{{Short description|1941 film}} {{DISPLAYTITLE:Sources for ''Citizen Kane''}} [[File:Citizen-Kane-Orson-Welles.jpg|alt=A mustachioed man in a suit leans on a lectern and points to his right. Behind him to the left is a large picture of himself wearing a hat.|thumb|right|Orson Welles in ''Citizen Kane'']] The sources for ''[[Citizen Kane]]'', the 1941 American motion picture that marked the [[List of directorial debuts|feature film debut]] of [[Orson Welles]], have been the subject of speculation and controversy since the project's inception. With a story spanning 60 years, the [[film à clef|quasi-biographical film]] examines the life and legacy of [[Charles Foster Kane]], played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate [[William Randolph Hearst]] and Chicago tycoons [[Samuel Insull]] and [[Harold Fowler McCormick|Harold McCormick]]. A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an [[Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay)]] for [[Herman J. Mankiewicz]] and Welles.
==Charles Foster Kane==
{{Main|Charles Foster Kane}}{{quotation|I wished to make a motion picture which was not a narrative of action so much as an examination of character. For this, I desired a man of many sides and many aspects.|Press statement issued by Orson Welles January 15, 1941, regarding his forthcoming motion picture, ''Citizen Kane''<ref name="OW 1941 Press Statement">{{cite web |url=http://www.wellesnet.com/orson-welles-explains-the-meaning-of-rosebud-in-citizen-kane/ |title=Orson Welles explains the meaning of Rosebud in ''Citizen Kane'' |date=August 5, 2007 |publisher=Wellesnet |access-date=2016-01-18 |archive-date=2017-04-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170416202800/http://www.wellesnet.com/orson-welles-explains-the-meaning-of-rosebud-in-citizen-kane/ |url-status=live }}</ref>}}
Orson Welles never confirmed a principal source for the character of Charles Foster Kane. [[John Houseman]], who worked with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz on the early draft scripts, wrote that Kane is a [[Composite character|synthesis]] of different personalities, with Hearst's life used as the main source. "The truth is simple: for the basic concept of Charles Foster Kane and for the main lines and significant events of his public life, Mankiewicz used as his model the figure of William Randolph Hearst. To this were added incidents and details invented or derived from other sources."<ref name="Houseman RT">{{cite book |last=Houseman |first=John |author-link=John Houseman |title=Run-Through: A Memoir |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |location=New York |date=1972 |isbn=0-671-21034-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/runthroughmemoir00hous }}</ref>{{Rp|444}} Houseman adds that they "grafted anecdotes from other giants of journalism, including [[Joseph Pulitzer|Pulitzer]], [[Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe|Northcliffe]] and Mank's first boss, [[Herbert Bayard Swope]]."<ref name="Houseman RT"/>{{Rp|444|date=January 2013}}
Welles said, "Mr. Hearst was quite a bit like Kane, although Kane isn't really founded on Hearst in particular, many people sat for it so to speak".<ref name="Estrin">{{cite book |editor-last=Estrin |editor-first=Mark W. |title=Orson Welles: Interviews |publisher=[[University Press of Mississippi]] |location=Jackson, Mississippi |date=2002 |isbn=978-1-578-06209-6}}</ref>{{Rp|78}} He specifically acknowledged that aspects of Kane were drawn from the lives of two business tycoons familiar from his youth in Chicago — [[Samuel Insull]] and [[Harold Fowler McCormick]].{{efn|Welles states, "There's all that stuff about McCormick and the opera. I drew a lot from that from my Chicago days. And Samuel Insull."<ref name="Welles TIOW">{{cite book |last1=Welles |first1=Orson |author-link1=Orson Welles |last2=Bogdanovich |first2=Peter |author-link2=Peter Bogdanovich |last3=Rosenbaum |first3=Jonathan |author-link3=Jonathan Rosenbaum |title=This is Orson Welles |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] Publishers |location=New York |date=1992 |isbn=0-06-016616-9|title-link=This is Orson Welles }}</ref>{{Rp|49}}}}<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|49}}
===William Randolph Hearst===
{{multiple image <!-- Essential parameters --> | align = right | direction = vertical | width = 220 <!-- Image 1 --> | image1 = WilliamRandolphHearst.jpg | alt1 = | caption1 = Although various sources were used as a model for Kane, [[William Randolph Hearst]] was the primary inspiration. <!-- Image 2 --> | image2 =Citizen-Kane-Welles-Coulouris.jpg | alt2 = | caption2 = Kane's response to a cable from a correspondent in Cuba—"You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war"— is the film's most overt allusion to Hearst.<ref name=Lebo>{{cite book |last=Lebo |first=Harlan |title=Citizen Kane: The Fiftieth Anniversary Album |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]] |location=New York |date=1990 |isbn=978-0-385-41473-9}}</ref> {{Rp|159}}}} {{quotation|William Randolph Hearst was born rich. He was the pampered son of an adoring mother. That is the decisive fact about him. Charles Foster Kane was born poor and was raised by a bank.|[[Orson Welles]]<ref name="Davies, Marion 1975">{{cite book |last=Davies |first=Marion |author-link=Marion Davies |editor1-last=Pfau |editor1-first=Pamela |editor2-last=Marx |editor2-first=Kenneth S.|title=The Times We Had: Life with William Randolph Hearst. ''Foreword by Orson Welles (two pages preceding unpaginated chapter index)'' |publisher=[[Bobbs-Merrill Company]], Inc. |location=Indianapolis and New York |date=1975 |isbn=978-0-672-52112-6}}</ref>}}
The film is commonly regarded as a fictionalized, unrelentingly hostile [[parody]] of [[William Randolph Hearst]], in spite of Welles's statement that "''Citizen Kane'' is the story of a wholly fictitious character."<ref name="Raising Kane">{{cite book |last1=Kael |first1=Pauline |author-link1=Pauline Kael |last2=Welles |first2=Orson |author-link2=Orson Welles |last3=Mankiewicz |first3=Herman J. |author-link3=Herman J. Mankiewicz |year=1971 |title=The Citizen Kane Book |chapter=Raising Kane by Pauline Kael |chapter-url=http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/raisingkane.html |location=Boston |publisher=[[Little, Brown and Company]] |pages=1–84 |oclc=301527105 |access-date=2015-08-23 |archive-date=2006-06-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060620060353/http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/raisingkane.html |url-status=live }}</ref>{{Rp|42}} Film historian Don Kilbourne has pointed out that much of the film's story is derived from aspects of Hearst's life that had already been published and that "some of Kane's speeches are almost verbatim copies of Hearst's. When Welles denied that the film was about the still-influential publisher, he did not convince many people."<ref name="Kilbourne">{{cite book|last=Kilbourne|first=Don|editor1-last=Morsberger|editor1-first=Robert E.|editor2-last=Lesser|editor2-first=Stephen O.|editor3-last=Clark|editor3-first=Randall|title=Dictionary of Literary Biography|volume=26: American Screenwriters|publisher=[[Gale Research Company]]|location=Detroit|year=1984|pages=[https://archive.org/details/americanscreenwr0000unse_h3m5/page/218 218–224]|chapter=Herman Mankiewicz (1897–1953)|isbn=978-0-8103-0917-3|title-link=Dictionary of Literary Biography}}</ref>{{Rp|222|date=May 2009}}
