Just watching Blondie of the Follies and The Patsy, and I am impressed all over again with Marion, who is every bit the screwball comic that Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert were–she makes it look effortless, as if she’s just having a grand time and making it all up as she goes along.
She was no great shakes as a dramatic actress, and Hearst kept insisting she be cast in epic and romances, when she really shone as a comedienne.
Name-dropping time: Marion’s friend Anita Page is a friend of mine, and once I said something or other that made her laugh. She said, “Oh, I wish you’d have been on the MGM lot with Marion and I, she would have just loved you!” Where’s that damn time machine when you need it . . .
I always leave ten or 15 minutes at the end of a movie when I tape it, and I still cut off the end of The Patsy! Morons. “World television premiere” of the movie, you think they could gret the bloody time right in the listings!!
And Marion Davies had sex with William Randolph Hearst, which like 12 kittens singing Cole Porter, is an interesting thing to talk about but would probably be disturbing as hell if you actually witnessed it happening.
I taped it and the Marion Davies biography that came after. It’s really for a friend of mine but if she’s amenable I could lend you the tape. Lemme know (email in profile).
Thanks, toots—I tink I onmly lost the last ten minutes or so, so maybe I’ll watch it and ask you how it ends.
Goddam Orson Welles, I hope he’s roasting in hell—Marion Davies was one of the best comediennes in Hollywood (and one of the nicest people ever) and all anyone cares about is what was her vagina called.
I love her autobiography, The Times We Had, even though the first sentence is a lie (“I was born in 1905” [an asterix at the bottom informs “Marion was born in 1897”). What’s really tasteless is that the foreward in the edition I have was written by Orson Welles. (Great pics throughout, and she never mentions that she loaned money to Hearst.)
Have you seen Cat’s Meow? I haven’t but was wondering how Dunst did as Marion.
I know more about Dunst than Davies, so I can’t say if her portrayal was accurate, but it was adorable and very mature. IIRC, Davies was supposed to be about 26 in this movie, and Dunst was about 18 when it was filmed. She carried it off well.
Oh no dear, I don’t actually watch the movies (don’t hate me but I’m really not that big a fan of silents).
I have (I assume) the same edition of Davies’ auto-bio as Sampiro and Welles apologizes for his contribution to the “Davies = Susan Alexander” mess. Too little too late perhaps…
I started a thread ages ago on The Cat’s Meow. I don’t know how close Dunst came to Davies but I thought Dunst (and everyone else) was terrific.
Just because they were both the much much younger lady loves of castle owning American newspaper tycoons with major financial crises who financed their entertainment careers which were perpetually assailed by critics, why would anybody think there was a resemblance? (Personally I think that Welles is far more overrated than Brando, and I don’t think I’ve ever read a nice thing about him as a person [other than he loved his poodles].)
Are you being sarcastic or are you really unsure of the differences between SAK and MD?
SAK: married to her tycoon
MD: not married to hers
SAK: had no talent
MD: had enormous talent
SAK: plucked from nothing
MD: built a career on the stage well beore WRH entered the picture
SAK: dependent on Kane for everything
MD: savvy businesswoman with extensive holdings who bailed WRH out of dire fnancial trouble on at least one occasion
I’m sure there are many, many more but it’s been about a decade since I’ve seen Citizen Kane.
Anita Page is still alive? That’s my find for the day. I enjoy the comments of lessor known actors and actresses far more interesting than the Brando’s of this world.
Yes, there were many differences, just as there were between Kane & Hearst (Kane was born poor while Hearst wasn’t; Kane’s only son was killed while Hearst had five healthy boys; Kane’s castle was in Florida while Hearst’s was in Florida [well, two of them anyway- there was another in Wales and briefly ones in Austria & Spain); Kane’s father was a ne’er do well while Hearst’s was a self-made multimillionaire senator; Kane was separated from his mother in adolescence while Hearst’s mother was a major fixture in his life until middle age, etc. etc.). However, you surely can’t deny that Kane was based on Hearst and Susan was based on Marion (plus, Susan wasn’t completely talentless- she was fine as a lounge singer but she couldn’t sing opera as Kane demanded, just as Marion was fine as a comedian but wasn’t so good in dramas about English princesses).
Welles’s claims that there was no connection is a flat-out lie. (Certainly Hearst and Davies believed they were the inspirations and I think they would be more qualified to judge than either of us.)
Is Marion’s Santa Monica beach monstrosity still standing? Or her Beverly Hills place (where Willie died)?
Totally off the OP, but another much much younger consort to a great California resident of the early part of the century who I was surprised to learn was also a financial genius: Oona O’Neill Chaplin. She was only an 18 year old ingenue when she wed Chaplin but by the time he died she was not only managing the family’s finances but doing an incredibly good job, continuing to sit on the board of several multinational conglamerates after Charlie’s death. (I was really sorry to learn that she was a hopeless alcoholic, but considering her genes it isn’t surprising- I hope her kids have beat heredity.)
Well, it’s not completely off the OP, if you saw The Cat’s Meow or read Hollywood Babylon - Davies was said to have had an affair with Charlie Chaplin.
