Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

The seldom seen British Arena special "The Complete Citizen Kane" has made its way to YouTube.com, courtesy of online video poster Citizen Welles.

The 91-minute documentary opens with a faux, but effective, "Heart of Darkness" and includes BBC interviews with Orson Welles filmed in 1960 and 1982. Also interviewed are Peter Bogdanovich and Pauline Kael.

"The Complete Citizen Kane," first shown in 1991, is also the only place where you can see the "colorized" test footage created by Ted Turner.

We have embedded the complete YouTube video below. (No guarantee how long it will be available).

A very special thanks to Alan Nowogrodzki for alerting us to this. (more...)

"What does 'Rosebud' mean in 'Citizen Kane'?" It is perhaps the question most often fielded by Wellesnet. The most detailed answer given by Orson Welles was contained in a press statement released by RKO Radio Pictures prior the film's release in May 1941. The complete press release, uncovered by biographer Frank Brady, has been more extensively reported here in the past, but it bears repeating.
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By ORSON WELLES
January 15, 1941

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.

I immediately decided that my character (Charles Foster Kane) should be a public man — an extremely public man — an extremely important one ...

There have been many motion pictures and novels rigorously obeying the formula of the “success story,” I wished to do something quite different. (more...)

David Frost and Orson Welles

Orson Welles appearance on The David Frost Show recorded on May 12, 1970 came before most of the numerous biographies about Welles had been published, providing us with Welles' own point of view on some very interesting aspects of his life and work.

This interview also took place in the midst of the cultural revolution of the late sixties, when Welles was still at work on his planned TV show, Orson's Bag, and in a few months would begin shooting on The Other Side of the Wind. Both projects related rather heavily on various aspects of the counter-culture and youth movement that was so much a part of (more...)

When Welles didn't work, he drank, bragged, ran through women, ate like a beast and hated himself. He'd eat supper at his dressing table--two steaks, each with a baked potato; an entire pineapple; triple pistachio ice cream; and a bottle of Scotch. Appetite drove him. Applause wasn't enough. He wanted amazement, the gasp of a common crowd.

---From the narration of  The Battle Over Citizen Kane

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The Battle Over Citizen Kane is factually misleading...  A mean-spirited and profoundly distorted view of who Welles was and what he did.

---Ronald Gottesman,  editor of  Focus on Citizen Kane

This whole attempt to connect his life with William Randolph Hearst and imply they're similar is nonsense.

---Henry Jaglom,  film director

What's wrong with the film is that, in its zeal to show a parallel between Hearst and Welles, it overlooks (the fact) that there are enormous differences between the two and it makes certain statements about Hearst and Welles that seem to be dubious.

---James Naremore, author of  The Magic World of Orson Welles

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With the arrival of the 70th Anniversary edition of Citizen Kane, I watched The Battle Over Citizen Kane for the first time since it's 1996 debut on PBS and I once again  found it to be a "profoundly distorted documentary" on both Orson Welles, and probably William Randolph Hearst, as well. Welles may have "ate like a beast" but to suggest he "hated himself" has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard about the man. Here is another choice bit of misleading narration from this supposed "documentary":

"Welles was a young man who courted danger. That was always an element of his success. In the theater, he demanded magic. Characters had to appear from nowhere, or levitate into the sky. Actors were at risk. There were broken bones, fistfights. He liked the reflection of light on a real dagger, but one night he ran a fellow actor through, severed an artery and almost killed him. It was a risky way to live even when it did work and audiences cheered. When they didn't love Welles or his shows, that was worse."

Welles may indeed have asked a lot from his actors, but to imply that they were at risk, is at best, a highly debatable contention. The implied suggestion that Welles as Brutus, deliberately stabbed Joseph Holland as Julius Caesar, rather than accidentally, is quite preposterous and more akin to the kind of yellow journalism Mr. Hearst liked to report about in his newspapers.

Though what is truly objectionable about the inclusion of The Battle Over Citizen Kane and the even more ridiculous RKO 281 as the two extra discs in the Citizen Kane "Ultimate Collector's Edition" is their tone. Given the kind of  puff-piece promotional material studios normally include as extras on their DVD's it boggles the mind that such misguided extras would appear alongside Citizen Kane, long regarded as "the greatest film ever made."  It is almost a replay of having the screenplay for Citizen Kane published alongside the now completely discredited essay by Pauline Kael in The Citizen Kane Book in 1971.  In contrast, when Criterion released Citizen Kane as a 3 laserdisc  set it included interviews with over 30 prominent directors and other people influenced or associated with Citizen Kane, who were all full of praise for Welles and his work. Just imagine if Warner Bros. decided to release such a questionable documentary as The Battle for Citizen Kane and a dubious fictional film in their recent box set devoted to Stanley Kubrick! I'm sure the Kubrick Estate would never have allowed such gross misrepresentations to occur.

