Marcia Davenport; Best-Selling Novelist

Marcia Davenport, 92, writer and lecturer whose best-selling novels were made into motion pictures in the 1940s. Her best-known books included “Valley of Decision,” which became a film starring Greer Garson and Gregory Peck in 1945, and “East Side, West Side,” which prompted the 1949 film of that title starring Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Ava Gardner and Nancy Reagan. Davenport also was noted for a 1932 biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart titled “Mozart,” which is still in print. A native New Yorker, she was the stepdaughter of violinist Efrem Zimbalist and was educated at Wellesley and the University of Grenoble. Her last book was an autobiography, “Too Strong for Fantasy,” published in 1967. On Saturday in Monterey, Calif.