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New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane.
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Awards for The Blue Butterfly, A Novel of Marion Davies
Praise for The Blue Butterfly, A Novel of Marion Davies
The Blue Butterfly is a vibrant period novel that reimagines the controversial love story of a classic film star.
Leslie Johansen Nack goes where no author has gone before with this vibrant period novel that brilliantly reimagines the life of legendary film star, Marion Davies.
Leslie Johansen Nack’s latest novel is a vibrant and complex historical fiction account of Marion Davies’ thirty-four-year relationship with William Randolph Hearst. Davies is known as one of the great actresses of her generation and Nack proves just how timeless her story really is, taking readers on a whirlwind journey of her life
In The Blue Butterfly, Leslie Johansen Nack chronicles the career of the fabulous Marion Davies and captures the star’s legendary verve and spirit on the Broadway stage, in her Hollywood movies, and in the battle against Citizen Kane. More importantly, this novel tells of the love story between Davies and William Randolph Hearst to its heartbreaking end.
Leslie Johansen Nack redeems the tragic legacy of Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst’s long-time lover, in her newest, The Blue Butterfly. Dripping with diamonds and gilded with grandeur, The Blue Butterfly takes readers from the bowels of the New York stage to the glittering life of Hollywood and its stars. Haunting and heartbreaking, The Blue Butterfly elicits the gut-punch that what we do for love colors our lives forever.
A detailed, moving portrait of a complex woman in a complex life.
The book reads as if it really is Davies’ autobiography . . . . a timely reminder of what women would have been up against in Hollywood.
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Following the lives of real-world people to spin an engaging story is a tricky business . . . . Fortunately, author Leslie Johansen Nack has picked the perfect subject matter in Marion Davies whose life on and off the silver screen was filled with glamour and high drama.
The Blue Butterfly is an unfiltered, first-person narrative told in glittering detail. It is the almost mythic story of a glowing, spirited woman who is captured and showered with riches beyond imagining—a butterfly in a gilded cage. In this very fast-paced book, which spares no detail in the telling, we see how dearly Marion Davies paid for her willing captivity.
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Davies, Marion. The Times We Had, Life with William Randolph Hearst. 1975 by Bobbs-Merrill Company. Published by Ballantine Books.
Guiles, Fred Lawrence. Marion Davies, A Biography. 1972 by McGraw Hill.
Nasaw, David. The Chief, the Life of William Randolph Hearst. 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company
Proctor, Ben. William Randolph Hearst, The Later Years 1911-1951. 2007 Oxford University Press.
Swanberg, W.A. Citizen Hearst. 1961 Scribner.
Lorusso, Edward. The Silent Films of Marion Davies. 2017 Edward Lorusso.
Herndon, Booton. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. 1977 Booton Herndon.
Robinson, David. Chaplin, His Life and Art. 1985 by David Robinson.
Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography. 1964 by Simon and Schuster
Chaplin, Lita Grey with Morton Cooper. My Life With Chaplin, an Intimate Memoir. 1966 Dell Publishing.
McCabe, John. Charlie Chaplin. 1978 Robson Books Ltd.
Telles, Larry. A Brief History of the Silent Screen. 2008 Larry Telles
Birchard, Robert S. Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara. 2007 Arcadia Publishing.
Hopper, Hedda. The Whole Truth and Nothing But. 1962, 1963 Doubleday
Barbas, Samantha. The First Lady of Hollywood, A Biography of Louella Parsons. 2006 University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Whitfield, Eileen. Pickford, The Woman Who Made Hollywood. 1997 University Press of Kentucky.
Boutelle, Sara Holmes. Julia Morgan Architect. 1988 Cross River Press.
Massa, Steve. Slapstick Divas, the Women of Silent Comedy. 2017 BearManor Media.
Brooks, Louise. Lulu in Hollywood. 1982 Alfred A Knopf.
Vogel, Michelle. Children of Hollywood, Accounts of Growing Up as the Sons and Daughters of Stars. 2005 McFarland and Company.
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PHOTOS OF MARION DAVIES