The most identifiable anecdote from Hearst's life used in the film is his famous but almost certainly apocryphal exchange with illustrator [[Frederic Remington]]. In January 1897 Remington was sent to Cuba by Hearst's ''[[New York Journal-American|New York Journal]]'', to provide illustrations to accompany [[Richard Harding Davis]]'s reporting about an uprising against Spain's colonial rule. Remington purportedly cabled Hearst from Havana that he wished to return since everything was quiet and there would be no war. Hearst is supposed to have replied, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war". Although Hearst denied the truth of the now legendary story, a milestone of [[yellow journalism]], the ensuing [[Spanish–American War]] has been called "Mr. Hearst's War".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=2429 |title=You Furnish the Legend, I'll Furnish the Quote |last=Campbell |first=W. Joseph |date=December 2001 |website=[[American Journalism Review]] |publisher=[[Philip Merrill College of Journalism]] |access-date=2016-02-03}}</ref>
Hearst biographer [[David Nasaw]] described Kane as "a cartoon-like caricature of a man who is hollowed out on the inside, forlorn, defeated, solitary because he cannot command the total obedience, loyalty, devotion, and love of those around him. Hearst, to the contrary, never regarded himself as a failure, never recognized defeat, never stopped loving Marion [Davies] or his wife. He did not, at the end of his life, run away from the world to entomb himself in a vast, gloomy art-choked hermitage."<ref name="Nasaw">{{cite book |last=Nasaw |first=David |author-link=David Nasaw |title=The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]] |location=Boston,MA |date=2000 |isbn=0-395-82759-0 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/chieflifeofwilli0000nasa }}</ref>{{Rp|574|date=May 2009}}
Arguing for the release of ''Citizen Kane'' before the RKO board, Welles pointed out the irony that it was Hearst himself who had brought so much attention to the film being about him, and that Hearst columnist [[Louella Parsons]] was doing the most to publicize Kane's identification with Hearst. Public denials aside, Welles held the view that Hearst was a public figure and that the facts of a public figure's life were available for writers to reshape and restructure into works of fiction. Welles's legal advisor, Arnold Weissberger, put the issue in the form of a rhetorical question: "Will a man be allowed in effect to copyright the story of his life?"<ref name="Leaming OW">{{cite book |last=Leaming |first=Barbara |title=Orson Welles, A Biography |publisher=[[Viking Press]] |location=New York |date=1985 |isbn=978-0-618-15446-3}}</ref>{{Rp|210–211|date=April 2012}}
Welles said that he had excised one scene from Mankiewicz's first draft that had certainly been based on Hearst. "In the original script we had a scene based on a notorious thing Hearst had done, which I still cannot repeat for publication. And I cut it out because I thought it hurt the film and wasn't in keeping with Kane's character. If I'd kept it in, I would have had no trouble with Hearst. He wouldn't have dared admit it was him.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|85|date=January 2013}}
In her 1971 essay, "[[Raising Kane]]", film critic [[Pauline Kael]] wrote that a vestige of this abandoned subplot survives in a remark made by Susan Alexander Kane to the reporter interviewing her: "Look, if you're smart, you'll get in touch with Raymond. He's the butler. You'll learn a lot from him. He knows where all the bodies are buried." Kael observed, "It's an odd, cryptic speech. In the first draft, Raymond ''literally'' knew where the bodies were buried: Mankiewicz had dished up a nasty version of the scandal sometimes referred to as the Strange Death of [[Thomas H. Ince|Thomas Ince]]."<ref name="Raising Kane"/> Referring to the suspicious 1924 death of the American film mogul after being a guest on [[USS Oneida (SP-432)|Hearst's yacht]], and noting that Kael's principal source was Houseman, film critic [[Jonathan Rosenbaum]] wrote that "it seems safe to conclude, even without her prodding, that some version of the story must have cropped up in Mankiewicz's first draft of the script, which Welles subsequently edited and added to."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/?p=6233 |last=Rosenbaum |first=Jonathan |title=Hollywood Confidential: ''The Cat's Meow'' |newspaper=[[Chicago Reader]] |date=April 26, 2002 |access-date=January 13, 2013 |archive-date=December 5, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205163444/http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2020/06/hollywood-confidential/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
One particular aspect of the character, Kane's profligate collecting of possessions, was directly taken from Hearst. "And it's very curious – a man who spends his entire life paying cash for objects he never looked at," Welles said. "He just acquired things, most of which were never opened, remained in boxes. It's really a quite accurate picture of Hearst to that extent."<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|50|date=April 2012}} However Welles himself insisted that there were marked differences between his fictional creation and Hearst.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|49}} [[Xanadu (Citizen Kane)|Xanadu]] was modeled after Hearst’s large mansion [[Hearst Castle]] in [[San Simeon, California]], which also had a private zoo and a large collection of art.<ref name="Howard">{{cite book |last=Howard |first=James |title=The Complete Films of Orson Welles |publisher=Carol Publishing Group |location=New York |date=1991 |isbn=0-8065-1241-5}}</ref>{{Rp|47}}
===Samuel Insull=== [[File:Insull Time November 1926.jpg|thumb|upright|Chicago utilities magnate [[Samuel Insull]] built a fortune and lost it, and built the [[Chicago Civic Opera House|Chicago Opera House]].]]
