Who Wrote Citizen Kane? - the Authorship Question

[Fat Annie]

With the confirmation that Welles was the author of Bogdanovich's refutation of "Raising Kane",
it might be worthwhile to revist the Authorship Question.

Summary of the Two Arguments:

- - - - - - - - - - -


1) The Wellesians:

- Houseman had a vendetta against Welles
and leaked the story to Kael.

- Kael never even contacted Welles
to get his side of the story.

- Houseman was keeping Mank off the sauce in Victorville
and was only aware of Mank's script.
He never saw Welles's revisions.

- Welles's secretary confirmed his contributions

- Welles was a gifted writer

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -


2) Houseman/Kael etc.

- Welles had a history of claiming or implying authorship credit
that he was not entitled to,
as during interviews on "War of the Worlds"

- Welles may have intended to cut Mank out of authorship credit completely,
until learning that the new Guild contract would prevent him from doing so.

- Houseman was very aware of who contributed what
because he saw the finished film and it aligned roughly
with what Mank had written.

- No one denies that as Director etc.
Welles made significant changes to the script.
The question is whether he deserved co-writer credit.

- Welles had to claim authorship credit in order to maintain
the wunderkind mantle of a 'One Man Band'

- Although he never definitively went on the record,
Mank was clearly upset at Welles grabbing the glory.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

I don't think this Board has had a debate on the Authorship Question.
Did Welles deserve the Oscar that, Lear-like his daughter tried to sell?

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Annie, just to throw a penny in the ring:

-- CITIZEN KANE, like all major movies, was a group project, but the standard Mercury Theater contract, which "Mank" signed, when Welles took him on to write radio scripts, gave authorship for anything he produced to the Mercury Theater in the person of Welles.

-- Although Mank remembered that Welles originally wanted to make a life of Alexander Dumas in a March of Time format, Welles freely credited Houseman with the "News on the March" sequence.

-- George Schaefer, CEO of RKO, is credited with the title, CITIZEN KANE.

-- If Mank was the sole genius behind CITIZEN KANE, who cut out the love affair between Jed and Emily, the assassination attempt by Kane's son against his grand-uncle, the President and the son's death in Rome in a Fascist riot. (The latter details, references to Lincoln's assassination, perhaps, would have given the title a cruder allegorical meaning.)

-- There are numerous memos on the progress of the script, including a couple in which Houseman refers to Welles' revisions.

-- If you piece, various memoirs and documents together (and there are people here at Wellesnet who have done much more of that than I), you will see that the story is a mix of Welles' concepts and Mank's experience.

-- It is rather commonly agreed that Welles wrote the scene overnight in which Kane is stripped of his power, if not his wealth, and that Welles created what many feel the single most brilliant sequence in CITIZEN KANE (some say, among the greatest in Movies): The swish-pan history of Kane's marriage to Emily. Welles said quite modestly that he stole the idea from a 1931 play by his friend, Thorton Wilder, with whom he said he cleared it.

If you have not read my review of CITIZEN KANE, you may wish to consult it. The piece contains a longish section on the writing of the script, gleaned from lots of reading, research and love for the subject over the years:

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-4874-81FD18C-38741497-bd4

May that get us started.

Glenn

[Jeff Wilson]

According to the Lilly's web site, the "American" draft came in at 325 pages. They list an untitled, uncredited 92 page screenplay as the first of the Kane scripts, but the fact that apparently no one, not Carringer or even Callow, even mentions it, would seem to indicate the importance scholars have put on it. Callow only mentions that Mank favored "Craig" as the name of the character, but that Welles rightly overruled him.

[Jeff Wilson]

Here is the Lilly list of Kane screenplays:

1. An untitled, undated 92 p. typescript with holograph revisions. A very early draft, possibly incomplete.

2. "First Rough Draft," titled American, dated 4/16/40. Typescript carbon, last page numbered 325 but lacking p. .

3. Newsreel portion, 4 p., undated, typescript. Has dialogue only.

4. Typescript carbon titled American, last page numbered 325, dated 5/1/40, with several typescript carbon pages of changes dated later than 5/1/40.

5. Outline of Estimating Script titled Orson Welles # 3, mimeo, 68+ pages. Dated 5/22/40 with changes inserted dated 6/6/40 and 6/17/40.

