Citizen Kane: FAQ
“It’ll probably turn out to be a very simple thing.”
(How Rawlston, the head of the newsreel company, explains to his reporter Thompson
the quest to learn the secret of Kane’s last word: “Rosebud.”)
Citizen Kane may be the most studied and discussed motion pictures of all time. But over the decades many unanswered questions have persisted, and inaccuracies about the film have emerged that worked their way into print and online.
Here are answers to some of the most commonly-asked questions and misunderstood issues about Citizen Kane, along with some dispelled myths.
These issues are explored in detail with new information in Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey by Harlan Lebo, the book that explores the extraordinary story of the production of this classic film, using previously unpublished material from studio files, and exclusive interviews with the last surviving members of the cast and crew.
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In brief, what is the story of the making of Citizen Kane?
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Was Orson Welles a novice at filmmaking when he arrived in Hollywood?
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Did Orson Welles have full creative control of his first films?
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Who wrote the script for Citizen Kane: Herman J. Mankiewicz
or Orson Welles? -
Were all of the innovative filmmaking techniques in Citizen Kane new
to the movies? -
What was unusual about the actors in Citizen Kane?
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Is the character of Charles Foster Kane based entirely on
William Randolph Hearst? -
How did the Hearst organization try to destroy Citizen Kane?
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Is Susan Alexander, Kane’s second wife, based on Marion Davies,
Hearst’s mistress? -
Is William Randolph Hearst actually mentioned in Citizen Kane?
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Does San Simeon, the real-life estate built by Hearst,
appear in Citizen Kane? -
What buildings were used for Xanadu?
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Did Citizen Kane lose money?
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Did Gregg Toland, the renowned cinematographer who shot Citizen Kane,
appear in the film? -
Did some non-actors appear in Citizen Kane?
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Did Nat King Cole, the legendary jazz performer, appear in Citizen Kane?
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Is it true that the face of the reporter seeking “Rosebud” is never seen?
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When Citizen Kane first released, was it a flop with the critics?
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What did the critics say about Citizen Kane when it premiered in 1941?
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What was the biggest mystery about the filming of Citizen Kane?
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Does a final script exist for Citizen Kane?
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In brief, what is the story of the making of Citizen Kane?
The story of Citizen Kane is the account of the creation of a film masterpiece—how it was produced and how it was almost destroyed.
It tells of Orson Welles, a brilliant 24-year-old star on Broadway and radio, who came to Hollywood in 1939 as a novice filmmaker and received near-total creative control of his productions. Welles’ first motion picture was Citizen Kane, which was acclaimed as a groundbreaking achievement and a cinematic milestone.
But the story of Citizen Kane is also a sinister tale of conspiracy, extortion, and witch hunts: it is the chronicle of a plot by the organization of William Randolph Hearst—concerned about the portrayal of lead character Charles Foster Kane—to prevent the film’s release or destroy it.
Citizen Kane survived, but Hearst’s pressure ruined any chance for the initial success of the film. As a result, Citizen Kane sank into obscurity for more than a decade.
However, in the 1950s, renewed awareness of the film increased its prominence. Citizen Kane rose in stature, and would become recognized as the greatest film ever made.
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Was Orson Welles a novice at filmmaking
when he arrived in Hollywood?
Welles came to RKO without experience as a Hollywood filmmaker, but he was not as unprepared for motion picture production as 1939 publicity and film history have suggested.
Welles had already gained some modest filmmaking experience: the footage he shot in 1938 for Too Much Johnson, intended to be shown between acts for his abortive revival of the William Gillette play, offers hints of a budding filmmaker.
Welles delighted in experimenting with makeup, costumes, and lighting. And unlike many theatrical directors, Welles viewed the stage not as a flat space, but as a three-dimensional platform: his direction featured interplay of character movement, overlapping dialogue, distinctive lighting, and vivid designs.
More important was Welles’ experience as a writer and editor, especially editing complex material to its essence under the unyielding pressure of broadcast deadlines—skills that would become vital in film production.
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Did Orson Welles have full creative control of his first films?
Mostly yes, but not the absolute control that is sometimes recalled.