As a model for the makeup design of the old Charles Foster Kane, Welles gave Maurice Seiderman a photograph of Chicago industrialist Samuel Insull, with mustache.<ref name="Gambill">{{cite journal |last=Gambill |first=Norman |date=November–December 1978 |title=Making Up Kane |journal=[[Film Comment]] |volume= 14| issue = 6 |pages=42–48}}</ref>{{Rp|42, 46}}
A protégé of [[Thomas Edison]], Insull was a man of humble origins who became the most powerful figure in the utilities field.<ref>{{cite news |last=Owens |first=Russell |title=Another Vivid Scene Ends in Insull's Amazing Drama |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=April 8, 1934}}</ref> He was married to a Broadway ingenue nearly 20 years his junior, spent a fortune trying to re-launch her career, and built the [[Civic Opera House (Chicago)|Chicago Civic Opera House]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Talley |first=Robert |date=October 19, 1932 |title=Insull Lavished Riches on Wife; Comeback On Stage Fails |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19321020&id=ZA4sAAAAIBAJ&pg=909,3415983 |newspaper=[[TimesDaily|The Florence Times]] |agency=[[United Media|NEA Service]] |access-date=December 13, 2014 |archive-date=December 5, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205163443/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19321020&id=ZA4sAAAAIBAJ&pg=909%2C3415983 |url-status=live }}</ref>
In 1925, after a 26-year absence, [[Gladys Wallis]] Insull returned to the stage in a charity revival of ''[[The School for Scandal]]'' that ran two weeks in Chicago.<ref>{{cite news |title=Mrs. Samuel Insull Returns to Stage |newspaper=The New York Times |date=May 23, 1925}}</ref> When the performance was repeated on Broadway in October 1925, Herman Mankiewicz — then the third-string theater critic for ''The New York Times'' — was assigned to review the production. In an incident that became infamous, Mankiewicz returned to the press room drunk and wrote only the first sentence of a negative review before passing out on his typewriter. Mankiewicz resurrected the experience in writing the [[Screenplay for Citizen Kane|screenplay for ''Citizen Kane'']], incorporating it into the narrative of Jedediah Leland.{{efn|Mankiewicz began his review, "Miss Gladys Wallis, an aging, hopelessly incompetent amateur …" Leland's review begins, "Miss Susan Alexander, a pretty but hopelessly incompetent amateur …"}}<ref name=Meryman>{{cite book |last=Meryman |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Meryman |title=Mank: The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz |publisher=[[William Morrow and Company]], Inc. |location=New York |date=1978 |isbn=978-0-688-03356-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/mankwitworldlife00mery }}</ref>{{Rp|77–78|date=April 2012}}
In 1926 Insull took a six-year lease on Chicago's [[Fine Arts Building (Chicago)|Studebaker Theatre]] and financed a repertory company in which his wife starred. Gladys Insull's nerves broke when her company failed to find success, and the lease expired at the same time Insull's $4 billion financial empire collapsed in the Depression.<ref>{{cite news |title=Drama Items from the Nation's Second City |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 16, 1932}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/10/obituaries/samuel-insull-jr-82-son-of-utility-magnate.html |title=Samuel Insull Jr., 82; Son of Utility Magnate (obituary) |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 10, 1983 |access-date=December 5, 2020 |archive-date=November 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107191640/https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/10/obituaries/samuel-insull-jr-82-son-of-utility-magnate.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Insull died in July 1938,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=05EjAAAAIBAJ&pg=6644,1951375&dq=insull&hl=en|title=Insull Drops Dead in a Paris Station|date=July 18, 1938|newspaper=[[Montreal Gazette]]|access-date=December 5, 2014|archive-date=December 5, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205163443/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=05EjAAAAIBAJ&pg=6644%2C1951375&dq=insull&hl=en|url-status=live}}</ref> bankrupt and disgraced.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FmYhAAAAIBAJ&pg=2275,1951775&dq=insull&hl=en|title=Fortune Shrank to $1,000, Samuel Insull Will Shows|date=August 12, 1938|newspaper=Reading Eagle|access-date=December 5, 2014|archive-date=December 5, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205163515/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FmYhAAAAIBAJ&pg=2275%2C1951775&dq=insull&hl=en|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Qk4sAAAAIBAJ&pg=1392,3516855&dq=insull&hl=en|title=Insull Left $1,000 Cash and Debt of $14,000,000|date=August 12, 1938|publisher=Herald-Journal|access-date=December 5, 2014|archive-date=December 5, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205163444/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Qk4sAAAAIBAJ&pg=1392%2C3516855&dq=insull&hl=en|url-status=live}}</ref>
Insull's life was also well known to Welles. Insull's publicity director John Clayton was a friend of Roger Hill, Welles's teacher at the Todd School and a lifelong friend.<ref name="Leaming OW"/>{{Rp|211}}
===Harold McCormick===
Like Kane, Harold McCormick was divorced by his aristocratic first wife, [[Edith Rockefeller McCormick|Edith Rockefeller]], and lavishly promoted the opera career of his only modestly talented second wife, [[Ganna Walska]].<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|497|date=April 2012}} In 1920 McCormick arranged for her to play the lead in a production of ''[[Zaza (play)|Zaza]]'' at the Chicago Opera. She fled the country after her Italian vocal instructor told her that she was unprepared to perform the night before the sold-out premiere.<ref name="Higham">{{cite book |last=Higham |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Higham (biographer) |title=Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]]|location=New York |date=1985 |isbn=0-312-31280-6}}</ref>{{Rp|40}}
===Other sources=== Another member of the powerful [[McCormick family]] who inspired the character of Kane was [[Robert R. McCormick]], the crusading publisher of the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]''.<ref name="Directors in Action">{{cite book |editor-last=Thomas |editor-first=Bob |title=Directors in Action: Selections from Action, The Official Magazine of the Directors Guild of America |publisher=The Bobbs Merrill Company, Inc. |location=Indianapolis |year=1973 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/directorsinactio00thom/page/1 1–11] |chapter=Citizen Kane Remembered [May–June 1969] |chapter-url=http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0601-Spring-2006/Features-Raising-Kane.aspx |isbn=0-672-51715-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/directorsinactio00thom/page/1 }}</ref>{{Rp|6}}
According to composer [[David Raksin]], [[Bernard Herrmann]] used to say that much of Kane's story was based on McCormick, but that there was also a good deal of Welles in the flamboyant character.<ref name="americancomposers">{{cite web |url=http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_herrmann.htm |title=American Composers Orchestra – David Raksin remembers his colleagues |publisher=Americancomposers.org |access-date=January 22, 2009 |archive-date=December 9, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209041005/http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_herrmann.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>
