Marion Davis, the actress, was to Hearst as the singer, Susan Alexander, was to Kane. Except that Hearst had found a devoted life-long companion, a women admired by everyone for her talent and intelligence.
OW
I thought we were unfair to Marion Davis because we had somebody really different in the place of Marion Davis and it seems to me to something of a dirty trick, and it still strike me as a dirty trick. And I had anticipated a trouble from that.
(Citizen Kane's shown)
OW
It's in the opening night of Citizen Kane in San Francisco, and I found myself was going to the top of the mark, in the elevator with Mr. Hearst, and I think I have to introduce myself. This strange dinosaur, you know, with ice cold blue eyes, And I said, "Mr. Hearst, I'm having opening of Citizen Kane, would you like to come?" He didn't answer, and I got off the elevator thinking, as I still do, if he'd been Charles Foster Kane he'd be taken the ticket and gone.
LM
You seem more open now, perhaps with the passage of time, to talk about Hearst connection with Citizen Kane, because...
OW
Hearst, you see, launch an attack to us, particularly on me. Or his minions did it, it was kind of 'no man' to get rid of me. I was once...it was very long, but I'll try to tell you very quickly, I was lecturing in Buffalo, then we're having dinner. Somebody said that, "there's the police want to see you". The police went out to be nice, he said, "Don't go back to your hotel room, they got underage girl undressed and photographer waiting for you. It's a set up". So I didn't go back to my room that night. I just stayed up and took the plane in the morning. That was that far they're prepared to go. I could be going to jail of course. And they have the producers in Hollywood ready altogether to pay RKO to burn the negative. It was nip and tuck. Whether the negative would be burn the picture never shows.
v.o.
The controversy of Citizen Kane didn't stop in 1940's. In 1971 the American critic Pauline Kael published her account of the writing of Kane, together with the shooting script. She paid particular attention to Welles co-writer, Herman Mankiewicz, and drew some devastating conclusion based on the evidence of the couple of Mankiewicz associate. One of them is the secretary, quoted saying that Welles did not write all dictate one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane. Another is that Welles actually try to bribe Mankiewicz to take the screen credit, so that Kane would seem to be a whole Welles' creation.
(Playing Pete Bogdanovich's clip)
PB
I thought it was a very very cruel mean spirit and essentially destructive job. I think the thing is perfectly clear attempt to assassinate Orson, trying to take away the one, where everybody says Orson Welles did make Citizen Kane, but she said he didn't.
v.o.
Bogdanovich published his response to Kael in a short essay. Detailing his evidence against the allegation of Mankiewicz secretary, that Welles wrote none of the shooting script.
PB
The point is most of Orson's writing was done with his secretary. I found his secretary, I told her that, and she said she doesn't know all that stuff that she was typing. The thing is she never met Orson, she never even bothered to that significance, she didn't even want to talk to him, here she's writing a book called Citizen Kane which include a screenplay. The presumption of not even wanting to speak to after all, let's say he didn't write it, he did certainly no question direct it, and if he didn't even do that, he's in it.
v.o.
Evidence published more recently proved conclusively that Orson Welles wrote, at least, 3 major scenes himself. Most of Welles' collaborators, including Toland, had died long since. But we found one member of the team still working in Hollywood. Welles has taken on for Citizen Kane a young filmmaker from the star of RKO. He's now the successful Hollywood director, Robert Wise.
RW
Working with him was never very long in even keel, it was either up or down. Marvelously exciting, stimulating, maddening, frustrating. He could be in one moment be guilty a piece of behavior that was so outrageous that make you want to tell him to go to hell and walk out of the picture before he came up with some idea that was brilliant and would literally have your mouth keeping open. So you never walked, you stayed.
Interviewer
Did the film kind of fall-together as some films appears to be or did you really have to work at it?
RW
Well, no films really fall-together, I tell you that, but it was very well planned. The continuity, so many of those effective long dissolve, those were all planned in the camera. Not shot with the camera, but was planned to go that way. But I think it was very well laid, very well planned.
(Citizen Kane's played)
Interviewer
Does that include the structure as well?
RW
Yes, very much so. I don't think we changed one bit in term of the continuity. Not as far as I can remember, it's almost been 40 years now. But I believe it was all I don't think we've changed any.
LM
There's another legend that seems to attach itself to you was that you are a big-spender, that you go way over on your budget and on your schedule.
OW
I've never gone over-schedule or over-budget.
LM
Nor on Kane?
OW
No. In fact we're under-budget on Kane and under-schedule but we did that by a trick, because I've said that I know nothing about movies, so for about 10 days I'm just gonna shot a test. What we did was we shoot Kane. We shot for 10 days before we admittedly we were actually shooting. But we would've been under-schedule anyway.
LM
There's so much literature on you. Did you get upset by it, some of those legends, particularly ones to do with people that suggest that you behaved irresponsibly through them?
OW
Very badly. I'm much too upset about it. All my loving friends keeps telling me to stop brooding about it. But they bothers me terribly. Anything to do with my behavior, I don't mind if they criticize what I do, but they utilize about me much more than they ought to, I don't know why I'm so touchy about it. I went to Mr.Chow's restaurant in London once to have lunch alone. I like to have lunch alone or dinner alone, I brought a book. They have Italian waiter there, came and said to me , "Did you ever make a picture after Citizen Kane?" And I was just been told by Hue Weldon that I was out-of-profession in one of his famously tactful moment. So this came at the wrong moment. And I said patiently to him, "Yes, after Citizen Kane I made Magnificent Ambersons and then I listed my pictures." Now John (something) wrote a piece in Esquire few months afterward which he described me coming in to Mr.Chow's...
(end of part4)
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