CITIZEN KANE in the Park!

[Glenn Anders]

For those of you in San Francisco, the Bay Area, or planning to visit in the next week, CITIZEN KANE will be shown at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 8, 2006, in the heart of Downtown, Union Square. The showing is part of a Summer Film in the Park Program.

Should be a grand evening!

Glenn

[TheMcGuffin]

It's things like this that make me miss San Francisco all the more...

[Glenn Anders]

As I set off from the old San Francisco apartment where Miles and Irma Archer once lived at Leavenworth and Geary, the sun was still high in the western sky, and not a cloud nor wisp of haze marred the rare clarity of the summer evening. Walking east on Geary Street toward Union Square, I reasoned that the "Films in the Park" people would not be showing CITIZEN KANE in bright sunlight, even if it were nearly eight o'clock, and so seeing that Swig (once the The Blue Lamp) was unusually quiet, I stopped in for a Martini. With their hair tied back, reading glasses perched on their pretty noses, the stable of blonde bartendresses were still reading their Irish Times. They accomodated me charmingly.

In fact, I had two Martini's with them before pushing on through the dusk to the great traditional mercantile center of the City. Mounting the central steps, I was transfixed by the spectacle of a thirty foot high self-contained translucent screen, like a huge life raft, hawsered and upended at the Square's western end. The "Newsreel" from CITIZEN KANE had just begun. Nearest to me, three people were sitting on the edge of a massive flower bed, watching the picture.

Ah, well, I thought, at least the idea of showing Welles' masterpiece within mortar shot of the Examiner Building had been a noble effort.

I asked to sit down, and a couple dressed in touristy t-shirts and shorts welcomed me. [The other guy jumped on his bicycle and pedaled off, looking as if he had been accosted by a gay serial killer!] What had been showing the first hour? I asked.

My shivering hosts said that they didn't know; they had been attracted by a trailer for BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S; now old newsreels were being shown. They hoped the main feature would soon begin. It was then that I noticed, "1898" was flashing upside down and backwards under flickering images of the Spanish American War. Adjusting my vision, I realized that on the other side of the screen, the vast space was entirely filled with nearly a thousand people intently, silently, watching the Year 1898, right side up.

Picking up a plastic chair, I excused myself and joined the crowd, who were sitting on similar chairs, or spread out on blankets, finishing the last nibbles and tipples of picnic dinners. The ornamental lamps along the sides of the Square were off, and the only distraction was a waterfall red neon sign advertising "Dancing," high on the wall of the Sir Francis Drake two blocks to the north. Even if I was near the front, at an extreme angle to the screen, the picture was sharp and clear, the sound from big portable speakers fine.

So sharp, clear and fine was the presentation that I was able to ascertain that an unobtrusive figure at the top of the frame in the second "El Rancho" scene was indeed probably Nat "King" Cole in his first screen appearance, and that the muscians at Kane's beach party were reasonably Cole and his trio.

By the end of the movie, a chilly breeze had sent those Martini's through me, and finding no other wellesnetters, I followed the crowd into Lefty O'Doul's (a place I haven't been in for over a decade) to take care of that.

My evening ended west on Geary at an almost empty Ha-Ra Club, one of a vanishing breed of old San Francisco bars, where I filled in Bartender "Cruel Karl" Kickery, a Film Noir buff, on the event. I played some cuts of Cole, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughn, in honor of the occasion, and followed up with "Body Heat" and "White Heat", my Jazz at the Movies Band CD's, which I have stocked on "Fireman Rick" Fugari's juke box at the Ha-Ra. Then, excusing myself of necessity again to the head, I somehow conjured up, in Wellsian style, a bachelorette party of nearly two dozen beautiful young women, feeling no pain, who were suddenly entertaining Karl, as if in spray of Champagne, when I emerged.

The girls liked the music, and before I left dutifully to to take my rest in order to fashion this report for you all, I kissed the bride-to-be, another blonde with flowers in her hair, a veritable Susan Alexander. I gave her requested advice on making a marriage work, and gifted her with links to wellesnet, epinions, and my phone number, in case her fears about the wedding were justified.

Good Old Charlie Kane might have approved , even if the Colorado Load no doubt would have helped.

Glenn

[mteal]

I kissed the bride-to-be, another blonde with flowers in her hair, a veritable Susan Alexander, gave her requested advice on making a marriage work, and gifted her with links to wellesnet, epinions, and my phone number, in case her fears about the wedding were justified.

Glenn, you dirty old man, you. You should have stuck around until the bride's friends got her nice and drunk. Then you might have been able to take the "first night" page out of Gibson's BRAVEHEART.

Sounds like you got lucky with the weather. Last year I missed a chance to see KANE at an outdoor showing at Robert McCormick's Cantigny retreat in the Chicago suburbs, which I suppose would have been the next best thing to seeing it at San Simeon. But I've been leery of outdoor showings since I watched a 70mm print of Kubrick's 2001 outdoors in a rainstorm. You haven't lived until you've seen it raining in outer space.

[Glenn Anders]

I am a Knight Errant, sir, but not that errant!

Yes, I feared the fog would come in that evening, but it did not, though the breeze picked up toward ten o'clock, which made some people pull up an extra blanket. The young women at the Ha-Ra, however, remained bravely dressed for summer.

No, I would not like it raining in Space.