Welles cited financier [[Basil Zaharoff]] as another inspiration for Kane. "I got the idea for the hidden-camera sequence in the Kane 'news digest' from a scene I did on ''[[The March of Time (radio program)|March of Time]]'' in which Zaharoff, this great munitions-maker, was being moved around in his rose garden, just talking about the roses, in the last days before he died," Welles said.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|75}} Film scholar Robert L. Carringer reviewed the December 3, 1936, script of the radio obituary in which Welles played Zaharoff, and found other similarities. In the opening scene, Zaharoff's secretaries are burning masses of secret papers in the enormous fireplace of his castle. A succession of witnesses testify about the tycoon's ruthless practices. "Finally, Zaharoff himself appears — an old man nearing death, alone except for his servants in the gigantic palace in Monte Carlo that he had acquired for his longtime mistress. His dying wish is to be wheeled out 'in the sun by that rosebush.'"<ref name="Carringer TMOCK">{{cite book |last=Carringer |first=Robert L. |title=The Making of Citizen Kane |publisher=[[University of California Press]]|location=Berkeley and Los Angeles |date=1985 |isbn=978-0-520-20567-3}}</ref>{{Rp|18|date=January 2013}}
The last name of Welles's friend, actor [[Whitford Kane]], was used for Charles Foster Kane.<ref name="Whaley">[http://www.lybrary.com/barton-whaley-m-191.html Whaley, Barton] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160407122754/http://www.lybrary.com/barton-whaley-m-191.html |date=2016-04-07 }}, ''Orson Welles: The Man Who Was Magic''. Lybrary.com, 2005, {{ASIN|B005HEHQ7E}}</ref>{{Rp|120}}
==Jedediah Leland== [[File:Ashton-Stevens-1920.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Ashton Stevens]] (1920)]] In 1940, Welles invited longtime friend and [[Mercury Theatre]] colleague [[Joseph Cotten]] to join a small group for an initial [[read-through]] at Mankiewicz's house. Cotten wrote:
<blockquote>"I think I'll just listen," Welles said. "The title of this movie is ''Citizen Kane'', and I play guess who." He turned to me. "Why don't you think of yourself as Jedediah Leland? His name, by the way, is a combination of [[Jed Harris]] and your agent, [[Leland Hayward]]." "There all resemblance ceases," Herman reassured me. These afternoon garden readings continued, and as the Mercury actors began arriving, the story started to breathe.<ref name=Cotten>{{cite book |last=Cotten |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Cotten |title=Vanity Will Get You Somewhere |publisher=[[Mercury House (publishers)|Mercury House]] |location=San Francisco, CA |date=1987 |isbn=978-0-916-51517-1 |page=34}}</ref></blockquote>
"I regard Leland with enormous affection," Welles told Bogdanovich,<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|84}} adding that the character of Jed Leland was based on drama critic [[Ashton Stevens]], [[George Stevens]]'s uncle and his own close boyhood friend.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|66}} Regarded as the dean of American drama critics, Stevens began his journalism career in 1894 in San Francisco and started working for the Hearst newspapers three years later. In 1910 he moved to Chicago, where he covered the theater for 40 years and became a close friend of Dr. Maurice Bernstein, Welles's guardian.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://mms.newberry.org/html/Stevens.html |title=Biography of Ashton Stevens, Ashton Stevens Papers |publisher=[[Newberry Library]], Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections |access-date=2015-08-23 |archive-date=2013-05-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130515144624/http://mms.newberry.org/html/Stevens.html |url-status=live }}</ref> When Welles was a child Stevens used to tell him stories about Hearst, much like Leland tells Thompson about Kane in the film.<ref name="Leaming OW"/>{{Rp|188}}
Welles said that he learned most of what he knew about the life of Hearst from Stevens. Welles sent Stevens an advance copy of the ''Citizen Kane'' script, and took him to the set during filming.{{efn|Actor Landers Stevens, Ashton Stevens's brother, made his final screen appearance in ''Citizen Kane'' as a Senate investigator.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/SearchResult.aspx?s=&Type=PN&Tbl=&CatID=DATABIN_CAST&ID=95368&searchedFor=Landers_Stevens_&SortType=DESC&SortCol=RELEASE_YEAR |title=Landers Stevens |website=[[AFI Catalog of Feature Films]] |publisher=[[American Film Institute]] |access-date=2016-01-18}}</ref>}} "Later he saw the movie and thought the old man would be thrilled by it," said Welles. "Ashton was really one of the great ones. The last of the dandies — he worked for Hearst for some 50 years or so, and adored him. A gentleman … very much like Jed.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|66}}
[[File:Gladys Wallis 1.jpg|thumb|upright|Gladys Wallis in 1893, six years before her marriage to Samuel Insull]]
Mankiewicz incorporated an incident from his own early career as a theater critic into Leland. Mankiewicz was assigned to review the October 1925 opening of Gladys Wallis' production of ''[[The School for Scandal]]''. After her opening-night performance in the role of Lady Teazle, Mankiewicz returned to the press room "… full of fury and too many drinks …", wrote biographer Richard Meryman: <blockquote>He was outraged by the spectacle of a 56-year-old millionairess playing a gleeful 18-year-old, the whole production bought for her like a trinket by a man Herman knew to be an unscrupulous manipulator. Herman began to write: "Miss Gladys Wallis, an aging, hopelessly incompetent amateur, opened last night in ..." Then Herman passed out, slumped over the top of his typewriter.<ref name=Meryman/>{{Rp|77–78|date=April 2012}}</blockquote>
The unconscious Mankiewicz was discovered by his boss, [[George S. Kaufman]], who composed a terse announcement that the ''Times'' review would appear the following day.{{efn|"''The School for Scandal,'' with Mrs. Insull as Lady Teazle, was produced at the Little Theatre last night. It will be reviewed in tomorrow's ''Times''."}}<ref>{{cite news |title=A New 'School for Scandal' |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 23, 1925}}</ref>
Mankiewicz resurrected the incident for ''Citizen Kane''. After Kane's second wife makes her opera debut, critic Jed Leland returns to the press room drunk. He passes out over the top of his typewriter after writing the first sentence of his review: "Miss Susan Alexander, a pretty but hopelessly incompetent amateur …"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.filmsite.org/citi5.html |last=Dirks |first=Tim |title=Citizen Kane, page 5 |publisher=Filmsite.org |access-date=November 29, 2014 |archive-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141208080318/http://www.filmsite.org/citi5.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
==Susan Alexander Kane==
[[File:Marion Davies - Emerald Green.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Hearst was disturbed by the film's supposed depiction of [[Marion Davies]], but Welles always denied that Susan Alexander Kane was based on Davies.]]
