On today’s Romance Wanderlust, we visit a place that I actually have been to: Hearst Castle, in San Simeon, California. Hearst Castle was the retreat of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. It housed a substantial amount of Hearst’s art collection from Europe and hosted world leaders, famous athletes, and Hollywood stars – as well as local vendors and some very lucky Hearst employees. Hearst Castle (which Hearst called La Cuesta Encantada, “The Enchanted Castle,” or The Ranch) epitomized the Hollywood glamour of the 1920’s and 1930’s, and today you can tour the inside of the main house and walk around the gardens and terraces.
William Randolph Hearst was a very, very rich newspaper publisher. In 1915, he hired Julia Morgan to design a simple bungalow in San Simeon. Kickass Woman Julia Morgan was the first licensed female architect in California, and she designed a great number of public and private buildings throughout the state. Construction started in 1919 and never officially stopped, as Hearst loved adding on. Construction stopped in 1947 when Hearst moved away due to ill health, but he planned to resume additions to the Castle upon his return. Sadly, he died before his dream was fully realized. By the time he died in 1951, the main house had over 100 rooms, not to mention a number of surrounding standalone guest cottages and other structures.
Hearst also loved collecting art, and Hearst Castle is essentially a giant art museum devoted to Renaissance, Gothic, Baroque, and Romanesque styles of art. Most of the ceilings were purchased from Europe, the walls are carved or inlaid or draped with rich fabrics or lined with antique choir stalls, and pools are tiled with marble and gilded with gold leaf.
Anyone who has seen Citizen Kane has some ideas about William Randolph Hearst, even though director Orson Welles insisted that the character of Charles Kane was fictional and not based on Hearst, at least not in full. Whether Hearst was the model for Citizen Kane or not, he was, historically, a man of dubious and damaging ethics. He led a wave of “yellow journalism” that favored sensationalism over fact (the term comes from the use of yellow ink). His fondness of inventing stories to suit his agenda damaged lives in the USA and abroad. However, he was known as a good employer. People who worked at Hearst Castle were paid well, and every year one of the guests at Hearst Castle was whichever paperboy had sold the highest number of Heart’s papers that year. Hearst Castle showed off Hearst’s better qualities of generosity to friends and employees and a genuine appreciation of beautiful things.
In Citizen Kane, Kane has a mistress, Susan, who is portrayed as shrill and talentless. In contrast, Heart fell in love with showgirl Marion Davies, and she became the hostess at Hearst Castle. Hearst spent a lot of his time at the retreat working in his study. It was up to the more outgoing and less-intimidating Marion to manage the staff and make sure everyone had a good time, a job she took very seriously. Hearst and Davies never married, but they were together for thirty years. Davies was thought of as a gold digger, but through her investments in real estate she became very rich in her own right. According to our tour guide at Hearst Castle, she told a friend, “I started off as a gold digger but I fell in love along the way.”
Hearst liked to invite about twenty people at a time to Hearst Castle, where they stayed for weeks and sometimes for months. He liked guests to mingle, so there was no room service and guests were expected to meet nightly for cocktails, dinner, and after dinner games or dancing or conversation. In the daytime, people could do whatever they wanted – tennis was a big deal there, so was swimming and horseback riding and boating and billiards. Hearst had a private zoo at Hearst Castle and a herd of zebras still roams the hills there. Needless to say, on my visits as a tourist I was most enchanted by the giant library. Hearst didn’t care what his guests did as long as they were busy doing something, and enjoying it.
You’d think people would have some wild times at these gatherings, but Hearst had limits. He didn’t like people to drink too much, so he kept the hard liquor in a giant safe. He also didn’t let people share a bedroom unless they were married (the exception being him and Davies). If you were going to have sexy times with someone you weren’t married to, you better not get caught or you wouldn’t get another invite – and everyone wanted a second invite.
One of the fun things about Hearst Castle is that to name drop even a few of the people who visited is to inspire dozens of Real Life Romance posts and Kickass Women posts. For instance, Alice Marble visited when she was about eighteen years old. She was a tennis prodigy who beat everyone at Hearst Castle at poker but returned the money because she wasn’t allowed to gamble. Hearst was so impressed by this that he gave her a new car. Alice went on to become a famous tennis player who used her influence to desegregate the sport by supporting Althea Gibson, who became the first African American tennis player to compete in a Grand Slam event. Marble was also a spy for America during WWII.
Here’s a short list of some other visitors you might have cocktails with if you had been a guest at Hearst Castle: Winston Churchill, Bob and Dolores Hope, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Gertrude Ederle, Charles Lindberg, and George Bernard Shaw, among many, many others. According to the Chicago Tribune, Harpo Marx and Marion Davies used to go up to the library when Hearst was away, move all the furniture, and do cartwheels up and down the room. Hearst also liked to invite the local vendors who sold goods to the place, and other newspaper people. He liked seeing world leaders, athletes, stars, and merchants mingling.
