Portrayals of Davies
Davies was commonly assumed to be the inspiration for the Susan Alexander character portrayed in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which was based loosely on Hearst's life. This led to various portrayals of Davies as a talentless opportunist. In his foreword to Davies' autobiography, The Times We Had (published posthumously in 1975), Welles wrote that his fictional creation bears no resemblance to Davies:
That Susan was Kane's wife and Marion was Hearst's mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today's changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. Hearst built more than one castle, and Marion was the hostess in all of them: they were pleasure domes indeed, and the Beautiful People of the day fought for invitations. Xanadu was a lonely fortress, and Susan was quite right to escape from it. The mistress was never one of Hearst's possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than 30 years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane.
Welles told filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich that Samuel Insull's building of the Chicago Opera House, and business tycoon Harold Fowler McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife, were direct influences on the Citizen Kane screenplay. "As for Marion," Welles said, "she was an extraordinary woman — nothing like the character Dorothy Comingore played in the movie."
Davies was portrayed by Virginia Madsen in the telefilm The Hearst and Davies Affair (1985) with Robert Mitchum as Hearst. Madsen later became a Davies fan and said that she felt she had inadvertently portrayed her as a stereotype, rather than as a real person.
Davies was portrayed by Heather McNair in Chaplin (1992), and by Gretchen Mol in Cradle Will Rock (1999).
In RKO 281 (1999), an HBO movie about the making of Citizen Kane, Davies is played by Melanie Griffith, with James Cromwell as Hearst. She is portrayed as a lush who yearns to travel, but stays with Hearst because she loves him, and Hearst's desire to defend her honor is seen as the primary reason he attempts to have Citizen Kane banned.
In the Peter Bogdanovich 2001 film The Cat's Meow (see above), Kirsten Dunst played Davies as a witty, intelligent woman.
A documentary film Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies (2001) premiered on Turner Classic Movies.
In the 1979 comedy The Jerk, the character Marie, the love interest of the tycoon protagonist, is largely modeled after Davies and her fictional counterpart Susan Alexander (enacted by Dorothy Comingore) in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.
Read more about this topic: Marion Davies
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