Hearst Jr.

Whatever his countrymen who read or do not read his press (22 newspapers, 13 magazines) may think of him, Publisher William Randolph Hearst can be sure they will not soon forget him. And if his journalistic potency has not been enough, Mr. Hearst has five sons to keep his tracks fresh long after he is gone. The eldest son, plump 25-year-old George, is well along the way as Publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, oldest of Hearst newspapers, after experience as Editor of the New York Mirror (since sold by Hearst) and President of the New York American. The second son, his father's namesake, is only 22 but already his thin young face wears deep marks of experience and looks like his sire's from the side.

Last week this second son moved out a step from his journalistic juniority. New York City's policemen and firemen had won a pay-raise from the voters. The Hearstpapers had vigorously helped. In expressing thanks, the city's servants addressed not only the newspapers and their owner but also William Randolph Hearst Jr., who six months ago succeeded son George as President of the New York American.

No figurehead is President Hearst Jr. Ten hours at his desk is no long day for him. Seriously a journalist, ambitious, he dislikes Manhattan but wants to make a success of his job. No less a pundit than Herbert Bayard Swope, onetime chief of the New York World, is said to have boomed at Songwriter Irving Berlin of Hearst Jr.: "He is the most promising young man who has come into the profession of journalism during my lifetime."

Hearst Jr. is vivacious, modest but not diffident. He is married and lives in Manhattan's Ritz Tower. When he drives his special-bodied Cadillac to the American office every traffic cop grins at him gratefully, and he stops often to pass the time of day. His license plates bear the simple legend 1. The car of his beauteous young wife, San Francisco's one-time debutante Alma Walker, has the license number 2. Hearst Jr. has not forgotten his Hollywood friends; Cinemactors Norman Kerry and Charles Farrell are among his intimates. With Songwriter Irving Berlin, Lawyer Richard Knight and other conspicuous Manhattanites, he nightclubs in moderation up and down Broadway.

The rise of the Hearst scions in their father's world has not been meteoric but deliberately, parentally calculated. They have had to work in their school vacations. At 17, William Randolph Jr. worked as a union "fly boy" (pulling papers from the presses) in the press room of the New York Mirror. Then he was a reporter on the San Francisco Call. Last year he left the University of California to go to Manhattan as police reporter for the American, became city hall reporter, then worked across the desk from Editor Stanton Arthur Coblentz until his father thought him ready to learn to be president. Since he has been in charge, coincidence or not, the American's circulation has risen from 187,000 to 261,000.

The third Hearst son, John Randolph, 19, is now working in the editorial offices of the Hearst magazines. The 14-year-old twins, William Elbert Whitmire and Randolph Apperson, are at St. George's School (Newport, R. I.). If these three ever give thought to the training they and their brothers need to enable them to grow up like their father, one of the things they can reckon on is the help of the expert editors whom their father employs. In the magazine end of the business, Brother John Randolph can, for instance, sit at the feet of astute Ray Long, Editor of Cosmopolitan. And after William Randolph Jr. has attended to a day's run of the morning American, he can handily drop in and get pointers from ancient, chinless, bald-pated Arthur Brisbane at the evening Journal. Also at the Journal just now is a man invaluable in an organization like Hearst's--Editor William Curley, "troubleshooter" extraordinary, the man whom Hearst Sr. sends to the spot when one of his newspapers shows signs of sagging.

Never have Hearst newspapers executed more typically Hearstian maneuvers than have the Manhattan ones lately.

Last week the Journal produced this super-provocative circulation stunt: It advertised for letters on "Why I want to go to Paris," promising that the winner, man or woman, would be taken to Paris personally by big -eyed, deep -dimpled. French-accented Actress Irene Bordoni (now starring in the voluptuous cinema Paris--.

In no wise to be outdone, President Hearst Jr.'s American last week made two announcements:

1)It had engaged as a daily staff-writer no less a personage than Elinor Glyn, "world-acclaimed disciple of her own magic culture of IT."

2) It was going to publish, beginning this Sunday, His Eminence Bonaventura Cardinal Cerretti's "First Authorized Biography of the Supreme Pontiff . . . POPE PIUS XI."