sparks’ novels, as I haven’t read any, but I get the sense it may be similar. In any case, it kept me at it until 1 AM.

Sparks has a number of excerpts on line.

They’re everywhere

From the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles will post warnings in Griffith Park, one of the country’s largest urban wilderness areas, after a mountain lion was seen by people there for the first time in 100 years, officials said today.

A park ranger, a city public works superintendent and several equestrians recently reported seeing a mountain lion in a northwest section of the park, used primarily by equestrians, said parks spokeswoman Jane Kolb.

That’s Governor Aunt Bea to you

There are things about Olene Walker that come as no surprise. Like the nickname. Yes, Mrs. Walker has been the governor of Utah for several months now. Yet even here, sitting in the august confines of her office in a regal red suit, the recently promoted lieutenant governor exudes a grits-and-cornbread charm that explains why legislative colleagues called her “Aunt Bea.”

She is, after all, the mother of seven, the grandmother of 25, and – at 73 – the oldest governor in the nation. But for those who imagined that she would simply serve out her predecessor’s term as a “grandmother in chief,” Walker has been full of surprises – from controversial vetoes to defiance of the state’s congressional delegation.

Less than six months after assuming the post vacated by Gov. Michael Leavitt, who departed to head the US Environmental Protection Agency, Walker has become something of a celebrity.

Read more about Governor Walker from The Christian Science Monitor.

Jay Leno…

is 54 today.

“President Bush’s campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his service records thrown out.”

Jay Leno

The crew of HMS Bounty

… mutinied on this date in 1789. The following is from the review of The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander from The New York Times.

The events that took place aboard the Bounty at sunrise on April 28, 1789, boil down to the characters of two men, William Bligh, age 34, and the mutineer, Fletcher Christian, who was a decade younger. As he waited, hands bound behind him, to be lowered into the Bounty’s overloaded launch — and having shouted himself hoarse calling for aid — Bligh asked Christian, who had sailed with him twice before, how he could have found the ingratitude to mutiny. Bligh recorded Christian’s answer in his journal. ”That! — Captain Bligh,” said Christian, sounding much like Milton’s Satan, ”that is the thing — I am in hell — I am in hell.”

Harper Lee…

was born on this date in 1926. The Writer’s Almanac tells her story.

It’s the birthday of the woman who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Harper Lee, born Nelle Harper in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She grew up in Monroeville, which had a population of about 7,000, and it was the model for the town of Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee wrote, “It was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

Her father was a lawyer, and she spent much of her free time hanging around the courthouse and playing golf with the children of other lawyers. She thought it seemed like a pretty good way to live, and for a long time she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. She went to law school at the University of Alabama, and after she graduated she worked as a reservation clerk for an airline in New York City. She spent all day at work, and then came home to write for four hours every evening. In the mid ’50s, Lee started working on a novel about the trial of a black man in a small town in Alabama.

In December of 1956, she wasn’t able to get back to Alabama to celebrate Christmas with her family, so instead she celebrated with a family she knew in Manhattan. On Christmas morning, Lee and the family gathered around the tree to open gifts. Most of them were for the children of the family, but when everything under the tree had been unwrapped, the parents asked Lee to open an envelope that was resting on the branches. Inside was a note that said, “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.” The couple gave her a loan to devote an entire year to nothing but writing, and it was during that year that Lee wrote most of the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

She sent the manuscript to a publisher in New York, and they told her that it had potential but that it was too much like a collection of short stories and not enough like a novel. She spent the next two and a half years rewriting it, and To Kill A Mockingbird was published in July of 1960. It was priced at $3.95, and it sold more than two and a half million copies in less than a year. It was selected by the Reader’s Digest book club, the Literary Guild book club, and the Book-of-the-Month Club; and it was immediately published in more than a dozen languages. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer who defends a black man named Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white girl. The title of the novel comes from something Finch says to his daughter: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

To Kill a Mockingbird sells about a million copies every year, and it’s sold over thirty million copies since its publication. In 1963, just three years after its publication, it was taught in eight percent of U.S. public middle schools and high schools, and today that figure is closer to eighty percent. Only Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Huckleberry Finn are assigned more often.

