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ENDED
SERIES PRESENTED IN 2002

MARION DAVIES

APRIL 23 TUE
THE PATSY	2:00, 5:15, 8:30*
JUNE 4 TUE
SHOW PEOPLE	2:50, 6:10, 9:30

All pre-1930 films are silent.
Live piano accompaniment by STEVE STERNER
at showtimes followed by an "asterisk" (*)

Marion Davies (1897-1961) is mostly remembered as the mistress of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, whose love for the former chorus girl and Ziegfeld beauty knew no bounds and who lavished millions to make her a movie star, a perception that's been almost irretrievably distorted by the character of Susan Alexander - loosely based on Davies - in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. But, as Welles pointed out years later, there were few real similarities between Alexander and Davies.

If both were mistresses of publishing magnates (Hearst's wife wouldn't give him a divorce), Hearst and Davies were a devoted couple who remained together till his death, with Davies dipping into her own fortune when he hit financial storms. Far from being a failed opera singer (that was based on the paramour of an altogether different tycoon), Davies, admittedly backed by the full power of the Hearst pressand empire (even she thought it was overkill), maintained her stardom for over three decades, garnering box office success, her own following, and raves from non-Hearst critics. Off-screen colleagues were unanimous that she was, in the words of Hearst biographer W.A. Swanberg, "a warm and winning personality - fun-loving, joyous, wildly sentimental and generous." (No one ever complained after a weekend at the Hearst/Davies pleasure palace San Simeon.) Twenty-five years after Kane, perhaps carrying the guilt of character assassination, even Orson Welles himself had to admit that Marion Davies was "one of the most delightfully accomplished comediennes in the whole history of the screen...She would have been a movie star if Hearst never happened."

Available from AMAZON.COM: The Times We Had: Life With William Randolph Hearst by Marion Davies The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw Links: The Marion Davies Website The Internet Movie Database Marion Davies Information Page Photo of Marion Davies Marion Davies Posters