Of course, Orson Welles was no saint and he did have a very large ego, but as the Welles scholars quoted above duly note, both extra discs hardly present us with a fair or balanced portrait of the man, since The Battle Over Citizen Kane is clearly determined to somehow make Welles life fit into a mirror image of the career of William Randolph Hearst.  One can easily see why Robert Carringer,  who wrote The Making of Citizen Kane and served as a consultant on the film,  asked that his name be removed from the credits, as they clearly paid no attention to any of his advice!

The final narration of the film recounts the same old sad and tired Welles story we've all heard many times before.   It was all downhill for the boy genius after Citizen Kane, although anyone who knows even the slightest about Welles's later career and such big-budget cinema classics as Falstaff, The Trial or Touch of Evil, could never possibly write such an error-filled passage as this one:

"In latter years, Welles was a vagabond, trying to patch together his low-budget films. He begged or borrowed from everyone he knew, including $250,000. from an old pal, Charlie Lederer, Marion Davies' nephew. The money came from her estate. Welles never paid it back. He'd do bit parts for money--ads for airlines or Paul Masson wine--between fits of temper at the journeymen filmmakers or junior execs who were now directing him. Sometimes he was so overweight he had to be ferried about in a wheelchair. He hated the fat man jokes. He hated it worse when people asked him what had he done with himself after Kane." 

As for that even more awful "fictional" portrait of Welles,  RKO 281, I will let Peter Bodanovich's comments about its many flaws tell the story:

LAWRENCE FRENCH:  RKO 281 lost me right at the start, because in the very first scene they show Orson Welles at San Simeon and everybody knows that Welles was never at Hearst Castle.

PETER BOGDANOVICH: Actually, most people don't know that. Most people haven't even seen Citizen Kane! But for anybody who knows anything about Orson Welles, it's quite clear that he was never at San Simeon and he didn't know Hearst.  To be candid, I thought that movie bore very little relationship to the Orson Welles that I knew, or to any of the facts that I knew. It was so filled with errors, that it was painful to observe!

All of that was clearly spelled out in my book, This is Orson Welles.  Also, Orson didn't base Citizen Kane on Hearst alone, but there was another press lord from Chicago, Colonel Robert McCormick, who had an opera house built for his girlfriend, who was a singer. So that whole aspect of Citizen Kane comes from McCormick, but people incorrectly assumed that it was Hearst, because they were spun to believe that by Louella Parsons.

Louella was pissed off because she had been on the set of Citizen Kane and wrote a lot in her column about Orson and the wonderful movie he was making, and then ironically, Hedda Hopper found out that part of the movie was based on Hearst—the part about the Spanish-American War—but not Rosebud, and not Susan Alexander Kane or the political scandal. So Orson always said he though it was Louella and the people around Hearst who made such an issue out of Citizen Kane. Particularly Louella, because she had been scooped by her arch-rival, Hedda Hopper. It was Hedda who blew the whistle and said that Citizen Kane was based on William Randolph Hearst, after Louella had been on the set and been friendly to Orson.

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As Peter Bogdanovich pointed out to me, most people apparently really don't know much about Welles career, including Citizen Kane. Looking at some of the internet reviews on the new Citizen Kane set, I was astonished to see one site rate the film at 8  (out of 10) and the extras at 9.5!

After the break is the complete article by Cathy Dunkley from the 1996 Hollywood Reporter that first reported on the distortions contained in The Battle Over Citizen Kane:

RAISING 'KANE' OVER PBS DOCUMENTARY:  SCHOLARS BLAST FILM AS "MEAN-SPIRITED AND PROFOUNDLY DISTORTED"

By Cathy Dunkley

The Hollywood Reporter - March 29, 1996

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Warner Bros. has released the official press release for their 70th Anniversary edition of  Citizen Kane, due out on September 13, 2011. It will come in three editions:   a  DVD 3-disc set, priced at $49.99;  a Blu ray 3-disc set priced at $64.99, and the Amazon exclusive edition which will include a fourth disc featuring Orson Welles's stunning second film The Magnificent Ambersons,  priced at $79.99.  None of the extra discs on any set will be in the  Blu ray format.  Amazon is currently listing their exclusive 4-disc set for $49.99 and both the 3-disc DVD and Blu ray sets are only $5.00 cheaper at $44.99, making the Amazon exclusive a must for Welles fans who have long wondered why Warner Bros. has failed to release The Magnificent Ambersons on DVD or Blu ray.

