From frontier mining tycoons to one of the most powerful newspaper publishers in history, the Hearst dynasty has spawned a vast business empire. Today, Hearst Communications generates annual revenues of around $11.5 billion (£8.5bn), and the Hearst family is worth $21 billion (£15.4bn) according to Forbes, making them the 12th richest family in America. But they've had their fair share of lows too, including a kidnapping story that saw a Hearst heiress become a convicted bank robber. Click or scroll through the eventful story of this high-rolling family, and the secrets behind their wealth.
The Hearst family actually had humble begininngs. George Hearst was born in 1820 and was raised in a log cabin on a small farm in Franklin County, Missouri. As a child he played at prospecting, hunting for chunks of lead on the many local copper mines in the area. This sparked a lifelong passion for excavating the earth for valuable metals. However, disaster struck when George’s father died, leaving huge debts of $10,000. At 26 years old, George had to assume responsibility for the family.
Under George's management the farm started to make money. He even opened a store and started to lease two prospective lead mines, which soon started to produce lead and copper. It's said that within two years George was able to pay off his father's debt. But by 1850 news of gold in California swept into town and George left home to seek his fortune. After a disappointing winter of mining in Placerville, George and his team moved on to Grass Valley, where he soon hit on gold at a mine he later named Merrimac Hill after a river in Missouri. Then came another rich find at what became the Potisi mine. He sold both mines in 1852. But this was only the beginning for George...
After buying and selling several mines, he bought a share in the Ophir silver mine in Nevada, which produced 38 tonnes of silver ore that sold for $91,000, the equivalent of $2.5 million (£1.8m) today. Eventually, he owned interests in the biggest mines in US history: Anaconda copper mine, Comstock Lode, and the Homestake gold mine (pictured), which Hearst invested into in 1877. The son of a debt-ridden farmer had become a multi-millionaire. He also had a stake in Ontario silver mine, which eventually added $12 million to the $19 million fortune he had when he died.
Business boomed when Homestake became the first mine listed on the Stock Exchange in 1879. It produced a massive 39.8 million troy ounces of gold and 9 million troy ounces of silver until its closure in 2001. Alongside his mining interests, George became a Democrat Senator in 1886. Around this time, he acquired the San Francisco Examiner as payment for a gambling debt, which would prove pivotal for future Hearst wealth. George died in 1891 at the age of 70, leaving a huge $19 million fortune to his wife, a certain Phoebe Apperson...
Missouri-born Phoebe Apperson was just 19 when she married wealthy miner George Hearst, who was then 42. Her parents didn't approve of the age gap, but she had a sharp intellect, negotiating a pre-nuptial agreement of 50 shares in George’s lucrative Comstock mine. A school teacher before marriage, her passion for education became a defining characteristic of her later philanthropy. She doted on her only child, William Randolph Hearst, who was born in 1863. She introduced her son to classical art, which shaped his future passion for collecting art.
As sole heir to George's multimillion-dollar fortune, Phoebe became a hugely influential philanthropist, donating antiquities to museums and bankrolling archaeological expeditions. Notably, in 1895 she sponsored a competition for the redesign of the University of California at Berkeley campus. The result was the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, dedicated to her husband George (pictured). She also established scholarships for female students and was the first woman to serve on UC Berkeley's board of directors.
A big believer in education as a driver for social mobility, Phoebe co-founded the National Congress of Mothers, pictured here in 1897 (Phoebe is third from right on the front row). It evolved into today’s National Parent-Teacher Association. In 1911, Phoebe declared herself in favour of the Suffragette Movement of votes for women. Her philanthropy was wide-ranging, from building schools and libraries across the nation to preserving Mount Vernon, former family home of President George Washington.
Although the gold mines Phoebe owned continued to yield about $10 million per year, she scaled back her philanthropic commitments in later years. Instead she retreated to her magnificent mansion, Hacienda del Pozo de Verona, set on 1,900 acres in Pleasanton, California, which was built in the style of an 18th-century Spanish fortified villa. Phoebe died there in 1919, aged 77, during the Spanish Flu pandemic. On her death Phoebe left $11 million, the equivalent of $164 million (£120m) today, to her only child, William Randolph Hearst.
