Marcia Davenport
American author and music critic
Marcia Davenport (née Glick; June 9, 1903 – January 16, 1996) was an American writer and music critic. She is best known for her 1932 biography of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the first American published biography of Mozart. Davenport also is known for her novels The Valley of Decision and East Side, West Side, both of which were adapted to film in 1945 and 1949, respectively.
Early life and education
Marcia Davenport was born Marcia Glick in New York City on June 9, 1903, the daughter of Bernard Glick and the opera singer Alma Gluck. Her family is of Romanian-Jewish descent. Around 1911, when Marcia was 8, her parents separated. Her mother remarried Efrem Zimbalist, a concert violinist. With Zimbalist as a step-father, Marcia had two half-siblings: Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (who became an actor) and Maria Virginia Zimbalist Bennett.
She described her childhood as very lonely, apart from music and books (she always knew she wanted to write).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Marcia Davenport” as american author and music critic. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2908658. VIAF identifies the subject as 111229575. The Library of Congress control number is n78096904. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1996, 1932 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marcia Davenport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.