In 1998,
the American Film Institute put Citizen Kane at
the top of its list of the one hundred greatest movies of all time.
Released in 1941,
it was the first movie Orson Welles co-wrote, directed, and produced.
Welles was only twenty-five at the time and widely considered to
be a theatrical genius. Because of Hollywood's efforts to woo him
from the theaters of New York, he received an almost unprecedented
amount of creative control from RKO Studios in his first contract.
He was free to choose the cast as well as to write, direct, produce,
edit, and act in the film he created. His budget was $500,000—a
significant amount for an unproven filmmaker and an amount that
Welles managed to exceed. Citizen Kane wound up
a commercial failure, and it ultimately derailed Welles’s career.
History has vindicated Welles by recognizing his cinematic genius,
but the story of his life makes for a cautionary tale every bit
as compelling as the story of Charles Foster Kane, the fictitious
protagonist of Citizen Kane.
George Orson Welles was born in 1915,
in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and endured a difficult childhood. His parents,
Richard and Beatrice, were prominent in their community, but Richard
was also an alcoholic. They separated when Welles was four. Welles
and his mother moved to Chicago, where he became the focus of her
hopes and dreams. Welles could do no wrong in her eyes, and he developed a
precocious sense of his own abilities. Beatrice died when Welles was
nine, leaving him in the custody of his father and of Dr. Maurice Bernstein,
a pediatrician to whom Beatrice had grown close because of their
shared love of classical music and opera. When Welles was fifteen,
his father died, and Welles became the sole ward of Dr. Bernstein.
The instability of Welles’s childhood did not thwart his talents and
ambitions, and when Dr. Bernstein sent Welles to a prestigious private
school, he thrived. His interest in the theater led him to begin producing
plays at school, and his talent for writing, acting, producing,
and directing caught the attention of the local media.
When Welles graduated, Dr. Bernstein sent him to Ireland
with the hope that he would forget the theater. Instead, Welles
made his theatrical debut in Dublin, then went on to appear in roles
in England and America. In 1934,
he made his New York theatrical debut, married Virginia Nicholson,
directed his first short film, and made his first radio appearance.
Around this time, Welles also met John Houseman, who became his
partner and mentor. After working together for several years staging
plays for the Federal Theatre Project, Houseman and Welles formed
the Mercury Theatre in 1937 to
produce classic plays and radio specials. From this collaboration
came Mercury Theatre on the Air. On October 30, 1938,
the Mercury Theatre gave its most famous broadcast, a production
of War of the Worlds. Performing the play as if
it were a newscast, Welles convinced many who tuned in that aliens
were invading New Jersey. The resulting panic made Welles the most
talked about actor in America.
Welles’s notoriety caught the attention of Nelson Rockefeller,
co-owner of RKO Studios in Hollywood. RKO was best known for its frothy
comedies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but RKO’s board
of directors wanted to make the type of artistically important movies
that its rivals were turning out. Rockefeller felt that Welles’s
theatrical genius could improve the quality of RKO’s pictures and
urged RKO president George J. Schaefer to lure him west. Welles
initially wasn’t interested, primarily because at that time movies
and the people who acted in them lacked the credibility of live
theater and its players. Schaefer eventually made Welles an offer
he couldn’t refuse: a contract that gave him almost total artistic
control over a project from start to finish. This kind of contract was
unprecedented and is even more remarkable because major studios
of this era controlled every aspect of their product. Welles couldn’t
resist being the star of such a coup, and he moved to Hollywood
in 1939.
Plenty of people in Hollywood hoped Welles would fail.
He had made no secret of his disdain for "movie people," and many resented
the fact that this inexperienced young man had been given so much
creative license. Welles knew of this resentment and was determined
to turn out something spectacular. He first planned to do a film
based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness,
but due to the extraordinary budget the project would require, the
idea failed. After five months in Hollywood, Welles was viewed as
a failure himself. He felt a great deal of pressure when he began
working on Citizen Kane, the story of a powerful
man who alienates everyone who loves him. Although Welles denied
it, he almost certainly based the movie on the life of press magnate
William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst was not happy with the result.
Hearst was probably upset by having a fictionalized account made
of his life, no matter how close to the truth that account was,
but Welles’s cruel portrayal of Hearst's mistress Marion Davies
was most likely what spurred Hearst’s full wrath. Hearst used his
considerable influence over the media to quell any mention of Citizen
Kane. In addition, several film executives from other studios,
led by an old friend of Hearst named Louis Mayer, offered RKO a
vast sum of money for the film in order to destroy it completely.
It is not clear whether their gesture was one of loyalty to Hearst
or one of fear of the possible backlash should Hearst decide that
his Hollywood friends were snubbing him, but in any case, RKO refused
to hand over the film.
Hearst’s friends may have failed at keeping the movie
out of theaters entirely, but Hearst’s efforts did result in the
movie’s delay and a limited run. Hearst's crippling tactics cost
the film the commercial success that would have cemented Welles’s
reputation as a great filmmaker. Critics praised Citizen
Kane, but after its run ended, RKO and other studios admitted
that Welles’s tendency toward controversy made them reluctant to
work with him. Moreover, no studio wanted to incur the wrath of
the influential Hearst papers. Welles’s arrogance toward the Hollywood
establishment and his mean-spirited portrayal of Marion Davies,
who was well-liked in Hollywood, didn’t help his cause. Citizen
Kane went on to receive nine Academy Award nominations,
but won only one, for writing. The audience booed when the award
was announced. Welles never made another important film.
Citizen Kane didn’t receive the viewership
or accolades it deserved until the 1950s,
when the film’s considerable innovations became clearer. The cinematographer,
Gregg Toland, who went on to achieve great fame, used techniques
such as deep focus, low camera angles, and optical illusions to
tell Kane’s story. For the first time, ceilings were visible in
several scenes, created by draping black fabric over the lights
and microphones that hung from the top of the sound stage. Toland’s
skillful application of new or rarely used techniques proved revolutionary.
Some of the film’s innovations that had contributed to its commercial
failure, including the non-linear narrative and somber conclusion,
eventually set Citizen Kane apart from films with
more traditional structures and happy endings. Along with its remarkable
cinematic achievements, what ultimately elevated Citizen
Kane to such revered heights was the character of Kane
himself. Despite the reporter's attempts to uncover the real Kane,
Kane remains an enigma. The depth of Kane's isolation and loneliness
results in a portrait that has haunted and will continue to haunt
generations of audiences.
