“An Irish bum,” Johnson calls him—and if that makes him sound lovable, the operative word is still “bum.” If Mankiewicz made up the story he told Johnson—and he was probably capable of such juicy slander—this kind of invention may be a clue to why Welles tries to turn the credit into blame. At the very least, we may expect a reprise of the recriminations exchanged between Peter Bogdanovich and Charles Higham on the occasion of the publication of Mr. Higham’s “The Films of Orson Welles.”. This deleted exchange between Thompson, the investigating reporter for the Rawlston (Luce) organization, and Raymond, Kane’s butler, makes the point about the line of succession from Hearst to Luce all too explicitly: THOMPSON: Well, if you get around to your memoirs—don’t forget, Mr. Rawlston wants to be sure of getting first chance. This sequence is adroit, and Welles brings out the fun in the material, but there’s no special Wellesian magic in it—except, perhaps, in his own acting. Remington grew restless there and sent Hearst a telegram: EVERYTHING IS QUIET. by Pauline Kael, Herman J. Mankiewicz, et al. Not only is the large room with the fireplace at Xanadu similar to Lorre’s domain as a mad doctor, with similar lighting and similar placement of figures, but Kane’s appearance and makeup in some sequences might be a facsimile of Lorre’s. He seems unsure of himself as the young Kane, and there’s something very engaging (and surprisingly human) about Welles unsure of himself; he’s a big, overgrown, heavy boy, and rather sheepish, one suspects, at being seen as he is. Marion Davies, living in the style of the royal courtesans with a man who couldn’t marry her without messes and scandal (his wife, Millicent, had become a Catholic, and she had also given him five sons), was an easy target. Rosebud is what was most frequently criticized in the movie, and Gilbert Seldes, in one of the most solid and intelligent reviews of “Kane” (in Esquire), called it “a phony” and “the only bit of stale stuff in the picture.” Welles himself has said, “The Rosebud gimmick is what I like least about the movie. The essays were later turned into Kael’s 1971 book. I worked on the third draft.” When he was read a long list of events in the film that parallel Hearst’s life as it is recorded in “Imperial Hearst,” he tried to use the Insull cover story and came up with the surprising information that the film dealt “quite as fully with the world of grand opera as with the world of newspaper publishing.”. By the time “Citizen Kane” came out, she had been in retirement for four years, but the sickening publicity had gone grinding on relentlessly, and, among the audiences at “Kane,” probably even those who remembered her as the charming, giddy comedienne of the late twenties no longer trusted their memories. In that draft, Kane, like Hearst, in order to reach the masses he thought he wanted to serve and protect, built circulation by turning the newspapers into pulp magazines, and, in order to stay in business and expand, squeezed non-advertisers. He gave that weekly magazine of yours three years. The Citizen Kane Book : Raising Kane by Pauline Kael May have limited writing in cover pages ... to Pitney Bowes Inc. By diversifying the material and combining several careers, Mankiewicz could protect himself. One passage of dialogue that is bad because it sounds slanted to make an ideological point is almost a straight steal (and that’s probably why Mankiewicz didn’t realize how fraudulent it would sound), and was especially familiar because John Dos Passos had quoted it in “U.S.A.,” in his section on Hearst, “Poor Little Rich Boy.” (That title might be the theme of the movie.) It was an easier target for the public to respond to than Hearst’s own folly—motion pictures—because the public already connected opera with wealth and temperament, tycoons in opera hats and women in jewels, imported prima donnas, and all the affectations of “culture.” It was a world the movie public didn’t share, and it was already absurd in American movies—the way valets and effete English butlers and the high-toned Americans putting on airs who kept them were absurd. Yet thousands of words are directly quoted from other writers, and thousands more are paraphrased without credit. It can be the result of a fortunate collaboration, of cross-fertilizing accidents. Insull didn’t build the opera house for his wife (dainty little Gladys Wallis didn’t sing), but there was a story to it, and it was the biggest opera story of the decade. Mankiewicz was summing up the era of “The Front Page” at the end of it, and was treating it right at its source in the American system that made it possible for a rich boy to inherit the power to control public opinion as his own personal plaything. In popular art, riches and power destroy people, and so the secret of Kane is that he longs for the simple pleasures of his childhood before wealth tore him away from his mother—he longs for what is available to the mass audience. I asked Nunnally Johnson if he thought Mankiewicz’s story was true, and Mankiewicz actually had got the offer and had taken Hecht’s advice. Away from Welles and each other, they were neither revolutionaries nor great originals, and so Welles became a scapegoat—the man who “let everyone down.” He has lived all his life in a cloud of failure because he hasn’t lived up to what was unrealistically expected of him. Though Rosebud was in the long first draft, it didn’t carry the same weight there, because the newspaper business itself undermined Kane’s idealism. Because of the moderate financial returns on “Kane,” he lost the freedom to control his own productions; after “Kane,” he never had complete control of a movie in America. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Your California Privacy Rights. I have read the McPherson script; it is called “Woman of the Rock,” and it’s a tired, persevering-to-the-end, burned-out script. Now, after his death, the Luce organization is trying to get back into film activities. It’s a scene like the ones Mankiewicz helped prepare for the Marx Brothers, but what was probably intended to make fun of a stuffed shirt turned into making fun of a helpless old man trying to keep his dignity, which is mean and barbarous. “Citizen Kane” is, in some ways, a freak of art. Hearst’s remarks are tight and slightly oblique, and it takes one an instant to realize what he’s saying. . ?” The Rosebud of Rosebud is as banal as Rosebud itself. Nevertheless, in a movie as verbally explicit as “Citizen Kane” the faceless idea doesn’t really come across. It’s a beautiful kind of emotional nakedness—ingenuously exposing the sheer love of playacting—that most actors lose long before they become “professional.” If an older actor—even a very good one—had played the role, faking youth for the young Kane the way Edward Arnold, say, sometimes faked it, I think the picture might have been routine. Best known for his stage productions of, Rich Little on working with Orson Welles on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, Mike Nichols on working with ORSON WELLES on CATCH-22, ‘Around the World’: Orson Welles, Cole Porter musical subject of podcast, ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ drama to air on BBC Radio 4, Exploring the Hemingway / Welles connection, ‘Magnificent Ambersons’ reconstruction to use animation for lost scenes, 2020 in review: New Orson Welles movie, chart-topping rap album appearance, ‘Christmas Carol,’ other Orson Welles holiday radio shows online, Orson Welles featured in ad for upcoming video game, Probing the mind of filmmaker Orson Welles, ‘Mank’ finds its villain in Orson Welles, the man who made ‘Citizen Kane’, At Orson’s fireplace: Brief considerations on ‘Hopper/Welles,’ and interview with Bob Murawski, Harlan Lebo delves into differences between ‘Citizen Kane’ script, finished film, Legacy Theatre: Performances return to stage where ‘Too Much Johnson’ was born, Rarely seen Orson Welles-narrated film ‘Gift of Harvest’ surfaces online, Filmed ‘Orson Rehearsed’ opera picks up festival awards, ‘Mank’ fails to give Orson Welles his due as ‘Kane’ co-writer, critic says, ‘War of the Worlds’ — 10 links worth checking out by Halloween, ‘Citizen Kane’ transcript improved, now available online, Film author to lead online course on Orson Welles, ‘Orson Welles Great Mysteries Vol. The engineering—the way the sequences are prepared for and commented on by preceding sequences, the way the five accounts tie together to tell the story—seems as ingenious as ever; though one is aware that the narrators are telling things they couldn’t have witnessed, one accepts this as part of the convention. 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