This TV movie from 1985 is pretty accurate in a lot of things and pretty inaccurate in a lot more. But it's a fascinating look at one of the early "power couples" of filmmaking., and as an extra bonus, we get an inside look at the fabulous "ranch" at San Simeon in California.
Robert Mitchum stars as Hearst and Virginia Madsen stars as Davies. Hearst of course was the media mogul of his time, with an empire of newspapers, magazines, and radio stations. He added movie making not long after meeting Davies, who was a featured player on Broadway, notably in the 1916 edition of the "Ziegfeld Follies."
Davies and Hearst remained a couple for well over 30 years, until his death in 1951 at age 87. Hearst was never able to obtain a divorce from his wife Millicent. Davies never married until after Hearst's death, when she married Horace Brown.
Hearst founded Cosmopolitan Productions largely to make movies starring Davies, but of the 95 or so films produced thru Cosmopolitan between 1918 and 1939, only about half starred Davies.
Davies entered films in 1917 in RUNAWAY ROMANY, a film she wrote herself. The film was largely financed by Paul Bloch and was produced and directed by her brother-in-law George Lederer (called Byron in this movie). Davies would star in about 48 films between 1917 and 1937, transitioning from silent films to talkies in 1929.
Unfortunately this TV movie perpetuates the image of Davies as a movie star propped up by Hearst's media blitz and not thru her own talent. From 1922 on, Davies was a superstar, signing with MGM in 1924 and reigning there for a decade before moving on to Warners.
Davies was voted the #1 female star of 1923 by theater owners in April of 1924 for the blockbusters WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER and LITTLE OLD NEW YORK. Both films ranked in the top 5 at the box office and catapulted Davies into the highest ranks of stardom, where she remained until her retirement in 1937.
This TV movie shows scenes filming RUNAWAY ROMANY (1917), a film Hearst had no connection to. Since the film does not survive, there's no way to compare Madsen's impersonation of Davies. There's also a small scene filming WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER (1922), which is dismissed as something second rate, when it was a mammoth production and a major hit.
The third scene shown filming is not identified in the TV movie and is misidentified on IMDb as being POLLY OF THE CIRCUS (1932). Wrong. The scene is intended to be about filming ZANDER THE GREAT (1925) in which, Davies claimed in her memoir, Charlie Chaplin donned her costume and filmed the scene with the lion. The scene does not exist in the surviving print.
The scene between Davies and Chaplin is also bizarre for having them worrying about "talkies" in 1925 when they didn't become a major factor in Hollywood until 1927. The film touches on scandals like the "Marion Davies Murder" and the suspicious death of Thomas Ince onboard Hearst's yacht.
While Madsen does a good job in showing Davies as an intelligent woman and not a brainless floozy, the film overall shortchanges Davies by not giving her credit for having a solid and long career in films. To be fair, in 1985 the filmmakers didn't have access to many of Davies' silent films that we now have.
Not really bad, but why not just watch a Marion Davies film?
