Davenport, Marcia (1903–1996)

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Davenport, Marcia (1903–1996)

American author and music critic, known for her popular biography of Mozart and the 1942 bestseller Valley of Decision. Born Marcia Gluck in New York on June 9, 1903; died in Pebble Beach, California, on January 16, 1996; daughter of Alma Gluck (the lyric soprano) and Bernard Gluck; stepdaughter of Efrem Zimbalist (the celebrated violinist); educated at the Friends School in Philadelphia, the Shipley School at Bryn Mawr; also attended Wellesley for two years, and graduated with a bachelor's degree from University of Grenoble in France; married Frank D. Clarke, in April 1923 (divorced 1925); married Russell W. Davenport (managing editor of Fortune and key advisor to Wendell Willkie), on May 11, 1929 (died 1954); children: (first marriage) Patricia Delmas Clarke (b. March 1924); (second marriage) Cornelia Whipple Davenport (b. April 1934).

Marcia Davenport was the daughter of the famous lyric soprano Alma Gluck . "I was fitted into my mother's existence along with the other exigencies," wrote Davenport. "If I wanted companionship I had to come up to adult standards." Though Marcia was hopelessly untalented at the piano, her mother signed her up for lessons because "she believed, as I do, that to permit a child to grow up illiterate in music is as bad as to permit general illiteracy." Davenport was also allowed free roam of books, which would later serve her well.

After her first marriage, she took a job as an advertising copywriter. From 1928 to 1931, she was on the editorial staff of The New Yorker. She was a music critic for Stage magazine (1934–39) and a radio commentator on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts (1936–37). Her first book Mozart, which appeared in 1932, was a great success. It was translated into French, German, Spanish and Portuguese and has been continuously in print.

Most of Davenport's life was divided between New York and Europe, with second homes in Milan, Lake Como, Salzburg, and Vienna. She lived in Prague throughout the postwar crisis in Czechoslovakia, which culminated in the communist coup d'état and the mysterious death of Jan Masaryk. These experiences are recounted in her autobiographical Too Strong for Fantasy (Scribner, 1967), in which she also creates portraits of her mother, Maxwell Perkins, Lotte Lehmann , and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings , and describes her 50-year friendship with Arturo Toscanini.

Her bestseller, The Valley of Decision, was a sharp break from her music-centered books. Published in 1942, the huge, sprawling, highly praised novel revolves around a steel-mill-owning family in Pittsburgh. The book, successfully adapted for the screen by MGM in 1945, was edited by Blanche Sewell and starred Gregory Peck, Gladys Cooper, Jessica Tandy , and Greer Garson . Because of her performance, Garson was handed her fifth Best Actress Oscar nomination in a row. Davenport also wrote Of Lena Geyer (fiction, 1936) and The Constant Image (fiction, 1960). She died, age 92, in Pebble Beach, California, on January 16, 1996.