A day at Hearst Castle today is not, in itself, especially sexy. You can’t stay there or swim there. Inevitably there will be small children on the tour. I myself have dragged a small child through the tour, and I can tell you from experience that the tours are not designed to meet the needs of small children. Inevitably some married couple will be having a ferocious argument, in whispers, in the garden, the kind of argument in which every word gets its own punctuation mark. Overheard last time were these immortal hissed words that have no doubt been heard at Hearst Castle before and will be again: “So just DECIDE to ENJOY yourself. We. Are. On. Vacation.”
Instead, Hearst Castle earns its place in Romance Wanderlust with its incredible amount of daydream fodder. You can’t look at those pools without imagining swimming in them. You can’t walk through that library without seeing yourself lounging in the highest fashions of the late 1920s in front of a blazing fire while reading and gazing out the window at the ocean. And you can’t walk on that terrace without imagining leaning on the low wall, looking out over the gardens, sipping a cocktail with Cary Grant or Greta Garbo – or both. It was a beautiful place filled with beautiful people who were known for saying clever things.
I took two tours of Hearst Castle this summer (The Grand Rooms and The Upstairs Suite). Where not otherwise noted, my information for this post comes from the tours (date: 7/9/16) or from hearstcastle.org (you can reserve a tour at this website).
If you can manage to get one of the private tours which are sometimes available through charities, I /highly/ recommend it. You get your own tour guide for your group of 4-8 people. They can take you places that the regular tours aren’t allowed to go (because a couple dozen people going through a day isn’t a problem; a couple hundred would be). They can focus on the things which interest you and don’t have to keep a really set schedule. I’ve been on the regular tours before (and they’re still totally worth it), but the private tour really was something special. (Also, it avoids the whiny children and arguing couples unless you brought them with you.)
Given that I used to live in the Bay Area, I’d been to Hearst Castle a couple of times but when I took my Aussie husband there a few years ago, there was something new: a hagiographic movie you have to watch before the tour, all about how the young sensitive Hearst was taken on the Grand Tour by his mama and how that inspired him to try to save European art and furniture treasures from the ravages and aftermath of war. We were therefore bemused a little while later when my husband asked whether Hearst’s bedroom has been sized to accommodate the panels in the ceiling, which are from a 14th century Spanish religious building, and the guide cavalierly replied that no, they had just been cut down to fit.
That said, I love the Roman pool and there’s an Art Deco clock I want to steal from Marion Davies’s bedroom :-> It’s also funky when you drive on the freeway near the base of the house to see the zebras, deer, and Barbary sheep that sometimes hang out by the fence, descendants of the Castle’s former zoo inmates.
I’m going to sound so shallow, but I first found out about Hearst Castle after watching Lady Gaga’s “G.U.Y.: An Artpop Film”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNu_-deVemE I didn’t understand the narrative, so I researched 🙂
It’s funny – I’m reading this while drinking my morning coffee from a Blue Willow cup that belonged to my mother. It must be 60-70 years old now.
My parents and I attempted to visit the castle many years ago, but had just missed the start of a tour and didn’t have time to wait around for the next.
There’s no question that Hearst and Davies loved each other. She supported him financially when he had difficulties. According to visitors, Hearst kept the liquor locked up in an attempt to control her drinking. When you think about it, he’s the prototype of the controlling billionaire alpha-hole so beloved by certain folk today – trying to manage her career and misguidedly believing he was giving her everything she could possibly want.
I remember our guide telling us if it looks like gold, it’s gold. So when we were walking through the indoor pool area I nudged the bff & nodded towards an area where the tiles were loose and in need of regrouting. “Distract the group and I’ll grab one.” I suggested. No adequate distraction came to mind (too far back to accidentally fall in the pool) so no pocketing of gold tiles. And while the foggy day kept us from seeing the animals that roamed the grounds, it lent a nice atmosphere to the pictures I took of the outdoor pool and statuary. Totally worth the trip.
I’ve been there twice and am going again in November. My grandmother and aunt went in the 70’s when I was a kid and I was enchanted with their pictures and postcards. It was top of my too-see list the first time we went to California (we’re from Chicago). I think it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and can’t wait to go again!
Just to be pedantic, since the commas were a bit unclear, “la cuesta encantada” is the enchanted hill. “The enchanted castle” would be “la castilla encantada.”
That said, I find it difficult to get misty-eyed and romantic about Hearst. Leaving aside the lurid racism in his papers that led to lynchings of who knows how many people, the harm he did in promoting the Spanish-American war has STILL not been undone. As to his alleged good qualities: Hearst dropped his long term mistress to marry a 21 year old chorus girl (Millicent Wilson) when he was 40, and traded her in fifteen years and five children later for a third chorus girl (Marion Davies) who was then 20. He remained legally married to his first wife – hence his not marrying Davies. Hearst the “generous employer” bitterly fought to prevent journalists working for his papers from joining the Newspaper Guild, leading to the 1936 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Strike. (In fact, the Bay Area chapter of the guild was formed by signing what they called the “Hearts Manifesto.”) Inviting a newsboy to his castle once a year doesn’t really make up for paying sub-minimum wage to thousands of journalists while ransacking Europe for his art collection.
Haven’t been to Hearst Castle and have no real desire to go, though I imagine that it is quite pretty. Versailles is pretty too, in its own way, but I’d never describe it as close to romantic.
