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Nico Llewelyn Davies
From Neverpedia
Nicholas "Nico" Llewelyn Davies (November 24, 1903 – 1980) was the youngest of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who were the inspiration for J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. He was only a year old when Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up hit the stage in 1904, and as such was not a primary inspiration for the characters of Peter and the Lost Boys. However he was eight years old when the novel adaptation Peter and Wendy was published, and in later editions of the play, the character Michael Darling's middle name was changed to "Nicholas".
Early life
When Nico was born, Barrie was already a friend of his brothers and mother Sylvia. Following the deaths of the boys' father Arthur (1907) and mother (1910), Barrie assumed guardianship of them. Two of Nico's brothers died before he was an adult: George was killed in combat in World War I in 1915, Michael drowned with a close friend in 1921. He attended Eton College, and started at Oxford University in 1922, but continued to spend holidays with Barrie.
Adult life
In 1926 he married Mary Beatrix James, and they had a daughter Laura, born in 1928. In 1935 he joined his brother Peter's publishing firm, Peter Davies Ltd. Just before Barrie died in 1937, his secretary Cynthia Asquith persuaded him to change his will, leaving the bulk of his estate to her rather than to the surviving Davies brothers and their families. Nico later commented,
"Believe it or not, much as I would have relished the money, the two things that broke my heart were firstly that I had no say in the reproduction of his plays - how I would have loved to be consulted in the casting and management of this play and that, all of which I knew so well and had watched so closely as JMB told the various actors what was in his mind etc etc: secondly that the relatively small amounts that were going to my daughter and others of her generation were removed. All very sad."
Nico's daughter Laura married David Duguid in 1951; they had a son named Tom. His brother Jack died in 1959, and Peter committed suicide in 1960. As the last surviving subject of the BBC mini-series The Lost Boys, he was a consultant to writer Andrew Birkin. He died in 1980.
Portrayals
In the 1978 BBC mini-series The Lost Boys, he was portrayed at various ages by Stephen Mathews, Jason Fathers, Matthew Ryan, and David Parfitt (later award-winning producer). (Upon reading a draft of the screenplay, he commented wryly, "I suppose if I'd committed suicide, I might have had a bigger part!")
He was not included at all in the 2004 film Finding Neverland based on the story of Barrie's relationship with the family and the writing of the play. Taking its cue from The Man Who Was Peter Pan, the play it was based on, it took the dramatic license of placing the dates of Davies' father's death and his mother's illness much earlier relative to the writing of the play, leaving no practical place in its timeline for his birth. However, his daughter Laura Duguid has a small acting role in the movie, as a theatre patron.
- Wikipedia: Nico Llewelyn Davies