Here is the Warner Bros. press release:

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Orson Welles’ Tour de Force Citizen Kane Celebrates 70th Anniversary with Blu-ray Debut of Remastered Ultimate Collector’s Edition

Burbank, Calif., June 13, 2011 -- Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ tour de force which the American Film Institute (AFI) chose as the #1 film of all time,  celebrates its 70th Anniversary with an all new 1080p hi-definition restoration from original nitrate elements in stunning 4K resolution and revitalized digital audio.  Warner Home Video will bring the iconic masterwork to a new generation with their new Blu-ray™ 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition, complete with more than three hours of bonus content and an array of rare and collectible premiums including a 48-page collector’s book filled with photos and behind-the-scene details, a 20-page reproduction of the original 1941 souvenir program, lobby cards, and reproductions of rare production memos and correspondence (Blu-ray Disc $64.99 SRP;  DVD $49.92 SRP).

This classic story of power and the press starring, produced, directed and co-written by then 25-year-old Orson Welles, the film captured nine Academy Award®* nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director, and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

These newest 70th Anniversary editions will present the film in the highest quality yet. "The work to recreate the original look of the film and to clean up the effects of aging was a painstaking, frame-by-frame process. The source for most of the picture was a 4K scan from a 1941 composite fine grain positive master" says Warner Bros.  Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) colorist Janet Wilson.

The new edition includes feature-length stories-behind-the-story that include the two- hour Academy Award-nominated documentary Battle over Citizen Kane and RKO 281, the Golden Globe® and Emmy ® winning HBO docudrama that chronicles the clash between William Randolph Hearst and Hollywood.  Memorabilia in the premium packaging includes the 1941 movie premiere newsreel, gallery of storyboards, studio correspondence, call sheets, rare photos and more.

Citizen Kane 70th Anniversary Edition is new to digital and will be releasing with iTunes Extras and will be available On Demand from cable and satellite providers and for digital download from online retailers including iTunes™, VUDU and Amazon Instant Video.

THE  EXTRAS!  READ ALL ABOUT THEM!

Disc 1
·    Commentary by Peter Bogdanovich
·    Commentary by Roger Ebert
·    Opening: World Premier of Citizen Kane Vintage Featurettes
·    Interview with Ruth Warrick
·    Interview with Robert Wise
·    Storyboards
·    Call Sheets
·    Still Photography with Commentary by Roger Ebert
·    Deleted Scenes
·    Ad Campaign
·    Press Book
·    Opening Night
·    Theatrical Trailer

Disc 2: The Battle over Citizen Kane (PBS Documentary)

Disc 3: RKO 281 (HBO Feature film)

Amazon only exclusive:

Disc 4:  The Magnificent Ambersons

About Orson Welles and CITIZEN KANE

CITIZEN KANE, according to director Martin Scorsese, made Orson Welles “responsible for inspiring more people to be film directors than anyone else in the history of cinema.”  Starring, produced, directed and co-written by Welles, CITIZEN KANE opened May 8, 1941 at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood and was nominated for nine Academy Awards®, winning the Oscar® for Best Screenplay.

The picture starred actors from Welles Mercury Theater, who at the time, were entirely new to motion pictures.  Joseph Cotten played Jedediah Leland, the best friend of Charles Foster Kane, while William Alland was the investigative reporter who delves into the life of Kane, in a quest for the meaning of Kane's dying word, “Rosebud.” Welles himself played the title role, from a boyish, ambitious young man to the old, bloated and embittered recluse he became.  Other actors Welles cast included Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick and Paul Stewart.  Alan Ladd and Arthur O’Connell appeared in uncredited bit parts as reporters.

The legendary Gregg Toland was the film’s cinematographer, and Robert Wise, later a two-time Academy Award®-winning director, was the editor on the picture. One of the screen greatest composers, Bernard Herrmann created his first movie score for CITIZEN KANE, and was nominated for the Academy Award, but that same year Herrmann beat himself for the Oscar — for his second film score, ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY. After remaining out of circulation for many years, the film was re-issued by RKO in 1956, and in 1962 CITIZEN KANE was selected by a panel of film critics as the greatest film of all time. During the ensuing years, in poll after poll, CITIZEN KANE has consistently ranked as the highest embodiment of film art. Says critic Roger Ebert, “Seventy years later, this towering achievement is as fresh, as provoking, as entertaining, as funny, as sad, as brilliant, as it ever was. Many agree it is the greatest film of all time.” Critic and film historian Arthur Knight observed, “Less by imitation than by inspiration, the Orson Welles film has altered the look not only of American films, but of films the world over.”