Ah, mteal, might we not form a national theme series, showing CITIZEN KANE to support wellesnet? Yes, at McCormick's estate near Chicago, indeed, but also at Hearst's San Simeon. My experience with and observation of the Hearsts is that they are rather proud of CITIZEN KANE, so long as the subject does not turn on Old Bill Hearst's politics, or the property doesn't fall into the hands of drunken Todd Baeson. Yes, we could have Welles' masterpiece projected, too, on the wall of Jim Fisk's Metropolitan Opera House, in Rockefeller Plaza, and in the garden of LA's Huntington Library!

I shall note that in the wee hours of this very morning, San Francisco's KPIX-TV, which still has a tertiary connection with the Hearst Family, showed CITIZEN KANE -- when normally, stations are off the air or showing infomercials. Perhaps, it was for the benefit of the boys who slave on what now passes for the Bull Dog Edition, even though the Hearsts sold the Inquir -- the Examiner years ago.

Glenn

[mteal]

might we not form a national theme series, showing CITIZEN KANE to support wellesnet? Yes, at McCormick's estate near Chicago, indeed, but also at Hearst's San Simeon. My experience with and observation of the Hearsts is that they are rather proud of CITIZEN KANE,

You're probably right about that. There was a good Travel Channel show a few years back called SECRETS OF SAN SIMEON, hosted by the infamous Patty Hearst (who, according to Bret Wood, Welles also wanted to make a film about), that featured a section on Welles and CK. There was a nice candid shot of Welles sipping coffee in a restaurant as Patty intoned that he "arrived in Hollywood looking to throw the biggest brick through the biggest window he could find". The show also revealed that Hearst was not upset about the depiction of Marion Davies so much as the depiction of the cold-hearted mother. The show, produced with the cooperation of the Hearst family, certainly didn't duck the issue of the film. In fact, the whole thing pretty much centered around refuting it.

[Glenn Anders]

Adding to our supposition, and more to above comments, I quote from an Update to my Epinion on CITIZEN KANE:

"On the morning of October 10, 1985, Welles was found dead of a heart attack, sitting in a chair, face down on his typewriter, much as Jed Leland had been found dead drunk by Bernstein and Kane. He had been working in the wee hours on yet another film project. That afternoon, the Hearst San Francisco Examiner devoted most of its front page, under a banner headline, to his death and life.

"On Saturday, March 18, 2000, in observance of the sale of the San Francisco Examiner by the Hearst Family the previous day, KPIX Channel 5 (the CBS Affiliate in San Francisco) pre-empted its prime time evening schedule to present . . . CITIZEN KANE."

I once interviewed to become a docent at San Simeon during my summer breaks from teaching. The panel, which included Will Hearst, gradually made clear that they were impressed with my knowledge -- but, much like Jeff's aversion here, wanted to avoid any political content in commentaries. It was this aspect of the CITIZEN KANE connection which bothered the family, I gather, about fifteen years after the old man's death.

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

When I toured San Simeon in 1990, no reference to Welles or "Citizen Kane" was made by the guide. I got the feeling employees were asked to ignore the subject.

[Glenn Anders]

Roger: My interviews were some years before your visit, shortly after the Hearst Family turned most of the San Simeon property over to the State of California. I guess that I'm not making my point clear. In my callow, youthful ignorance, I thought that my knowledge of the CITIZEN KANE controversy would be a plus, especially since it was (and is) my belief that, as we've suggested here, Hearst was only one of a "class" of subjects the picture brackets. The interviewing panel were reasonably sympathetic to that view, but they made clear that they did not want presentations to brook what they considered political questions, in any way.

In other words, the docents' presentations, as they evolved in those early years, follow the lines you experienced.

I was put on a waiting list, and about two years later, received a letter from the State that my number had come up, but by that time, I had other things to take up my summers.

Still, all the evidence suggests that the Hearst Corporation (and possibly, the Family) finds the attention CITIZEN KANE brings interesting, may even encourage it. After all, as the picture suggests, by late 1941, Hearst was still a giant in America, but not the shaker of empire he once had been. Today, aside from the less welcome notoriety brought by Patty Hearst and the SLA, CITIZEN KANE provides them an additional, rather distinguished historical footnote to the Family contribution to the growth of America as we know it.

Glenn.

[Tony]

I don't believe there is any documentation whatsoever of Hearst even seeing Citizen Kane, and certainly no doumentation therefore as to what he thought of it; Welles said that he believed it was the minions protecting the old man, and not orders from the man himself. As you probably know, Welles refuted the notion that the picture is about Hearst in a 1941 article "Citizen Kane is not about Louella Parsons's Boss" and in his forward to Marion Davies' 1975 autobiography "The Times We Had".

[Glenn Anders]

Right, Tony. That's been my position, on the record, for many years. I believe a lot of the speculation is truly simple minded sensationalism.

But as we should know by now, the difference between what is true and what people believe is true can be huge. The sensational fantasy usually wins out in people's minds.

Seeing CITIZEN KANE in Union Square, San Francisco, on a summer evening, three blocks from the Hearst Building, with its splendid Italian bronze entrance canopy, marked "H" in script, is something else.

That's where I came in.

Glenn

[mteal]

I don't believe there is any documentation whatsoever of Hearst even seeing Citizen Kane, and certainly no doumentation therefore as to what he thought of it;

No, there probably isn't. I was simply quoting his granddaughter Patty Hearst from the Travel documentary. She doesn't reveal what her source for that info was, but one assumes she would be privy to the kind of family secrets that the public wouldn't be.