Rodman's "Western Manhattan Warehouse"

[Colmena]

Greetings All,

In the bibliography to D Thomson's _Rosebud_ he lists Howard Rodman's "Western Manhattan Warehouse," American Film, Jan '86.

Does anyone know what this article is about? Is it online anywhere?
(I live in the country, far from any major academic library.)

The "Western Manhattan Warehouse" is where Kane is headed, the evening he meets Susan.

I'd also like to track down Rbt Carringer's "Rosebud, Dead or Alive." PMLA Mar, '76.

(Here I'm surprised that RC considers Rosebud a worthy topic, because he debunks it as a "gimmick" in his _Making of CK_.

-- thanks,

Colmena

PS My first post.

[Glenn Anders]

Welcome to Wellesnet, colmena:

Howard Rodman's "Western Manhattan Warehouse" is a hard one. Rodman, a well-known screenwriter, is a fan of Welles, and you may find a clue to the subject of your quest by looking up his "The Last Days of Orson Welles."

Robert Carringer's "Rosebud, Dead or Alive" is a little easier, just a little. You may find the first page of his nine page essay here:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/461506

I have read the piece somewhere else, and evidently Carringer still thinks "rosebud" when conventionally explained is "a gimmick," and so, in defense of CITIZEN KANE the great motion picture, he sets out to interpret "rosebud" in a scholarly fashion as part of a much more complicated pattern of meaning. Having understood the meaning of "rosebud" emotionally (as well as in terms of plot) at the age of ten, when I saw CITIZEN KANE first run in the little Ohio town where I was born, my fondness for "rosebud" extends to all of Carringer's interpretations -- and several more.

To read the full essay, one has to be a member of the jastor library.

That raises the question: May not Wellesnet.com qualify as an institution, which would allow you, colmena, easy access to the essay and others you might enjoy?

I hope you like what you find at Wellesnet.

Glenn Anders

[RayKelly]

Welcome Colmena.
The Lilly Library online (Peter Bogdanovich papers, Box 170) describes a Howard A. Rodman article The Western Manhattan Warehouse as "being an account of the final days of Orson Welles, his friends, and what he leaves behind."
I am assuming this is the January 1986 article from American Film. It would make sense that American Film would run a final days piece a few months after Welles' passing in October 1985.

Here is a link to the Robert Carringer piece "Rosebud, Dead or Alive" in its entirety: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:pdoStGWWIBwJ:cinefiles.bampfa.berkeley.edu/cinefiles/DocPdf?docId%3D4812%26pgs%3Dall+Robert+Carringer+%22Rosebud,+Dead+or+Alive%22&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESitUwXxdb1W4y6433SpKewR3TKo9qBkzhyb1Eaome0X7mdpw97cPdu2N9Ss1pcPHTxc-JjGn-tlmv0ZOZPdx4PAniH3tBVd5gm_5vkQrDlJINlDdA3S77SsUXTKIoUZTjxCKcNd&sig=AHIEtbQMjPMSH9Vk2W_90RDJ5hKQLiY_GA

[Colmena]

Ray & Glenn,

Thanks for these helpful and prompt replies.

Since my query I also came upon that reference to the Rodman in the PG papers, which indicates that it is not about the topic I was hoping for: the evening when Kane meets Susan, instead of arriving at the WMW.

I'm a maximalist as opposed to a debunker on the topic of the import of Rosebud, and am looking forward to seeing how Carringer analyses it, as a debunker. Since my understanding is, at this point, that if you take Rosebud to be merely a gimmick, a MacGuffin, etc. then it can't bear analysis.

Welles himself is a sometimes debunker, but also treats Rosebud very respectfully in his deposition, the one that's included in the Brady bio, and is also posted here at W-net. Which despite the obvious duplicity of being designed to rule out the focus on Hearst, is one of the best encapsulations of CK I've come upon.

Colmena

[RayKelly]

There is a wealth of Rosebud material on the site.

You may be interested in reading Andrew Sarris reveals the mystery behind “ROSEBUD” in Orson Welles’s CITIZEN KANE: It was really Herman J. Mankiewicz’s Bicycle! at http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=691

[Colmena]

Ray,

Thanks for the Sarris tip... which I've read. Perhaps here.

While Rosebud was Mank's idea, perhaps it might have also resonated significantly for Welles because, like Kane, his childhood was truncated?

As a maximalist I find that not only is the sled a potent symbol, not a gimmick, but that it can (contrary to Thatcher's final pessimism) serve as an important piece of the puzzle of Kane's life, and the larger meaning of CK.

