Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies

Growing up, all I ever knew about MARION DAVIES was that she was the protégé and mistress of William Randolph Hearst and there were rumors galore that Orson Welles based his CITIZEN KANE on the relationship between the real life newspaper magnate and an untalented actress by the name of Marion Davies.

When finally I did get to see a few films of Marion Davies, I remained unimpressed by her so-called "talent" as a comedienne that others refer to. Only one of her pictures, THE RED MILL, even made a favorable impression on me. The rest were mired in old-fashioned acting techniques and staging that belonged more to the silent period than "talkies". In other words, I never warmed up to Miss Davies as an actress. In sound films, there's certainly nothing special about her speaking voice or her appearance and whatever talent she had seemed minimal to me.

Still curious, I viewed the documentary to get a better overall view of the woman and her career and to see whether I would come away with a better impression. I didn't. They say she was the forerunner of the sort of beautiful, funny comedienne that Carole Lombard was. Well, I'll take Carole any day--both as an actress and comedienne.

I'm still left with the impression that MARION DAVIES was a mediocre screen personality with minimal talent and find it difficult to believe that people are talking about her as if she was a truly dazzling comic talent. I just don't see it that way.

And the documentary itself is a disjointed thing--full of film clips, still photos, audio voice-over of Davies expressing thoughts about herself and her career (bad recordings), and a few remarks by people like RUTH WARRICK and CONSTANCE MOORE that bear no more weight than feathers.

This is a very good documentary of a remarkable person. I believe that Marion would have been flattered by the honesty and poise of Virginia Madsen, Charlize Theron and others.

Marion has sadly been remembered as the inspiration for Susan Alexander Kane from Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane". That character, who had no talent and no mind of her own, and whose singing career is propped up by newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane's obsession that she had the potential to become a great opera singer, eventually breaks down under the strain and attempts suicide. Welles might have had a much more successful career than even he had if his film had not been appearing to pick on Marion Davies, because that was one thing William Randolph Hearst could not abide. He didn't care what people wrote or thought about him, but he basically started a war with RKO over this presentation of his lady fair, and it's probably one reason "How Green Was My Valley" won best picture of 1941, and not Kane.

The documentary talks about Davies from her birth, discusses her background, and how her mother encouraged all of her daughters to go for money and not romance in men, because she believed that romance would eventually die out anyway. That might have been how Davies' relationship with Hearst started, but she stayed with him for 34 years, even after all hope of marriage to him had faded because his first wife liked the social standing of being Mrs. Hearst and her price for divorce was too high, after Marion ironically saved Hearst financially during the 1930's by writing him a check for one million dollars. How was she rewarded in the end? When Hearst died Marion had been heavily sedated and was sleeping. When she awoke, Hearst's body was gone and all signs that Hearst had ever lived in Marion's house had disappeared courtesy of his sons.

This documentary goes very much into her film career too, not just the personal story. Marion made her first film in 1917, and was one of the few actresses who successfully made the transition to sound. She even overcame a stammer, which was something I didn't know before. Hearst was making films in the 1910's, years before he met Marion, but IMHO Hearst, for all of the talents that he genuinely saw in the woman, is probably one of the reasons her film career never really took off. He was always insisting that she star in period pieces and odd productions that just did not play to her strengths. Part of the problem was that for over a decade she was associated with MGM, which did drama very well but was never good at comedies, which was Marion's forte. And when MGM did drama during the age of Irving Thalberg, it was usually his wife Norma Shearer who got the best parts. If you want to see Marion's very best work look at "The Patsy" and "Show People", two very good late silent period comedies that MGM got right in spite of itself.

Marion once told a story about William Randolph Hearst saving a stranded mouse that ventured into the house by capturing it, feeding it cheese, digging it a little hole outside, which he covered in leaves and a corner of Marion's chaise blanket which he cut up for the purpose of keeping the mouse safe and warm. I'm thinking that his karmic reward for this single act of kindness was not wealth, power or prestige but Marion Davies- she was the gift of grace and sunlight in his life.

'Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies' is one of several documentaries directed by Hugh Munro Neely and produced by Hugh Hefner, each one spotlighting a legendary actress of silent films. Full disclosure: I've had some minor interaction with Mr Neely and I consider him a friend, so I may be slightly prejudiced in favour of this movie. But I genuinely enjoyed it.

Any appraisal of Marion Davies's life and career must necessarily examine her relationship with William Randolph Hearst. 'Captured on Film' goes to great lengths -- protesting *too* much, methinks -- in its insistence that Hearst and Davies were *not* the inspiration for the fictional relationship between Charles Foster Kane and Susan Alexander in 'Citizen Kane'. Unfortunately, this documentary offers a series of talking heads making that disavowal, but provides no real evidence. I wish that 'Captured on Film' had mentioned, even briefly, the two real-life couples whose relationships probably inspired Orson Welles's depiction of Kane and Susan Alexander. Jules Brulatour was an early film producer who tried to build up an acting career for his untalented mistress Hope Hampton (whom he wed secretly); their relationship strongly resembles the Kane/Alexander liaison. An even stronger inspiration was undoubtedly the life and career of newspaper publisher Colonel Robert McCormick, who built the Chicago Opera House so that he could groom his beautiful but tone-deaf mistress for a career as an opera diva. Anyone familiar with McCormick's career will realise that his life, and his relationship with his mistress, resemble Citizen Kane and Susan Alexander far more closely than Hearst and Davies ever did. It's a shame that Hugh Neely never mentioned any of this while making his argument. I predict that future generations will continue to 'know for a fact' that Citizen Kane is Hearst and Susan Alexander is Davies, and will be uninterested in learning otherwise.

