Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Marion Davies (born January 3, 1897; died
September 23, 1961) was a United States
actor|actress whose long-running relationship with
newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst obscured
her talents.

Of Greece|Greek and Ireland|Irish heritage, she
was born Marion Douras in Brooklyn, New York, the
youngest of five children born to Herbert Douras,
a lawyer who moved in New York City political
circles, and Rose Reilly, formerly of Jersey City,
New Jersey. Her elder siblings included Rose,
Reine, and Ethel. A brother, Charles, died at the
age of fifteen from drowning in 1906.

The Douras family lived near Prospect Park,
Brooklyn, New York|Prospect Park in Brooklyn, but
already the bright lights of Manhattan beckoned to
the sisters. They all became showgirls on the
Broadway|Great White Way, where Florenz Ziegfeld
was beginning his spectacular annual "Ziegfeld
Follies" shows. These shows were considered the
high end of Vaudeville. 

The girls changed their surname to Davies, which
one of them spotted from a realtor's sign in the
neighborhood. Even as New York was the melting pot
for new immigrants, having a WASP surname greatly
helped one's prospects.

She made her film debut in 1917's Runaway Romany.
Soon she began to play light comedic roles well
into the 1920s and giving generous financial
assistance to her family and friends. These facts
are still overshadowed by her relationship with
William Randolph Hearst, who was married to former
showgirl turned society grande dame Millicent
Veronica Willson, and Davies' fabulous life as
hostess at Hearst Castle|San Simeon and Ocean
House in Santa Monica. Hearst met her soon after
she'd started working in movies, and formed
Cosmopolitan Pictures solely to produce starring
vehicles for her. 

Hearst loved seeing her in expensive costume
pictures such as Janice Meredith (1924) and
Quality Street (1927), but in retrospect she seems
to have fared just as well, if not better, in
contemporary comedies like Tillie the Toiler, The
Fair Co-Ed (both 1927), and especially two
directed by King Vidor, The Patsy and the
delightful backstage-in-Hollywood saga Show People
(both 1928), where she showed an excellent comedic
talent, and a considerable pantomimic skills.

Marion outshone her siblings with a 20-year movie
career, playing light comedic roles well into the
1930s. Her career, however, was hampered by
Hearst's insistence that she play distinguished,
dramatic parts, as opposed to the comic roles that
were her forte. She also harboured an increasing
dependence on alcohol, hiding bottles of liquor in
San Simeon's toilet tanks.

In all she played in fifty movies, including ten
movies that she produced. Her last was in 1937.
Davies was involved with many aspects of her films
and was considered an astute businesswoman.

Hearst and Davies were dearly in love but never a
fully committed couple - he never divorced his
wife (at one point he came close to marrying
Davies but his wife's settlement demands were too
high) and she was infatuated with actor Dick
Powell in the mid-30's. In the mid-20's she was
caught up with Charlie Chaplin. The latter
relationship became the stuff of legend in 1924
when Hearst, Davies and Chaplin were on Hearst's
yacht with film producer Thomas Ince. Ince took
ill and died, and in spite of no supporting
evidence, rumors have circulated for years that
Hearst mistook Ince for Chaplin and shot Ince in a
jealous rage. The rumors were dramatized in the
play The Cat's Meow, which was later made into a
2001 http://imdb.com/title/tt0266391/ film.

By the early 1940's Hearst's empire crumbled and
he was about to lose everything. Over Hearst's
objections, Davies sold millions of dollars of the
gifts Hearst had given her over the years to raise
money to bail him out. Davies commented that the
gold digger had fallen in love. When Hearst died,
his family had every trace of Davies' presence in
his home removed, and when discussing his life and
legacy, made no reference to her. 

Ten weeks after the death of William Randolph
Hearst, Marion Davies married for the first time,
at the age of fifty-four, on October 31, 1951. Her
husband was a former sea captain, policeman and
sometime actor, Horace G. Brown. It was not a
happy marriage (and he encouraged her drinking):
Marion filed divorce papers twice but no divorce
was ever finalized.

In 1952, Davies donated $1.9 million to establish
a children's clinic at UCLA, which still bears her
name. She also fought childhood diseases through
the Marion Davies Foundation.

Marion Davies died of cancer in Hollywood,
California. Her funeral was attended by old-time
Hollywood legends and President Herbert Hoover. 
She is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in
Hollywood.

After the death of Davies' niece, Patricia Lake
(nÊe Van Cleeve), Lake's family announced that
she was in fact the daughter of Marion Davies and
William Randolph Hearst.  Prior to the
announcement, it had been said that Lake was the
daughter of Rose Davies (Marion's sister) and her
first husband, George Van Cleeve.  Although the
claim does not appear to have been verified
independently, Patricia and her
husband—Arthur Lake (actor)|Arthur Lake, who
played Dagwood in numerous films—were buried
with Marion Davies.

Davies is sometimes confused with the shrill,
talentless Susan Alexander character portrayed in
Citizen Kane, which was based loosely on Hearst's
life. This portrayal has led to various real-life
portrayals of her as a drunken bimbo, the most
recent of which was Melanie Griffith in HBO's RKO
281. But there's little similarity between the
fictional character and real woman. Orson Welles
himself deeply regretted that so many in the
public assumed Susan Alexander was a carbon copy
of Davies - he felt that the real Davies was a
wonderful woman. Other screen versions of Davies
were Kirsten Dunst in The Cat's Meow (2001),
Virginia Madsen in The Hearst and Davies Affair
(1985) and Heather Macnair in Chaplin (1992).
Madsen later became a fan and said that she felt
she had inadvertently played the negative
stereotypes of Davies instead of the real woman.
Many film historians and fans resent the negative
reputation Kane garnered her and have worked to
restore her image in the public eye. Their efforts
included a 2001 http://imdb.com/title/tt0276585/
documentary which featured appearances by friends
and coworkers who tearfully remembered Davies even
four decades after her death.

==See also==
*History of Santa Monica, California#1920s|History
of Santa Monica, California in the 1920s A short
history of Ocean House.

==External link==
* http://www.classicactresses.com/marion.html
Marion Davies at Classic Actresses
*imdb name|id=0203836|name=Marion Davies