While Mankiewicz and House man worked on rewrites in Victorville, Welles orchestrated the approvals for his production. He met with RKO studio chief George Schaefer and attorney Harry Edington and performed the entire story of Citizen Kane, playing each part while he described the action and the staging.

Schaefer approved the idea in concept (at the time, apparently, no one in RKO senior management expressed concern that the central character might be confused with a certain real-life prominent publisher). Schaefer agreed to move Citizen Kane into preproduction, with full production pending final resolution of the bud get issues.

For weeks, the picture was referred to simply as “Orson Welles #3”; it was also called “Orson Welles #1” in the memo announcing the final name of the film. But when the script was approved, the project gained an additional designation: in the accounting ledgers, production reports, and hundreds of memos that would crisscross the studio during 1940, Citizen Kane was identified as “RKO Production #281.”

With the failures of Heart of Darkness and the Smiler with a Knife behind him, throughout the spring and early summer of 1940, Welles began preparing Citizen Kane for filming.

As work on the script moved forward, preproduction planning for Production #281 proceeded rapidly. Within three months of completion of the draft script, Citizen Kane needed to be ready for the cameras. Welles continued to revise the script, but he was also the film’s producer. In April 1940, he began to pull together the complex combination of artistry and technology needed to move a film script into production.

Welles was quickly learning the methods of backstage Hollywood. Daily film screenings, department visits, and his preproduction of Heart of Darkness—which had included set design, model building, makeup tests, and photographic planning—fortified Welles with valuable experience collaborating with Hollywood craftsmen that would be applied to Citizen Kane.

“Orson had no doubt that he knew it all,” said William Alland, who served as assistant producer in addition to appearing as Thompson the reporter. “Yet he was smart enough to appreciate the talent he spotted in others.”

RKO, like the other Hollywood studios, employed hundreds of craftsmen and technicians. The corps of specialized experts in all aspects of film production was a primary strength of the Hollywood studio system during its most productive years; this was a period when a studio operating at its peak could routinely release a new feature film every ten days.

Welles recognized that the industry’s cauldron of talent would be a tremendous benefit to him. He told reporter Alva Johnston, “It’s the greatest railroad train a boy ever had!”

Like most forceful creative personalities, Welles certainly had his share of professional liabilities when working with others. As his arguments with Mankiewicz over the script credit showed, not the least of Welles’ weak spots was his quenchless thirst for sole recognition and multiple screen billings. But day to day on the set, such flaws were overshadowed by his gift for collaboration.

Welles clashed with Mankiewicz because he was a writer himself. However, when preparing unfamiliar aspects of the production, Welles eagerly sought collaboration and gladly provided sole credit to those responsible. Welles may not have had experience in a Hollywood studio—a boy’s biggest railroad train—but although he did not yet know how to run the locomotive, he certainly knew how to find the right people to lay the track.