Marion Davies: The Woman at the Top of the Hill

The films Marion Davies made when William Randolph Hearst was not interfering were genuinely funny. Her timing was precise, her physical comedy was confident, and the critics who saw those films said so. The problem was that Hearst, who funded her career through his production company and controlled what she made, did not want her to be a comedian. He wanted her to be a dramatic actress, to play queens and historical heroines, and he spent millions producing those films and promoting them in his newspapers. The films were expensive. They were not very good. The critics said that too, and Hearst could not quite suppress every critic.

Davies ran the social life of Hearst Castle for the better part of two decades. She managed the guest lists, organized the parties, handled the logistics of entertaining hundreds of people, including film stars, politicians, and foreign visitors, in a compound at the top of a mountain three hours from Los Angeles by car. Her memoir and the Sunset Magazine features from the period describe the Castle during its peak years of operation: the outdoor pools lit at night, the dining hall where Hearst sat at the center of a long table, the strict rule against drunkenness that Hearst apparently maintained while drinking wine himself at every meal.

Charlie Chaplin was a regular guest. Clark Gable came. The weekends at San Simeon were the most socially desirable invitations in Hollywood, and Davies was the reason they worked. She was the actual host.

In nineteen forty-one, Orson Welles released "Citizen Kane." The character of Susan Alexander Kane, Charles Foster Kane's second wife, a woman of genuine talent whose career he distorts in service of his own ego, was based in part on Marion Davies. Davies reportedly said the comparison was insulting and accurate in roughly equal measure.

She left the Castle when Hearst's health failed in the nineteen forties. He died in nineteen fifty-one. The parties were over.