This documentary features some delightful excerpts from Davies's more obscure films, but does not always identify them. We see a brief (and funny) clip of Davies walking down a street with a procession of men following her, but we're not told that this is from 'Tillie the Toiler'. We also see a brief clip of Davies with a chorus line of Coldstream Guards from 'Hollywood Revue of 1929'; I wish that this documentary had included her entire musical number from that film. More favourably, I was pleased when narrator Charlize Theron mentioned that Davies was production manager of her films: unlike Susan Alexander, Marion Davies was *not* some brainless bimbo living off a sugar daddy! Also, I was gratified that Neely and his crew got the name right for Davies's film 'The Florodora Girl' ... because that show's title is often misspelt as 'FlorAdora'.

We're shown a brief clip of Davies in 'The Red Mill', but this documentary never mentions the tremendous irony behind that film: 'The Red Mill' was directed (under an alias) by silent-film comedian Roscoe Arbuckle, after Arbuckle's acting career was ruined by the publicity-hungry Hearst. We get some sound bites from two matronly ladies who knew Davies when they were girls: these ladies are daughters of King Vidor, the man who directed Davies in some of her best films (including her best and sexiest performance, 'The Patsy'). I wish that this documentary had done more to establish the working relationship between Davies and the underrated Vidor, since he did so much to mould her career. Hearst liked to showcase Davies in elaborate costume dramas that would position her as a 'serious' actress, but Vidor recognised that Davies's true talent was for light social comedies.

I was pleased that this documentary entirely avoided a device that has been overused in several other showbiz documentaries: re-enactments of key incidents in the subject's life, performed by modern actors with their faces out of frame. Hugh Neely's documentaries often feature elaborate and imaginative visual sequences that must have been complicated to set up. We get one of those here, as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle conjoin themselves to form a head shot of Davies, which then dissolves into a publicity photo of Davies. It's clear that Neely and his crew must have done this sequence backwards: duplicating the vintage photo, then cutting up the duplicate into a jigsaw puzzle, then disassemblng the pieces. The effort involved is impressive. I'll rate 'Captured on Film' 9 out of 10. I would have rated this enjoyable documentary a perfect 10 if only it had included a brief mention of Colonel McCormick and his mistress ... the *real* inspirations for the Citizen Kane story.

Finally re-watched this documentary after a 15-year span and enjoyed it though it seems sketchier than I remembered. But for a 2001 production, it mostly gets it right.

It's nice to see Kevin Brownlow and Davies' biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles (who died in June 2000) and others. But I think they spend too much time on the Hearst connection, important as that may be. At some point Davies' film career has to stand on its own merits ... and there are many.

Marion Davies' film career started in 1917 and lasted until 1937. She was a star, always the star, of all her films (with the exception of the all-star Hollywood REVUE OF 1929). Davies was a star when her MGM "rivals" Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Greta Garbo were unknowns and who all started in films as bit players. Indeed, Shearer was an extra in Davies' THE RESTLESS SEX in 1920. Davies starred in 48 feature films, wrote the scenario for her film debut in RUNAWAY ROMANY (1917), and was an active film producer through Cosmopolitan Productions for many years.

While the documentary shows silent-film clips and names titles like BEAUTY'S WORTH, WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER, LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, JANICE MEREDITH, THE RED MILL, QUALITY STREET, THE PATSY, THE CARDBOARD LOVER, and SHOW PEOPLE, I also recognized short clips from GETTING MARY MARRIED, THE RESTLESS SEX, and TILLIE THE TOILER.

Just in the last few years, GETTING MARY MARRIED, THE RESTLESS SEX, ENCHANTMENT, and THE BRIDE'S PLAY have seen limited DVD releases, and ENCHANTMENT has aired on TCM. The incomplete BURIED TREASURE is likely to see a limited DVD release in 2017. These films would have been hard to see in 2001.

The documentary gets it right in showing the breadth of Davies range in films. She is best remembered for her comedies, but she also starred in costume epics and romantic dramas. When talkies came, she added a few musical performances, having been a Ziegfeld show girl and featured player in other Broadway shows of the 1910s.

The documentary also gets it right in discussing Davies' business acumen and extraordinary generosity to studio crewmen and fellow players as well as her civic philanthropies.

The documentary ignores the late 1930s trade papers' reports of Hearst's attempts to set up his production company at other major studios after he and Davies left Warners in 1937. As late as 1939, these deals were in development. Davies never really intended to retire from the screen in 1937.

Quibbles aside, this is a marvelous and much-needed documentary record of a very neglected star. In the late silent era, Marion Davies was one of MGM's top 5 box office stars. And while her MGM rivals' careers lasted into the 1940s or later (Crawford), Davies had a very big jump on them all.

And so a big thanks to all responsible for getting this documentary made. And let's hope more of Davies' MGM copyrighted silents get restored and released on DVD.

With a considerable amount of earnest determination, this 60-minute documentary about actress Marion Davies tried to do 3 things (which I've listed below).

(1) It tried to dispel the negative image Davis earned from the public by being William Randolph Hearst's mistress for over 30 years. Davies was just 20 when she met Hearst, who was 54 at the time.

(2) It also tried to convince the viewer that Davies was an exceptionally gifted actress, especially in "Screwball" comedy roles. Hearst definitely believed Davies to be an extraordinary actress and he certainly spent millions trying to convince the public that she was, as well.

(3) It tried to prove that the comparison that's been repeatedly made between the real-life Marion Davies and the character, Susan Alexander, in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" was completely erroneous. According to this documentary, Davies was everything that Alexander wasn't, and then some.

Anyway - I, for one, don't know why (40 years after her death) that it was looked upon as being such a big deal to make this documentary about Davies in order to rectify some (apparently) serious misconceptions about her.

I mean, who in this day and age really cares one way, or the other. I sure don't. Do you?