Bizarre Los Angeles
Oh, the crazy associations this photo set off when I came across it. First you have Dagwood Bumstead, a.k.a., Arthur Lake, seen here standing at right. Then you have Marion Davies, seated at center. To her right is Mrs. Lake, born--or was she?--Patricia Van Cleve (or Cleeve or Clive, depending on what you read). So it seems that for years Patricia was said to be William Randolph Hearst's niece; her ostensible aunt would haven been Mrs. Hearst, from whom the old man was never divorced. My brain is too taxed here now to remember for sure how Mr. Van Cleve Cleeve Clive figured in--I think he was Marion's sister's husband. Anyway, the Hollywood hush-hush on Patricia was that she was actually Willie & Marion's love child whom the Van Cleve Cleeve Clives took as an infant and pawned off as their own recently-deceased child, name and all. Later, Mr. Van Cleve Cleeve Clive kidnapped little Pat and took her away for five years, until Willie tracked her down and got her back to Marion's sister. Apparently Pat saw quite a bit of "Uncle Willie" and "Auntie Marion" while growing up; she later told Arthur about her true parentage on their wedding day. (She did not disclose it to the rest of her family until right before she died in the '90s.) So many exhausting tangents.... I remember reading about Arthur Lake being implicated--here's the noir hook--by one of the many wacked-out Dahlia experts in that death (Larry Harnisch's hilarious takedowns of such tales are worth reading:
click here.) Then there is something I remember reading in some rag like
Vanity Fair a few years ago... that Patricia was given to getting squiffed at parties, climbing onto tables, lifting her skirts and shouting, "Here's Pussy!!" (Unfortunately, no pictures of any of these performances seem to exist.) Marion, Patricia and Arthur are buried together at Hollywood Memorial Park.
To give the others in the photo their due: The blonde behind the candles is Mrs. Huntington Hartford; the man at left is Douglas Wood--no idea who he was--and Horace Brown, Marion's hubby at the time. I thought
he was Hearst at first, since Patricia looks like him. But he--WRH--must have uttered ""Rosebud" by this time.
Rather than make this post any longer, I'll post something I just discovered about the Bumstead's real movie house next....