Marion Davies had spent most of her career up until 1924 starring in theater adaptations. And even though they were box office hits, her penchant for comedy was stifled by the respectability expected from the mistress of William Randoplh Hearst, who pigeonholed Davies into historical dramas. This tension plays out in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Cat’s Meow (2001). Kirsten Dunst stars as Davies, hosting Charlie Chaplin and gossip columnist Louella Parsons, among others, on a yacht for the celebration of producer Thomas H. Ince’s birthday. Once aboard the luxury yacht Oneida, Davies’ flirtatious banter with Chaplin propels Hearst’s childish jealousy. All the while Ince tries to convince a very distracted Hearst to fund the expansion of what was one of the first studio lots in Hollywood before his untimely death. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Ince’s death on the yacht are based on many versions of a story Bogdanovich heard from Orson Welles.

A few years after the events speculated in The Cat’s Meow, Davies began to appear in comedies. One of which, Show People (1928), Charlie Chaplin also appears in twice. In many ways it is the proto A Star Is Born; a satire on Hollywood stardom that follows a disillusioned actress who gains prominence for low brow comedies and abandons them for the prestige of being a dramatic actress at a studio literally called High Arts Studio. The film shows Davies getting lost in the machine of celebrity only to be rescued by an old friend and the pleasure good bit. 

Although it would make sense to watch Show People first, watching it after The Cat’s Meow feels like time traveling. You start to anachronistically recognize Dunst’s studied impression in the way Davies smiles or grimaces overzealously. Davies was okay in the historical dramas, but in her comedies, especially the three directed by King Vidor, she became someone to make a biopic about. And because you spend so much of The Cat’s Meow watching a fictional Davies being the life of the party while she’s relentlessly berated by Chaplin about wasting her comedic chops, Show People is hard evidence that he was kind of right.