Marion Davies was Amazing

A visit to the movie star's Guest House at the Annenberg Community Beach House sent me down a research rabbit hole where, like so many others before me, I fell under the spell of Marion Davies.

Marion Davies Guest House is open to the public, part of the Annenberg Beach House

If all you know about the life of Marion Davies came from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, you have the wrong idea about a woman who was not only a huge movie star in the 1920s, but through her philanthropy had an impact on the lives of underserved communities on the Westside of Los Angeles. Citizen Kane’s main character, Charles Foster Kane, is a thinly disguised portrait of William Randolph Hearst, and the film director portrayed Kane’s girlfriend as an irritating, untalented singer. In real life, Hearst had an enduring out-of-wedlock relationship with the much younger Marion Davies, with whom he famously lived and entertained in Hollywood and San Simeon. Hearst tried to prevent the film from being made and barring that, did his best to banish any mention of it in his newspapers. But with the passage of time, many people (myself included!) blithely assumed that Marion was as charmless as the character in the film. Nothing could be further from the truth.