Given that "The Greatest Film Ever Made" certainly deserves a Deluxe release on it's 70th anniversary, which also happens to be how many years Orson Welles lived on the planet Earth,  I would like to propose my own wish list of extras and improvements that Warner Bros Home Video can make to their upcoming Blu Ray release of Citizen Kane, which  will most likely be released in September.   Since RKO proclaimed September 5, 1941 as Citizen Kane Day, when the film went out at "popular prices" in many theatres across the country,  that would seem to be the obvious day for WB to release their new Citizen Kane Blu Ray disc.

So here are some other suggestions to Warner Home Video for their upcoming release of Citizen Kane:

*  A truly deluxe edition, along the lines of the superb editions Warner Home Video has given us on such classic titles as The Searchers, King Kong, A Star Is Born and Bonnie and Clyde.  This would mean reproductions of the original RKO Citizen Kane pressbook and Souvenir program. Reproductions of the various Citizen Kane posters could also be included, or better yet, offer up a reproduction of the original one-sheet (style B,  please) as WB did with their box sets for The Searchers,  King Kong and Bonnie and Clyde.

* The most obvious major extra to include would be The Complete Citizen Kane, the excellent 1991 BBC documentary that talks about all things relating to the making of Citizen Kane and features interviews with many of the people who worked on the movie who are now no longer with us.  This documentary was hardly seen in the U.S.  and there can be little doubt it would be a far superior extra than the lamentable The Battle Over Citizen Kane documentary, which WB included on the first DVD release of Citizen Kane.

* Reprints of the articles many of the major creative people wrote about Citizen Kane. Besides the many articles Welles himself wrote about the film, there are also many other pieces that could be included, such as articles written by Gregg Toland, Bernard Herrmann,  John Houseman, Linwood Dunn, etc, etc.

* RKO correspondence on the making of Citizen Kane, both to and from Welles. Most of this material is preserved in the Lilly Library and even if only a few choice samples are included, it would make for fascinating reading.

* Audio tracks for some of the radio shows Welles did that satirize movie-making, such as Miss Dilly Say No and the 1939 I Lost My Girlish Laughter, where Welles plays a David O. Selznick-like producer named Sidney Brand who tells a novelist whose book he has brought, "I'll give you sole screenplay credit!"

* Both Time and Life Magazine did numerous articles on Citizen Kane during its production and after it was finally released on May 1, 1941.  Henry Luce was clearly happy to help Welles and his film, as he was often at odds with William Randolph Hearst.   Given the corporate connection between Time-Warner,  why not include a selection of photos and articles on Citizen Kane from the vast Time-Life archives,  such as this piece that appeared in Time in March, 1941.

*  WB should certainly "un-restore" the "News-on-the-March"  sequence which Welles intentionally wanted to have a dirty and scratched look,  as well as all the scenes in the previous digital restoration that removed such “artifacts” as the raindrops on the windows outside of  Mr. Bernstein’s office.

* Instead of  a documentary featuring interviews with current directors talking about how much Citizen Kane “influenced” them,  it would be far more interesting to edit together Orson Welles own comments on the film from the various  interviews he has done over the years.  You could easily get a 30-minute documentary of  Welles talking about Citizen Kane as almost everyone who ever interviewed Welles asked him about the making of  Kane. Obviously,  cost considerations would come into play,  in terms of  getting the rights to some of  Welles's  interview clips and other  material, but given that Citizen Kane is  “The Greatest Film of All Time,” wouldn’t you think WB would give it at least as deluxe a treatment as they are planning to do for  Ben-Hur?

Anything less should be greeted with King Lear-like howls of indignation!

I had never read Andrew Sarris's reply to Pauline Kael's infamous article "Raising Kane," that was first published in The New Yorker in 1971.  So it was a very pleasant surprise to see it turn up in the archive section of  The Village Voice online.  Mr. Sarris makes many salient points about the numerous flaws in Ms. Kael's piece, which unfortunately was published alongside the original script for Citizen Kane in The Citizen Kane Book.

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FILMS IN FOCUS by Andrew Sarris

The Village Voice -- April 15, 1971

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Pauline Kael's two-part article on "Citizen Kane" ("Raising Kane" -- the New Yorker, February 20 and 27, 1971) reportedly began as a brief introduction to the published screenplay, but, like Topsy, it just grew and grew into a 50,000-word digression from "Kane" itself into the life and times and loves and hates and love-hates of Pauline Kael.

