In this detailed biography of film star Marion Davies (nee Douras) who was in so many ways created by and for William Randolph Hearst — the symbiotic relationship spanned from 1915 when W.R. first ogled her chorus-girl charms to his death in 1951. But she was much more quickly superannuated cinema-historically speaking by the Orson Welles-Herman Mankiewicz dumb-blond caricature in Citizen Kane, paradoxically the most important Film in her life.
Fred Lawrence Guiles presents the life story of one of the most deft comedians in silent pictures—up from Brooklyn, show biz, the engaging stammer, private then public Hearst inamorata, Hollywood, the Chaplin liaison, encounters with the famous, San Simeon, W.R.'s demise, the constant drinking (she hid her gin from Hearst in the water tank of the toilet), the quick marriage to Captain Horace Brown, finally her death from cancer in 1961. Now a deserving revival.