S22E06: Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst (Done & Dunne Crossover)
Trashy Divorces
Hemlock Creatives
4.5 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2024
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Media mogul William Randolph Hearst can be cast as a hero or a villain of the 20th century, and plenty of writers have taken a stab at pinning down his legacy definitively. But one of the lesser remembered aspects of Hearst's life was his abandonment, in 1917, of his wife, Millicent, and their five sons, to spend the rest of his life with actress Marion Davies. One quirk of this arrangement is that Millicent never consented to a divorce from her husband, and while this scandalous state of affairs might have sunk a less powerful person, Hearst's ability to manipulate the vast media empire he owned protected him, and allowed Marion's life and career to flourish on the West Coast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to trashy divorces. Everybody's favorite good podcast about bad relationships. |
| 0:07.2 | This week, though, a good relationship, maybe with some fallout, certainly famous in its own time. |
| 0:13.4 | My name is Stacey and Alicia, you are extremely excited about this one. |
| 0:17.1 | Oh, that I am. Welcome, friends. Thank you for joining us for today's tale of marital |
| 0:22.8 | misadventure with a twist. Today I'm bringing you the spider web laden-filled story of Marion Davies, |
| 0:31.8 | the most famous mistress of the 20th century. Marion Davies and W.R. Hurst carried. William Randolph Hurst. Oh, yeah, carried on a multi-decade |
| 0:41.8 | love affair. W.R. will never leave his long-suffering wife, Millicent. But even a wife didn't slow. W.R. |
| 0:50.2 | and Marion down all that much. This one is such a great story that we are double-dipping. |
| 0:56.0 | We're actually going to release this episode both on Trashy Divorces and Done and Done. |
| 1:00.7 | Trash Pandas, you're going to adore it. Lots of connections in this one. |
| 1:04.7 | For my done-and-done investigators, there is a reason I'm going into all of it for you. |
| 1:10.3 | There are going to be a few follow-up episodes |
| 1:12.0 | that launch from this particular story that I can't wait to tell you about. So many spider webs, |
| 1:18.0 | but it really does all connect in our very, very tiny, trashy world. Before we begin today with the |
| 1:23.8 | lovely Marion, we do have a magic mirror here to give some huge shoutouts. First up, |
| 1:30.1 | big, big thanks to Melanie Sean, our dearest friend who did the incredible research for this story. |
| 1:36.8 | Melanie, you are a goddess of all things old Hollywood and I adore your trashy heart. |
| 1:43.2 | Next up, huge thanks and praise to our newest Patreon supporters. |
| 1:48.0 | Alicia, whose names do we see in the magic mirror? |
| 1:51.5 | Holy cats, big love and thanks to Alison P. |
| 1:54.7 | Julia P. Emily R. Sharon L. |
| 1:57.7 | S.O.L. 88. Or Soul 88, not sure. P PV. Erica R. Nasha H. And some new super supporters to |
... |
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