Week 9 &10 Seminar paper

The Chief: the Life of William Randolph Hearst
By David Nasaw

‘Citizen Kane’

By reading the book and concentrating on chapter Citizen Kane is about Orson Welles making is first film about William Randolph Hearst. Welles spoke of Dumas, Machiavelli, and the Borgias but also of an unformed idea for a film about some larger than life American figure which in this case was William Randolph Hearts. Citizen Kane was been named on of the most influential films of all time, which was based on Hearst’s life and also adding bits and peaces from other rich men life to turn it into Kane.

Orson Welles worked together with RKO and Herman J. Mankiewicz to write the script of the movie and once it was finished it was obvious that it was about William Randolph Hearts. At the time Hearts was against the movie being shown on screen and did anything in his power to prevent the film being released. The reason behind this was because Orson Welles in the written scrip talks about a life of fictional figure who owns a chains of newspapers, who has been unsuccessful candidate for New York Governor, and also boasted that he started the Spanish-American war, and who marries an singer who he tries to get recognition for her an opera star by his publications, who retires and dies when his empire collapses. In other words it is done in a biographical way of Hearts life.

As I stated above William Randolph Hearst did everything in his power to prevent Citizen Kane not to be shown. Hearts threatened the RKO board members he will print their frictional version of their lives in his newspaper. He refused to advertise RKO films in his newspapers and magazines. Hearst also contacted Warner Brother’s manager and told him not to be shown in their theatres. Hearst did the same thing with Twentieth Century Fox theatres. His main purpose was to boycott the viewing of Citizen Kane all over the country. William Randolph Hearst explained doing all this as “unkind gesture” towards him because Welles tried to destroy his character. Also before the release of Kane Orson Welles told a story how he was approached by a man apparently detective and told him not to go back to his hotel as they was trying to set him by having a 14 year old girl waiting for him to show up and two photographers to takes snaps of him. This was done so Orson Welles could have been jailed and this would have killed his reputation.

After agreeing from both sides for the film to be shown Welles agreed to make small cuts to the movie. But just before premier in Radio City Music hall there was an unsurprising hick up the opening was cancelled again due to threatening from Hearst side that they will publish information on John D. Rockefeller. After a long time of fighting the film was released and explained by Orson Welles that it was peace of art that deserved to be shown. The reviews of the films were very high; many magazines called it the “greatest creation”.

My opinion on this is that William Randolph Hearst was against the movie not to be shown because he had a lot of illegal stuff he did not want people to know about that was happening in his life. Also he doing did everything in his power to prevent the film to release but it didn’t happen because Orson Welles stood his ground firm and didn’t want to drop it.