By 1924, Davies was the number one female box office star in Hollywood because of the popularity of When Knighthood Was in Flower and Little Old New York, which were among the biggest box-office hits of their respective years.

[1] However, many commentators, including writer-director Orson Welles, defended Davies' record as a gifted actress and comedienne to whom Hearst's patronage did more harm than good.

[21] Davies worked as a chorus line dancer starting with Chin-Chin, a 1914 musical starring David C. Montgomery and Fred Stone, at the old Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia.

[24] While dancing in the Follies at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City, the teenage Davies was first observed by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who was seated in the front row of the audience.

[1] Without Davies' knowledge, Hearst clandestinely arranged for an intermediary from Campbell's Studio to invite her to be photographed in ornate costumes such as a Japanese geisha and a virginal bride.

[27] After making her screen debut in 1916, and modelling gowns by Lady Duff-Gordon in a fashion newsreel, Davies appeared in Runaway Romany (1917), her first feature film.

[31] His newsreels touted her social activities, and a reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner was assigned the full-time job of recounting Davies' daily exploits in print.

[38] Other hit silent films included: Beverly of Graustark, The Cardboard Lover, Enchantment, The Bride's Play, Lights of Old Broadway, Zander the Great, The Red Mill, Yolanda, Beauty's Worth, and The Restless Sex.

[39] Upon visiting the sprawling Hearst Castle with its Greek statues and celestial suites, playwright George Bernard Shaw reportedly quipped: "This is what God would have built if he had the money.

[41] During the heyday of the Jazz Age, the couple spent much of their time entertaining and holding extravagant soirees with famous guests, including many Hollywood actors and political figures.

[42] Frequent habitues and occasional visitors included Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Harpo Marx, Clark Gable, Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart, among others.

[49] Davies herself was more inclined to develop her comic talents alongside her friends Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford at United Artists, but Hearst pointedly discouraged this.

He preferred seeing her in expensive historical pictures, but she also appeared in contemporary comedies like Tillie the Toiler, The Fair Co-Ed (both 1927), and especially three directed by King Vidor, Not So Dumb (1930), The Patsy and the backstage-in-Hollywood saga Show People (both 1928).

[59] According to Louise Brooks' memoirs, to avoid a public scandal or to forestall blackmail, Hearst arranged for Pepi to be committed to a mental institution for her drug addiction.

[62] In June 1935, mere days after her institutionalization, Pepi committed suicide by leaping to her death from an upper floor window of the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.

[59] Hearst purportedly used his press influence to have Pepi's death obscured in the news cycle,[59] and Davies arranged a funeral for her niece at a private chapel.

[63] Mirroring earlier events at MGM, Warner Brothers purchased the rights to Robert E. Sherwood's 1935 play Tovarich for Davies, but the lead role in the 1937 film adaptation was given to Claudette Colbert.

[70] After selling many of the contents of St Donat's Castle, Davies sold her jewelry, stocks and bonds and wrote a check for $1 million to Hearst to save him from bankruptcy.

"[73] In November 1924, Davies was among those revelers aboard Hearst's steam yacht Oneida for a weekend party that culminated in the death of film producer Thomas Ince.

[4][6] Ince purportedly suffered an attack of acute indigestion while aboard the luxury yacht and was escorted off it in San Diego by Hearst's studio manager, Dr. Daniel Goodman.

[6][77] Screenwriter Elinor Glyn, a fellow guest at the party, claimed "everyone aboard the yacht had been sworn to secrecy, which would hardly have seemed necessary if poor Ince had died of natural causes".

[49] As the years passed, Davies developed a drinking problem, and her alcoholism grew worse in the late 1930s and the 1940s,[7] as she and Hearst lived an increasingly isolated existence.

This gave her a controlling interest in the company for a short time, until she chose to relinquish the stock voluntarily to the corporation on October 30, 1951[82] by selling it to Mrs. Millicent Hearst for one dollar.

[84] Eleven weeks and one day after Hearst's death, Davies married sea captain Horace Brown on October 31, 1951, in Las Vegas.

[1] By the time of her prolonged death from cancer, press obituaries erroneously depicted Davies to have been an extremely mediocre and unpopular actress during her lifetime.

[55] She was the number one female box office star of 1922–23 because of the enormous popularity of 1922's When Knighthood Was in Flower and 1923's Little Old New York, which ranked among the biggest box-office hits of 1922 and 1923, respectively.

[95] Several decades after her death, a critical reassessment of Davies occurred as the result of greater availability of her notable films such as When Knighthood Was in Flower, Beauty's Worth, The Bride's Play, Enchantment, The Restless Sex, April Folly, and Buried Treasure.

[55] According to biographers, "if Hearst had allowed her great talents as a mime and comic to come to full flower in a long series of comedies as bright as her Show People and The Patsy, her screen reputation could not have been so readily damaged by the controversy surrounding Citizen Kane".

[97][98] ABC inaccurately marketed the film as "the scandalous love affair between one of the richest and most powerful men in America and the obscure Ziegfeld girl he promoted to stardom".

[100] The 1999 HBO movie RKO 281 focuses on the production of Citizen Kane and Hearst's efforts to prevent its release, with Melanie Griffith portraying Davies.