{{quotation|It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story, but the man was not Hearst. Susan, Kane's second wife, is not even based on the real-life soprano. Like most fictional characters, Susan's resemblance to other fictional characters is quite startling. To Marion Davies she bears no resemblance at all.|[[Orson Welles]]<ref name="Davies, Marion 1975"/>}}
The assumption that the character of Susan Alexander Kane was based on Marion Davies was a major reason Hearst tried to destroy ''Citizen Kane''.<ref name="PBS">{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kane2/kane2ts.html |last1=Epstein |first1=Michael |last2=Lennon |first2=Thomas |title=The Battle Over Citizen Kane |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] |date=1996 |access-date=January 14, 2008 |archive-date=December 16, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071216132713/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kane2/kane2ts.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Davies's nephew [[Charles Lederer]] insisted that Hearst and Davies never saw ''Citizen Kane'', but condemned it based on the outrage expressed by trusted friends. Lederer believed that any implication that Davies was a failure and an alcoholic distressed Hearst more than any unfavorable references to himself.<ref name="Feder">{{cite book |last=Feder |first=Chris Welles |date=2009 |title=In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles |location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina |publisher=Algonquin Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781565125995/page/44 44] |isbn=9781565125995 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781565125995/page/44 }}</ref>
In his foreword to Davies's posthumously published autobiography, Welles drew a sharp distinction between his fictional creation and Davies: "That Susan was Kane's wife and Marion was Hearst's mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today's changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. … The mistress was never one of Hearst's possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than 30 years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of ''Citizen Kane''."<ref name="Davies, Marion 1975"/> Welles called Davies "an extraordinary woman—nothing like the character [[Dorothy Comingore]] played in the movie",<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|49|date=April 2012}} and told [[Peter Bogdanovich]] "I always thought [Hearst] was right to be upset about" the character's association with Davies.<ref name=chawkins20120123>{{cite news |last=Chawkins |first=Steve |title=Family 'Citizen Kane' gets inside the castle |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |location=Los Angeles, CA |url=https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2012-jan-23-la-me-citizen-kane-20120123-story.html |date=January 23, 2012 |access-date=December 11, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141221115331/http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/23/local/la-me-citizen-kane-20120123 |archive-date=December 21, 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[File:Ganna Walska.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Ganna Walska]] after her marriage to [[Harold Fowler McCormick|Harold F. McCormick]], who lavishly promoted her lackluster opera career]]
He cited Insull's building of the [[Civic Opera House (Chicago)|Chicago Opera House]], and McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife, [[Ganna Walska]], as direct influences on the screenplay.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|49|date=November 2014}} Contemporaries said Walska had a terrible voice; ''The New York Times'' headlines of the day read, "Ganna Walska Fails as Butterfly: Voice Deserts Her Again When She Essays Role of Puccini's Heroine"<ref>{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F0CE3D9153FE733A2575AC2A9679C946495D6CF |title=Ganna Walska Fails as Butterfly; Voice Deserts Her Again When She Essays Role of Puccini's Heroine |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 29, 1925 |access-date=December 2, 2014 |archive-date=December 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141210143409/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F0CE3D9153FE733A2575AC2A9679C946495D6CF |url-status=live }}</ref> and "Mme. Walska Clings to Ambition to Sing".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A0CEFDE123DE733A25757C1A9619C946695D6CF |title=Mme. Walska Clings to Ambition to Sing |newspaper=The New York Times |date=July 14, 1927 |access-date=December 2, 2014 |archive-date=December 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141210135547/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A0CEFDE123DE733A25757C1A9619C946695D6CF |url-status=live }}</ref>
"According to her 1943 memoirs, ''Always Room at the Top,'' Walska had tried every sort of fashionable mumbo jumbo to conquer her nerves and salvage her voice," reported ''The New York Times'' in 1996. "Nothing worked. During a performance of [[Umberto Giordano|Giordano]]'s ''[[Fedora (opera)|Fedora]]'' in Havana she veered so persistently off key that the audience pelted her with rotten vegetables. It was an event that Orson Welles remembered when he began concocting the character of the newspaper publisher's second wife for ''Citizen Kane''."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/22/garden/garden-of-the-slightly-macabre.html?scp=84&sq=Ganna+Walska&st=cse&pagewanted=all |last=Owens |first=Mitchell |title=Garden of the Slightly Macabre |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 22, 1996 |access-date=December 5, 2020 |archive-date=November 23, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181123203151/https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/22/garden/garden-of-the-slightly-macabre.html?scp=84&sq=Ganna+Walska&st=cse&pagewanted=all |url-status=live }}</ref>
Lederer said that the script he read "didn't have any flavor of Marion and Hearst."<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|497}} Lederer noted that Davies drank and did jigsaw puzzles, but this behavior was exaggerated in the film to help define the characterization of Susan Alexander.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|497–498}}
Others thought to have inspired the character are film tycoon [[Jules Brulatour]]'s second and third wives, [[Dorothy Gibson]] and [[Hope Hampton]], both fleeting stars of the silent screen who later had marginal careers in opera.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bigham |first=Randy Bryan |title=Finding Dorothy: A Biography of Dorothy Gibson |publisher=[[Lulu.com]] |location=Raleigh, North Carolina |date=2014 |isbn=978-1-105-52008-2 |pages=99–100}}</ref> The interview with Susan Alexander Kane in the Atlantic City nightclub was based on a contemporary interview with [[Evelyn Nesbit|Evelyn Nesbit Thaw]] in the run-down club where she was performing.<ref name="Houseman RT"/>{{Rp|452–453}}
Susan Alexander's last name was taken from Mankiewicz's secretary, Rita Alexander.<ref name="Whaley"/>{{Rp|120}}
==Jim W. Gettys==
[[File:1905 cartoon of Charlie Murphy as a prisoner.jpg|alt=Caricature of a big, heavyset man in a striped convict suit, and wearing a monocle|thumb |220px |upright|[[Tad Dorgan]]'s caricature of [[Charles Francis Murphy|Charles F. Murphy]], which appeared in Hearst's ''[[New York Journal American|New York Journal]]'' (November 10, 1905), is described by Boss Jim W. Gettys in ''Citizen Kane''.]]
