"New York 1915. Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion, and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst's mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly...

Hollywoodcrossroads of filmmaking, mythmaking, and politicswas dominated by one man more than any other for most of its history. It was William Randolph Hearst who understood how to use cinema to exploit the public's desire for entertainment and to create film propaganda to further his own desire for power. From the start, Hearst saw his future and the future of Hollywood as one and the same. He pioneered and capitalized on the synergistic relationship...

Consulted by a wealthy client whose mistress has been scandalously photographed, Ambrose Bierce and his sidekick, Tom Redmond, follow a trail that pits them against a ruthless pornography ring.

Reveals how an unheralded young newspaperman from San Francisco arrived in New York and created the most successful daily of his time, pushing the medium to an unprecedented level of influence and excitement, and leading observers to wonder if newspapers might be more powerful than kings and popes and presidents. Journalist Kenneth Whyte offers a window onto the media world at the turn of the 20th century as he chronicles Hearst's rivalry with Joseph...

Coming to Hollywood as a celebrated boy genius featuring a spectacular career arc in New York including his "War of the Worlds" radio hoax, Orson Welles is stymied on the subject for his first film. After a dinner party at Hearst Castle, during which he has a verbal altercation with Hearst, Welles decides to do a movie about Hearst. It takes him some time to convince co-writer Herman Mankiewicz and the studio, but Welles eventually gets the script...

A retelling of one of the most notorious Tinseltown legends to circulate at the height of the studio era. In November 1924, a mysterious Hollywood death occurred aboard media mogul William Randolph Hearst's yacht. Included among the famous guests that weekend were Charlie Chaplin, starlet Marion Davies, the studio system creator and producer Thomas Ince, and feared gossip columnist, Louella Parsons.

In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst's media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. His newspapers were so influential that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill all wrote for him. The first practitioner of what is now known as 'synergy,' Hearst used his media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political...