Marion Davies is a typical American, born in Brooklyn with the name Marion Cecilia Douras in 1897. She received her education in a convent. Her stage debut was at age 16, and she appeared with the “Ziegfield Follies” in 1916. From thereon she dedicated herself to cinema. Still at a quite young age she met press magnate William Randolph Hearst. He showed immediate interest in her, wanting to turn her into a big star. Hearst, as described by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941), has a relationship in the film with Susan Alexander which recalls, for the record, the relationship between the editor and the actress. Hearst in fact invested a great deal in the launch and upkeep of his protégé’s career. He founded a production house, Cosmopolitan Pictures, for her, and also used his newspapers to promote her films and bear the costs of her acting career. From 1919 on, films by Cosmopolitan were distributed by Paramount, but due to their high costs, they never broke even. It seems that Hearst lost seven million dollars in the venture. Marion Davies was very pretty and definitely talented, especially in comedy, but her films were not always successful. This could have been because of Hearst’s (aggressive and sycophant) promotional campaigns,  annoying both to the public and to those in the business, and because the authoritarian magnate imposed virginal, Victorian-style roles on the actress that were unsuited to her coquettish verve. In 1924 Cosmopolitan changed over to Samuel Goldwyn, later following the merger with Metro as well: Mayer immediately realized the advantages (social and in terms of advertising) of this association with Hearst, and he offered to finance the small company’s films, paying Marion Davies the remarkable salary of 10,000 dollars per week. Mayer also had a 14 rooms “bungalow” built for her at the studio that would become the center of the social life at MGM, even though Marion could already count on her home in Santa Monica, with 110 rooms and 55 bathrooms, her villa in Beverly Hills, and of course, the castle on the sea at San Simeon, Kane’s legendary Xanadu. Marion Davies and William Hearst were an affectionate couple, though never official since the magnate’s wife wouldn’t grant him a divorce. In the Thirties, when the Hearst empire fluctuated due to the Depression, Marion Davies came to his aid with a personal loan of one million dollars. Her career went into a slump with the advent of sound film because she stuttered. Several roles created for Davies were assigned to Norma Shearer, wife of producer Irving Thalberg, so Davies and Hearst decided to leave MGM, switching over to Warner, bungalow and all. The decline was however unstoppable: after the collapse of Hearst’s empire in 1937, Marion Davies bowed out of cinema, probably without any major regrets. She went on to become a shrewd business woman, able to count on an enormous personal estate.

Giuliana Muscio, “Girls, Ladies, Stars”,  Cinegrafie, n. 13, 2000