* el castillo encantado. (Not la castilla.) Or el alcazar encantado. Should have proof-read.
@Rebecca – you are correct, and Hearst referred to the place as “The Enchanted Hill” because he owned another, actual castle, in Europe.
This Hearst and his “castle” must have partially inspired the movie mogul in one of the Royal Spyness novels by Rhys Bowen. I think it was Queen of Hearts. The heroine is part of a group of people who visit this movie moguls place, which in the book is described pretty similar to what you write about the Hearst castle. Am I right?
Hearst’s ‘other’ castle has been an international school in Wales for the last half century (it’s the place that started the International Baccalaureate). My husband was a student there–it’s in an astonishing part of the world.
Hearst makes my skin crawl but his story is fascinating. Here’s an episode of the podcast, You Must Remember This, that tells the story of Marion Davies and Hearst!
http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/9/21/mgm-stories-part-two-marion-davies-william-randolph-hearst-and-citizen-kane
That’s not a picture of Marion Davies with Hearst – it’s Norma Shearer (no doubt at one of Marion’s countless costume parties – I believe she’s wearing a costume from her movie “Marie Antoinette”). I’m very fond of Davies in her silent comedies like “The Patsy” and “Show People”. Very worth checking out -she’s very funny indeed.
My husband and I visited Hearst Castle years ago. I remember that swimming pool fondly!
For those who don’t have moral objections to W.R. Hearst and want to visit the castle, I recommend making a long weekend of it so that you can get the full benefit of its rather remote location on the Central Coast. There is a beach not far away that is the regular haunt of elephant seals; there is outstanding wine country just to the east; and there is the lovely (and romantic) town of Cambria to use as a base.
@chacha1 I agree that it’s a really nice location. We usually stay at Morro Bay, a charming fishing village with a giant rock in its harbor and a lot of bird-watching action. And not too far away, in San Luis Obispo, it’s definitely worthwhile stopping at the quirky Madonna Inn: every room has a different decor.
I’ve stayed in Cambria – the beach has black sand and it’s truly beautiful.
The beach, how could I forget! I was the only one who clambered down the hill. My friends took a picture of me standing on a rock doing the classic looking out to sea pose after which I promptly fell off the rock & tore off a toe nail. Good times!!”
The pool in Hearst’s Castle is in “Spartacus.” For those of you who know “Citizen Kane,” I read a while ago that “rosebud” was Hearst’s nickname for Marion Davies’ clitoris. Anyone who thinks that “Citizen Kane” was not parallel to Hearst’s life doesn’t know a thing about either the movie or the man.
@LyndaX – In the spirit of Annie Hall, where Woody Allen pulls Marshall McLuhan into a movie queue to refute a statement about McLuhan’s work, Orson Welles himself talks about the many differences between Hearst’s life and Citizen Kane in this essay.
Janice, I thought that Welles’ article was very interesting, but anyone who dismisses the parallels between Heart’s life and “Citizen Kane” is crazy. Hearst himself saw the parallels, as proven by his attempt to buy the movie before it was released, as well as his forbidding it to be reviewed in his newspapers, as well as his lifelong vendetta against Wells. There are just too many parallels to be denied. Of course, “Citizen Kane” is not a documentary, so some attempt was made to blur the movie from its subject, probably to avoid direct lawsuits. It is widely believed that the major reason–aside from Welles’ personal flaws–that Welles’ career never recovered from this masterpiece is Heart’s unrelenting hostility to him.
A few notes on the whole Welles vs Hearst thing. Welles was certainly inspired by Hearst’s life, and the parrallels are many and obvious. However, he sought to make clear that he was not trying to make a bio pic – hence the many differences. For instance, Kane is born poor and adopted by parents who are rich but unloving, wheras Hearst was born into a rich and emotionally nurtuting family. In particular, Welles was insistent that the character of Kane’s mistress was nothing at all like Marion Davies, a fact which has been backed up by virtually everyone who knew Davies. Hearst believed the movie was based on him, and fought the movie’s release. However, it’s not accurate to say that Welles’ career never recovered. While Citizen Kane suffered at the box office because of Hearst’s campaign against it, it was also Welles’ first outing as a director. He went on to direct a number of critically acclaimed and award winning films. Kane marked the start of his career as a director, not the decline of his career (he was already established as an actor).
@LyndaX – As CarrieS says, although Welles was inspired by certain aspects of Hearst’s life, that’s far different than claiming, as you are, that it was meant to practically be a biopic and directly parallel to Hearst’s life and that any differences are merely blurs to avoid a lawsuit. As is clear from his own words, Welles was merely inspired by certain aspects to build a character of his own with a different history and far different relationships. And, as Carrie also noted, your claim that his career “never recovered from this masterpiece” is also far from the truth.
I’ve always wanted to visit it, in spite of Hearst’s personal foibles. After all, I’ve been to an antebellum plantation in the South AND Versailles. He can’t be worse than that. But I’d have to find a bff to come with me because my husband would be walking around mumbling about the excesses of the 1%, and I don’t want to end up being That Couple.