She was really good, wasn't she?

[mido505]

I have just finished watching the TCM documentary Marion Davies - Captured on Film. It is terrific. Of course, Welles and Citizen Kane play a prominent role. Ruth Warrick actually shows up for an interview segment, emphatically stating that Orson regretted what Kane had inadvertently done to Marion's public image. There is a great quote from Orson: "Marion was never one of Hearst's possessions...she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than 30 years. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane".

This documentary conclusively proves what an amazing talent Marion Davies actually was. Extensive film clips show a vivacious, supremely talented actress, superb as a mimic, hilarious as a comedienne, and powerful in drama. Footage of Davies imitating Lilian Gish, Pola Negri, and Greta Garbo had me laughing out loud. Davies really was the first, and in some respects the best, "screwball" actress. It is very apparent why Hearst was besotted with her.

The documentary does not shy away from the problematic aspects of Davies' life, especially the affairs and the drinking. The exposure of the latter is, according to the doc, what most angered Hearst when he viewed Kane; as a public figure and press lord who was used to being pilloried by the competition, Hearst evidently was not bothered by his own portrayal.

They had some balls, those two, Hearst and Marion, living fairly openly as a couple while he was still married in an era when this was beyond scandal. It is pointed out in the doc that the second libel against Marion promulgated by Citizen Kane (the first was her lack of talent) was that Marion abandoned Hearst; on the contrary, she stuck by him until the end, and at one point wrote a check for a million dollars to save Hearst from bankrupcy. Hearst died in Davies' home while she was sedated; when she awoke, all traces of Hearst's presence had been eliminated. She was not even invited to the funeral.

The most haunting aspect of the documentary are Marion's own words, recorded some time in the early 50's. They are simple, strong, and heartbreaking. What a remarkable woman! Ruth Warrick points out, correctly I think, that Welles would be pleased that this documentary had finally been made to rehabilitate Davies' reputation. She was by all accounts a very generous, talented, and kind-heared person. Bob Board, a longtime Davies fan, sums her up best when he states: "Tennessee Williams said, "Marion Davies makes up for the rest of Hollywood. That says it all". Indeed, it does.

[Glenn Anders]

Well, mido 505, I would not go quite so far as the documentary goes to canonize Marion Davies, but clearly the tragedy of her career, if not her life, was that, as you point out, she was a skilled natural comedienne with quick features and perfect timing. But William Randolph Hearst was mainly interested in control, which IS what CITIZEN KANE is generally about. He insisted that she make films at the studio he created for her. And because he wanted, perhaps from some increasingly vicarious lust, to see her in the arms of handsome actors doing "serious" romantic historical epics, he refused to let her do what she was best at: Comedy. That contributed, perhaps, to her drinking and her affairs.

In this kind of discussion, we run into how precisely biographical toward Hearst CITIZEN KANE may be, but Welles does echo the general regret toward Miss Davies attributed to him, and repeated by Ruth Warrick, during his conversations with Peter Bogdanovich in This is Orson Welles.

Glenn

[Tony]

Welles's quote makes me think that he didn't understand Kane as much as Mankiewicz did: I've always believe that Kane was about love, and the loss of it, and the symbol of that lost love was Rosebud. And Welles never liked Rosebud, and always said that Mankiewicz was 100% responsible for Rosebud and everything to do with it, as if he (Welles) were disowning the symbol of love (the most famous symbol of the picture) and blaming his co-writer for including it.

But then someone once said that Dicken's favourite work was a book considered by most critics as a very minor and flawed work, and that the artist is the last person to ask about their work: we really should look to the work itself. We can get info and clues from the artist, but certainly not the entire range of possible interpretations. Which gives us the age-old warning about fetishizing the artist at the expense of the work, something that, thank God, never happens on this web-site.

As for how Welles treated Marion Davies, he seemed to want to have it both ways, didn't he? First, he wrote that famous article in 1941 called "Citizen Kane is not about Louella Parson's Boss" (hope that title is right) wherein he claimed that indeed Kane was not based on William Randolph Hearst. Then in his forward to the the bio on Davies (c. 1973) he claimed to feel very sorry for how he treated her in Kane, and that she was not at all like Susan Kane.

Well, you can't have it both ways, can you? If the work wasn't about Hearst, how can Susan be based on Marion? If Susan wasn't based on Marion, why feel bad?

[LamontCranston]

No mention of Thomas Ince?

[mido505]

Lamont:

The doc is pretty forthright about the Ince incident, mentioning it in the context of Davies' affair with Chaplin, although ultimately dismissing the allegation as myth. They even have Davies talking about the supposed shooting/murder in a snippet of that recorded interview I mention. Kinda creepy, actually, to hear her talk about it. As I wrote earlier, the doc does not shy away from the negative aspects of Davies' life, merely seeking to correct the public's misconception of her as drunken, untalented shrew.

She made close to fifty movies, many of them in the sound era. She had a few bombs, but a surprising number of hits, both silent and sound. Although Hearst preferred her in those expensive dramatic pics, she's terrific in them - she was a very skilled dramatic actress, and many of those films were hits. Hearst never forbade her to do comedy - Davies made comedies right into the sound era. He did forbid her to take a pie to the face once, but we see footage of her getting a stream of seltzer water smack in the kisser. Speaking of sound, Davies was one of the few silent actresses to make an effective transition, overcoming a terrible stammer to do so. The heading of my first post, "she was really good, wasn't she?", came from director King Vidor, who made two of his best films, The Patsy and Show People, with Davies. BTW, Welles' buddy Lucille Ball claimed that Davies was a major influence on her comedic style.