When Orson Welles came to the movie business as a filmmaking novice, his contract with RKO Radio Pictures gave him the right of sole supervision and control—but he did not have absolute freedom.
Welles’ full creative control only applied if he kept his budget for a film under $500,000. If the costs rose above $500,000—as they did for Citizen Kane—RKO retained the right to approve the budget and the story.
But even if production costs rose above $500,000, Welles could produce, direct, write, and star in his projects, or any combination of those jobs he chose, and spend studio money at his discretion. And most important of all, Welles alone controlled the final cut of the film.
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Who wrote the script for Citizen Kane:
Herman J. Mankiewicz or Orson Welles?
Debate about the authorship of the script of Citizen Kane—who was responsible, Herman Mankiewicz (the writer assigned to create the first draft) or producer-director-star Orson Welles—has boiled since before the film was released.
The debate continued in large part because of an essay written in 1971 by critic Pauline Kael (the essay and Kael’s reputation were later discredited because of her unprofessional methods and plagarism in creating the essay).
Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich wrote a rebuttal to Kael’s essay that credited both Mankiewicz and Welles for writing the script. Scholar Robert Carringer reviewed the seven official drafts of the script and concluded that Welles’ role in the writing was “substantial.”
However, Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey reveals that Welles was even more involved in writing long after the supposedly final script was complete. The studio-approved script contained many pages of unnecessary plot points and wordy dialogue, and it is not constructed in the style of the final film. After production of the film began, many key scenes that needed to be condensed or cut entirely, and more than 10 minutes of scenes that would eventually appear in the film had not yet been written.
Lebo found that all of these scenes were written late in production by Welles, often—as he did for his earlier radio broadcasts—at the last moment on the set during final rehearsals.
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Were all of the innovative filmmaking techniques in Citizen Kane new to the movies?
No. The biggest misconception about Citizen Kane is that the film includes techniques that were new and used here for the first time. The legendary filmmaking techniques in Citizen Kane—deep focus photography, shooting from low angles, ceilings visible in many shots, the seamless movement of action from scene to scene, and many other methods—were had been used in other films before they appeared in Citizen Kane in 1941.
However, what was new about Citizen Kane is how Orson Welles and his creative team applied these techniques to tell their story in innovative, imaginative ways.
For Welles, the cinematography and design were not simply tools to make a movie. Welles’ goal was for every shot, the entire design, and all of the photographic techniques employed in Citizen Kane to be key parts of the story itself.
Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland developed their goals for the production, and then—unlike most Hollywood production teams—sought answers to storytelling problems through inventive photographic methods.
“From the moment the production began to take shape in script form,” Toland recalled, “everything was planned with reference to what the camera could bring to the eyes of the audience.”
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What was unusual about the actors in Citizen Kane?
The lead performers in Citizen Kane shared a common characteristic that was critical in Welles’ plans: most of them were new to motion pictures. Their lack of familiarity with film production allowed Welles to encourage performances that most seasoned Hollywood actors would have found unacceptable from an unconventional first-time director.
“I could never have made Citizen Kane with actors who were old hands at cinema,” Welles said, “we thought they would show us up and change the dimension of the film. My being a newcomer would have put them on guard and would have made a mess of the film. It was possible because I had my own family, so to speak.”
Or, Welles said bluntly of his actors in a later interview, “they didn’t have terrible movie habits.”
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Is the character of Charles Foster Kane based entirely on real-life publisher William Randolph Hearst?
The idea that the character of Kane is based only on publisher and scandal-journalist William Randolph Hearst is so ingrained in the lore of Citizen Kane that the full story is often obscured.
William Randolph Hearst was indeed the principal model for the fictional Charles Foster Kane. However, Hearst was not the sole model; Kane shares characteristics with several other American business leaders besides Hearst, including, among many, newspaper executives Joseph Pulitzer, Charles Dana, and Robert McCormick; Kodak chairman Jules Brulatour, and business executive Samuel Insull.
However, Lebo points that whether Kane was based solely or partially on Hearst, the most volatile evidence that supported the plot by the Hearst organization to suppress Citizen Kane were scenes in the fictional “News on the March” newsreel that appeared in the first 10 minutes of the film—scenes that identify Kane as a newspaper baron who owned a hilltop palace with a private zoo, who acquired a huge art collection, and who urged his country into the Spanish-American War—all high-visibility real-life facts about Hearst as well.