The character of [[political boss]] Jim W. Gettys is based on [[Charles Francis Murphy|Charles F. Murphy]], a leader in New York City's infamous [[Tammany Hall]] political machine.<ref name="Raising Kane"/>{{Rp|61|date=April 2012}} Hearst and Murphy were political allies in 1902, when Hearst was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but became enemies in 1905 when Hearst [[New York City mayoral elections#1897 to 1913|ran for mayor of New York]]. Hearst turned his muckraking newspapers on Tammany Hall in the person of Murphy, who was called "... the most hungry, selfish and extortionate boss Tammany has ever known." Murphy ordered that under no condition was Hearst to be elected. Hearst ballots were dumped into the East River, and new ballots were printed favoring his [[George B. McClellan, Jr.|opponent]]. Hearst was defeated by some 3,000 votes and his newspapers bellowed against the election fraud.<ref name="When Giants Ruled"/>
A historic cartoon of Murphy in convict stripes appeared November 10, 1905, three days after the vote.<ref name="When Giants Ruled">{{cite book |last=Turner |first=Hy B. |title=When Giants Ruled: The Story of Park Row, New York's Great Newspaper Street |publisher=[[Fordham University Press]] |location=New York |date=1999 |isbn=978-0-823-21944-5 |pages=150–152}}</ref> The caption read, "Look out, Murphy! It's a Short Lockstep from [[Delmonico's]] to [[Sing Sing]] ... Every honest voter in New York wants to see you in this costume."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/details/currentliteratur41newyrich |title=Current Literature, Vol. 41, No. 5 |date=October 1906 |page=477|publisher=New York : Current Literature Pub. Co. }}</ref>
In ''Citizen Kane'', Boss Jim W. Gettys (named "Edward Rogers" in the shooting script) admonishes Kane for printing a cartoon showing him in prison stripes:<blockquote>If I owned a newspaper and if I didn't like the way somebody else was doing things—some politician, say—I'd fight them with everything I had. Only I wouldn't show him in a convict suit with stripes—so his children could see the picture in the paper. Or his mother.</blockquote>
As he pursues Gettys down the stairs, Kane threatens to send him to Sing Sing.<ref name="CK Script">{{cite book |last1=Kael |first1=Pauline |author-link1=Pauline Kael |last2=Welles |first2=Orson |author-link2=Orson Welles |last3=Mankiewicz |first3=Herman J. |author-link3=Herman J. Mankiewicz |year=1971 |title=The Citizen Kane Book |chapter=The Shooting Script by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles |location=Boston |publisher=[[Little, Brown and Company]] |pages=87–304 |oclc=301527105}}</ref>{{Rp|219–225}}
As an [[in-joke|inside joke]], Welles named Gettys after the father-in-law of his mentor, [[Orson Welles#Roger Hill|Roger Hill]], a teacher at [[Todd Seminary for Boys]].<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|63|date=June 2012}}
==Other characters==
Houseman claimed that Walter P. Thatcher was loosely based on [[J. P. Morgan]], but only in the general sense of Morgan being an old-fashioned 19th century capitalist with ties to [[Wall Street]] finances and [[New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad|railroad companies]].<ref name="Mulvey">{{cite book |last=Mulvey |first=Laura |author-link=Laura Mulvey |title=Citizen Kane |publisher=BFI Publishing |location=London, UK |date=1992 |isbn=978-1844574971}}</ref>{{Rp|55}}
When Welles was 15 he became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein. Bernstein is the last name of the only major character in ''Citizen Kane'' who receives a generally positive portrayal. Although Dr. Bernstein was nothing like the character in the film (possibly based on Solomon S. Carvalho, Hearst's business manager<ref name="Brady"/>{{Rp|241}}), Welles said, the use of his surname was a family joke: "I used to call people 'Bernstein' on the radio, all the time, too – just to make him laugh."<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|65–66|date=April 2012}} Composer David Raksin described Sloane's portrayal of Bernstein as "a compendium of the mannerisms of Bernard Herrmann: he looks like Benny, acts like him, and even talks like him."<ref name="americancomposers"/>
Herbert Carter, editor of ''The Inquirer'', was named for actor [[Jack Carter (stage actor)|Jack Carter]].<ref name="Higham"/>{{Rp|155}}
=="Rosebud"== {{quotation|Charles Foster Kane, as Welles presents him, was a man who had everything money could buy except love. He lacked that, which was all he wanted, because he had no love to give—except love of self. He died, lonely in his vast and fabulous palace, crying out (in a single word) for a return to his childhood.|Robbin Coons, [[Associated Press]] (May 1, 1941)<ref name="Robbin Coons">{{cite news |last=Coons |first=Robbin |date=May 1, 1941 |title=Hollywood Sights and Sounds |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19410501&id=yOIcAAAAIBAJ&pg=3353,2902994&hl=en |newspaper=[[Sarasota Herald-Tribune]] |location=[[Associated Press]] |access-date=2016-04-03 |archive-date=2020-12-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205163452/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19410501&id=yOIcAAAAIBAJ&pg=3353%2C2902994&hl=en |url-status=live }}</ref>}}
"The most basic of all ideas was that of a search for the true significance of the man's apparently meaningless dying words," Welles wrote in a January 1941 press statement about the forthcoming ''Citizen Kane''. He described the meaning of "Rosebud": "In his subconscious it represented the simplicity, the comfort, above all the lack of responsibility in his home, and also it stood for his mother's love which Kane never lost."<ref name="OW 1941 Press Statement"/>
Welles credited the "Rosebud" device to Mankiewicz. "Rosebud remained, because it was the only way we could find to get off, as they used to say in vaudeville," Welles said. "It manages to work, but I'm still not too keen about it, and I don't think that he was, either." Welles said that they attempted to diminish the importance of the word's meaning and "take the mickey out of it."<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|53}}
