In 1935 Fortune magazine published a profile of the Hearst empire, which said that William Randolph Hearst’s assets—twenty-eight newspapers, thirteen magazines, eight radio stations, two movie companies, inestimable art treasures, real estate, fourteen thousand shares of the Homestake Mine, and two million acres of land were worth $220 million.

But Fortune also noted that because of taxes and other debits in books that it was not permitted to see, the Hearst Corporation might soon be short of cash. The taxes, of course, were imposed by that hated man in the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., for which Hearst would have gladly traded his California castle; his Bavarian Village in Wyntoon, California; his mistress Marion Davies’s beach “cottage” at Malibu; his castle at St. Donat in Wales; his Long Island estate; his New York apartment; his two cloisters from Spain; and his Brooklyn warehouse with all its treasures.

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