Why Marion Davies? 

This May, go behind the scenes into the opulent private life of Marion Davies and how the movie Citizen Kane stole her legacy and turned everyone against her. The much-anticipated historical fiction release, THE BLUE BUTTERFLY 🦋 by award-winning author Leslie Johansen Nack (May 3, She Writes Press) explores the true-life story of Marion Davies’ and her relationship with William Randolph Hearst, including a whirlwind courtship, a secret child, a movie career spanning two decades, harrowing family excesses, and even a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. 

We are delighted to feature this piece by Leslie about what inspired her to write the book! 

By Leslie Johansen Nack

Do you believe in divine inspiration? I do. I’ve let good ideas pass me by because I didn’t stop and take note of the insight at the moment. It’s only now, five years later, that I understand how deeply the revelation was that I received about Marion Davies in 2015. The docent at Hearst Castle said that Marion gave Hearst $1 million dollars when he was near bankruptcy in 1937, at the height of the Great Depression. The idea came at me in a flash—I should write about her!

My breath caught and I was filled up with something light and yet powerful—can we call it inspiration? Yes! I instantly wanted to know more about a woman who would do that, especially in a time when women had no financial power, not even the ability to get their own checking account. Of course, Marion was far different than the common woman. She was mega rich and mega privileged. By 1937, she had worked for more than twenty years making more than forty films and had also received many expensive gifts from Hearst. She had her own checking account, and her own real estate.

Even so, coming up with $1 million in 1937 took a few days for her. She called her financial guy, and he sold some stocks and property to raise the money. In 2022 that would be equal to $19 million dollars raised in a matter of days. She was rich. 

She was also shunned by upper society, politics, and business in general because she never married Hearst, just “lived in sin” with him because his wife Millicent refused to grant him a divorce. Millicent wanted to keep her upper-class station in life, which was impossible as a divorcee, and besides, she was the mother of Hearst’s five sons. In 1937 Millicent refused to help Hearst when he was near bankruptcy and yet also continually refused to give him up in a divorce. But Hearst loved Marion and was devoted to her. 

When Marion gave Hearst the $1 million dollars, she had lived as Hearst’s mistress for 22 years. Theirs was hardly a “fly by night” affair.

When I got home from Hearst Castle the day the inspiration struck me, I looked on the internet for information about Marion’s life—how she grew up, where she was from, how it all started with Hearst— and found basically nothing at all. I looked for books written about her. There were two: Marion Davies: A Biography, published eleven years after her death by Fred Lawrence Guiles and The Times We Had, a collection of transcribed tapes published by Ballantine Books in 1975 from memories Marion had recorded near Hearst’s death. Unfortunately, footnotes had to be added to correct her memory on almost every page! 

I was so discouraged not to know more about her so I decided to research and write her story. Hearst has a dozen biographies written about him, and everybody knows his amazing story. Nobody knows Marion’s real story. 

I began my research with the two books mentioned above. I also bought every Hearst biography and talked with David Nasaw who wrote Citizen Hearst, the preeminent book on Hearst which included quite a bit about Marion. I talked with Brian Kenney from the Hearst Corporation. I discovered in Hearst’s dozen biographies that they all included stories about Marion. These biographers had to include her because they were together for thirty-four years! 

These biographies included many of the same stories repeated about Marion, but there were unique ones in each book, too. And then I discovered The Silent Films of Marion Davies written and researched by Edward Lorusso, which included background information on each of Marion’s movies. 

I began writing at that point. I was so inspired. But right away I hit a challenge of how to organize the book. New to writing fiction, I yearned to write a book that wasn’t chronologically straight forward in its telling, but I found that it really was the best way to introduce Marion to the world. Start at the beginning of her life, and hop, skip and jump my way through her life, highlighting the most important moments. I wrote in the first person, as if I was Marion and wrote the end of the book first, then circled back to the beginning of her life.  