6. Typescript carbon titled Orson Welles # 3, 137 p., dated 6/5/40. Cover has holograph note: "Mank Version."

7. Untitled typescript, 137 p., dated 6/5/40.

8. "Second Revised Final Script," titled Citizen Kane, mimeo and typescript carbon with holograph revisions, 156 p., dated 7/9/40.

9. "Third Revised Final Script," titled Citizen Kane, mimeo, 156 p., dated 7/16/40. Bernstein's copy?

[Glenn Anders]

Interesting, Jeff. For the record, I have a facsimile of "CITIZEN KANE by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles [dated] June 18, 1940." Included with the boxed set of the 50th Anniversary Edition in VHS, the script runs 209 mimeographed standard 8X11 pages. A hand-tipped insert informs us:

"This screen play is included through the authorization of:

The Estate of Orson Welles
3189 Montecito Drive
Los Vegas, Nevada,89120
(702) 435-6928"

[I take it, this is by permission of Beatrice Welles, though I've never phoned to check its authenticity.]

The script is rather like the film, unlike the edition of American by Herman Mankiewicz which Pauline Kael includes in Raising Kane. Still, there are interesting differences.

While there are not indications of the brilliant "Marriage Montage" or the scene in which Kane gives up his real power over his empire, there are trims and re-arrangements. For instance, the Newsreel is roughly sketched, but references to other historical events like World War I; political figures such as Bryant, FDR, and Stalin; Press Lords like like Bennett and Beaverbrook are included. Notes on Emily Norton Kane indicate that she also divorced Kane and married a British lord. Dotted through the script afterwards are indications that shots from the newsreel were to be seen again, in a real time style.

The longest section included which was later dropped concerns Kane's attempt to get Emily's uncle, the President, to veto an Oil Lease bill. When he refuses, Kane's papers blast the President and he is assassinated by a man carrying an Inquirer. Kane is blamed because of his papers' attacks on the President. Later Kane's son, Junior, is implicated in the plot. This leads to Jed Leland, aka "Brad," to intercede for Kane with an angry Emily. There are hints that Leland is, or has been, in love with Emily. Them, there is a long scene by the grave of Kane's son (killed during a riot in Italy), at which Kane reads his Son's epitaph, which might be his own. [See my review at Epinions, noted above.]

Finally, there is an indication that Thompson's overcoat is resting on the Rosebud sled, as he prepares to leave Xanadu for the last time.

And so, my friends, what basically has been cut from this script in the finished film are all mention of Kane, Jr., and his activities as an adult.

I hope this helps.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

mack sennet

[blunted by community]

post removed by blunted due to extreme paranoia, and fear of death

[blunted by community]

post removed by blunted due to extreme paranoia, and fear of death

[mteal]

Glenn,
Good article on Kane. Hearst and Welles' father used to chase women together? That's a new one on me. Also, I didn't know that Kane's son, in an earlier draft of the screenplay, had tried to help assassinate the president (I suppose that would have been FDR, who really did narrowly avoid assassination shortly after his first election). Kane's son then wound up dying a fascist in Rome, which is interesting also since Hearst was sometimes compared to a Roman emporer, and another essay in the Robbins CRADLE book points out that Hearst bought Italian Renaissance masterpieces from Mussolini, which helped finance his war machine.

You say AMERICAN was to be about communication in the broadest sense (and of course, the lack of it). Welles said that his original boardinghouse ending for Ambersons was to about the "death of communication" between people, possibly due to the rise of mass media. Also, you mention that Welles shot and cut scenes to Hermann's music. This is a technique that would also be repeated in Ambersons, though many of those scenes were eliminated. I couldn't help noticing your essay on Philippe Sainton's score for Huston's MOBY DICK, one of the most beautiful film scores I've ever heard. You say Huston told Sainton to treat the film as if it were an opera, and called the scene where Ahab first addresses his crew "Ahab's aria". This is also a technique Welles and Hermann used throughout the original Ambersons, as well as the scene in JANE EYRE where Rochester pleads with Jane not to leave him. The technique also turned up years later in Welles' career, with John Gielgud's "uneasy lies the head" speech from CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.

There's another interesting article on Kane that explores it's psychological dimensions. It's at Dave Lebeouf's fine Welles website

http://www.gis.net/~d13/welles/welles.htm

which also has a link to an early draft of the Kane script. Amazing how much more the early drafts focused on the McKinley assassination.