Tweet MARION DAVIES FAMILY

This sort of detective work isn't much fun, and worse, we're really not getting very far. Can't we find someone to use the rubber hose on?

On 3/9/1919 Variety reported that Allan Dwan had just finished directing Getting Mary Married for Select, Marion starring. On April 11, 1919, Variety reported that Allan Dwan was filming The Dark Star, Marion starring. In between those two dates, on 3/21/1919, Variety reports that Marion is ill with influenza, but she returned to work on 3/28/1919. Given this timeline, if we assume that Pat Lake was born in June of 1919, Marion must have been the size of a barn while filming The Dark Star and Allan Dwan (whom Kevin Brownlow interviewed extensively for Hollywood) was holding out on us. If we decide that Marion didn't have influenza in the middle of an influenza epidemic but really gave birth to Pat Lake during that 3/21 - 3/28 period, then ditto on the barn thing during the filming of Getting Mary Married. And again, Allan Dwan was holding out on us.

It could be aruged, as to Marion's flu...
That stars, especially in the old days, admitted to an illness, real or fabricated, only
1. When they needed sympathy or 2. When they were suffering from a sickness, or problem, that would be perceived as being worse than the illness they'd been reported having

On 3/9/1919 Variety reported that Allan Dwan had just finished directing Getting Mary Married for Select, Marion starring. On April 11, 1919, Variety reported that Allan Dwan was filming The Dark Star, Marion starring. In between those two dates, on 3/21/1919, Variety reports that Marion is ill with influenza, but she returned to work on 3/28/1919. Given this timeline, if we assume that Pat Lake was born in June of 1919, Marion must have been the size of a barn while filming The Dark Star and Allan Dwan (whom Kevin Brownlow interviewed extensively for Hollywood) was holding out on us. If we decide that Marion didn't have influenza in the middle of an influenza epidemic but really gave birth to Pat Lake during that 3/21 - 3/28 period, then ditto on the barn thing during the filming of Getting Mary Married. And again, Allan Dwan was holding out on us.

It could be aruged, as to Marion's flu...
That stars, especially in the old days, admitted to an illness, real or fabricated, only
1. When they needed sympathy (that is, they'd been diagnosed with a bad case of P.R., and their best cure was the sympathy of their fans) or 2. When they were suffering from a sickness, or problem, that would be perceived as being worse than the illness they'd been reported having.

Ah! #2, the Joan Blondell gambit. I have remarked in the past how epidemic appendicitis was in the Hollywood crowd. Or "appendicitis", if you prefer.

I have a copy of Getting Mary Married and Marion is certainly not noticeably pregnant.

Darn! If she had been, it would have given a nice urgent reason for the title of the picture.

[Danny Burk]

I have a copy of Getting Mary Married and Marion is certainly not noticeably pregnant.

Darn! If she had been, it would have given a nice urgent reason for the title of the picture.

With a border motif of little shotguns on the lobby cards...

Here's some homework for someone who is a member of Newslibrary.com. There's an article from the Fresno Bee of 19 May 2001 which may be helpful. The opening excerpt is as follows:

A Hearst legacy? ...
Victoria Lake's face paints a clear picture of a woman worn from the struggle to find the truth about her family. Her eyes have dulled from thousands of hours of poring over photos and documents. The corners of her mouth droop in failure, the failure to find the one piece of defining evidence she needs. Her voice cracks as she fights to answer questions that have haunted her for years.

A promise Victoria Lake and her sister, Kimberly, made to their grandmother just before ...

It's listed as over 2000 words, so quite a substantial article which may answer at least some of the questions we're posing. The date is particularly notable - nearly a decade after the 'deathbed revelation', there is apparently no consensus within the family as to its veracity.

By the way, reading the reportage of Marion's death in the early 60s is quite interesting. They can't get away from mentioning Hearst, but he's carefully described as a 'lifelong friend', a 'confidant' and a 'promoter'. I wonder how much people were expected to read between the lines, without the insights we have?

Variety, which I subscribed to for decades, is now $600 a year and I think it said $60 for a 1-month online search access.... There'd be tons of stuff there, but it's pricey. If you could pay for a month and print out every you could find it might be worth it.

I came up with a snippet about a mail bomb threat to Davies in 1932 by John Grubbs and Martin Sullivan, but I couldn't find any other info ... other than the teaser.

By the way, reading the reportage of Marion's death in the early 60s is quite interesting. They can't get away from mentioning Hearst, but he's carefully described as a 'lifelong friend', a 'confidant' and a 'promoter'. I wonder how much people were expected to read between the lines, without the insights we have?

I think it was known, but the code wording really leaps out at you. I grew up in the San Simeon area and I remember the nudging and winking whenever the living arrangements at the Ranch were discussed. This may have been about the time that Marion died, I was but a wee vamplet, but I do remember the sudden silences and being shooed out of the room. ("Little pitchers...") People were less open about publicly discussing such arrangements in those days or at least they were when children were in the room. Or perhaps it was just our locale.

Until the thirties Hearst was always very careful to make sure that "the proprieties" were observed and the papers didn't discuss their affair until the NYC William Fallon trial in 1924, when they both got dragged into the testimony. The unstated rule for reportage was "we don't discuss that stuff unless it goes to court and becomes public record; once it does, all bets are off." By the thirties he and Marion were more or less living together openly, although officially they had separate residences, they aren't even enumerated together on the available censuses. Hearst is either in NY with Millicent or at San Simeon, and Marion is living separately in NY or in Santa Monica.