I'll read the Carringer article this today.

Colmena

[Colmena]

The Carringer essay is excellent, the best discussion of Rosebud I've come upon, & esp. stimulating for me because it is so opposed to my own interpretation. He sustains the Kael debunking, holding that CK comes out of a tradition of muckraking comedy, via Mank. He offers an extensive discussion of the significance of the shattered globe. For RC, the final disclosure of Rosebud is not empty, but significant (paradoxically) as a failure of meaning, and as the vindication of Thompson's pessimism contra Rawlston. It points back to the impossibility of fitting the 5 different reports about Kane into a coherent tale.

Quite the opposite of my approach, noted in my prior post, where the sled is both meaningful, and also serves to solve the puzzle of K.

Thanks again for the link!

Colmena

[Colmena]

Glenn,

I just re-read this:
"Having understood the meaning of "rosebud" emotionally (as well as in terms of plot) at the age of ten, when I saw CITIZEN KANE first run in the little Ohio town where I was born..."

That's amazing! To get Rosebud as a child, even younger than Kane in his snow scene, right? So that when you came to the burning sled you could recall his childlike happiness, out in the snow? Lucky you.

I think that for most first viewings of CK, so much has happened in between that the happiness in the snow has been forgotten, lost... and so the "Ah-hah... it's the sled!" arrives more as an anti-climax, gimmick, a "way to get off" as Welles puts it.

I didn't see CK until college, and couldn't get it until after seeing Ambersons, after "getting" the MAs.

Colmena

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Colmena: Somewhere on Wellesnet, I have an account of that grand day, one of many, when my father, mother, and I trooped down to Shea's Theater, in Geneva, Ohio, on a Sunday afternoon in the late Spring of 1941. Simply put, though we had heard Welles many times on the Radio, this was the first time we were to see him in action. I was enthralled by CITIZEN KANE, from first to last, and I was weeping when I saw the sled cast upon the fire, all the meaning churning within me. Afterwards, neighbors of ours in the small town, gathered in groups in the lobby. There was a good deal of both awe and head scratching, but the most common question was, "What did all that mean?"

Looking up at the anguished elders looming above me, I proudly proceeded to tell them, "Don't you see? When he was a little boy, he lost his sled, and that was the last thing, he thought of!" A number of eyes were rolled toward the ornate ceiling of the theater, whether in derision or wonder was also a question, maybe. But Ma and Pa were proud of me.

If you would like to read my extension of that idea, less scholarly than Dr. Carringer's, look at this review I wrote for Epinions over a decade ago:

http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu- ... 741497-bd4

I hope we have been able to help, Colmena.

Glenn

[Colmena]

Glenn,

Thanks for the link to your essay, with all kinds of background that I didn't know about.

And if you can lead me to the larger description of your first viewing, I'd enjoy that as well.
I can't think of a better entry into the complexity of CK as your own.

Where did you find this scene of Kane and Raymond at his son's grave?
And do you know where this poem ("from the Persian..."?) comes from, who wrote it?

It reminds me of Ozymandius, of course, as well as the opening scene of Xanadu, which (in the screenplay) concludes with:

"Moss, moss, moss.
Ankor Wat, the night the last King died..."

A dying king whose wife has just left him, and who has no issue.
And an only child. So he is the last of his line.

--much appreciated,

Colmena

[Glenn Anders]

Colmena: The poem as quoted is difficult to track down. You may find it on page 201 of "the final script" of CITIZEN KANE by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, dated June 18, 1941. The scene comes very late in the proposed action. The full script is 209 pages, long even in those times. Welles cut and added scenes later, sometimes while shooting on the set. One supposes that either Mankiewicz or Welles lifted the verse from a Persian source.

My research did turn up a word for word plagiarism of my setting (decorated with lovely colored Persian designs) in the following blog:

http://newcombat.net/Conversation/2010/ ... rd-burton/

However, whoever the editor and Poet Michael Gushue are, they desecrate the poem itself by whacking off its last lines and attaching a cliched homily. The lively comments which follow the entry do come to the most likely conclusion that the poem in the script is a gloss from a story in Sir Richard Burton's Arabian Nights.

Alas, colmena, the full account of my first encounter with CITIZEN KANE is lost to me, too. [You must implore the Wizards of Wellesnet to compose a real index, where all the lore and insights of past years may be unearthed anew.] Really though, my original account was probably not much more detailed than the précis I've given you.

Given enough time, you will have opportunity to find many wonders here.

Glenn