For fear of her stutter and of fatiguing her, we’d arranged to give her only one line to say: “Welcome to my house.” She carried it off on the first take. “Is this all I get to do?” she demanded. “I want more.”
“Don’t be a greedy little girl.” At five o’clock she insisted on going visiting. She went to Pickfair to show Mary how young she looked and then all over town, until it was time for bed. At midnight I received a call from her: “How do I get this stuff off my face?”
When the show was screened, she was a sensation. Thanks to Hibbs and Masters, she enjoyed a last flurry of fame and fun, including her trip to the inauguration, while I went off for a month to Europe. She had two more offers for TV.
When I came home, Marion had been taken into Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. She never came out alive. She was in a coma for five weeks. “I don’t think she’ll recognize you,” Mrs. Mauser said. But I went anyway. I’ll never forget my last picture of her. Weeks of daily cobalt treatments had colored her neck and part of her face a deep purple. It was heartbreaking, yet she was feeling no pain.
On September 23, 1961, the Los Angeles Examiner reported the death of Marion Davies the previous day. “The list of Miss Davies’ close friends,” the obituary said, “was long, impressive and diverse, reflecting her wide range of interests. They included George Bernard Shaw, William Randolph Hearst, Sir Thomas Lipton, Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Bernard M. Baruch.... Miss Davies’ only venture into matrimony lasted until her death. She was married to former Merchant Marine Captain Horace Brown....”
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A letter Frances Marion wrote her earlier struck some different notes: “Remember how we laughed even when we were crying?... How we danced the shimmy and the Charleston ... tossed our petticoats over the windmill ... went to the Follies to applaud A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody and cheer the beautiful Miss Davies, who was Miss-Miss-Miss America!
“Then the thirties ... those fabulous excursions to San Simeon ... the long table in the dining room with W.R. shepherding his flock (and not all of us lambs) ... nipping champagne in the little girls’ room ... those overnight picnics ... Miss-Miss-Miss America on a gentle old nag but looking more scared than if a mouse had run up her riding habit ... sleeping under the stars ... W.R. pacing up and down as he waited for his forgotten Seidlitz powders ... the ride back in the morning, the fields dappled with wild flowers ... a lot of us wilder than the flowers but just as pretty ... Bill Haines dressed as though for the North Pole wearing a hood over his head and face, and mittens on his hands ... Errol Flynn smacked in the heart by the limbs of Lili Damita....
“All of this was ours to enjoy and be grateful for the rest of our lives. And none of these memories could have graced our past if it hadn’t been for you and your loving kindness.”
If anybody can sum up a life in nine words, Frances can. Of Marion Davies she says: “She was a butterfly with glue on her wings.”