Monday, December 25, 1922

"CHRIST"MAS DAY
Overcast, mild and nasty. Arose 8:30 A.M. Breakfast etc. Xmas tree & gifts. Wrote in diary. Dinner. Around house. Mark arrived in P.M. All happy. Supper. Talked. Russell & I to see "When Knighthood Was in Flower." Talked. To bed 11:30 P.M. Thankful for privilege of education.

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Mark is there for the wedding, of course, which is to take place on the 30th. Stanford doesn't mention what he got for Christmas . . .

Marion Davies

When Knighthood Was in Flower is a photoplay (what they called a film made from a play) starring Marion Davies. Here is a description and plot summary from Wikipedia:

When Knighthood Was in Flower is a 1922 silent historical film based on the novel When Knighthood Was in Flower by Charles Major and play by Paul Kester. The film was produced by William Randolph Hearst (or his Cosmopolitan Productions) for his 'live-in companion' Marion Davies and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The director was veteran Robert G. Vignola who helmed several of Davies costume romances. This was William Powell's second film. The story was re-filmed in the sound era in 1953 as The Sword and the Rose by Ken Annakin.[1][2]

Mary Tudor (Marion Davies), the younger sister of King Henry VIII (Lyn Harding), falls in love with commoner Charles Brandon (Forrest Stanley). There are other plans for Mary, however; she is supposed to make a politically strategic marriage to the elderly King Louis XII of France (William Norris). Brandon is framed for murder, but Mary, disguised as a boy, helps him to escape. Henry tracks down his sister and her lover at a Bristol Inn, and Mary agrees to wed the French king if Brandon's life is spared. After Brandon is exiled, Mary goes ahead with the wedding, but King Louis, in his attempt to prove he is lively enough for such a pretty young bride, drops dead. His nephew and heir to the throne, Francis (William Powell), wants to wed Mary, but Brandon comes to the rescue. When Henry discovers that his sister and Brandon have married, he remarks, "I should have consented in the first place, and saved us all this trouble."

The movie was showing at the Strand. Here is the ad that appeared in the Schenectady Gazette for Christmas Day. It's so hyperbolic it makes you suspect that Hearst had a hand in writing it.

Marion Davies was a comedic actress, according to this excerpt of a Wikipedia article about her:

Davies was already building a solid reputation as a film comedian when newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, with whom she had begun a romantic relationship, took over management of her career. Hearst financed Davies' pictures, promoted her heavily through his newspapers and Hearst Newsreels, and pressured studios to cast her in historical dramas for which she was ill-suited. For this reason, Davies is better remembered today as Hearst's mistress and the hostess of many lavish events for the Hollywood elite. In particular, her name is linked with the 1924 scandal aboard Hearst's yacht when one of his guests, film producer Thomas Ince, died.

In the film Citizen Kane (1941), the title character's second wife—an untalented singer whom he tries to promote—was widely assumed to be based on Davies. But many commentators, including Citizen Kane writer/director Orson Welles himself, have defended Davies' record as a gifted actress, to whom Hearst's patronage did more harm than good. She retired from the screen in 1937, choosing to devote herself to Hearst and charitable work.