Ezra interviews Lara Gabrielle about Marion Davies, an actress who was one of the few to make the transition from silent films to "talkies"... oh, and she stuttered.
Marion Davies (1897-1961), an American actress, screenwriter, producer, and philanthropist was a wonder that many people were captured by. This is impressive by any feat, but even moreso as a woman born in the 1890s. So why don't we know more about her? And what impact did stuttering have on Davies's life?
Lara Gabrielle knew that the life of Marion Davies was a story someone needed to tell. She was captured by Davies at a young age, and her research on Davies took her down many paths - one of those being the world of stuttering. Although Davies spoke privately about her stutter, more pieces fell into place the more Gabrielle connected with the stuttering community.
The impact of stuttering during this time often isn't known, and this is a beautiful window into what it meant not just to be a woman who stuttered at a time when women had less agency over their lives, but one of laughter, love, and heartbreak.
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Guest: Lara Gabrielle is a biographer and researcher, whose work on Marion Davies has been featured in Alta, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Missouri Review, The Wall Street Journal, and on PBS’s American Experience. Gabrielle has spoken at film festivals and retrospectives worldwide, and is acknowledged as the leading authority on Davies’s life and legacy, serving as a consultant on Marion Davies for books, dissertations, and film projects. Gabrielle’s biography, Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies, has been included on many top book lists for 2022, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Northern California Book Award.
Learn more at https://mariondaviesbook.com/
Follow Lara on Instagram and Twitter at @backlotsfilm
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mariondaviesbook/
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Intro music is an edited excerpt of: "The Crawl of Life" jaspertine Available on ccmixter.org, 4.0 CC BY license
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Post-production edits by DJ Liiam, instagram @liam.m4a
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Follow Stutterology on Instagram or find more information at https://linktr.ee/stutterology
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