The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996)
directed by Michael Epstein and Thomas Lennon
Plot Summary
This documentary compares the careers of Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, centering on the controversy surrounding Citizen Kane. Their lives are chronicled using stills, newsreel footage, and various interviews. Clips from Citizen Kane are also sprinkled throughout the film.
Commentary
The Battle Over Citizen Kane is a documentary that focuses on the similarities between Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst, and Charles Foster Kane. It doesn’t present a very admirable picture of either of the two real men but evokes more sympathy for Welles, particularly by showing some later footage of him talking about his past career. It does erase any doubt regarding whether Charlie Kane was based directly on Hearst, as evidenced by the numerous shared experiences between the real and fictional newspaper tycoons. If Kane was taken to fully represent Hearst and one knew nothing about the real person, he might be a more pitiable historical figure. Yet, the more one learns about the real Hearst from this documentary, the more he resembles a manipulative tyrant. Of course, Kane is shown to be this too, but the psychological insight we are given about him renders him more sympathetic.
After being kicked out of college, Hearst’s rich father gave him a small newspaper with which to toy. He began taking on the competition in a ferocious manner, and he would shape stories into sensational forms to meet his needs. Hearst bought newspapers at strategic locations, and a series of "newspaper wars" began between rival papers, even resulting in some people being killed. Even more incredible is the documentary’s statement that Hearst papers called for President McKinley’s assassination soon before he was murdered. Hearst was a skillful politician who ran for top offices but never succeeded in winning them. He fell in love with an actress named Marion Davies who he began shoving down the public’s throat with too much promotion. They began having Hollywood parties at Hearst’s lavish private estate that covered a huge area and included a zoo and a priceless art collection. The wealthy tycoon bought incredible amounts of everything and became a symbol of the hated rich as the country slipped into depression. Hearst said that he never got into motion pictures because you can more easily crush a person in journalism. Perhaps Orson Welles heard this statement and decided he would try to prove differently.
Welles was a born showman and loved sensationalism; controversy had always proved beneficial to his career until he made his first feature film. Welles was declared a genius early in his life, and both of his parents died when he was 15 years old. His early interest was drama, and he wanted to revolutionize theater. At about the age of 21, he staged a controversial all-black production of "MacBeth" that proved to be somewhat of a sensation. Around this time Hearst newspapers began attacking Welles and his stage productions for reasons that were not made clear in the film. Welles formed the Mercury Theater as a sort of experimental group against the established traditions, and many of the principal players in Citizen Kane came from this troupe. Welles’ production of "Julius Caesar" flopped on its first evening, after which its young director went into a rage and reworked the production, turning it into a huge success. He was a tyrant on the set and in the radio studio when he began speaking over the airwaves. His infamous "War of the Worlds" production fooled many people into believing aliens really had landed and almost led to mass panic. In subsequent interviews, Welles claimed he had no idea people would mistake his ruse for fact, but it seems clear he intended to trick people and merely disregarded any consequences that might arise. This stunt led to the RKO movie deal that would eventually give birth to Citizen Kane.
Initially, Welles first project was going to be an adaptation of Heart of Darkness with the camera being the main character, but this proved impossible logistically. After hanging around in Hollywood for a while, Welles somehow got together with Herman Mankiewicz, a seasoned Hollywood writer who shared Welles’ contempt for Hollywood but knew the town from the inside. Mankiewicz had often been to Hearst’s parties and came up with the idea to base the film on the old newspaper tycoon; Hearst was 76 years old at the time, and Welles was only 24. When production finally began, Welles focused completely on the filmmaking process and worked easily with cinematographer Gregg Toland; one of the interviewees claimed the two men were "on the same wavelength". Marion Davies was represented in the film by Susan Alexander, and Welles later admits that this portrayal was cruel to Davies and that the actress was nothing like the fictional Mrs. Kane. Clearly, the filmmakers took what they knew about Hearst, embellished those events, and filled in the rest. It’s as if they were doing to Hearst personally what his papers had done to many news stories over the years in the practice of yellow journalism. But the documentary suggests that Welles also saw himself in the role of Charles Foster Kane and, consequently, gives the character a bit of humanity and plays himself in some ways. When the film came out, Hearst threatened the studios by every means imaginable, and gossip columnist Louella Parsons, working for him, spearheaded the charge. Attacks on Welles were widespread, and he had to fight to even get the picture released.
This informational documentary alternates its tales of Hearst and Welles at certain intervals, perhaps attempting to solidify the link between their personalities and lives. Unfortunately, since many of the people involved in these stories have passed away, the film relies on the standard documentary procedure of slowly zooming into still pictures of the events or people being discussed. Interspersed with these shots are certain interviewees, newsreel footage, and clips from Citizen Kane. The documentary discusses and shows how Hearst was not a stooped, unhappy man in his later years as the film suggests. However, it makes the point that his reputation suffered as a result of the film and has continued to suffer over the years. As for Welles he never got an opportunity to direct a film like Citizen Kane again, although he has several other great films to his credit. In some interview footage from later in his life, Welles comments about how he spent many years after his initial success trying to raise money to finance other film projects. He admits that he could have had greater success in another field but fell in love with filmmaking and made it his life’s pursuit. He says only about 2% of these years involved making movies, while the other 98% involved scrounging for financial support and adds, "That’s no way to spend a life." It’s a sad epitaph for someone now considered one of the greatest geniuses of not only American film, but of the entire medium’s history.
http://www.geocities.com/phesto_d/bokane.htm
The Battle Over Citizen Kane
About the Program
It was a clash of the titans. William Randolph Hearst, the lord and ruler of San Simeon. And Orson Welles, the ambitious young man with a golden touch, who set out to dethrone him. It was a fight from which neither man ever fully recovered.