My disagreement with her position begins with her very first sentence:

"'Citizen Kane' is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened." I can think of hundreds of "American talking pictures" that seem as fresh now as the day they opened. Even fresher. "Citizen Kane" is certainly worthy of revival and reconsideration, but it hardly stands alone even among the directorial efforts of Orson Welles. To believe that "Citizen Kane" is a great American film in a morass of mediocre Hollywood movies is to misunderstand the transparent movieness of "Kane" itself from its Xanadu castle out of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to its menagerie out of "King Kong" to its mirrored reflections out of old German doppleganger spectacles. Not that Miss Kael makes any extravagant claims about the supposed greatness of the film on which she has devoted so much newsprint. "It is a shallow work," she decides, "a shallow masterpiece."

One wonders what Miss Kael considers a deep masterpiece. "U-Boat 29" perhaps? Actually, the closest she comes to comparing "Kane" with the higher depths of cinema is in a parenthetical aside of dubious relevance: "Like most of the films of the sound era that are called masterpieces, 'Citizen Kane' has reached its audience gradually over the years rather than at the time of release. Yet, unlike the others, it is conceived and acted as entertainment in a popular style (unlike, say, 'Rules of the Game' or 'Rashomon' or 'Man of Aran,' which one does not think of in crowd-pleasing terms)."

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You can read an interview with David Thomson by John Carvill  Here.  It' s an interesting but at the same time quite an idiotic interview. Why? Not because of the questions asked, which is usually the case, but because of the answers given, by Mr. Thomson.

I think the interview makes a very nice piece to discredit David Thomson as any kind of authority on Orson Welles, or for any one else in the cinema, for that matter.

Mr. Thomson’s answers to Mr. Carvill's questions on Orson Welles, which come at the very end of the long interview, seem to me to be very condescending.  That Mr. Thomson prefers  the 93-minute original cut of TOUCH OF EVIL,  which Welles himself detested, is obviously very revealing. It shows us where to place Mr. Thomson on the level of Orson Welles scholars.  Namely, way below Pauline Kael.  Obviously anyone who loves Welles work and the cinema would wish these people had never existed!

As Webmaster of Wellesnet, I don’t know anyone who would give David Thomson’s book ROSEBUD, anything less than an “F” except my good friend,  "Glenn Anders."  I'm sure Glenn and I will be talking about our differences when next we meet, and obviously if Mr. Thomson views Wellesnet, he is invited to reply, but as far as I know, he is the only writer associated with Orson Welles and his work who does not visit this site.  Unlike  most other Welles scholars and friends, such as Joe McBride, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Simon Callow, Christopher Welles Feder and Beatrice Welles, to name only a few.  But of course, Mr. Thomson feels he knows more about Welles than all of these people, as a reading of his discredited book, ROSEBUD will show.

Actually, I find it ironic that Mr. Thomson could bring Welles two daughters, who agree about little else, together in agreeing that Thomson's ROSEBUD is a complete abortion. But beyond the fax pas Mr. Thomson committed with ROSEBUD, I must also note the superior, John Simon-like attitude Mr. Thomson projects throughout his interview with John Carvill.  The tone is that Mr. Thomson is right, and everybody else is wrong. For example, Mr. Thomson’s view of Martin Scorcese and Leonard Di Caprio’s work. Obviously, it’s fine to say their films are bad, or you don’t like them, but to suggest they have both not been recognized widely elsewhere, because you don't like them, is simply idiotic in the extreme.

I don't know how old John Carvill is, but when I first met Mr. Thomson in San Francisco, in 1981, shortly after seeing THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS for the first time, I would have told Thomson to (excuse my French) go fuck himself if he had said what he did to Mr. Carvill.  So would two directors who were friends of mine, that Thomson professes to admire, Nicholas Ray and George Cukor.

Mr. Thomson's  suggestion that Mr. Carvill is too young to "appreciate "THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS is, in my humble opinion, simply beyond the pale.  Orson Welles is obviously a far greater artist than Mr. Thomson, which I assume even Mr. Thomson would agree with (well, maybe not).  And how old was Orson Welles when he made  THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS?  26... So how does Mr. Thomson explain that?  "You are too young, Mr. Carvill."  My God, that has got to be the stupidest answer I have ever heard!  How old were Picasso and Van Gogh when they painted their earliest masterpieces on canvas?

