The lavish promotion of her lackluster opera career by her fourth husband, Harold Fowler McCormick, inspired aspects of the screenplay for Citizen Kane.

She told the Chicago Tribune that she had invested her own funds, not those of her wealthy husband, and said, "I will never appear in my own theatre until I have gained recognition based solely on my merits as an artist.

McCormick spent thousands of dollars on voice lessons for her and even arranged for Walska to take the lead in a production of Zazà by Ruggero Leoncavallo at the Chicago Opera in 1920.

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" (January 29, 1925), and "Mme.

[8] Ganna Walska was married six times: In 1941, with the encouragement of her sixth husband Theos Bernard, she purchased the historic 37-acre (15 ha) "Cuesta Linda" estate in Montecito near Santa Barbara, California, intending to use it as a retreat for Tibetan monks.