Marion Davies
Marion Davies ( born January 3, 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, † September 22, 1961 Los Angeles, California; actually Marion Cecelia Douras ), was an American actress.
Career
During her school years in a convent Davies appeared in several plays and made her debut on Broadway at the age of sixteen. After some minor engagements she got in 1916 a contract with the Ziegfeld Follies.
Her first film role was in 1917 in Runaway, Romany, to which Davies wrote the screenplay. At that time she made the acquaintance of William Randolph Hearst, who has since took great interest in their career. Hearst founded his own production company, Cosmopolitan Productions, for Marion, whose films were 1919-1923 distributed by Paramount Pictures and after 1924 by MGM. While Hearst saw they prefer in historical romances, Davies's talent lay in the light comedy. With King Vidor she turned towards the end of the decade, two of her best films, The Patsy and Something's happening in Hollywood, in which Marion Davies was skillful parodies of celebrities such as Mae Murray and Lillian Gish. The actress earned $ 10,000 a week, had the 14-room bungalow by far the largest of all stars in the studio and a huge beach house in Santa Monica with 110 rooms. In addition to Mary Pickford, it was considered the best hostess of the city and received crowned heads, as well as celebrities; e.g. she drank tea with George Bernard Shaw.
Her films were often very successful at the box office and Davies, who could sing and dance passable, but also stuttered a bit, managed thanks to the support of the studio the leap to talkies. In Marianne, a musical, she played a young French woman who could only broken English. In The Hollywood Revue of 1929, she appeared in only a few vocal numbers with, including the first time presented here, later popular song Singin 'in the Rain. In 1930 she made two of their better films, comedies Not so Dumb, again directed by King Vidor, and The Girl Florodora. Together with Bing Crosby in 1933, the actress worked together in the successful streak Going Hollywood, the filming of which dragged on for six months. After 1933, Davies ' films were increasingly less public acceptance. The attempt to revitalize Davies career through the role of a Südstaatenspionin opposite Gary Cooper in the opulently produced film operator 13, had no success. To this end, the attempt by Hearst, Marion was necessarily planned for two Norma Shearer rollers to squeeze, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the film adaptation of the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Marie- Antoinette. Due to the rift left Marion in 1934, the studio together with her production company and moved to Warner Brothers about. In 1937 she officially ended her film career. In the late 1930s, Hearst suffered financial slump and it was Davies, who supported him financially by selling jewelry for $ 1 million and Hearst provided the money available. Only after the death of Hearst in 1951 married Davies a businessman.
By only weakly laminated representation of the Hearst -Davies affair, in the film Citizen Kane, suffered the reputation of Marion Davies in his lifetime, and her talent was put massively denied.