Just imagine if in 1937,  GUERNICA had been "re-touched" by another artist who felt it needed a bit of color to dramatize the black and white and "CinemaScope" canvas Picasso had painted.  Picasso, as a true artist  would have burned the painting rather than seen it displayed in any version other than what he had intended.

Welles, as a film artist,  was in the same position five years later, except in 1942, he couldn't burn the negative of his original film.  It took the idiots at RKO to do that for him.  Ironically, they wanted to burn the negative of CITIZEN KANE,  but to destroy the artistry of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, they dumped it into the Pacific Ocean.

The bottom line is this:  David Thomson is no fan of Orson Welles or his legacy.

To anyone interested in Orson Welles or his works, please avoid Mr. Thomson and his trashy books like the PLAGUE!

Here is what Jonathan Rosenbaum had to say about Mr. Thomson's book  A Biographical Dictionary of Film:

"Rather than focus on its omissions and denials, which I've already done elsewhere, I'd like to raise my eyebrows at the notion that the book, whatever its merits as criticism, is any kind of reference book at all. Apart from skeletal and often incomplete filmographies, its facts are few and far between."

Read more by Jonathan Rosenbaum on David Thomson HERE.

Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles had its New York City premiere on November 23, and the next day, on November 24, there was a dedication by Chris Welles Feder and Christian McKay of a plaque in memory of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre which once stood at the site of the current building which now occupies the lot at 110 West 41st street.

That is why Wellesnet will be recalling some of the memories of the original cast members of Julius Caesar this week, beginning with these filmed recollections of one of the founding members of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre company, Mr. William Alland.

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Part One: Meeting Welles, Theater and Radio

Part Two: Hollywood and Citizen Kane to Touch of Evil

Photos of William Alland and Orson Welles can be seen at Wellesnet's Facebook page HERE.

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William Alland most famously played the reporter Thompson in Citizen Kane, and was one of the original Mercury Theatre actors, having first met Welles early in his career in 1936. He then went on to play the part of Marullus in Julius Caesar, and joined the other Mercury Actors when they went to Hollywood. Alland debuted as a film actor in Citizen Kane and worked with Welles on several of his subsequent films, including playing one of the murderers in Macbeth.

Mr. Alland also had roles in many of Welles's radio shows, most notably playing several parts in the notorious War of the Worlds broadcast.

John McCarty, a colleague from Cinefantastique magazine, recently wrote to tell me he had filmed an long interview segment with Mr. Alland for a documentary project and had just recently placed it on YouTube for everyone to enjoy.

I asked John to write a short introduction for his documentary, The Man Who Pursued Rosebud, and he readily complied. In looking at Mr. Alland's comments, what I found especially interesting, is how his account of his first meeting with Orson Welles differed so greatly from what John Houseman recorded in his own autobiography, Run Though. Like the reporter he played in Citizen Kane, it seems William Alland and Mr. Houseman have two very different memories of how they first came to meet the great man!

So after you watch John McCarty's documentary, I have included the relevant comments from John Houseman's book, where he recalls his own take on how William Alland became a member of the Mercury Theatre.

It should also be noted that William Alland is portrayed in a featured part in Me and Orson Welles, by the actor Iain McKee. In the movie he is known only as "Vakhtangov" which is explained by Mr. Houseman in the excerpt from his autobiography.

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THE MAN WHO PURSUED ROSEBUD

By John McCarty

In 1994, I published a book titled The Fearmakers (St. Martin’s Press), a compendium of essay-profiles of twenty filmmakers who, in my opinion, had the greatest influence on the evolution of the terror-horror-suspense film genre from the silent era to the present (circa 1993). One of these filmmakers was Jack Arnold, the director of such enduring sci-fi/horror classics of the 1950s as It Came From Outer Space, Tarantula, The Creature of From the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and others.

Two years later, a Texas-based video production company contacted me about developing the book into a documentary series for the fast-growing home video market. Each half-hour segment would focus on one of these master fearmakers and include clips from their films as well as interviews with co-workers, cast members, film historians, and even the filmmakers themselves if they were still around. I signed on as narrator, script supervisor, co-director, interviewer, and chief cook and bottle washer.

After selecting a baker’s dozen from the twenty in my book for the thirteen segments that would be produced, I gave the producers a list of potential interviewees. For the segment on Jack Arnold, the interviewee I most hoped to get was William Alland, Universal’s “house producer” of science-fiction and horror films in the ‘50s – and, not unimportantly to me, the man who had played Jerry Thompson, the reporter in pursuit of the identity of “rosebud” in the Orson Welles masterpiece Citizen Kane.

