As the years passed, Davies developed a drinking problem, and her alcoholism grew worse in the late 1930s and the 1940s, as she and Hearst lived an increasingly isolated existence. Although Hearst and Davies "were still playing the gracious lord and his lady, and the guests were still responding with grateful expressions of joy," nevertheless "the life had gone out of their performances." The two spent most of World War II at Hearst's Northern California estate of Wyntoon, until returning to San Simeon in 1945.