As he began his first draft of the screenplay in early 1940, Mankiewicz mentioned "Rosebud" to his secretary. When she asked, "Who is rosebud?" he replied, "It isn't a who, it's an it." Biographer [[Richard Meryman]] wrote that the symbol of Mankiewicz's own damaged childhood was a treasured bicycle, stolen while he visited the public library and not replaced by his family as punishment.{{efn|Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman wrote, "The prototype of Charles Foster Kane's sled was this bicycle … The bike became a symbol of Herman's bitterness about his Prussian father and the lack of love in his childhood."<ref name=Meryman/>{{rp|300}}}} "He mourned that all his life," wrote Kael, who believed Mankiewicz put the emotion of that boyhood loss into the loss that haunted Kane.<ref name="Raising Kane"/>{{Rp|60}}
Hearst biographer Louis Pizzitola reports one historian's statement that "Rosebud" was a nickname given to Hearst's mother by portrait and landscape painter [[Orrin Peck]], whose family were friends with the Hearsts.{{efn|The source for Peck's giving the Rosebud nickname to Phoebe Hearst is a 1977 oral history interview with a researcher named Vonnie Eastham, conducted by [[California State University, Chico]].<ref name="Pizzitola"/>{{Rp|469}}}}<ref name="Pizzitola">{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/hearstoverhollyw00pizz_0 |last=Pizzitola |first=Louis |title=Hearst Over Hollywood |publisher=[[Columbia University]] Press |date=2002 |isbn=0-231-11646-2 }}</ref>{{Rp|181}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2489q7g5/ |title=Orrin Peck Collection of Photographs |publisher=[[Huntington Library]] |date=1878–1951 |access-date=2015-08-23 |archive-date=2015-08-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150831021510/http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2489q7g5/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Another theory of the origin of "Rosebud" is the similarity with the dying wish of Zaharoff to be wheeled "by the rosebush".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.ft.com/content/31126df4-7120-11e0-acf5-00144feabdc0 |last=Andrews |first=Nigel |author-link=Nigel Andrews |title=The mark of 'Kane' |newspaper=[[Financial Times]] |date=April 29, 2011 |access-date=August 23, 2015 |archive-date=September 24, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924152840/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/31126df4-7120-11e0-acf5-00144feabdc0.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
In 1989 author [[Gore Vidal]] stated that "Rosebud" was a nickname which Hearst had used for the [[clitoris]] of Davies. Vidal said that Davies had told this intimate detail to Lederer, who had mentioned it to him years later.<ref name="Vidal">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4016 |last=Vidal |first=Gore |author-link=Gore Vidal |title=Remembering Orson Welles |magazine=[[The New York Review of Books]] |date=June 1, 1989 |access-date=January 14, 2008 |archive-date=January 2, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080102002405/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4016 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Vidal2">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3942 |last=Vidal |first=Gore |title=Rosebud |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=August 17, 1989 |access-date=January 14, 2008 |archive-date=January 1, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080101062043/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3942 |url-status=live }}</ref> Film critic [[Roger Ebert]] said, "Some people have fallen in love with the story that Herman Mankiewicz…happened to know that 'Rosebud' was William Randolph Hearst's [[pet name]] for an intimate part of Marion Davies' anatomy."<ref name="Ebertcommentary">{{cite video |last=Ebert |first=Roger |author-link=Roger Ebert |title=Citizen Kane ''Audio Commentary'' |publisher=Turner Entertainment/Warner Home Video |date=2001 |time=2:48 }}</ref><ref name="Ebert Journal">{{cite news |url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040101/COMMENTARY/401010335 |last=Ebert |first=Roger |title=A Viewer's Companion to 'Citizen Kane' |newspaper=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] |date=January 1, 2004 |access-date=June 2, 2010 |archive-date=June 10, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100610233442/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20040101%2FCOMMENTARY%2F401010335 |url-status=live }}</ref> Welles biographer [[Frank Brady (writer)|Frank Brady]] traced the story back to newspaper articles in the late 1970s, and wrote, "How Orson (or Mankiewicz) could have ever discovered this most private utterance is unexplained and why it took over 35 years for such a suggestive rationale to emerge…[is] unknown. If this highly unlikely story is even partially true…Hearst may have become upset at the implied connotation, although any such connection seems to have been innocent on Welles's part."<ref name="Brady">{{cite book |last=Brady |first=Frank |author-link=Frank Brady (writer) |title=Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles |publisher=[[Charles Scribner's Sons]] |location=New York |date=1989 |isbn=0-385-26759-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/citizenwellesbio00brad }}</ref>{{Rp|287}} Houseman denied this rumor about "Rosebud"'s origins, claiming that he would have heard about something "so provocative" and that Welles could never "have kept such a secret for over 40 years."<ref>{{cite news |last=French |first=Philip |author-link=Philip French |title=Review: The world's favourite Citizen |newspaper=[[The Observer]] |date=July 7, 1991}}</ref>
[[File:Old Rosebud.jpg|thumb|[[Old Rosebud]], winner of the [[1914 Kentucky Derby]], inspired Mankiewicz's choice for Kane's enigmatic last word.]]
