Marion Davies

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Marion Davies

Marion Davies (born January 3, 1897 in Brooklyn , New York , † September 22, 1961 in Los Angeles , California ; actually Marion Cecelia Douras ) was an American actress .

Life

Davies performed in a variety of plays while attending a convent school and made her debut on Broadway at the age of 16. After a few smaller engagements, she got a contract with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1916 .

Her first film role was in Runaway, Romany , in 1917 , for which she herself wrote the screenplay. At that time she made the acquaintance of William Randolph Hearst , who has since played a major role in her career. Hearst founded his own production company for Marion, Cosmopolitan Productions , whose films were distributed from 1919 to 1923 by Paramount Pictures and after 1924 by MGM . While Hearst preferred to see her in historical romances, Davies' talent was light comedy. With King Vidor she made two of her best films towards the end of the decade, The Patsy and Es geht sich was in Hollywood , in which Davies was skilful parodies of stars like Mae Murray and Lillian Gish . The actress was earning $ 10,000 a week, had by far the largest studio bungalow of any actor with 14 rooms and a 110-room beach house in Santa Monica . Alongside Mary Pickford , she was considered the best hostess in town and received crowned heads as well as celebrities; z. B. she had tea with George Bernard Shaw .

Some of your films were very successful at the box office. Davies, who could sing and dance passably, but also stuttered a bit, made the leap to sound film thanks to the support of the studio. In Marianne , a musical, she played a young French woman who could only speak broken English. In The Hollywood Revue of 1929 she only appeared in a few vocal interludes, including the song Singin 'in the Rain, which was presented here for the first time and later became popular . In 1930 she made two of her better films, the comedies Not So Dumb , again directed by King Vidor, and The Florodora Girl . Together with Bing Crosby , the actress worked together in 1933 on the successful film Going Hollywood , the shooting of which dragged on for six months. After 1933, Davies' films found increasingly less acceptance by the audience. The attempt to revitalize her career by playing a southern spy alongside Gary Cooper in the opulently produced film Operator 13 was unsuccessful. In addition, Hearst tried to press Marion into two roles intended for Norma Shearer , Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the film adaptation of the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Marie-Antoinette . Due to the falling out, Marion left the studio and its production company in 1934 and moved to Warner Brothers . In 1937 she ended her screen career. In the late 1930s, Hearst suffered financial downturns and it was Davies who backed him financially by selling jewelry for a million dollars and providing Hearst with the money. After Hearst's death in 1951, Davies married a businessman.

Due to the poorly concealed depiction of the Hearst-Davies affair in Orson Welles 'film Citizen Kane, Davies' reputation suffered during his lifetime. The character of the untalented singer Susan Alexander , who is built to star by her lover Kane, has often been interpreted as an allusion to Davies. Orson Welles personally defended Davies in 1975 when he wrote the foreword to her biography The Times We Had .

“Marion Davies was one of the funniest and most capable comedians in film history. Without Hearst, she would have become a star too. "

Filmography

  • 1917: Runaway Romany
  • 1918: The Burden of Proof
  • 1918: Cecilia of the Pink Roses
  • 1919: The Belle of New York
  • 1919: Getting Mary Married
  • 1919: The Cinema Murder
  • 1919: The Dark Star
  • 1920: April Folly
  • 1920: The Restless Sex
  • 1921: The Bride's Play
  • 1921: Buried Treasure
  • 1921: Enchantment
  • 1922: Beauty's Worth
  • 1922: When Knighthood was in Flower
  • 1922: The Young Diana
  • 1923: Adam and Eve
  • 1923: Little Old New York
  • 1924: Janice Meredith
  • 1924: Yolanda
  • 1925: Lights of Old Broadway
  • 1925: Zander the Great
  • 1926: Beverly of Graustark
  • 1927: Quality Street
  • 1927: The Red Mill
  • 1927: The Fair Co-ed
  • 1927: Tillie the Toiler
  • 1928: A girl with speed (The Patsy)
  • 1928: The Cardboard Lover
  • 1928: Things are happening in Hollywood (Show People)
  • 1929: The Hollywood Revue of 1929
  • 1929: Marianne
  • 1930: Not So Dumb
  • 1930: The Florodora Girl
  • 1931: It's a Wise Child
  • 1931: The Bachelor Father
  • 1931: Five and Ten
  • 1932: Blondie of the Follies
  • 1932: Polly of the Circus
  • 1933: Peg O'My Heart
  • 1933: Going Hollywood
  • 1934: Operator 13
  • 1935: Page Miss Glory
  • 1936: Hearts Divided
  • 1936: Cain and Mabel (Cain and Mabel)
  • 1937: Ever Since Eve

Web links

Commons : Marion Davies  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Welles' introduced the following quotation with the following words: "As someone is very much to blame for creating another shadow - the Susan Alexander Kane - I take this opportunity to say something that is forgotten by everyone today except for those lucky enough to have seen some of her films: "
  2. ↑ Orson Welles via Marion Davies at Wellesnet.com.
  3. ↑ Production design, Lights of Old Broadway. Illustrated Film Week 1926, accessed on May 9, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Davies, Marion
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Douras, Marion Cecelia (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1961
Place of death Los Angeles , California