Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

In revisiting Frank Brady's excellent biography, CITIZEN WELLES,  I came across this statement that Welles issued to the press in January, 1941, to basically counter the growing impression that Citizen Kane was based on a certain well known newspaper publisher.  Given Welles own reluctance to talk about Citizen Kane in any great detail in his later years, it seems like an incredibly important piece of information coming, as it does, from the creator of the "greatest movie ever made."   

In the piece, Welles goes into great detail about why he choose to make his fictional newspaper publisher do certain things, and spells out many of the psychological reasons for them. It may be dime-store Freud, but 60 years later, it still seems very convincing and is also  quite fascinating to read.   

It's also notable that somehow this important piece, that clearly indicates Welles had a major role in writing the screenplay, was never uncovered by those early (and highly incompetent) writers on Citizen Kane,  Charles Higham and Pauline Kael.    

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January 15, 1941

Press statement issued by Orson Welles regarding his forthcoming motion picture entitled, Citizen Kane, which will be released by RKO-Radio Pictures:

ORSON WELLES:  I wished to make a motion picture which was not a narrative of action so much as an examination of character. For this, I desired a man of many sides and many aspects. It was my idea to show that six or more people could have as many widely divergent opinions concerning the nature of a single personality. Clearly such a notion could not be worked out if it would apply to an ordinary American citizen.

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The Free Company presents   

HIS HONOR THE MAYOR

A radio play by

ORSON WELLES

http://www.box.net/shared/xky7hn4uxk

As originally broadcast on April 6, 1941 on CBS

_______________

For what avail the plow or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson   

JAMES BOYD: Today our theme is an ancient and fundamental democratic right, which will become clear to you as you listen to the play. This week's author is Orson Welles.

_______________  

THE CAST 

Orson Welles (Narrator)
Ray Collins (Mayor Bill Knaggs)
Agnes Moorehead (Mrs. Knaggs/Mrs.Carter/Pearl Dewey)
Everett Sloane (Jerry, gas station owner/Joe E. Knocking, anarchist)
Erskine Sanford (Colonel Englehorn)
Paul Stewart (Father Hatton)  

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Listening to the Orson Welles radio broadcast of His Honor the Mayor  in 2007, over sixty years after it's debut, it seems beyond belief that anyone could possibly attack it as the work of a "subversive" anti-American agitator.   

Then again, maybe not.  It's quite probable that the current Attorney General, would easily find Welles radio broadcast just as disturbing as J. Edgar Hoover did, way back in April of 1941.  It was apparently Welles's broadcast of  His Honor The Mayor that led Hoover to send a report about Welles to his bosses at the Justice Dept. and then order a full report on the political activities of Welles, and the other members of The Free Company.  Welles FBI files would remain active throughout Hoover's long tenure as director of the FBI.    

Apparently the passages that most incensed the right wing commentators of the time (The Hearst Newspapers and The American Legion) were these  proclaimations Welles gave to Mayor Knaggs:

"There’s nothing illegal about being a communist.  There’s no law in this country about having an opinion."

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