The times we had

life with William Randolph Hearst

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Last edited by ImportBot
August 12, 2011 | History

The times we had

life with William Randolph Hearst

  • 2 Want to read

A personal memory. . . possibly an autobiography, but probably not,"" these are taped reminiscences, as Marion Davies talked them twenty years ago. Randomly, sometimes inaccurately (dates?), in snatches. Here and there, this and that. A curious combination of guilelessness and discretion, Marion describes Hearst as the ""kindest, most innocent, naive person you'd ever want to meet."" She seems to be exactly the same--this young girl who first went on the stage at thirteen, then was something of a show/playgirl in Florida where she first met W.R., who reappeared in her life when she went on to make her films and graduated with nervous difficulty to the talkies. Finally she became Hearst's acknowledged mistress, presiding at the 60-guest-room San Simeon, called ""the ranch,"" where he insisted on paper napkins only, even if there were often as many servants as rooms. Finally when W.R. was 78, she retired from films to be his companion, working jigsaw puzzles in the evening. As the editors readily admit, you'll have learned more about the two of them from Fred Guiles' Marion Davies or Swanberg's Citizen Hearst, while Orson Welles contributes an introduction repudiating many of the assumptions occasioned by his famous film. It's pleasant incidental reading as only-yesterday celebrities surface (Churchill, Shaw, Cooper, Crosby, Thalberg, Harlow, not to forget Garbo who unkindly said to Marion, ""to me you are null and void""). Obviously Miss Davies--who knew she ""was no Sarah Bernhardt""--was nonetheless a very kind presence

Publish Date
Publisher
Ballantine Books
Pages
370

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Published in
New York
Series
Ballantine nonfiction -- 27768

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
921
Library of Congress
PN2287.D315 A35 1977

The Physical Object

Pagination
370 p. :
Number of pages
370

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL24222019M
Internet Archive
timeswehadlifewi00davi
ISBN 10
0345277686
ISBN 13
9780345277688
OCLC/WorldCat
8385116

Source records

Internet Archive item record

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
August 12, 2011 Edited by ImportBot add ia_box_id to scanned books
September 3, 2010 Edited by ImportBot Added new cover
May 6, 2010 Edited by WorkBot found a work
May 5, 2010 Created by ImportBot Imported from Internet Archive item record