The Whisper Heard Most

Finally got around to watching The Cat's Meow, which came with a high recommendation from the PenPal.

The film dramatizes a version of what went on over a weekend in November of 1924 aboard the Oneida, a yacht belonging to William Randolph Hearst. No one's ever verified exactly what happened on that fateful cruise, but as writer Elinor Glynn says, "the history of Hollywood has always been written in whispers and this is the whisper heard most."

And the whisper was murder. Whether or not a murder took place that weekend, and if Hearst himself was the murderer.

Edward Herrmann is a great Hearst, at once being completely at ease with his power, and completely undone by his lack of power to control his heart, which leads him to acts of insecurity which are honestly painful to watch. His mistress, Marion Davies is played by Kirsten Dunst and she gives a terrific and moving performance, torn between her affections for two strong men.

In this version of the events (as there are no existing records of this voyage), other guests onboard are Charlie Chaplin (disconcertingly played with real emotion and belief by Eddie Izzard), Thomas Ince, a once-famous director and an architect of the studio system, played by the sadly fading Cary Elwes, Louella Parsons, then a struggling New York reporter, and portrayed as extremely grating by Jennifer Tilly, and Elinor Glynn, a British novelist whose sharp observations frame the story, played by one of my favorites, the always magnificent Joanna Lumley.

This was great little diversion, and a capsule of far-gone time that we will never see again. Good flick.