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32 years ago, in 1978 when I was the the chairman of The Cinema Guild at a New England College, we received a grant from the Johnson-Mellon foundation for $10,000 to bring important artistic speakers to our campus for a day of interaction with students.

Early in our talks with the University "committee" for the event, my thoughts were focused like a laser beam on one person: ORSON WELLES!

A year earlier, Welles' latest picture, F FOR FAKE had astonished me when I went to see it the weekend it opened in Manhattan at the D.W. Griffith Theater.

Unfortunately, the heads of the Cinema Dept. never were able to prevail on the "money" men in bringing Orson Welles to campus as a speaker. Instead, the sponsors of the lecture series seemed intent for some unknown reason on getting Otto Preminger.

Well, thankfully, that was a choice we could at the least, live with. If they wanted to bring Richard Fleischer or Robert Wise on campus, I'm sure I would have, to quote Waldo Lydecker, "Run amuck."

However, we did get our say in which critic would be accompanying Mr. Preminger on campus. We certainly didn't want someone like Pauline Kael! Instead, we asked for, and thankfully we got, Andrew Sarris.

So in February of 1978, I met Mr. Sarris for the first time. I still remember talking to him while Otto Preminger was trying to get Sarris's attention. I was asking Sarris about why Touch of Evil and Vertigo were not mentioned on his ten best films list of 1958. Sarris was very contrite about the lapse, and admitted it was a critical failure on his part, due mostly to his inexperience at the time.

The day Preminger and Sarris came to speak, I ended up speaking much more to Mr. Preminger than to Mr. Sarris. Luckily, my good friend, James Hurley was far more interested in talking with Sarris, and he also wrote a wonderful piece on Andrew Sarris for our program book.

So here is an excerpt from the introduction James Hurley wrote about the critical writings of Andrew Sarris:

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It's too bad Andrew Sarris is such an important movie critic, because it tends to obscure the fact that he is such a good critic. Sarris's revolutionary auteur theory has created such controversy that its American founder is too often seen as a mere polemicist, a potent critical force rather than a brilliant critical intelligence. But though the slavishly faithful auteurists he has spawned pay him frequent and impassioned homage, Sarris is much more closely related to the great American tradition of iconoclastic film criticism: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, Robert Warshow, men who have, as critic and film-maker Paul Schrader has said, "come out of the wilderness... spouting some sort of doctrine which they have half-cocked in their own heads."

This is not to say that Sarris's great influence should be downplayed; indeed, it cannot be over-stressed. The best of the younger critics working today have been formed greatly in his mold: Molly Haskell, Richard Corliss, Joseph McBride, Stuart Byron, Roger Greenspun and John Belton, to name but a few. Peter Bogdanovich, critic before film-maker, cites Sarris as one of his "main influences." The auteur theory has not only become the predominant critical and academic outlook, it has acted, for better or worse, as breeding ground for such recent trends in film scholarship as structuralism, semiology, genre criticism and Cahierist Marxism. It has also unfortunately created a school of jabbering parrots, "Sarrisites", who have, in Sams's own words, "embraced the auteur theory as a shortcut to film scholarship." Sarris, however, cannot be blamed for the sins of his bastard offspring.

---James Hurley, 1978

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This is a rather long introduction to Andrew Sarris's very cogent and, I think, quite amazing rebuttal to Pauline Kael's badly researched article in The New Yorker, "Raising Kane." Kael's article, was naturally, well written, but many of the facts seem to have somehow eluded her.

So it was very nice to see how well Andrew Sarris's rebuttal to Kael's article holds up. I was also astonished to find out that Sarris revealed, for the first time I am aware of, that Herman J. Mankiewicz based "Rosebud" on his childhood bicycle!

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CITIZEN KAEL VS. CITIZEN KANE