After viewing those scenes, for Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and the Hearst lawyers, who went to screenings already assuming Kane was Hearst, any evidence in the film that pointed to other possible models for Kane was irrelevant.
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How did the Hearst organization try to destroy Citizen Kane?
As usually reported, the eruption over Citizen Kane within the Hearst organization supposedly began after a rough cut of the film was viewed in January 1941 by Hollywood columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
However, Lebo found that the plot against Welles, RKO, and Citizen Kane began long before Hopper and Parsons saw the film.
Lebo learned that the Hearst organization—working under the direction of the corporation’s senior leadership and with the knowledge of Hearst himself—had been planning to disrupt the film since company officials began to suspect four months earlier that the Kane character was modeled on Hearst.
Lebo found letters and memos in Hearst’s personal papers that reveal a thoroughly-planned conspiracy to suppress the film’s release: the Hearst organization schemed with movie theater executives to prevent exhibition; blocked ads in Hearst publications for RKO films; banned all mention of Citizen Kane; attempted to buy and destroy the original film negative; threatened to expose private foibles of Hollywood stars; and used its newspaper staffs to attempt to attempt to frame him for communist affiliation and potential draft-dodging.
In addition, Parsons, a supposedly-objective journalist, pressured studio executives to encourage RKO to shelve the film, and threatened theater owners with boycotts of coverage in her column if they screened Citizen Kane.
Lebo also found evidence that the Hearst organization colluded with Congressional investigators who were hunting Communists in Hollywood: correspondence in the Hearst files showed company executives describing Welles as being “a pretty bad boy” who was “mixed up with the Leftists.”
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Is Susan Alexander, Kane’s second wife, based on
Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress?
As with Kane and Hearst, the character of Susan Alexander shares both similarities and differences with real-life Marion Davies, the long-time mistress of William Randolph Hearst. The biggest difference was their personalities: Susan was weak, insecure, and a failure as a singer—much different in temperament from Marion, who was strong, outgoing, and successful as an actress.
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Is William Randolph Hearst mentioned in Citizen Kane?
Yes. A point missed during the early controversy over Citizen Kane was that Hearst is actually mentioned in the film as a real-life figure in Kane’s fictional world.
Early in the movie, during the scene in the projection room after the screening of News on the March newsreel, Rawlston, the head of the newsreel company, and his staff are discussing Kane’s impact on America. Rawlston asks his staff about Kane, “But how is he different from Ford? Or Hearst, for that matter? Or John Doe?”
Rawlston’s line flies by so fast in Welles’ swift pacing of the screening room dialogue that on first viewing, few hear the reference to Hearst.
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Does San Simeon, the real-life palace built by Hearst,
appear in Citizen Kane?
No. San Simeon, the estate built by William Randolph Hearst on 300,000 acres in the hills along the central California coast, is never shown in Citizen Kane.
This notion probably came from the fact that photos of San Simeon can be found in the files of Mercury Theatre (Welles’ production company). But these photos were used during production of the film to establish how the fictional Xanadu should be positioned on a mountain top (In the Citizen Kane story, Xanadu, situated on the naturally-flat Florida coast, was built on a man-made mountain).
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What buildings were used for Xanadu?
Many of the “buildings” used for Xanadu were not structures at all: they were special effects, models, or paintings, such the opening scenes of Citizen Kane that show Xanadu and its grounds, and the closing scenes that show the smoke billowing from the furnace fire that burned the relics of Kane’s life.
In the “News on the March” newsreel at the beginning of Citizen Kane, buildings intended to be Xanadu include structures on the RKO studio lot, as well as several real buildings: among the mansions shown in the newsreel is “Oheka Castle,” the estate built on Long Island by investment banker Otto Kahn (Oheka Castle is the first estate shown in the newsreel).
