A talented comic actor remembered most for her role as mistress!
Her story has overtones of Pygmalion, and while it led to a 35-year relationship, it had no happy ending.
Her Henry Higgins was William Randolph Hearst. In 1916, he saw her, a 19-year-old performing in the Ziegfeld Follies. He was 53. She became his mistress until his death in 1951.
Marion Davies (1897-1961) was blonde and beautiful, a gifted mimic and an actor with great comedic talent. Hearst took over her career, steered her into film, produced her movies through his company Cosmopolitan Pictures, financed them and used his media empire to publicize her work. In the 1920s, she was a top box-office draw.
So what went wrong? Why is she not remembered like other top silent-era contemporaries? Hearst may have built her up as a film star, but his preferences did not always favour her talents. And her reputation, in the end, was tarnished by a film in which she never appeared.
Learn more about her at our Extraordinary Woman event, Sunday, March 30, 12:30 pm at the Revue Cinema. We are screening the documentary Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies on Sunday with special guest Christina Stewart, assistant media archivist at the U of T’s Media Commons Archives. Christina has a particular interest in the history and films of Cosmopolitan, Hearst’s production company, which produced more than 40 of Davies’ films.
More about our guest speaker:
Christina Stewart is a film and media archivist at Media Commons Archives, University of Toronto Libraries. A graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum, she has worked with collections at the George Eastman Museum, Northeast Historic Film, Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, and the Canadian National Exhibition Archives. She has taught film preservation workshops through provincial archival associations across Canada and in the graduate programs of the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University. In 2016, Christina discovered “Secrets of the Night” (1924), a previously lost film directed by Herbert Blaché. Currently, she’s researching Marion Davies, and William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions film company.
More about the Film:Narrated by Charlize Theron, Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies combines archival film clips, interviews and rare home movies to explore her life and work.
Released in 2001 (57 min.), it was directed by Hugh Munro Neely. The executive producer was Hugh Hefner, who produced a number of films about women in early Hollywood including a recent documentary about film director Alice Guy-Blaché.