"The Cat's Meow"

If there were any justice in the world, "The Cat's Meow" would be the beginning of the rehabilitation of Davies' image. Film Forum in New York has already broken ground on such an effort, showing a festival of Davies' movies last spring. Part of the reason the public turned against Davies was the fawning over her pumped out by the Hearst publicity machine, the lavish coverage of her parties and the invariable praise of her movies. People got suspicious when they heard praise for movies they knew were duds.

Hearst, sensitive to his position as a married man living with his mistress, attempted to make Davies dignified in a series of stultifying costume pictures that the studio he built for her, Cosmopolitan Pictures, released through Paramount and then through MGM. The most telling scene in "The Cat's Meow" comes when Hearst screens scenes from Marion's latest costumer. The guests sit bored and respectful until Marion starts breaking up and pulling faces behind her director's back, and, laughing, they come to life. The pained, stiff look on Herrmann's face conveys the misguided love that did in Davies the movie star; you know this man thinks that when Davies makes people laugh, she's being ridiculed by them. (Hearst refused to let Davies take part in a pie fight in the 1928 "Show People," though she and the film's director, King Vidor, begged him to.)

Davies is charming in some of her costume talkies, the relatively lighthearted "Marianne" (1929) and "The Floradora Girl" (1930), though the hearty, family entertainment tone of those pictures makes them tough going. The production values that Hearst insisted upon weigh down her spirit, and you have to look elsewhere, like the 1928 silent comedy "The Patsy," to see what makes Davies so appealing; she's one of the most delightful screen comediennes I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, the evidence is hard to come by; of all her films, only "Show People" is available on video. But it's proof enough. It's also an inadvertent metaphor for her career, containing the happy ending Davies deserved in real life. In it she plays Peggy Pepper, a Georgia colonel's daughter who comes to Hollywood to be a great dramatic star. Thanks to the kindness of a bit player named Billy Boone (William Haines), Peggy stars in a series of slapstick two-reelers, where she's a hit. And it's no wonder. When Peggy, all curls and flounces, gets a spray of seltzer right in the puss, the gaping, gasping look of offended maidenhood on Davies' face has the zing of real surprise, the essence of a perfectly executed gag. (Vidor does an expert parody of a Keystone Kops sequence, in which Davies and Haines are chased in a wild barnyard sequence that at one point features Peggy bareback on a galloping sow.)

But Peggy still longs to be a dramatic actress, and when she gets the call from High Arts Studios, she reinvents herself as Patricia Pepoire. It's here that art eerily imitates life. Audiences and exhibitors reject her movies (as they did with Davies; Hearst lost an estimated $7 million on Davies vehicles), and, reunited with Billy, she reclaims her place as an audience favorite.

"Show People" must have been an unbelievable relief for the real-life Davies, giving her a chance to parody the sort of refined movies that Hearst wanted her to make while demonstrating her real talents. Davies executes a small tour de force in the scene where Peggy demonstrates "the emotions" for a studio casting director. Running through "passion" (closed eyes, cupid's-bow mouth puckered for a kiss), "joy" (eyes popped and huge, toothy smile) and "hatred" (eyes flaring as if someone has just goosed her), Davies skewers a bad actress's idea of great acting. When "Patricia" is interviewed by a flattering Hollywood journalist, Davies comes up with an expression -- fey, droopy eyes and upper lip curled as if she were attempting to suck a morsel of food from between her front teeth -- that tells you she was as bored by her prestige pictures as everyone else.

Davies sails through the movie like a daisy caught in a windstorm. She's enough of a sport to make fun of herself and smart enough to make the audience her pal as she's doing it. The only bad thing about "Show People" and "The Patsy" is the thought of what she might have done if Hearst could have let audiences love her for what she was. At the end of her posthumously published autobiography, "The Times We Had," Davies writes, "People got so tired of the name Marion Davies that they would actually insult me. W.R. [Hearst] thought he was building up a star. He saw me, in all his good faith, as an actress, or that I had the ability to be one. I hope before he died, he found out I wasn't. Still, I think he thought I was." That's the voice of someone who had been led to undervalue her own real talents by someone who, with the best intentions, stifled them. It's also the voice of true love. Damn it.

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