It was exhilarating to finally have scenes come to me. The scene in my book when seventeen-year-old Marion calls out Hearst because she’s mad at him was so fun to write. She was spunky, feisty, and a bit of a tomboy, but was morphing into a beautiful young woman who loved gorgeous dresses and jewels. She danced on the Ziegfeld stage and that’s where Hearst saw her and fell in love with her. 

He was a bit of a lurker and what they called a “stage door Johnny” because he loved the theater life, the dancers, the sets, and the action of it all. It’s what made him a successful movie studio owner later in his life. He was drawn to that world as a sort of secret passion. And a man of his stature who is drawn to such a lowly craft needs to raise it up in importance. He formed Cosmopolitan Pictures only a few years later.

Marion grew and changed and learned her craft on the stage and then in front of the camera with Hearst and Cosmopolitan Pictures. One of her biggest teachers was Charlie Chaplin. Marion loved comedy so much. She was a natural at it. She loved to goof off and loved physical comedy. I am sure she also fell head over heels in love with Charlie although that is nowhere to be verified in any of the books I read. A few details squeak out in memoirs written by people who traveled in their circle. Costume designer Gretl Urban’s book tells a story of catching Marion and Charlie having sex. I also read Lita Grey’s memoir, My Life with Chaplin. She was Charlie’s second scorned sixteen-year-old wife. She wrote with abandon about so many intimate details, including her suspicions of Marion and Charlie’s affair. I had so much fun writing the love scenes between twenty-seven-year-old Marion and Charlie who was thirty-five-years-old. Mind you, Charlie Chaplin loved young girls – preferably under 18 years old, so falling for Marion really was out of character for him. They collaborated and had their secret affair for years. Exploring that as a writer was fun. Maybe I could write a romance novel after all. It was that much fun! 

As I rounded to the beginning of the end of the book, it became incredibly sad. She had given birth to Hearst’s baby in secret decades earlier when their relationship was new – a girl who her sister raised while Marion played the role of aunt. In her career, eventually she stopped getting offered the best parts, partly because of the limiting sort of parts Hearst would let her play, and partly because of her age. Forty-year-old actresses were cast aside for younger more beautiful starlets even back in the 1930s – same as today. Orson Welles put the final nail in Marion’s movie career and reputation in Hollywood with his movie Citizen Kane, where he portrays Marion as a drunk, talentless bore. Marion’s actual drinking had become obvious by 1941 when the movie was released, but what right did Welles have to publicly shame her like that? She was a hardworking, talented actress and a world-class hostess and a loyal friend to many. She stayed with Hearst until he died in 1951. She loved him deeply. 

Thankfully, Hollywood has begun to re-assess its lack of love and respect for Marion. She’s been excluded from some of the “best of” lists in Hollywood because people believed what they saw in Citizen Kane. It’s wrong! She was the inspiration for Lucille Ball’s comedy, after all. She was the richest woman in Hollywood when she died in 1961 at the age of sixty-four from cancer, and she worked her butt off for two decades when she really didn’t have to. She could have stayed home and been the rich woman of means who ran Hearst Castle. 

I won’t ruin the end of the love story between Hearst and Marion for you but hang on to your heart. It’s compelling. It makes me choke up even today. Silly, right? Why would the end of Hearst’s life and eventually Marion’s life a decade later move and devastates me so much? I can only chalk it up to the same connection that initially lit me up, years ago, on that fateful day in San Simeon.

—

Leslie Johansen Nack’s debut, Fourteen, received five indie awards, including the 2016 Finalist in Memoir at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Before she started writing, she raised two children, ran a mechanical engineering business with her husband, took care of her aging mother, and dreamed of retirement when she could write full-time. She did everything late in life, including getting her degree in English Literature from UCLA at age thirty-one, only two years after she married for the second time. If you want to know when her next book is coming out, please visit her website www.lesliejohansennack.com and sign up to receive an email when she has her next release. She lives in sunny San Diego and enjoys sailing, hiking and reading.

THE BLUE BUTTERFLY

New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane.

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Category: On Writing