A cheque dated March 9th 1956, signed by Marion Davies, made out for $50 and payable to her grand-daughter Marion Rose Lake, who would have been 12 at the time. Marion Rose Lake's mother was Patricia Lake, the illegitimate daughter of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, and her father was Arthur Lake the actor best known for bringing Dagwood Bumstead, the bumbling husband of Blondie, to life in film, radio, and television.

Marion Davies (1897 - 1961), was the American actress who after being educated in a religious convent, left the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl. As a teenager, she appeared in several Broadway musicals and one film, Runaway Romany (1917), and was a featured performer in the Ziegfeld Follies. While performing in the 1916 Follies, the nineteen-year-old Marion met the fifty-three-year-old newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, and became his mistress. Hearst took over management of Davies' career and promoted her as a film actress. Hearst financed Davies’ pictures and promoted her career extensively in his newspapers and Hearst newsreels. He founded Cosmopolitan Pictures to produce her films. By 1924, Davies was the number one female box office star in Hollywood because of the popularity of When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922) and Little Old New York (1923), which were among the biggest box-office hits of their respective years. During the zenith of the Jazz Age, Davies became renowned as the hostess of lavish soirees for Hollywood actors and political elites. However, in 1924, her name became linked with scandal when film producer Thomas Ince died at a party aboard Hearst's yacht. Following the decline of her film career during the Great Depression, Davies struggled with alcoholism. She retired from the screen in 1937 to devote herself to an ailing Hearst and charitable work.