Citizen Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh once turned down a fortune merely in order to make a quiet stand for journalism ethics.

Young, handsome, brave, self-possessed and remarkably unassuming, Lindbergh in 1927 was the first superstar, more popular than anyone in the world today. Shortly after his return from his spectacular New York to Paris flight, Lindbergh was offered a movie contract by media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

In return for appearing in a film about aviation opposite Heart’s mistress Marion Davies, Lindbergh would be paid $500,000 plus 10 percent of the gross receipts — a percentage that would at least equal his salary and leave Lindbergh financially independent for life.

They met at Hearst’s Riverside Drive apartment in New York, where Hearst handed Lindbergh the contract and Lindbergh politely tried to hand it back.

“I wish I could do it if it would please you, but I cannot, because I said I would not go into pictures,” Lindbergh told Hearst.

In his memoirs years later, Lindbergh revealed the other reason for his flat refusal. With an aviation pioneer’s occupational distaste for inexactitude, Lindbergh didn’t like what Hearst stood for.

Hearst “controlled a chain of newspapers from New York to California that represented values far apart from mine,” Lindbergh said. “They seemed to be overly sensational, inexcusably inaccurate and excessively occupied with the troubles and vices of mankind. I disliked most of the men I had met who represented him, and I did not want to become associated with the organization he had built.”

Hearst argued with Lindbergh, refusing to accept the returned contract and telling Lindbergh he’d have to tear it up. Hearst having insisted, Lindbergh ripped the document in half and threw the pieces in the fireplace while Hearst watched with what Lindbergh described as “amused astonishment.”

It wouldn’t be their last disagreement.

Source: ‘Lindbergh’ by A. Scott Berg