By ANDREW SARRIS
The Village Voice - April 29, 1971
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“Citizen Kane, American Baroque" is the pretentious title of a solemn, pedantic, humorless revaluation of “Citizen Kane" written on the occasion of its revival in 1956. The piece first appeared in the ninth issue of Film Culture (1956) and did not cause too much stir one way or another. The reviewer (or rather re-reviewer) was a 28-year old New York freelancer (more free than lance) with a severely limited education in film history. He had just started reviewing movies in the mid-'50s, first under the name of Andrew George Sarris and then merely Andrew Sarris, and by 1956 he had decided that the three greatest films of all times were "Odd Man Out," "Citizen Kane," and "Sullivan's Travels." Then from 1961 through 1969, he held that the three greatest films of all time were "Lola Montez," "Ugetsu," and "The Rules of the Game," and now in 1970 he has replaced "Lola Montez" at the top with "Madame de" He still likes "Citizen Kane," "Odd Man Out," and "Sullivan's Travels," but not as much these days as "The Magnificent Ambersons," "The Third Man" and 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," "Hail the Conquering Hero" and "The Palm Beach Story," not to mention "Sunrise," "Liebelei," "La Ronde," "Day of Wrath," "Ordet," "Flowers of St. Francis," "French CanCan." "The Golden Coach," "Psycho," "Vertigo," "The Searchers," "Diary of a Country Priest," "Au Hasard Balthazar," "Brink of Life," "Oharu," "Seven Chances," "Sherlock, Jr.," "Steamboat Bill Jr.," and "Shop Around the Corner."

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While Orson Welles spent time all over the world, and in at least five of the seven continents, I'm not quite sure if he ever made it to New Zealand or Australia.

However, I find it rather amazing that today, due to the internet, we can get input from people down under, just as easily as from a neighbor next door.

A perfect example of this is this interesting blog I just stumbled across from Christopher Banks, in New Zealand, who, like the Kiwi director Peter Jackson, obviously loves the work of Orson Welles.

The link to his site is here, which gives you an additional links to a very interesting article by Jonathan McCalmont, comparing TOUCH OF EVIL to CITIZEN KANE, complete with clips from YOU TUBE.

Here is the text of Christopher Banks recent post from his blog down under:

*****

Jonathan McCalmont has done an interesting post comparing elements of “Citizen Kane” and “Touch of Evil”. Some great insights into how the Wellesian style permeates two very different films, with particular regard to his clever use of sound.

(He also references the not-so-famed opening sequence of “Contact”, a film I’m also very fond of. What has happened to Robert Zemeckis these days?)

The combination of Welles’ backgrounds in radio and theatre - both very immediate media - made for some very exciting and dynamic films in “Citizen Kane” and also in the butchered masterpiece “The Magnificent Ambersons” as he brought the tricks of his earlier trades along with him to the cinema.

I can’t think of a better illustration of his passion for every frame of celluloid he exposed than his 58-page memo to Universal upon seeing what they’d done to the original release version of “Touch of Evil”. Without it, we would never have the restored version we have today.

The last holy grail from the Welles vault is his last narrative feature, “The Other Side Of The Wind”. Shot but never edited, it’s been stuck in various vaults for years while estate lawyers get their act together.

Given what is known about Welles’ frenetic and fast-paced intentions for the editing style, it will be a vast departure from his earlier work. Had it been released in 1972, it could well have been as ahead of its time as “Citizen Kane” was in 1941.

Coming across the Autumn, 1962 issue of Sight & Sound at a flea market recently, I was struck by a John Houseman interview, who of all people, defends Orson Welles from that absurd question that seems to have plagued him ever since the fiasco of It's All True: "What went wrong?"

In 1962, Houseman had yet to write his own detailed account about guiding Herman J. Mankiewicz through writing the script for Citizen Kane, nor had he spoken to Pauline Kael. Which brings up an interesting point about the whole Citizen Kane writing controversy. From Houseman's point of view, his story is what indeed did happen, because he had no knowledge of what Welles was doing on his own in Hollywood, while he and Mankiewicz were holed up in Victorville. In fact, since the whole controversy mirrors the structure of Citizen Kane itself, is seems like it would be quite a fascinating idea to take the making of Citizen Kane, and tell it from four distinct point of views: Those of Welles, Houseman/Mankiewicz, George Schaefer and Joesph Cotten. It would certainly be far more more interesting than the lamentable mess of a movie that RKO 281 turned out to be!

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INTERVIEW WITH JOHN HOUSEMAN

by Penelope Huston - Sight & Sound, Autumn, 1962

JOHN HOUSEMAN: (The writing of Citizen Kane) is a delicate subject: I think Welles has always sincerely felt that he, single-handed, wrote Citizen Kane and everything else that he has directed—except, possibly, the plays of Shakespeare. But the script of Kane was essentially Mankiewicz's. The conception and the structure were his, all the dramatic Hearstian mythology and the journalistic and political wisdom which he had been carrying around with him for years and which he now poured into the only serious job he ever did in a lifetime of film writing. But Orson turned Kane into a film: the dynamics and the tensions are his and the brilliant cinematic effects—all those visual and aural inventions that add up to make Citizen Kane one of the world's great movies—those were pure Orson Welles.

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