Marion Davies was born Marion Cecilia Douras on January 3, 1897, in what had recently become the borough of Brooklyn in New York City.; it was previously its own city.  She reposed  on September 22, 1961 in Los Angeles, California of cancer. She was an American actress that was better known for her 34-year relationship with publishing giant William Randolph Hearst  (grandfather of the kidnap victim, Patty Hearst) and to a lesser extent,  her talent on-screen. She was actually a good actress, but that got marred by the over 7 million dollars Hearst spent promoting Davies’s career.

Her father, Bernard J. Douras, was a lawyer and later a New York City magistrate from 1918 to 1930. She had three older sisters—Reine, Ethel, and Rose who also became actors. At age 13, Davies made her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in The Blue Bird, and she continued to appear in shows until 1917.  Then when was twenty,  the 54-year-old publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst noticed her in the chorus line of The Ziegfeld Follies and her career changed. Despite being a married man, Hearst and Davies began a relationship that lasted until his death in 1951 when finally Davies married Horace G. Brown, a friend of hers who was a retired sea captain.

 

                          Mapping Marion

Marc Jones has her listed in his Jones 1000, but without a birth time.  We rectified her chart for an 8:20 AM birth time giving her a 28 Capricorn Ascendant.  That has the Hyperion symbol of an “explorer coming from the South” highlighting a new adventure that can happen if one keeps true to their original intent.  That begs the question of what is her intent, and her chart, unsurprisingly reveals that it was being an independent woman unfettered by legal agreements.

Miss Davies is a fan handle temperament type, a rather unique layout that looks like a multi-handled bucket.  The geometry of the fan handle is like the bucket — everything is in one hemisphere, with the bucket being alone in alone.  The difference, and it is the key, that instead of a singleton, typically we have a mini stellium of planets congregated together.  For Miss Davies that is in the fourth house with the planets, Pluto, Mars and Neptune.  The handle works like a bundle and the aspect between the leading planet, here Pluto to the next planet, Venus, gives the dominating force of her life.

In this chart, Venus is square Pluto and Mars, though the former planet not discovered until 1932, but as they are partile and co-rulers of Scorpio, they are equivalent in her chart.   This gives her a strong Mars, who relies on her personal magnetism and sex appeal to get ahead.  It also highlights her Line of Efficiency, Venus’s aspect to Mars, showing that Davies had an antagonist personality baiting others into confrontations to understand their motives.  This aspect probably was the real reason for her Hollywood failure –her acid wit did not jell well with the Hollywood bosses who prefer more pliable actresses.

Marc Jones notes a few others with that Venus-Mars aspect:    Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain & Swami Vivekananda –both known for their combative tongues.

                                                        The Freedom Aspect

Other aspects in her chart support her Line of Efficiency like her Saturn & Uranus in the tenth house near the mid-heaven showing her great luck and financial prowess in real estate, thanks, of course, to the Hearst bounty.   But more tellingly her tenth house shows her love of personal freedom from both Hollywood bosses and marital ties (she tried to divorce Captain Brown twice but failed) and since Uranus the pioneer is in the mix, tells of her desire for a bohemian lifestyle.

Jupiter in the seventh house shows her many paramours , including Dick Powell, ten years her junior, during her Hearst years — he too wanted to marry her but Ms. Davies would not give her free lifestyle up, so he rebounded to Joan Blondell.  The Jovian placement also highlights her good fortune in relationships giving her favorable opportunities, particularly as it is in an angular house and trine her sun.

The Sun and Moon both in the eleventh house, depict her popularity and her ability to attract relationships that allow her to flourish.  Her life may have not been everyone’s cup of tea, but for Marion Davies, it was exactly what she wanted.

                                              Looking at Captain Brown

Rectifying Captain Brown is trickier: so little is known about him, that we took the safe approach and put Neptune in his seventh house of opportunities and Jupiter in the sixth for the many ships he must have captained.   This gives him an Ascendant of 15 Sagittarius and the Hyperion symbol of an “occult figure gazing thoughtfully” showing his ability to capitalize on the unseen potential that is ahead.  That seems to fit both his marriage to Ms. Davies, whom he outlived, and his  seafaring career.

Below his chart is the synastry between him and Ms. Davies that accurately shows the tension in their marital life, as he must have clamped down on her peccadilloes and as the sixth house shows meet with her ire.

                                             And finally Patricia

In 1985, when  Patricia Van Cleve Lake, a woman who thought to have been Davies’s niece through her sister Rose, Lake’s family revealed, by her deathbed request, that Patricia was in fact the only child of Davies and Hearst.  Mrs. Lake died at Rancho Mirage, the Hearst mansion.  She was born in Paris, France on June 18, 1923 and we rectified her to 16 Libra giving her father, Saturn, a placement in the hidden twelfth house but also depicting her association with large manufacturing i.e. publishing and real estate.

Mrs. Lake is a bucket with an Uranian handle in her fifth house of speculation and entertainment next to her Dragon’s tail that shows how much of that life was eclipsed by its circumstances.

Her ascendant is Libra 15, the Hyperion symbol of “Complex numbers in a formula” telling us while there was a difference in her life because of her birth, she was someone who was well loved and that was the missing equation.  Uranus in her fifth house does show that her unusual birth affected her suitors and how people treated her.  It is also her focal determinator hearkening back to her mother who has it in her tenth house, and here shows that Miss Lake wanted to find things meaningful in life, hence her devout Christian faith (a strong preponderance of planets in the ninth house).