Destroying Dorothy Comingore - article in Filmfax #107

[Harvey Chartrand]

In Filmfax #107, writer John F. Black reports on the ruthless and systematic destruction of actress Dorothy Comingore's career by William Randolph Hearst and his minions, as a result of her performance as "singer" Susan Alexander in CITIZEN KANE (modeled on Hearst's mistress Marion Davies).

Comingore appears to have been deliberately driven to unemployment, alcoholism, prostitution, obscurity and suicide (in 1971 at age 58 in a Connecticut backwater).

Hearst's revenge on Comingore continued after his death in 1951, when the actress seemed to be on the verge of making a comeback. She never worked again after THE BIG NIGHT, for which she received good notices. In the 1950s, Comingore was often seen drunk in bars, telling her sad tale for the price of a drink, her fate eerily resembling that of Susan Alexander Kane after she leaves her husband.

The article is entitled DESTROYING DOROTHY COMINGORE. It's quite a disturbing story, especially when one considers that Welles was very cruel to Comingore during the filming of CITIZEN KANE, claiming it was the only way he could coax a decent performance out of her. So the poor girl really got it from all sides.

[Wilson]

Interesting, I'd like to see the article. Did the writer find actual proof for this? I ask because that WALKING SHADOWS book mentions the same allegations, but only has "Hearst was evil, and no doubt did this" as its case against Hearst.

[Harvey Chartrand]

No smoking gun, but the article is well researched (Ruth Hussey and others were interviewed for it). Some rare illustrations too, including an early Photoplay profile of the young and beautiful Dorothy Comingore, when she was being hailed as "the next Bette Davis", and a newspaper clipping on her arrest for solicitation in 1953, which may have been engineered by Hearst.
To order a copy of Filmfax #107, visit http://www.milehighcomics.com/comicin....ne.html

[NoFake]

No smoking gun indeed, but the article sound like a must-have. As for “Walking Shadows,” I see it as the literary equivalent of a docudrama. True, it doesn’t present evidence that would hold up in court, were Hearst to be brought before a jury of his peers (hm, better skip that last condition -- although, considering where he may be right now, that might not be such a bad idea). It also – urk! – spells Dorothy Comingore with two m’s.

But to give Walsh his due, he seems to have done extensive research (there are 55 pages of “Notes and Sources”), and Hearst WAS widely seen as a man of few scruples, even in his lifetime (Walsh quotes a March 1939 Time magazine: “No other press lord wielded his power with less sense of responsibility... His appeal was not to men’s minds but to those infantile motions which he never conquered in himself: arrogance, hatred, frustration, fear”).

Still, even Walsh admits he has no evidence for his contention that Hearst was the engine that drove Comingore’s career off the cliff, but adds: “Her fall seems much too swift and precipitous to have been without external cause.” Maybe now — with the Filmfax article — we have the cause.

[R Kadin]

Hmmm...depending on the substance to the article's claims, wouldn't it be interesting to see Comingore's Estate (e.g., her daughter, Judith) pursue the matter - perhaps in a civil suit - with the Hearst family? Far wilder legal gambits have been launched, some with surprising results.

If Hearst were complicit in harrassing my mother virtually to death and, in the bargain, had helped traumatize my childhood, I think I might rightfully consider myself an aggrieved party to whom certain reparations ought to be paid.

I realize how formidable the prospective defendant would be, making David's challenge to Goliath look like an even match, by comparison. And it's not as if I advocate that people today run around suing everyone else for their ancestors' alleged misdeeds. What a silly world that would be (although many a war has been launched over much less!). It's just that it might be nice to see a dastardly patrician held at least posthumously to account for inflicting such cruelties on so vulnerable a plebe.

Ah, but such outcomes only happen in the movies - though not a Welles movie, to be sure..

[Harvey Chartrand]

If the Hearst organization was instructed by the dying William Randolph Hearst to continue ruining Dorothy Comingore's life and career after his death, then perhaps Welles was victimized in a similar fashion, without his knowledge. This would explain why so many promising deals with Hollywood studios fell through, without explanation.

As for R Kadin's notion that Dorothy Comingore's daughter Judith might entertain the idea of pursuing this matter in a civil suit with the Hearst family – I think a seed has been planted here from which a mighty litigation will grow.

[Harvey Chartrand]

My mistake, but the author of DESTROYING DOROTHY COMINGORE is John E. Walsh. The article is likely based on material from his book "Walking Shadows: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst, and Citizen Kane".

[jaime marzol]

wow wow wow, i had never thought of the others that hearst probably went after. he didn't have to go after welles, welles did himself in with no help from hearst, but comingore would have been much easier to kick around, and she was the one who played the part that really angered hearst.

welles knew nothing of it, in the bogdanovich of OW tapes he just says she was waiting for another good part, but it makes sense that hearst would do that, and that welles would not really know about it.

[Orson&Jazz]

I had read this little blurb on the internet some where, and I was looking for validity. But by reading what has been mentioned so far, it seems ture.

In Hollywood from the late thirties as "Linda Winters", DOROTHY COMINGORE had her biggest chance as 'Susan Alexander Kane' in Orson Welles' now legendary "CITIZEN KANE" (1941). Nothing much came of this opportunity and by 1953 she was turning tricks out of the "Try Later" cocktail lounge (owned by B-actor Frankie Darro). The arresting officer was shocked when Dorothy offered herself "for a lousy ten bucks!" "Soliciting" charges were dropped when she entered a clinic for alcohol abuse. Dorothy was "blacklisted" during the McCarthy hearings in 1951 and died in obscurity in Connecticut in 1971.

The depiction of Kane and Alexander must have hit too close to home for Hearst. Comingore and Welles look to have paid deeply for Hearst's embarrassment.

And wasn't Hearst the one that turned the FBI on to Welles for being a communist? I wouldn't doubt that he used his power to turn in Comingore as well.