Most of the shots of Xanadu in the newsreel are snippets of buildings constructed for the 1915 Panama-California International Exposition at Balboa Park in San Diego; the buildings today look the same as they did in 1940 when filmed for Citizen Kane. (Some of the brief glimpses of Kane’s animal collections, such as the large bird sanctuary, were filmed at the San Diego Zoo, adjacent to Balboa Park.)
Unfortunately for Welles, the exposition buildings in San Diego were constructed in the same Mediterranean Revival style as Hearst’s San Simeon, and on first glance in the film could easily be mistaken for the real-life palace—providing added ammunition for the Hearst-is-Kane factions in 1941.
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Did Gregg Toland, the cinematographer who shot Citizen Kane, appear in the film?
No. This is a fallacy that showed up on a website a few years ago, and has since spread.
Toland supposedly appeared in the “News on the March” newsreel near the beginning of the film, as the radio reporter who interviews the elderly Charles Foster Kane about the prospects for war in Europe. The reporter was actually played by Guy Repp, a bit player who appeared in a dozen films from 1939 to 1977, and was lucky enough to earn a speaking role in Citizen Kane. Repp bears a slight resemblances to Toland.
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Did some non-actors appear in Citizen Kane?
Yes. Several members of the film’s production staff did perform in Citizen Kane, including assistant director Richard Wilson, who appears in the projection room scenes and as a reporter at Xanadu; associate producer Richard Baer, who also appeared in the projection room scenes and as an official at Kane’s campaign speech; and Welles’ personal assistant Kathryn Trosper, who played as a reporter at Xanadu.
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Did Nat King Cole, the legendary jazz performer,
appear in Citizen Kane?
No. This is another story that has flourished since it started to appear online. But its origins may have come from a misunderstood interview with Orson Welles.
Welles told a reporter that for the scenes of Kane’s group picnic in the Everglades, he used the song “In a Mizz”—in particular the “It Can’t Be Love” section of the lyrics—after seeing the song performed by the King Cole Trio at a Los Angeles nightclub. “I kind of based the whole scene around that song,” Welles said.
But some film historians have interpreted Welles’ comment to mean that Nat King Cole actually performs in Citizen Kane, presumably playing the piano off camera in Susan Alexander’s nightclub—a theory that has crept into many studies and websites about the film. But the production records for Citizen Kane show that Cole had no involvement in the production.
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Is it true that the face of the reporter seeking “Rosebud”
is never seen?
William Alland, who played reporter Jerry Thompson, is sometimes remembered as the character in Citizen Kane whose face never appears on-screen, because in most of his scenes he is shown in partial shadow or seen from behind his left shoulder.
The idea that Alland’s face is not shown is the result of Citizen Kane for years being screened with the low-quality 16-millimeter prints of the film in art houses and in even lower-quality television broadcasts in the 1950s and 1960s. Because of this, several film historians stated flatly that Alland’s face is never seen and analyzed his role in the film from that perspective.
However, in crisp prints of the film, and in viewings of the Blu-ray and high-definition broadcasts, Alland’s face appears quite clearly during the scenes in the projection room when he argues with Rawlston about the importance of Rosebud, as well as in the Thatcher Library when he is reading the lawyer’s memoirs and he slams the volume shut.
Nevertheless, for most of his appearances, Alland is shown from behind and to his left, and he often joked about being the “unknown man” in the Citizen Kane cast. When Alland was introduced to the audience after the Los Angeles premiere, he said, “Perhaps you’ll recognize me better like this,” and turned his back to the crowd.
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Did Citizen Kane lose money?
Yes, but it didn’t lose much.
In the spring of 1942, when Citizen Kane was withdrawn from general circulation, the film was listed on RKO’s books at a loss of more than $150,000—all things considered, not a bad showing, especially when the impact of hundreds of theaters refusing to show the film because of pressure from the Hearst organization are figured into the accounting.
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When Citizen Kane was first released, was it a flop with the critics?
Not at all. In fact, Citizen Kane received an outpouring of accolades and enthusiastic commentary unlike anything ever written about a film—not simply positive reviews, but acclaim for Citizen Kane as a groundbreaking production and a milestone in the development of the motion picture.
The notion that Citizen Kane was not a critical success when it debuted may come from its limited financial success (see the previous question). As a result of the film’s box office performance—and not critics’ opinions—Citizen Kane sank into obscurity for the first half of the 1950s.
