Screenplay for Citizen Kane
With a story spanning 60 years, the 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 McCormick.
A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles.
In September 1939[6]: 244 Welles visited Mankiewicz while he was hospitalized in Los Angeles after a car accident, and offered him a job writing scripts for the Mercury Theatre's show on CBS radio, The Campbell Playhouse.
Mankiewicz proved very useful, particularly working with Houseman as editor,[6]: 240–242 and wrote five scripts for Campbell Playhouse shows broadcast between November 12, 1939, and March 17, 1940.
[7]: 504–505 [9]: 235–236 In late December, the executive board of RKO Pictures all but ordered studio chief George J. Schaefer to stop paying salaries to the Mercury Productions staff until Welles submitted an acceptable script and set a start date for filming.
[5]: 235 Over the next five weeks Welles spent many long evenings brainstorming plot ideas in the bedroom of the small rented house where Mankiewicz was in traction with his shattered leg.
[11]: 17 Mankiewicz was to receive no credit for his work as he was hired as a script doctor; a similar clause was present in the writers' contracts for The Campbell Playhouse.
[10]: 487 Mankiewicz was advised by his agents, Columbia Management of California, and before he signed the contract it was again made clear that all credit for his work belonged to Welles and the Mercury Theatre, the "author and creator".
His contract with RKO stated that the film would be produced, directed, performed and written by Welles, and his "boy wonder" persona had great publicity value for the studio.
[5]: 237 Houseman was to serve as editor, Carringer noted, "but part of his job was to ride herd on Mankiewicz, whose drinking habits were legendary and whose screenwriting credentials unfortunately did not include a reputation for seeing things through."
Like that of Citizen Kane, the play’s plot is structured around a journalist attempting to understand Brown by interviewing people who knew him and have different perspectives on him.
[9]: 55, 184–185 "Orson was from Chicago," said the Mercury Theatre's Richard Wilson, "and I believe he was as much influenced by Samuel Insull and Colonel Robert McCormick as he was by the figure of Hearst.
[4]: 66 [5]: 230 When Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1939 everyone was talking about Aldous Huxley's new book, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, a novel that dealt with the film colony and seemed to be a portrait of Hearst.
Welles was invited to celebrate Huxley's birthday at a party where the consensus was that the book could never be made into a film due to Hearst's influence.
[5]: 218–219 How much Huxley's book influenced Welles's choice of subject is unknown; Brady wrote that "a more personal coincidence, however, might have helped fuel the idea."
Welles's first wife Virginia moved to Los Angeles shortly after their divorce,[5]: 231–232 [20] and on May 18, 1940, she married screenwriter Charles Lederer, favorite nephew of Hearst's mistress Marion Davies.
[9]: 204–205 [21][d] In his earlier years as a journalist, Mankiewicz sought political reporters who kept him up on gossip about Hearst, and he had even started to write a play about him.
[6]: 257 "Despite Houseman's description of himself and Herman paring every excess out of American, it was 325 pages long and outrageously overwritten, even for a first draft," wrote Meryman.
[17]: 21 The RKO legal department warned Welles that it was too close a portrait of Hearst and that if the script was not changed a suit for libel or invasion of privacy was almost certain.
… Welles added the narrative brilliance—the visual and verbal wit, the stylistic fluidity, and such stunningly original strokes as the newspaper montages and the breakfast table sequence.
[4]: 52–53 He summarized the screenwriting process: "The initial ideas for this film and its basic structure were the result of direct collaboration between us; after this we separated and there were two screenplays: one written by Mr. Mankiewicz, in Victorville, and the other, in Beverly Hills, by myself.
"[18]: 6 But at the same time, Houseman was stirring controversy, lunching with film critic Pauline Kael and giving Mankiewicz total credit for the creation of the script for Citizen Kane.
"[j][11]: 18 Houseman would openly say that Mankiewicz deserved sole credit for writing the film for many years[25]—right up until his death—without explaining the contradictions present even in his own personal papers.
"[9]: 201 [10]: 517 When RKO released the film in May 1941, the souvenir program included a double-page spread depicting Welles as "the four-most personality of motion pictures … author, producer, director, star.
[k][9]: 203–204 "The major focus of Kael's essay is its defense and celebration of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as the principal, neglected creative force behind Kane," wrote film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.
"[4]: 494 The mainstream press accepted Kael's essay—an extension of her dispute with Andrew Sarris and the auteur theory—based on her credibility as one of the country's top film critics.
[l][m][30] The article included the revelation that Kael used the research and interviews of Dr. Howard Suber, an assistant professor at UCLA where she was then a guest lecturer, without ever crediting him.
[31]: 30 Other rebuttals included articles by Sarris,[32] Joseph McBride[33] and Rosenbaum,[34] interviews with George Coulouris and Bernard Herrmann that appeared in Sight & Sound,[35] a definitive study of the scripts by Carringer[17] and remarks in Welles biographies by Leaming[9]: 203–204 and Brady.
"[17]: 80 Carringer finally assessed that it was Welles who transformed the script “from a solid basis for a story into an authentic plan for a masterpiece.”[37] Carringer found that the issues raised by Kael rested on the evidence of an early draft of the screenplay, primarily written by Mankiewicz,[17]: 80 which "elaborated the plot logic and laid down the overall story contours, established the main characters, and provided numerous scenes and lines that would eventually appear in one form or another in the film.
"Mankiewicz was hired to furnish him with what any good first writer ought to be able to provide in such a case: a solid, durable story structure on which to build," Carringer wrote.