William Randolph Hearst had a flair for the dramatic. At Harvard University he was in drama group, Hasty Pudding Theatricals, whose hallmark was burlesque cross-dressing musicals. This continued later in life and William is pictured second right with mistress Marion Davies, centre. But it was his uncontrollable urge to prank professors that got him expelled from the prestigious university. George was furious, but Phoebe quietly paid her son a $10,000 per month allowance.
Desperate to prove himself, William (pictured in 1900) pleaded with his father for ownership of the failing San Francisco Examiner newspaper. His father agreed and, bankrolled by his mother, he put $8 million of family money into creating the most popular paper in San Francisco, hiring top writing talent Mark Twain, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce and political cartoonist Homer Davenport along the way. But it was his signature sensationalising of news which both made his fortune, and tainted his legacy.
Eager to expand, William bought The New York Morning Journal for $150,000, the equivalent of $4.4 million (£3.2m) today, in which he favoured popularist journalism focusing on sex, scandal, sport, human interest and crime stories told in an exaggerated style. It became known as ‘yellow journalism’. Pictured is a satirical attack on Hearst’s newspapers, depicting him as a jester spewing out sensationalised news. But working-class readers loved the stories, and circulation boomed from just 77,000 to more than a million readers per day.
Locked in a sales war with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, William stole top writers away with the lure of higher salaries. Hearst and Pulitzer's yellow journalism is mocked in this cartoon, which satirises the role of the two newspapers in drumming up public opinion in favour of war with Spain. William even sent a swashbuckling reporter to break a young female Cuban rebel out of jail – and succeeded!
Seeking political power, William was elected to the House of Representatives as a New York Democrat twice. But he missed out in the presidential election of 1904, wasting a reported $2 million on his unsuccessful bid. He also narrowly missed out on becoming New York City Mayor in 1909. Hearst is pictured here voting for himself in that election.
Following in his father's footsteps, William married a much younger bride later in his life. In 1903, aged 40, William wed 21-year-old showgirl Millicent Wilson, whose mother was rumoured to run a brothel catering to the political elite. Millicent is pictured in 1951 with their five sons. But William became infatuated with another chorus girl, 19-year-old Marion Davies. In fact, he began to live openly with her from around 1919 and splashed $7 million on boosting his lover's film career, according to his obituary in The New York Times. Marion remained his very public mistress until his death, and it was revealed in 1993 that the actress and socialite Patricia Van Cleve Lake, who had been publicly presented as Marion's niece, was in fact their daughter. However, Hearst and his wife Millicent never divorced.
Hearst and his mistress Marion lived in Hearst Castle, a palatial 250,000-acre hilltop estate overlooking San Simeon, California. Hearst commissioned architect Julia Morgan "to build a little something" on land he had inherited, and building started on the site in 1919, with William spending nearly $10 million, the equivalent of $155 million (£115m) today, on the castle's construction, which went on until 1947. Designed in the Mediterranean Revival style, the Castle has 38 bedrooms and more than 40 bathrooms, and it also had three guest houses. The buildings became home to many of the antiques and artworks in Hearst's collection, and it even once housed the world's largest private zoo, with zebra, camels, antelope, kangaroos, ostriches and emus grazing freely on the hillside. After Hearst's death in 1951, his family gave the castle to the state of California, and while the family still has ownership of much of the land, the state opens the house, now known as the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, to visitors.
By the 1920s, an impressive 25% of the US population read a Hearst newspaper. He controlled 20 daily and 11 Sunday papers in 13 cities, and owned six magazines, including Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping. He had a bulging real estate portfolio and thousands of acres of land. The money-spinning mining and timber interests from his father were still raking it in. In the 1920s was a very powerful man (seen here with New York City Mayor John Hylan in 1922) and Hearst's business interests were booming, but then he almost lost it all...
The stock market crash of 1929 heralded the Great Depression, with low profits and plunging incomes. This was bad news for Hearst, who had over-extended himself and couldn't pay his debts. Hearst Corporation was forced into a court-ordered reorganisation in 1937. Hearst named a trustee to control his finances, who slashed his salary to $500,000, and his annual $700,000 dividend was stopped. Newspapers and property were liquidated and Hearst Castle mortgaged for $600,000. He also sold his animals to Los Angeles Zoo. He managed to narrowly avoid bankruptcy, but the humiliation was huge.
