The Battle Over Citizen Kane
- 1939 – Height of Hollywood
- Highlight of the year was new media star Orson Welles
- New Media v Old Media (William Randall Hearst)
- Citizen Kane heavily criticized Hearst and plunged Hollywood into shambles
- Hearst tried to censor the film
- Hearst growing up was a spoiled only child with a very rich father
- Hearst used fabricated stories for the paper
- Hearst started the newspaper “The Examiner”
- Welles first play was Shakespeare
- Hearst first tries to run for mayor but after failing he went into show business
- He owned a ranch with a huge mansion that was about half the size of rhode island.
- Hearst wanted the film to be destroyed by buying it and burning it
- Citizen Kane only won award for best screenplay
DocudramaRKO 281
- Orson Welles and Hearst in Elevator, Hearst tells Orson that it is not Hearst’s end of his career but instead Orson’s.
Orson Welles Interview on Citizen Kane
- Effort to stop film while in production
- intended as a social document
- director had total control
- cinematographer was highly experienced
- Kane was made to be an edge of controversy made to blur the lines between this and the idea of too far
- Orson was seen as an enemy to the system he critiqued
- Kane was suppose to be what Orson isn’t everything even the good and the bad