sure if he would compete, but he was working with a group of boxers and was particularly impressed with the winner of the light heavyweight championship of the American Expeditionary Force, “a young Irish boy named Gene Tunney.”
Frances was wondering what to do next while she waited for Mary when a telegram arrived: “Would you consider contract as writer and director at Cosmopolitan Studio, New York? Salary two thousand dollars a week. W. R. Hearst.”14
William Randolph Hearst. The publishing baron and owner of the San Francisco Examiner who had paid her fifteen dollars a week less than ten years before was now offering her $100,000 a year. There wasn’t much to think about. Yet just the same, she checked in with Adela Rogers, who had been working for Hearst as a reporter for over five years.
Adela adored Hearst and had nothing but praise for the man. She had been living a rather conflicted life since marrying the Los Angeles Examiner’s handsome young copy editor Ike St. Johns. She had resisted changing her last name, but her beloved father insisted upon it, “so not to belittle Ike’s feelings.” She compromised and used Rogers St. Johns, and joked she had married at the age of eighteen for fear of “being an old maid.”
She was juggling her roles of being a wife to Ike and taking care of Elaine and Bill, the two young children she had wanted so badly, but Adela came alive when she was reporting, especially covering murder trials. Her husband might complain, but Hearst had backed her at every turn and she was proud to have earned his respect.15
The only person Frances cared about who was negative about Hearst was her father. He was convinced “that Hearst alone was responsible for the sinking of the Maine, war with Mexico, our troops going to France, and the rising power of the unions.” Len Owens told Frances she was “going from bad to Hearst,” but his daughter was not about to be deterred. She understood working for Hearst meant writing for Marion Davies and she was intrigued by the prospect.16
Frances had first met Marion when she was one of the four beautiful chorus girls backing Elsie Janis during the short run of Miss Information in the fall of 1915. Marion was a stunning blue-eyed blonde, unpretentious and very funny. For all her flirting, Elsie was never jealous of pretty young women and she promoted Marion as “one of the most popular gals in town judging from the coffin-like boxes of flowers that crowded the stage entrance nightly.” Marion’s bubbling personality, her genuine interest in other people, and her ability to make everyone feel good about themselves made her well liked by other chorus girls as well as the wealthy, bored, and usually married men of New York.17
That was before Marion had “settled down” with William Randolph Hearst. She had literally watched from behind the curtains as her three older sisters became showgirls, each taking the last name of Davies for the stage. “Mama Rose” ruled the roost, supported by a combination of relatives, her daughter’s salaries, their boyfriends, and later their husbands. According to Anita Loos, her mother and sisters schooled Marion in the “Gigi tradition” of pleasing a man, for catching the eye of a producer or a rich “patron” was one of the few avenues to financial security available to girls from families like the Dourases.18
Marion was eighteen and Hearst over fifty when they became an established couple in 1916. The newspaper publisher’s anti-English and pro-German stance made him unpopular with many, but Marion never cared for politics or world affairs. He gave her a Tiffany watch after their first dinner together, the start of a stream of gift giving that would last for over thirty years.
W.R.—“the Chief”—was born and raised in San Francisco, the only child of Phoebe and George Hearst. His father made his first fortune in the silver from the Comstock Lode and invested in real estate and newspapers and eventually was elected United States senator from California. Concentrating on the Harvard Lampoon and the Hasty Pudding Club instead of his studies, W.R. left college during his junior year and made his first foray into publishing at his father’s San Francisco Examiner. He expanded the family fortune by buying papers in twenty cities including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and purchasing a magazine combine consisting of Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Popular Mechanics.
Hearst served as a congressman from New York in the early 1900s, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor, governor, and twice for the presidency. By the time he met Marion, he had been married for more than ten years to another former showgirl, Millicent Willson, and was the father of five boys. The previously fun-loving Millicent showed an immediate affinity for the approval of society as soon as she married and W.R. was once again looking for diversion. Marion was hardly his first affair, but it became a serious one very quickly. He “favored fidelity in the abstract” according to his biographer W. A. Swanberg, and had “an enormous zest for life” and “an almost pagan worship of youth, energy, activity, sensation.”19
He expanded his empire to include movies in 1913 by producing newsreels and formed Cosmopolitan pictures as a showcase for what he was convinced were the great dramatic talents of Marion Davies. Anita Loos wrote Getting Mary Married for Marion, but when she and Emerson signed to work for the Talmadge sisters, she recommended Frances and W.R. embraced the idea.20
John Emerson, Anita, and Frances left Los Angeles together and when they arrived in New York, Frances called Hearst’s office for instructions. She was told she was expected at the Beaux Arts apartment building, where Marion Davies opened the door amid howls of laughter and blaring music. There in the center of half a dozen Ziegfeld beauties towered William Randolph Hearst, over a foot taller and thirty years older than any of the other giggling and dancing participants.21
“Hi, Fran-Frances,” said Marion. “Come in, we’re just tea-teaching W.R. how to shim-shimmy!”
Out of breath but not at all embarrassed, Hearst ceased shaking his shoulders and welcomed Frances. His large size and thin voice struck her as contradictory, yet he seemed totally at ease. He looked at her with his piercing blue eyes and told her he considered her the brains behind Mary Pickford’s success and he expected the same stardom for Marion. Frances praised Marion’s talents and personality, but cautioned him that Mary’s position was unique and expressed reluctance to write for Marion.
“Don’t you like her?” Hearst asked.
“Very much,” Frances assured him. “That’s why I don’t want to do anything which could jeopardize her career.”
“I don’t understand you! I’m willing to spend a million on each picture.”
“Lavishness doesn’t guarantee a good picture, Mr. Hearst. Marion is a natural-born comedienne and she is being smothered under pretentious stories and such exaggerated backgrounds that you can’t see the diamond for the setting.”22
Hearst was not used to direct criticism, but Frances had made her point and their mutual respect was sealed. They established that Frances would be given the freedom to finish her other commitments and be “loaned out” to make a United Artists film with Mary when the time came. All this and two thousand a week were worth a few concessions.
They found a story they could both agree on in The Cinema Murders, a light drama that had been serialized in Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine. It allowed for plenty of the theatrical costumes so important to Hearst, but Frances wrote in dancing scenes and comic interludes to show off what she considered Marion’s strengths. Their compromise marked the beginning of a fifteen-year tug-of-war over what was best for Marion.
Frances could write anywhere and Anita suggested sharing a house out on Long Island, since they were both making enough money to indulge in a “country home” for the season. They fell in love with the idea of a huge yard and growing their own vegetables. They
