Mankiewicz’s grandson, Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, talks with his father, Frank, about the “Kane” authorship during a Father’s Day showing of the the film on TCM.
Frank Mankiewicz maintains that the 1941 masterpiece “was not written at all by Orson Welles.” He asserts that Welles “begged” his father for co-authorship because Welles’ receiving his full salary for the movie from RKO Pictures depended on getting the writing credit in addition to directing, acting in and producing “Citizen Kane,” according to a report in The Washington Post.
TCM will air “Citizen Kane” on Sunday at 11:45 a.m.
In a controversial 1971 essay for The New Yorker, film critic Pauline Kael argued that Mankiewicz was the true author of the Oscar-winning screenplay. Peter Bogdanovich wrote a rebuttal for Esquire, “The Kane Mutiny,” countering that Welles was indeed co-author of the script.
Carringer’s exhaustive research, first published in 1978, cited script records from the RKO archives. Those records included Welles’ handwritten contributions on the drafts and subsequent changes that fleshed out Charles Foster Kane. Together, they prove that “Welles’ contribution to the ‘Citizen Kane’ script was not only substantial but definitive,” Carringer wrote.
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