TMS Muse of the Week: Marion Davies

(Hamilton King)

One of my least enjoyed movies of 2022 was Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. A crude epic of extravagant proportions that over embellishes Hollywood’s dirty roots and doesn’t respect its own history. The main characters are fictional, but largely inspired by real figures from the 1920s. Two of the few, real famous names to make appearances as characters are, of course, W.R. Hearst and Marion Davies. One of the richest media moguls in US history and his open-secret party girl mistress. During the whole sequence in Babylon when we get WR and Marion [Pat Skipper and Chloe Fineman], I just thought of one of my favorite movies most people aren’t aware of: Peter Bogdanovich’s The Cat’s Meow (2001). This was my introduction to the infamous couple when I was 12 years old, and it starred one of my favorite modern actresses, Kirsten Dunst, as Marion. While I was pleasantly surprised by Amanda Seyfried’s portrayal in David Fincher’s Mank (2021)—save for an unnecessary NYC accent—no on-screen portrayal of Marion has beaten Kiki Dunst’s, in my opinion. A problem with the public eye’s perception of Marion is that most movie fans have always assumed the character of Susan Alexander [played by Dorothy Comingore] in Orson Welles’ landmark Citizen Kane (1941) is based on Marion, just like the Orson’s title character is inspired by WRH.

To those who have seen Citizen Kane, Susan isn’t exactly a flattering role. She’s written as a pretty, young woman who becomes Kane’s second wife and has a mediocre opera career bank-rolled by the newspaper tycoon. While this isn’t the case with Marion in real life in the 1920s-1930s, it was enough to give younger people over the time the impression Marion herself was a ditz without any talent. For viewers who like Marion and have sought out her movies, it’s clear she was born to be a comedy star and not a dramatic thespian. The problem was, WR’s own production studio, Cosmopolitan, was producing the movies starring Marion, and WR thought comedy was too low brow for his lover and insisted she only make serious costume dramas. Not all of these silent epics were bad or flops, with Robert G. Vignola’s regal historical drama When Knighthood was in Flower (1922) in particular being Marion’s biggest success during her early years and considered one of her best contemporarily. But in comparison to her romcom and slapstick efforts when she eventually joined MGM in the late ‘20s, she was obviously more natural and comfortable with lighter material. On top of that, she had a reputation for being bright, having a great sense of humor off camera and fun in social circles. Kirsten and Amanda both successfully reflected these qualities of Marion’s persona in biopic form, while other performances, such as Melanie Griffith in Benjamin Ross’ RKO 281 (1999) and Virginia Madsen in David Lowell Rich’s The Hearst & Davies Affair (1985), give the impression she was just a bimbo who liked the perks of fame. [To Virginia’s credit, she did later reveal how she wishes she had properly researched Marion more beforehand and regrets playing her as a dumb blonde.]

(George Grantham Bain)

While at MGM, Marion made a string of modestly successful and enjoyable comedies and musicals like King Vidor’s Show People (1928) and The Patsy (1928), Robert Z. Leonard’s romance Marianne (1929), and Raoul Walsh’s pre-Code Going Hollywood (1933); while maintaining her popular rep of hosting highly profiled house parties to her showbiz peers, including friends Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish. But Marion’s film career eventually died down in 1937 for numerous reasons. Ageism, WR’s ailing health, Marion’s growing drinking problem, alleged affairs with actors like Charlie Chaplin and a pre-famous Joel McCrea, influential studio exec Irving Thalberg and WR clashing on whether Marion or Irving’s wife Norma Shearer should be the queen of MGM [the latter won that title evidently]. By the time of her death in 1961, more film fans were associating Marion with Citizen Kane than any of her hits at Cosmopolitan or MGM; to the point where Orson personally wrote the foreward to her 1975 posthumous memoir The Times We Had, claiming Susan Alexander’s personality isn’t so similar to Marion’s, and that he and the real blonde got along with each other.

Over the years, Marion’s reputation has been reevaluated and has garnered more sympathy from historians, critics and movie lovers, much like fellow model-turned-actress Marilyn Monroe or former White House intern Monica Lewinsky on the political spectrum in recent years. What’s great about Marion’s legacy is that even if her movies are only on old Hollywood fans’ radars, a lot of the general public still knows who she is because Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA, and Marion’s beach house in Santa Monica, CA, are still open for touring. I visited Hearst Castle with my family not long after I first saw The Cat’s Meow, and felt so cool seeing Marion’s real party dresses on display in person. She may not have gotten the respect she should have received by her superiors and audiences at the time, but at least we can reverse that for history, like she deserves.