Rather ironic that although Citizen Kane helped contribute to that mistaken image, Davies would probably just be another forgotten actress now if Kane hadn't kept her legend alive in some form.

[tonyw]

We must also remember that Kane was a composite figure based on many models, one of which was a Chicago businessmen who constructed an opera house for his very untalented mistress. Writing in 1941 that Kane was not based on Louella Parsons's boss, Welles may have been correct. But he probably understood how the depiction backfired to mar a very talented silent screen actress who was more talented than the mistress of a Chicago capitalist who is mostly forgotten today.

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: You seem to work against your own argument. Of course, "you can have it both ways." As one of the prime works of 20th Century cinematic art, CITIZEN KANE is about Hearst, yet not about Hearst. Susan's character has some resemblance to Marion Davies, but in many regards, they have very different characteristics. The picture is a work of dramatic fiction, and as I put it in my Epinions review, years ago:

"The general outline of Mank's script [for CITIZEN KANE] followed a jigsaw puzzle of the lives of self-made or lucky plutocrats who dominated America from the Civil War onward: Hearst, observed nearby at his movie unit on the MGM Lot; Reaper King Harold McCormick, who married Edith Rockefeller, and for his Polish mistress, Ganna Walska, bankrolled an opera house in Chicago; John D Rockefeller, Sr, recently dead, whose grandson, Nelson Rockefeller, Jr, Welles knew in New York; Samuel Insull, much in the tabloids for his return to America to face prosecution, having absconded to Greece with a fortune . . . many others -- the railroad giant Huntington!"

I must have in that review, somewhere, reference to Jim Fisk, the original boy plunger of Wall Street, who built the Metropolitan Opera House for his mistress, and who was shot down on the steps of her apartment by her lover. And recently, THERE WILL BE BLOOD brings up another candidate, Edward Doheny, who parlayed a silver strike into a fortune in Southern California oil. He engaged in a competition with his son, Edward "Ned" Doheny, Jr., over who could build the biggest palatial estate. After mutual involvement in the bribery of Harding Administration Interior Secretary Fall over government oil leases at Elk Hills threw America into a decade of political embarrassment, "Ned" built Greystone Manor in the Hollywood Hills, where he was found shot to death with his (male) secretary by his trophy wife Lucy, and their family doctor.

CITIZEN KANE is about all of these people, and about none of them.

We are talking about an artistic creation, based on a type of individual unique to America in the 19th and 20th Century. They were usually males of poor or humble origins who, because of the incredible undiscovered riches of America (or shoddy deals about those riches), made huge fortunes, influenced the political life of the nation, built massive palaces, attempted to put their stamp on our cultural life, and aped the aristocracy of Europe or Asia, often in an absurd and offensive manner. That line of individual may have reached its nadir in the later generations of the Bush Family.

These men tended to die alone, sometimes violently, abandoned by all but their retainers or mistresses.

CITIZEN KANE is also clearly about Welles, as he and Mankiewicz saw, and projected, his life. Yet, obviously, CITIZEN KANE is not primarily intended to be an imaginative autobiography of Orson Welles. Charles Foster Kane is . . . Charles Foster Kane. And Susan Alexander Kane is . . . Susan Alexander Kane. In the moment, they are no more, no less.

Welles apologized to Marion Davies in several places because critics and tabloid writers, once they convinced themselves that CITIZEN KANE was entirely about William Randolph Hearst, took a complex fictional character like Susan Alexander Kane, and lazily simplified her into Marion Davies. It was a grossly unfair characiture of Miss Davies, an innocent in the matter, and Welles acknowledged the fact.

I have little doubt that Welles, one way or another, artistically and in personal acts, continued to apologize to her for the rest of his life. After all, the identification of Susan Alexander Kane with Marion Davies was the artistic "flaw" least forgiven about CITIZEN KANE, the most publicly recognized work of genius he produced.

I think you are right, Tony, Welles doth protesteth too much about "rosebud." It is not so much a symbol of love but of the loss of a mother, and the freedom a toy represented to a young boy. The death of Beatrice Welles, when he was nine, is the pivotal event in the life of Orson Welles. The first wife he chose, Virginia; the early actresses he hired for his movies, Dorothy Comingore, Dolores Costello -- all are remarkable for their resemblance to Beatrice.

Yes, CITIZEN KANE is about love, I agree. Remember Leland rambling on about how "Charlie wanted everybody to love him," how he wanted love, but only on his own terms, and how he lost it "because he had none to give." But the picture is also about the control that wealthy old male plutocrats exert over people, lovers, money, industry, and the nation. It's about history, about being male, male dominance as being destructive above all else to democracy, about communication and the lack of it, about being an American, about a lot of things. CITIZEN KANE, like all great works of art, is about a core meaning, levels of meaning, and finally, whatever we find in it . . . ourselves.

Perhaps, that is why Welles ended so many of his works with the closing remark: "I remain, obediently yours."

Glenn

[mido505]

You've surpassed yourself with that post, Glenn. Just terrific...