Citizen Kane: An Accurate Portrayal of William Randolph Hearst?
Citizen Kane: An Accurate Portrayal of William Randolph Hearst?Many have called Citizen Kane the greatest cinematic achievement of all time. It is indeed a true masterpiece of acting, screen writing, and directing. Orson Welles, its young genius director, lead actor, and a co-writer, used the best talents and techniques of the day (Bordwell 103) to tell the story of a newspaper giant, Charles Kane, through the eyes of the people who loved and hated him. However, when it came out, it was scorned by Hollywood and viewed only in the private theaters of RKO, the producer. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it was practically booed off the stage, and only won one award, that for Best Screenplay, which Welles and Herman Mankiewicz shared (Mulvey 10). This was all due to the pressure applied by the greatest newspaper man of the time, one of the most powerful men in the nation, the man Citizen Kane portrayed as a corrupt power monger, namely William Randolph Hearst. One cannot ignore the striking similarities between H
You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war. He attacked the trusts in favor of "the people" (a favorite phrase of Hearst's) and hired lawyers to try to get injunctions against the trusts and eventually destroy them. " (Swanberg 127) Such an obvious similarity can only have been deliberate, as Kane practically quoted Hearst. Having failed in his own right, he heaped his ambition on Susan. All in all, Orson Welles directed, starred in, and helped to write possibly the greatest film of all time, all to one purpose, to denounce William Randolph Hearst and all men who were abusive of power and the public trust. He said that, "Maybe Charlie wasn't brutal, he just did brutal things," (Citizen Kane) explaining how Kane, while a firm believer in the government and law, couldn't see how it applied to him. While Hearst was not the loveless monster Kane is portrayed as, he had many faults, the main one being that he often seemed to believe he could buy love. Finally, with the point of view of Kane's butler come two more similarities. Hearst also met a beautiful young actress, Marion Davies, and took her as his mistress (Swanberg 402). In fact, a representative of the Hearst Organization offered eight hundred and forty two thousand dollars to RKO, the film's producer, if they would burn it. He enjoyed being king over his empire, watching his subjects squirm. Both of the men used dirty and abusive campaigning methods, portraying their opponents as jailbirds in their publ ications.
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