JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

In the 50 years I’ve made a fragile living as a freelance writer,

there have been perhaps a half-dozen times that I had a shot at turning

articles I did for national magazines into Really Big Money. One of those

-- the best shot of all -- was brought vividly back to life for me over

the weekend when Larry King devoted his Sunday show on CNN to an

interview with Patricia Hearst.

Her rationale for appearing on King’s show was to promote an upcoming

TV special she has just produced on her grandfather’s “castle” at San

Simeon. But most of the talk had to do with the period of her kidnapping

in the mid-1970s, and that’s what hit home so hard for me. I was the only

reporter inside that story, a position most journalists would have killed

for. But for reasons beyond my control, it just didn’t play out for me

the way it was supposed to.

Patty’s kidnapping put the Hearst family in the peculiar position of

being the center of the biggest news story of the year, and the

corporation simply didn’t know how to deal with it. Initially, the

company chose not to give its reporters any special access to inside

information, but when Hearst’s competitors began printing often highly

inaccurate stories based on rumor and innuendo, the corporation realized

it had to put its own reporter inside the story to counter the rumors. At

the time, I was writing major articles for several Hearst magazines, and

I was the reporter chosen for that job.

I was to hang out at the Randolph Hearst residence in the San

Francisco suburb of Hillsborough until there was some resolution of the

story. That was a tactful way of saying until Patty was released or

killed. When one or the other took place, I was to do a two-part story

for the Hearst masthead magazine, Good Housekeeping, followed by a

10-part series for the Hearst newspapers and collaboration on a book with

Patty if she was still living or an inside account of what had happened

if she wasn’t.

So I packed up, flew to San Francisco, rented a car and drove to the

Hearst residence. The mass of reporters, photographers, TV trailers and

technology laying siege in the street outside reminded me, oddly, of the

first time I approached Okinawa from the air during World War II and saw

the array of ships and manpower surrounding it during the fight for that

island. In Hillsborough, there were several hundred media types, grubbing

for wisps of information and waiting for some kind of word from inside

the house.

In this zoo, I drove up to the front door and rang the bell as a

throng of reporters gathered behind me. A man I later found to be an FBI

agent -- although no one ever told me that directly -- opened the door,

then closed it and told me to wait after I identified myself. It couldn’t

have been more than a minute or two but it seemed like an eternity of

having questions shouted at me before the door was opened again, and I

was admitted.

Catherine Hearst was standing just inside, and she neither greeted me

nor acknowledged my legitimacy. Instead she said: “Do you plan to talk to

Steve Weed? Because if you do, you aren’t welcome here.”

Weed was the man with whom Patty was living when she was kidnapped. By

the time I arrived on the scene, the Hearsts were extremely angry with

him, which I didn’t know. So this was the first of many emotional

minefields I had to navigate in the weeks ahead. All told, I spent about

six weeks, on and off, with the Hearst family (Patty’s two younger

sisters, Anne and Vicki, were then living at home). Those weeks included

the period of the police shootout in Los Angeles when six of the

kidnappers were killed and then incinerated when the house in which they

were hiding burned to the ground. I was with the Hearsts during the 48

hours when they didn’t know whether one of the charred bodies was Patty.

Shortly after that, McCall’s magazine published an alleged inside

story on the Hearst family that was mostly inaccurate and convinced the

corporation that it could no longer wait to go public. So I was told to

write the first of the magazine articles for Good Housekeeping. But I was

faced with the unique situation of writing about the people who owned the

magazine and who were clearly going to read the article before it was

published.

After some tough negotiations and minor changes, Catherine and

Randolph Hearst signed off on the article. Then came my downfall.

The editor asked me to add two sections to the story that I knew would

enrage the Hearsts. When I told him that, he said just do it and let him

handle it. When Randolph Hearst saw the additions, he killed the story

and fired me and later the editor. I was well-paid, but it was

accompanied by a warning that the material I had was confidential and any

effort to use it elsewhere would lead to legal action. And so the Really

Big Money, along with the book, went down the drain.

I don’t think about this much anymore. Only when I see Patty Hearst in

one of her acting roles or being interviewed by Larry King. That sends me

to my files where I read, once again, the story that was never published

and graze through my notes of those perilous weeks.

I also have more than a dozen hours of taped conversation inside the

Hearst home. The tapes rest on a bookcase shelf in my office. Right

beside two tickets to the final game of last Saturday’s Big West

basketball tournament that didn’t get used either.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.