By RAY KELLY
The writing, production and troubled release of arguably the greatest movie of all time is chronicled in Harlan Lebo’s new book Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey.
Due April 26 from Thomas Dunne Books, Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey arrives in time for the film’s 75th anniversary.
When 25-year-old Orson Welles walked into the Palace Theatre in New York on May 1, 1941 for the film’s premiere, he had experienced a number of high and lows. RKO Radio Pictures had given him considerable control in making his Hollywood directorial debut, which he co-wrote with Herman Mankiewicz. But Welles had drawn the ire of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who saw the film’s title character as a thinly veiled portrait of himself. Hearst loyalists attacked Welles and RKO Pictures was called upon to scrap the film.
Lebo has written books about The Godfather, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane, and served as a consultant for Kane’s 50th anniversary theatrical release. In his new book, he delves into the making of the movie, as well as the efforts Hearst took to destroy the film and its director. He graciously fielded questions about his new book.
The amount of control Orson Welles had over Citizen Kane was staggering. Why was RKO Pictures so willing to grant that much power to a newcomer?
When George Schaefer was brought to RKO as production chief, he had an ambitious plan to produce more high-quality, prestige films. That plan included hiring new talent who were
successful in other artistic ventures – but not necessarily in filmmaking. Welles was high on Schaefer’s priority list, not just because of the creative abilities Welles showed in radio and
theater, but also because he had such a high national profile after the controversy caused by The War of the Worlds broadcast.
But to get Welles, Schaefer had to dangle attractive bait, which meant giving Welles what he really wanted: authority, rather than a lot of money. The deal was eventually made, after months of negotiating, by providing Welles with near-total creative control (not “complete” creative control as the conventional story goes. My book explores this). Most important, Welles retained the right to the final cut of his projects, as long as they didn’t exceed specific budget limitations. As a result, Welles got the creative power he wanted because of George Schaefer’s grand plan for the studio, and Schaefer was willing to take the risk that Welles would not be a complete flop. But I also have to think that giving Welles such unprecedented control was also a statement about Schaefer’s arrival – that things at RKO were changing in a big way.
Which archives and sources did you find most helpful in researching Citizen Kane’s production history?
I found most of what I needed about Orson Welles in his personal and business archives in the Lilly Library at Indiana University. I also found the last “lost” correction script in the papers of Richard Wilson at the University of Michigan (there is another copy at the Museum of Modern Art in New York). For material on Hearst, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley maintains archives of the papers from the Hearst organization, as well as some of Hearst’s personal papers. For film industry publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills is an incredible resource. And the UCLA library maintains some production files and memos from the day-to-day work on Citizen Kane.
Of course, the best sources I had were the librarians I worked with. They were all tremendously helpful, and always glad to go the extra mile.
What documents have you cited in your book that previous authors either overlooked or could not access?
That’s a great question, because it reinforces a point that surprises everyone: the reason that other authors haven’t used most of this material is that my book represents the first time that anyone has written a non-fiction narrative with the full story of the making of Citizen Kane. There are a lot of books about Welles, and plenty of analysis of the film in print. But until now no one had written a straight-forward non-fiction account of the background, creation, and release of the Citizen Kane.
My coffee-table book written for the 50th anniversary of Citizen Kane in 1991 came closest, but my new book is definitely for reading and not looking at pictures; it is a standard-size hard cover with 50,000 more words than the 1991 coffee-table book – and is also available in a Kindle version and audio.
So with one notable exception, all of the material I used is publicly available at the archives I mentioned earlier. Of course, be careful what you wish for, because by capitalizing on all of this material, I started out with almost 4,000 pages of studio files, memos, script drafts, letters, and financial records.
The one notable exception was the lucky coincidence of writing this book at precisely the moment that a large collection of material from Orson Welles’ personal collection was offered at auction by Profiles in History. The staff at Profiles in History was incredibly generous, and allowed me to spend a lot of time looking at all of the auction items, including photographs from the production that have never been available before, and three scripts from Citizen Kane that included Welles’ personal notes. These items were invaluable in adding depth to the detail in my book, and should be quite interesting for readers.
Frank Mankiewicz’s posthumous memoir got a great deal of tabloid ink for repeating the debunked claim that Welles did not write a single word of the Citizen Kane script. Are you surprised that this allegation has refused to die?
No – I’m not surprised in this case. Frank Mankiewicz was just repeating the claim based on things his father told him in the years just before his death, when Herman was suffering from the ravages of pills and alcohol, and told many stories that didn’t make much sense.
For instance, Herman told Frank that the source of the name Rosebud was a childhood bicycle that was stolen from Herman when he was a child – this story relayed to Frank after Herman
testified in federal court that the reference to Rosebud came from the name of a horse – Old Rosebud – that he bet on in the 1914 Kentucky Derby (interesting that in the projection room
scene in Citizen Kane, one of the reporters speculates about Kane that Rosebud was “a horse he bet on once.”). And of course, all of this is colored by the other possible source of the Rosebud reference, which was supposedly Hearst’s nickname for Marion Davies’ genitalia – a tidbit that Herman reportedly heard from Louise Brooks. I describe all of these in my book, but at this point we have no way of knowing which one is true.
But none of this is news, and it’s a shame that a reporter as good as Frank Mankiewicz did the same thing that Pauline Kael did (although not for the same reasons): He ignored easily-available factual evidence that showed Welles wrote large parts of the script, including many of the significant scenes. Had Frank been alive when the book came out, I think he would have been embarrassed by the loss of credibility that his repeating a story long dead would have caused.
Your book makes the case that Hearst was directly involved in trying to destroy the film and Welles’ career. What evidence did you find?
In the Hearst papers in the Bancroft Library are several examples of two types of memos: first, communications from Hearst’s personal assistant Joseph Willicombe with orders to every Hearst unit to boycott RKO and Citizen Kane – orders which were described as coming directly from “The Chief” (as Hearst was known by his cronies).
Second, there is at least one example (I quoted this one in my book) of film columnist Louella Parsons writing to Hearst about her progress in working to stop the film, and Willicombe reporting back that Hearst was informed of what she was doing.
Of course, when Hearst publications started covering Welles’ involvement in liberal causes, it would have been impossible for “The Chief” to have not known – just as it would have been hard for Hearst to have missed the massive print coverage of his organization’s plot against the film that was being regularly reported in The New York Times, most other national media, and all of the film industry publications.
So even if the direct evidence of his involvement didn’t exist, he certainly must have known what was happening.
Welles seemed to blame it on those around Hearst. Do you think we was being naïve or trying not further incur Hearst’s wrath?
I don’t think it was naïve, and it was certainly too late to avoid Hearst’s wrath! I think that Welles had an uncanny understanding of powerful male figures – which is why most of his films are about dynamic men, almost all of whom become failures through their own foibles. Welles probably assumed that the stooges who work for a powerful person often do things either to protect the boss or to solidify their own positions within the organization.
Welles never said that Hearst didn’t know about the plot; he just said that Hearst didn’t order it. But what was left unsaid in those comments was that any organization that would plot against a work of art the way the Hearst organization attacked Citizen Kane speaks volumes about the character of the organization – and especially about the man who runs it.
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Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey is available at bookstores and online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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