A week after principal photography for Citizen Kane was completed, filming resumed to finish a variety of retakes and inserts.

Among the many snippets needed were a brief clip of Sonny Bupp as Kane’s son outside of Madison Square Garden; Susan and Kane driving in a limousine to the Florida picnic; retakes of Susan and Kane in the picnic tent, their Chicago apartment, and Susan’s Xanadu bedroom; and many additional shots of the reporters in the Great Hall.

November 16 marked Gregg Toland’s last day on the production. He filmed a round of retakes of the reporters at Xanadu and set up the shots of Kane’s death before turning over photography to RKO staff cinematographer Harry Wild.

Although Toland began his assignment on The Outlaw—on loan by Goldwyn to Howard Hughes—his camera team remained at RKO to help finish the scenes that lingered. Wild shot scenes for the newsreel, including the protest speaker in Union Square, played by Art Yeoman, who called Kane “a Fascist,” and Kane with the foreign generals.

On the call sheet for November 28 was a cryptic note that meant little to anyone unfamiliar with Citizen Kane but would mark the filming of what became one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history: on the call sheet that day was a “special effects man to break ball”—a reference to bursting the snow globe when Kane dies and drops it. Then on November 30, Wild filmed Kane’s death, and two retakes were completed on December 9 and 20.

On January 4, on Stage 3 at RKO in Hollywood, cinematographer Russell Cully filmed William Alland—again showing his left side—looking up; it was a shot that would be merged with film of the George Washington Bridge as an introduction to the interview with Leland. It was the last shot of the production.

On January 6, associate producer Richard Baer reported to set designer Darrell Silvera that “Mr. Welles has completed with the shooting of Citizen Kane, so you may release any props which you are holding for that picture.” The filming was over.

The shoot was complete, but the myriad details of postproduction—already under way for weeks—would require another month before Citizen Kane would become a finished film…