Undeniable patriotism

General Clark speaks strongly on behalf of John Kerry in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. Two excerpts:

In the heat of a political campaign, attacks come from all directions. That’s why John Kerry’s military records are so compelling; they measure the man before his critics or his supporters saw him through a political lens. These military records show that John Kerry served his country with valor, and that those who served with him and above him held him in high regard. That’s honor enough for any veteran. …

Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn’t serve, or didn’t show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve — often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.

Stand up, be proud

Albuquerque blogger Arthur Alpert with Alpert’s Truth on liberals

Further, they may not understand how easy it would be to defend liberalism.

If it were up to conservatives, for example, there might be no United States of America. Known as Tories then, they sided with the King, remember?

If not for liberals, we might not have survived Hitler. Conservatives – Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and major industrial leaders – thought we could get along with him. The radical right of the time – Father Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith, the German-American Bund – found him congenial.

Or the Depression. The free market folks who got us into the Depression had no idea how to get us out. FDR’s New Deal didn’t succeed either, but softened the blow for millions of middle-class and poor Americans until World War II revived the economy. (Roosevelt described himself, remember, as “a little left of center.)

Mind you, conservatives are not, need not be the enemy, for the folks in the White House have no right to that term. They are big government folks, claiming all kinds of power for the Executive, lying to the Congress, ignoring State’s rights and individual liberties.

Also, in their passion to reward the rich and the corporate elite, they have given liberals a gift.

A liberal candidate can say today, “If a balanced budget is liberal, that’s me.”

He could go on to say, “If considering war a last resort is liberal, that’s me, too.”

“If sharing some of the wealth this country produces with its middle-class is liberal,” hey, you got me.

Archivist of the U.S. update

From Bruce Craig of the National Coalition for History and posted on H-Net

Controversy continues to mount over the Bush administration’s nomination of Allen Weinstein to succeed John Carlin as Archivist of the United States. Press coverage in major newspapers including the Washington Post, New York Times, and other major publications and wire services such as the Associated Press has helped heighten public awareness of the issue that focuses on an apparent attempt by the White House to replace John Carlin as Archivist of the United States with a person of its own choosing.

Due in part to the publicity and to a statement of concern issued by nearly two dozen historical and archival organizations (see http://www.archivists.org/statements/weinstein.asp ), the White House effort to confirm the nominee through an “expedited” appointment process appears to have been thwarted. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee — the committee of jurisdiction that will be making a recommendation to the U.S. Senate about the qualifications of the nominee –indeed will give the Weinstein nomination a full and proper hearing incoming weeks. According to committee spokesperson Leslie Phillips, “We’re just beginning the vetting process…But we will examine him [Weinstein] carefully as we do all nominees.”

Continue reading Archivist of the U.S. update

No savoir-faire at all

Report from the Los Angeles Times

Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks Monday afternoon at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., drew sharp criticism from an unexpected source: Westminster College President Fletcher M. Lamkin.

Lamkin was so unhappy with Cheney’s partisan address, which included swipes at Democratic candidate John F. Kerry, that he sent a campuswide letter expressing his displeasure.

Fletcher wrote that he was “surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech.”

The school’s president had anticipated a foreign policy talk on the situation in Iraq. Given the political content of Cheney’s speech, Fletcher said in his letter that he had invited Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, to speak on campus “in the interest of balance and fairness and integrity.” Fletcher could not be reached for further comment.

“The vice president today put the war on terror in its historical context and addressed the very different views held by President Bush and his opponent, John Kerry, for fighting and winning the war on terror,” said Bush-Cheney campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish in response to Fletcher’s letter.

“A robust debate about how best to protect our country from the threat of global terror is central to this election.”

Westminster has a long tradition of political orators. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech there in 1946, in which he coined the phrase describing Cold War tensions between East and West.