Another blow to William’s reputation was the 1941 movie Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles. An unflattering portrait of a fictional newspaper magnate, it was clearly partly based on Hearst. He used his influence to squash it, banning it from his publications and pressuring theatres to pull showings. It failed to recoup its costs at the box office, partly because of Hearst’s interference. But it's now considered one of the most influential films of all time.
After a disastrous decade, Hearst began making a profit again in the 1940s as business recovered. He resumed collecting art and this interior shot of Hearst Castle shows a wealth of antiques. William died in in 1951 at 88, leaving a whopping a fortune worth the equivalent of $31 billion (£22.6bn) today. But business control was given to trustees – not his five sons. Today, Hearst’s family still has only five out of 13 votes on the board. William stipulated any heir who challenged his will was to be disinherited.
The Hearst business remained a family affair. All five sons joined the company. His second son, William Randolph Hearst Junior (pictured with President Kennedy), became a celebrated war correspondent and won a Pulitzer Prize. Fourth son Randolph managed the San Francisco Examiner – the paper that kickstarted his father’s media empire. But shocking events surrounding Randolph’s daughter, Patricia, dragged the Hearst family into a media firestorm...
Patricia Campbell Hearst, known as Patty, was a carefree teenager. But that changed on 4 February 1974, when armed intruders broke into her California apartment. Masked strangers beat up Patty's fiancé Stephen Weed, and bound and blindfolded the terrified 19-year-old Patty, flinging her into their car and driving away. Obscure far-left guerrilla group the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) said it was holding Patty as a "prisoner of war" and demanded $70 (£30) of food for every poor person in California as a ransom. The Hearsts donated $2 million (£880k)-worth of food, but Patty was not released.
Astonishingly, in April that year Patty was caught on security cameras holding a gun during a bank robbery in San Francisco, which netted the rebels $10,000 (£4.4k). She was also seen spraying gunfire outside a Los Angeles store trying to free a captured SLA member. In a recording sent to the authorities, Patty proclaimed she’d joined the terrorist group. An image (pictured here) showed her brandishing a weapon in front of SLA insignia. On 17 May, police raided an SLA hideout and Patty’s parents watched the horror unfold live on TV. Six of the group's known nine members were killed in the gunfight, but Patty was not there.
Finally, in September of that year, Patty was arrested. Despite the fact she claimed she had been brainwashed, she was convicted of armed robbery on 20 March 1976 and was sentenced to seven years in prison in the "trial of the century". However, it's since been understood that she was likely a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, where captives bond with abusers in order to survive. Patty described being locked in a closet for 57 days, deprived of sleep, food and blindfolded, in constant fear of being killed. She also recounted being raped. After serving nearly two years in prison, President Carter commuted her sentence. In 2001, President Clinton granted her a pardon.
Patty went on to marry her bodyguard. Today, she's an author, actress and charity fundraiser, with a reported net worth of $50 million (£36.6m). But her daughter Lydia Marie Hearst is even richer than her mother. Pictured here in 2017, the model and actress is reported to be worth a cool $100 million (£73.2m). Her first magazine cover was for Vogue Italia in 2004. In 2016 she married actor and comedian Chris Hardwick.
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Another younger Hearst carving out her own path is Lydia’s cousin and Patty’s niece, Amanda Randolph Hearst, photographed here in 2020. As a fashion editor at Marie Claire magazine, she became interested in sustainable fashion and in 2015 she co-founded Maison de Mode, a luxury ethical fashion label. She also runs an animal welfare and environmental protection charity. Her net worth is thought to be around $100 million (£73.2m).
Today's wealthiest Hearst is believed to be William Randolph Hearst III, pictured here in 2016. He is the current chairman of Hearst Corporation and is reported to be worth a massive $2.3 billion (£1.7bn). The entire Hearst family currently has 67 heirs, sharing a fortune of $21 billion (£15.4bn) as of 2020, which is down from $35 billion (£25.6bn) in 2014. However, history has shown that the Hearst family can certainly bounce back. And what about the family's key business interests?
Based in Hearst Tower, the modern Hearst business is a mass media giant, publishing 24 daily and 52 weekly US newspapers, plus 250 international magazines. It has 33 TV stations reaching 19% of US viewers. While the future of print has been in the balance for many years and the digital business model shaky ground for publishers, the family business has looked to diversify. In 2018, Hearst bought credit ratings agency Fitch Group for $2.8 billion (£2bn). And so the business empire which began in mining and moved to media could now be set to evolve once again...
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