MARION DAVIES BIOGRAPHICAL DATA Marion Cecile Douras was born in Brooklyn in 1897. Broadway producer George W. Lederer, who had married Davies's sister Reine, gave Davies her first professional work as a chorus girl in his productions of The Sunshine Girl (1913) and The Queen of the Movies (1914). Davies's sister got the name "Davies" from a shop sign. She and all of her sisters changed their last names. William Randolph Hearst discovered Davies when she was dancing in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916. She was 19; he was 53. He was so infatuated with her that he attended every performance for eight weeks. He bought two tickets each night, using the second seat for his hat. Although he never divorced his wife, former showgirl Millicent Wilson, and remained a devoted father to their five sons, Hearst and Marion would remain together for the rest of his life. His sons often socialized with him and Davies and often traveled with them on their European excursions. When they moved to Hollywood, Hearst bought Davies a lavish Beverly Hills mansion and built her a 118-room beach house in Santa Monica. The latter cost $7 million. Because of her many lavish parties there, it was dubbed "The Versailles of Hollywood." Once she became a star, Davies showed uncommon generosity to other fledgling talents. When Norma Shearer was having trouble getting started in Hollywood, she and Hearst gave her a small role in The Restless Sex (1920) and even arranged for her to shoot a screen test. Although the two often competed for roles, Davies hosted Norma Shearer's 1927 marriage to Irving G. Thalberg at her Beverly Hills home and served as a bridesmaid. When Thalberg took ill years later, Davies helped Shearer design the beach house in which he would recuperate. Davies frequently appealed to Hearst to help film stars on the skids. When drug addiction ended Alma Reubens's career in the Ô20s, she went to England in a highly publicized "rescue" mission and brought her back to Hollywood, convincing Hearst to put her up in an apartment in the same building where they stayed when in New York. Davies was famous for her lavish parties. For one, she rented an amusement pier and forced Hollywood's finest to dress as children. When Thalberg and Shearer left Hollywood for a European tour, she threw a "Night in Heidelberg" costume party at which everyone wore German peasant dress. Davies was so pleased with her costume that she threatened to start a fashion trend by wearing it around town for a week. Despite Hearst's moralistic stance (he even limited drinking at San Simeon), Davies had a rowdy sense of humor and loved to indulge in practical jokes. When she entertained teetotaling president Calvin Coolidge, she slipped him some wine, claiming it was fruit juice. By the time he got to his third glass, he was heard to say, "I don't know when I've had anything as refreshing." Davies's bungalow on the MGM lot was the ultimate stopping place for many celebrities visiting Hollywood. Among the notables she hosted were Charles Lindbergh and George Bernard Shaw. Tennessee Williams once said, "Marion Davies makes up for the rest of Hollywood." When Hearst fell on hard times in 1937, Davies dipped into her personal savings to give him the $1 million he needed to save his empire. She would later say, "Why have him tortured for a miserable million dollars?" Citizen Kane wasn't the only fictionalized treatment of Davies's relationship to Hearst. Two years before Welles's film classic, British author Aldous Huxley painted a scathing picture of the two in his 1939 novel After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, about a millionaire willing to give up his humanity to escape death. Hearst threatened to sue Orson Welles for defamation of character but ultimately never followed through for fear of having to testify about his relationship with Davies. Welles biographer Barbara Leaming claims that Welles's attorneys threatened to prove Davies had given birth to twins fathered by Hearst. Nobody knows for certain if Davies ever saw Citizen Kane, though there are numerous legends suggesting that she and Hearst screened it at San Simeon or viewed it during its premiere run in San Francisco. A copy had been sent to Hearst in 1941, but it was returned with the protective seals unbroken. One friend of Hearst's claimed that, when asked if he had seen the film, the publisher's only comment was, "We thought it was a little too long." Ironically, Davies's nephew, screenwriter Charles Lederer, was married to Welless' first wife, Virginia Nicholson, through most of the Ô40s. Lederer and the former Mrs. Welles were frequent guests at San Simeon and Davies's Santa Monica beach house but had to keep Welles and Nicholson's daughter, Christopher, out of sight whenever Hearst was around. When a Japanese submarine sank a U.S. freighter off the coast of California in December 1942, Hearst and Davies shut down San Simeon and moved their partying to Wyntoon, an estate in northern California. In 1945, Hearst's health failed. On doctors' orders, he sold San Simeon and moved to a relatively modest home in Beverly Hills, which Davies deeded to Hearst so that he could die in a house that he owned. Davies sold the beach house for $600,000. Hearst died on Aug. 14, 1951, at age 88. The family had his body removed while Davies slept under sedation. She would later say, "I asked where he was, and the nurse said he was dead. His body was gone, whoosh, like that. Old W.R. was gone. The boys [Hearst's sons] were gone. I was alone. Do you realize what they did? They stole a possession of mine. He belonged to me. I loved him for 32 years, and now he was gone. I couldn't even say goodbye." Although she was not mentioned in his will, she already had voting control of Heart's businesses. She sold her voting rights to the family for the fee of $1 a year. Two months after Hearst's death, Davies eloped to San Francisco with former stuntman Horace Brown. It was her first marriage. Davies died September 22, 1961, leaving an estate of $8 million, which was squandered by her family members. Davies's memoirs, taken from tapes she made in the Ô50s, were finally published in 1975 as The Times We Had. For the forward, the publishers turned to Orson Welles, whose brief essay pointed up the many differences between Davies and the second wife in Citizen Kane and praised her skills as an actress and comedianne and her lifetime of devotion to Hearst. MARION DAVIES FILMOGRAPHY Runaway Romany (1917) The Burden of Proof (1918) Cecilia of the Pink Roses (1918) The Belle of New York (1919) Getting Mary Married (1919) The Dark Star (1919) Cinema Murder (1919) April Folly (1920) The Restless Sex (1920) Enchantment (1921) Buried Treasure (1921) When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922) The Young Diana (1922) Beauty's Worth (1922) Bride's Play (1922) Adam and Eva (1922) Little Old New York (1923) Janice Meridith (1924) Yolanda (1924) Zander the Great (1925) Lights of Old Broadway (1925) The Fair Co-Ed (1927) Tillie the Toiler (1927) Red Mill (1927) The Patsy (1928) The Five O'Clock Girl (1928) The Cardboard Lover (1928) Show People (1928) Marianne (1929) The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929) Not So Dumb (1930) The Florodora Girl (1930) Bachelor Father (1930) A Christmas Story (1931) It's A Wise Child (1931) Five and Ten (1931) Polly of the Circus (1932) Blondie of the Follies (1932) Peg o' My Heart (1933) Operator 13 (1933) Going Hollywood (1933) Pirate Party of Catalina Isle (1935) Page Miss Glory (1935) Hearts Divided (1936) Cain and Mabel (1936) Ever Since Eve (1937)