Then, the emergence of film schools and critical appraisal of motion pictures in the United States, and the recognition that Citizen Kane had begun to receive in Europe, helped re-establish in the mid-1950s what the original audiences in 1941 already knew: that Citizen Kane was a cinematic masterpiece.
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What did the critics say about Citizen Kane when it premiered?
Here are some of the original reviews that appeared after Citizen Kane in May 1941:
“Now that the wraps are off, it can be safely stated that suppression of this film would have been a crime. Citizen Kane is far and away the most surprising and cinematically exciting motion picture to be seen here in many a moon. As a matter of fact, it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood.” (The New York Times)
“Citizen Kane has found important new techniques in picture making and story-telling. Artful and artfully artless, it is not afraid to say the same thing twice if twice-telling reveals a fourfold truth.” (Time)
“After you’ve seen Orson Welles’ first film, you’ll wonder what all the controversy is about, because it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference whether it is or isn’t about William Randolph Hearst or any other individual. What matters is that Citizen Kane is a cinema masterpiece.” (New York World-Telegram)
“Seeing Citizen Kane, it’s as if you never really saw a movie before; no movie has ever grabbed you, pummeled you, socked you on the button with the vitality, the accuracy, the impact, the professional aim, that this one does.” (PM)
At the the Hollywood Reporter, publisher W. R. Wilkerson—author of the harshest denunciation of Welles when he came to Hollywood in 1939—happily apologized for his early criticism.
“When [RKO studio chief] George Schaefer came along with Orson Welles and the latter’s authority to produce, write, direct and star, we believed it too much to ask of any individual and suggested that Mr. Schaefer was just plain nuts,” Wilkerson wrote in his column. “However, the nearest approach that anyone ever came to a batting average of one thousand in the delivery of entertainment for the screen, Orson Welles accomplished with Citizen Kane.
“We criticized George Schaefer, we condemned Orson Welles, we ridiculed even the thought of what they attempted to do; we must now retract much of it. Where there was criticism, we now come to praise. Where there was condemnation, we now feel compelled to eulogize.”
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What was the biggest mystery about the filming of Citizen Kane?
For more than 70 years, the unknown story about Citizen Kane was: why is the finished film so much different from the supposedly “final” script?
In the final script—approved by the studio only days before production began—several key scenes were not yet written, and many other sections needed to be condensed or cut entirely.
No study of Citizen Kane had explored the development of the script beyond the seven studio-approved drafts and the final script—until now.
In Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey, Lebo describes an additional draft that was prepared after the final shooting script: copies of this “lost” draft are in the libraries at the University of Wisconsin and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Called the “Correction Script” in the MOMA files, this draft is the closest possible version of a final shooting script for Citizen Kane.
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Does a final script exist for Citizen Kane?
As Raymond the butler says in Citizen Kane, “Umm — yes and no.”
The Correction Script created by Welles shows that he deleted many pages of wordy dialogue and unnecessary plot points that appeared in the supposedly final studio-approved script. As a result, Welles cut more than 20 minutes of unnecessary material. And much of the Correction Script was shot as written.
However, even the “Correction Script” did not solve many problems, and holes in the plot were not yet filled. Lebo showed that to complete the final film, Welles did two things—first, he created solutions in Hollywood the same way he prepared his Broadway productions and radio broadcasts: for Citizen Kane, almost every scene was reworked extensively by Welles while filming—often at the last moment on the set during final rehearsals.
Second, to fill the gaps remaining in the script and build up Kane’s personality, Welles created four key scenes from scratch just days before shooting them. All of these scenes involved lawyer Thatcher and his interactions with Kane: these scenes include seven brief shots of a frustrated Thatcher reading headlines from Kane’s New York Inquirer, and a scene four decades later during the Depression when Kane, bankrupt, signs over his crumbling empire to Thatcher’s financial control.
Unfortunately, the script pages for these last-minute scenes do not exist—or have not yet turned up. So for now, the Correction Script is the “final” script for Citizen Kane.
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Citizen Kane: Newly-Revealed Stories (here)→