In 1991 journalist Edward Castle contended that Welles may have borrowed the name of Native American folklorist, educator and author [[Rosebud Yellow Robe]] for "Rosebud". Castle claimed to have found both of their signatures on the same sign-in sheets at CBS Radio studios in New York, where they both worked on different shows in the late 1930s.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/07/obituaries/rosebud-frantz-indian-authority-and-sitting-bull-descendant-85.html |last=Daniels |first=Lee A. |title=Rosebud Frantz, Indian Authority And Sitting Bull Descendant, 85 |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 7, 1992 |access-date=March 18, 2014 |archive-date=December 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141207231417/http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/07/obituaries/rosebud-frantz-indian-authority-and-sitting-bull-descendant-85.html |url-status=live }}</ref> However, the word "Rosebud" appears in the first draft script written by Mankiewicz, not Welles.<ref name="Scripts of Citizen Kane">{{cite book |last=Carringer |first=Robert L. |editor-last=Naremore |editor-first=James |title=Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: A Casebook |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2004 |orig-year=first published 1978 |pages=79–121 |chapter=The Scripts of Citizen Kane |isbn=978-0-19-515892-2}}</ref>{{Rp|81–82}}
In his 2015 Welles biography, [[Patrick McGilligan (biographer)|Patrick McGilligan]] reported that Mankiewicz himself stated that the word "Rosebud" was taken from the name of a famous racehorse, [[Old Rosebud]]. Mankiewicz had a bet on the horse in the [[1914 Kentucky Derby]], which he won, and McGilligan wrote that "Old Rosebud symbolized his lost youth, and the break with his family". In testimony for a 1947 plagiarism suit brought by Hearst biographer [[Ferdinand Lundberg]], Mankiewicz said, "I had undergone psycho-analysis, and Rosebud, under circumstances slightly resembling the circumstances in [''Citizen Kane''], played a prominent part."<ref>{{cite book |last=McGilligan |first=Patrick |author-link=Patrick McGilligan (biographer) |date=2015 |title=Young Orson |location=New York |publisher=[[Harper (publisher)|Harper]] |page=697 |isbn=978-0-06-211248-4}}</ref>
==''News on the March''== [[File:Citizen-Kane-Whistle-Stop.jpg|thumb|[[Theodore Roosevelt|Teddy Roosevelt]] ([[Thomas A. Curran]]) campaigns with Kane in the ''News on the March'' sequence.]] "Although ''Citizen Kane'' was widely seen as an attack on William Randolph Hearst, it was also aimed at [[Henry Luce|Henry R. Luce]] and his concept of faceless group journalism, as then practiced at his ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine and ''[[The March of Time|March of Time]]'' newsreels," wrote [[Roger Ebert]].<ref name="Ebert Journal"/>
The ''News on the March'' sequence that begins the film satirizes ''The March of Time'', the news documentary and dramatization series presented in movie theaters by [[Time Inc.]] from 1935 to 1951. At its peak ''The March of Time'' was seen by 25 million U.S. moviegoers a month.<ref>{{cite news |last=Gilling |first=Ted |date=May 7, 1989 |title=Real to Reel: Newsreels and re-enactments help trio of documentaries make history come alive |newspaper=[[Toronto Star]]}}</ref> Usually called a newsreel series, it was actually a monthly series of short feature films twice the length of standard newsreels. The films were didactic, with a subjective point of view.<ref name="Fielding">{{cite book |last=Fielding |first=Raymond |date=1978 |title=The March of Time, 1935–1951 |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-502212-2}}</ref>{{Rp|75–76}} The editors of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' described it as "pictorial journalism". ''The March of Time''{{'}}s relationship to the newsreel was compared to the weekly interpretive news magazine's relationship to the daily newspaper.<ref>{{cite news |date=February 2, 1935 |title=Pictorial Journalism |newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref>
"''The March of Time'' style was characterized by dynamic editing, gutsy investigative reporting, and hard-punching, almost arrogant, narration," wrote film historian [[Ephraim Katz]] — who added that it "was beautifully parodied by Orson Welles in ''Citizen Kane''."<ref>{{cite book |last=Katz |first=Ephraim |author-link=Ephraim Katz |title=The Film Encyclopedia |publisher=HarperPerennial |location=New York |year=1998 |edition=3rd |isbn=0-06-273492-X}}</ref>{{Rp|901}}
From 1935 to 1938<ref name="MOB">{{cite book |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |date=1988 |title=Orson Welles on the Air: The Radio Years. Catalogue for exhibition October 28–December 3, 1988 |location=New York |publisher=[[Paley Center for Media|The Museum of Broadcasting]]}}</ref>{{Rp|47}} Welles was a member of the prestigious and uncredited company of actors that presented the radio version of ''[[The March of Time (radio program)|The March of Time]]'', which preceded the film version.<ref name="Bret Wood">{{cite book |last=Wood |first=Bret |author-link=Bret Wood |title=Orson Welles: A Bio-Bibliography |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, Connecticut |date=1990 |isbn=0-313-26538-0}}</ref>{{Rp|77}} He was well versed in what came to be called "Time-speak",<ref name="Fielding"/>{{Rp|84}} described by ''March of Time'' chronicler Raymond Fielding as "a preposterous kind of sentence structure in which subjects, predicates, adjectives, and other components of the English language all ended up in unpredictable and grammatically unauthorized positions."<ref name="Fielding"/>{{Rp|8–9}} In ''News on the March'', William Alland impersonated narrator [[Westbrook Van Voorhis]]: "Great imitation," Welles later said, "but he's pretty easy to imitate: 'This week, as it must to all men, death came to Charles Foster Kane.' We used to do that every day — five days a week!"<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|74–75}}
Welles screened the film for Luce: "He was one of the first people to see the movie," Welles said. "He and [[Clare Boothe Luce|Clare Luce]] loved it and roared with laughter at the digest. They saw it as a parody and enjoyed it very much as such — I have to hand it to them."<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|74}} Welles had met Luce through [[Archibald MacLeish]],<ref name="Politics of Magic">{{cite book |last=Denning |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Denning |editor-last=Naremore |editor-first=James |title=Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: A Casebook |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2004 |orig-year=first published 1996 |pages=185–216 |chapter=The Politics of Magic: Orson Welles's Allegories of Anti-Fascism |isbn=978-0-19-515892-2}}</ref>{{Rp|205}} and financial support from the Luces helped open the Mercury Theatre in November 1937.<ref name="Houseman RT"/>{{Rp|304–305}}
Callow called the ''News on the March'' sequence "the single most impressive, most spoken-of element in the movie".<ref name="Callow">{{cite book |last=Callow |first=Simon |author-link=Simon Callow |title=Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu |publisher=[[Viking]] |location=New York |date=1996 |isbn=9780670867226 |url=https://archive.org/details/orsonwellesvolum00simo }}</ref>{{Rp|524}} Remarkably, critic [[Arthur Knight (film critic)|Arthur Knight]] reported in 1969 that the sequence was excised from most prints presented on American television.<ref>{{cite book |last=Knight |first=Arthur |author-link=Arthur Knight (film critic) |title=Directors in Action: Selections from Action, The Official Magazine of the Directors Guild of America |publisher=The Bobbs Merrill Company, Inc. |location=Indianapolis |year=1973 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/directorsinactio00thom/page/12 12–17] |chapter=Citizen Kane Revisited [May–June 1969] |isbn=0-672-51715-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/directorsinactio00thom/page/12 }}</ref>{{Rp|14}}
==Notes== {{notelist|2}}
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
{{Citizen Kane}}
[[Category:Citizen Kane]] [[Category:Issues of cultural influence|Citizen Kane]]