Long before Orson Welles' Citizen Kane was released in 1941, there was a buzz about the movie and the "boy genius" who made it. At a preview screening, nearly everyone present realized that they had seen a work of brilliance--except Hedda Hopper, the leading gossip columnist of the day. She hated the movie, calling it "a vicious and irresponsible attack on a great man."
Citizen Kane was a brutal portrait of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. When Hearst learned through Hopper of Welles' film, he set out to protect his reputation by shutting the film down. Hollywood executives, led by Louis B. Mayer, rallied around Hearst, attempting to buy Citizen Kane in order to burn the negative. At the same time, Hearst's defenders moved to intimidate exhibitors into refusing to show the movie. Threats of blackmail, smears in the newspapers, and FBI investigations were used in the effort.
Hearst's campaign was largely successful. It would be nearly a quarter-century before Citizen Kane was revived--before Welles would gain popular recognition for having created one of cinema's great masterpieces.
"Hearst and Welles were proud, gifted, and destructive--geniuses each in his way," says producer Thomas Lennon. "The fight that ruined them both was thoroughly in character with how they'd lived their lives."
Orson Welles was just twenty-four when he took aim at William Randolph Hearst. The brash upstart was well on his way to claiming Hollywood as his own. A few years earlier, his infamous radio broadcast, War of the Worlds, had terrified listeners and won him the sweetest contract Hollywood had ever seen. With a reputation as a gifted radio and theater director, Welles' arrogance was founded on a track record of success and a lifetime of encouragement.
"Everybody told me from the moment I could hear that I was absolutely marvelous," Welles once told an interviewer.
Hearst was a 76-year-old newspaper magnate whose daring and single-mindedness had made him a publishing legend. The son of a wealthy mine owner, he too had been raised to believe he could have everything. He built his empire selling newspapers filled with entertaining stories that were often scandalous and, occasionally, pure fiction.
"We had a crime story that was going to be featured in a 96-point headline on page one," remembers Vern Whaley, an editor for Hearst's Herald-Examiner. "When I found the address that was in the story, that address was a vacant lot. So I hollered over at the rewrite desk, I said, 'You got the wrong address in this story. This is a vacant lot.' The copy chief that night was a guy named Vic Barnes. And he says, 'Sit down, Vern.' He says, 'The whole story's a fake.'"
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., remembers his father asking Hearst why he preferred concentrating on newspapers, with their limited, regional appeal, rather than spending more energy on motion pictures and their worldwide audience. Fairbanks recalls Hearst's reply: "I thought of it, but I decided against it. Because you can crush a man with journalism, and you can't with motion pictures."
Hearst began his empire with one small newspaper in San Francisco, then expanded to New York where, with flair and daring, he created the top selling of the city's fourteen newspapers. But he always wanted more, and eventually he controlled the first nationwide chain--with papers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta. Soon, an estimated one in five Americans was reading a Hearst paper every week.
Hearst's urge to acquire extended to art objects, mansions, and women. He owned eight homes, each stocked with priceless antiques and works of art, but spent most of his time in his California castle. Called San Simeon, the estate was on a piece of property nearly half the size of Rhode Island. George Bernard Shaw commented, "San Simeon was the place God would have built--if he had the money." Hearst's companion was Marion Davies, a showgirl whom he loved and propelled into Hollywood movies. Together they entertained Hollywood's biggest, best, and brightest; San Simeon became a social mecca for the stars.
Marion Davies was widely liked in Hollywood: straightforward, full of humor and charm. The battle over Citizen Kane was in large part a fight over her honor: It was said that Welles's treatment of Davies riled Hearst more than any other aspect of the film. Even Welles agreed that Susan Alexander, the Davies character, was unfair: "We had somebody very different in the place of Marion Davies. And it seemed to me to be something of a dirty trick, and does still strike me as being something of a dirty trick, what we did to her. And I anticipated the trouble from Hearst for that reason."
Never one to shy away from trouble, Welles built his career on a streak of controversial productions--the more upset and swirl he could create, the better. His production of Macbeth was set in Haiti and employed an all-black cast...his Julius Caesar was reimagined as a contemporary drama about facism...and finally, his radio staging of War of the Worlds, about Martians invading Earth, caused so much terror and uproar it might have ended his career. But his talent and ferocious energy seemed to lift him above the fray, delivering him unscathed to his next challenge. When he graced the cover of Time magazine, he was only twenty-three years old.
Welles was the talk of Hollywood when he arrived. His contract demanded two films, but Welles demanded they be revolutionary. He cast about for months for a project, presenting two ideas to the studio, neither of which went into production. With the pressure mounting, Welles was desperate. "He did a lot of drinking," says Bill Alland, Welles' longtime associate. "He did a lot of chasing around. But he also did a lot of work." When Herman Mankiewicz, a Hollywood writer and friend of Welles who had been a guest at San Simeon, proposed the story of Hearst, Welles seized on the idea as his last best chance.
Producer John Houseman, who worked with Mankiewicz on the Citizen Kane script, recalls the creation and evolution of Charles Foster Kane, the character modeled on Hearst, which Welles himself would play. "We were creating a vehicle suited to a man who, at twenty-four, was only slightly less fabulous than the hero he would be portraying. And the deeper we penetrated into the heart of Charles Foster Kane, the closer we seemed to come to the identity of Orson Welles."