The Hearst organization banned Citizen Kane from its own pages, but the company’s efforts to suppress the film stimulated tremendous interest at every other news organization in the country.

RKO received a flood of requests for passes to press screenings, and admission to an advance screening of the film was the hottest ticket in New York. The April 9 preview at the Broadway Theatre in New York was attended by four hundred reporters and critics.

However, the press interest did nothing to motivate theater owners to show Citizen Kane to a paying audience; in New York and Los Angeles, one theater after another refused.

“Show it in tents,” Welles wrote to Schaefer. “It will make millions— ‘the film your local theater won’t let you see.’ ”

Eventually the Palace Theatre in New York was enlisted, but not without RKO paying for massive renovation costs to outfit the facility for a showcase engagement. In Hollywood, the El Capitan Theatre was converted from a venue for stage productions to host the Los Angeles premiere.

On May 1, Citizen Kane finally premiered at the Palace in New York City. the film debuted in Chicago at the Woods Theatre and Palace Theatre on May 6—Orson Welles’ twenty-sixth birthday—and in Los Angeles at the El Capitan on May 8.

With the premieres came an outpouring of accolades and enthusiastic commentary unlike anything ever before written about a fi lm—not simply positive reviews, but acclaim for Citizen Kane as a groundbreaking production.

By any measure, Citizen Kane was an astounding critical success, one of the great films in Hollywood history, and a milestone in the development of the motion picture…