New book by Mank son says Welles wrote none of Kane

[Wellesnet]

Mankiewicz book repeats lie that Orson Welles did not co-write ‘Citizen Kane’:
http://www.wellesnet.com/mankiewicz-boo ... izen-kane/

[Wich2]

I think that kind of thing is a reaction to the OTHER extreme, which we all know about:

OW did create some justified ill feeling among his hardworking partners, especially in the early days, by going along with/helping to maintain the myth that he was The Young Genius Who Did It All.

-Craig

[RayKelly]

I think that kind of thing is a reaction to the OTHER extreme, which we all know about:

Frank Mankiewicz was the head of NPR and a respected journalist. I am troubled that he would be ignorant of such well-documented evidence or, worse, ignore it to bolster his father's legacy.

[Wich2]

Of course, Ray.

I wasn't offering an excuse; just a possible explanation for why, over time, these "reactionary" theories pop up.

Best,
-Craig

[Roger Ryan]

I think it comes down to Kane routinely being called the "greatest film ever made". There is a prestige to Frank Mankiewicz being able to say his father wrote it and the temptation to give his father all the credit, a flattering "revelation" (no matter that it's old, dismissed news) that elevates the memoir. I find it interesting that the only other Welles project to meet with similar controversy is the War of the Worlds broadcast which had Koch claiming he invented all of it. The notoriety and success of the two projects is what brings out these claims; no one has seemed eager to "debunk" Welles' contributions to all of his works that are considered less exemplary.

[Wellesnet]

From Raising Kane by Pauline Kael:

Welles probably made suggestions in his early conversations with Mankiewicz and since he received copies of the work weekly while it was in progress at Victorville, he may have given advice by phone or letter. Later, he almost certainly made suggestions for cuts that helped Mankiewicz hammer the script into tighter form, and he is known to have made a few changes on the set. But Mrs. (Rita) Alexander, who took the dictation from Mankiewicz, from the first paragraph to the last, and then, when the first draft was completed and they all went back to Los Angeles, did the secretarial work at Mankiewicz’s house on the rewriting and the cuts, and who then handled the script at the studio until after the film was shot, says that Welles didn’t write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane.

Here's a page on "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" by Robert Carringer, written in 1978 for the periodical "Critical Inquiry". Carringer's original article is available for download for $10. Jonathan Rosenbaum says it goes into greater detail about Welles's contributions to the Kane script than does Carringer's later book, "The Making of Citizen Kane":
http://philpapers.org/rec/CARTSO-31

The first two drafts of the Citizen Kane script were written by Herman Mankiewicz and John Houseman in seclusion in the desert at Victorville, California, during March, April, and May 1940. Officially, Houseman was there as an editor. But part of his job was to ride herd on Mankiewicz, whose drinking habits were legendary and whose screenwriting credentials unfortunately did not include a reputation for seeing things through. Detailed accounts of the Victorville interlude have been given by Houseman in his autobiography and by Kael in "Raising Kane."

There was constant interchange between Victorville and Hollywood, with Houseman going in to confer on the script and Welles sending up emissaries and regularly receiving copies of the work in progress. Welles in turn was working over the draft pages with the assistance of his own secretary, Katherine Trosper, and handing the revised screenplay copy in its rough state over to Amalia Kent, a script supervisor at RKO noted for her skills at breaking this kind of material down into script continuity form, who was readying it for the stenographic and various production departments.1 · 1. John Houseman, Run-Through: A Memoir , pp. 445-61. "Raising Kane," pp. 29-39.

Amalia Kent had impressed Welles with her work on the problematic first-person script for his unproduced Heart of Darkness film, and she worked directly with him on various script supervision capacities on other of his RKO projects, including The Magnificent Ambersons and the unproduced Smiler with the Knife. She also continued as the script supervisor throughout the shooting of Citizen Kane and prepared the cutting reports for the film's editor, Robert Wise. Kael gives the impression that Rita Alexander, Herman Mankiewicz's private secretary, was performing all these specialized studio functions herself.

Here is John Houseman's take on the Kane script controversy (From The South Bank Show):
https://vimeo.com/114983081

[Wich2]

I've read Houseman comments on the piece before, but hearing that "live" was very interesting - thanks.

It seems balanced, honest, and insightful about some points raised above. I do think there was a period early on when Orson - we forget, sometimes, how young he actually was then - bought into his own legend too much. (Callow, among others, confirms this.)

But life did, as it usually does, "gave him his comeuppance" for that.

-Craig

[tonyw]

Unfortunately, Callow's first vol. is biased and, as Carringer and others have shown, the claim is false. Please read today's leading article by Ray.

[Wich2]

Tony, I've read Ray's article. And I admire Orson as much as any one here - or I would not be here.

But Houseman was indeed "present at the creation," and I think Callow's work is estimable, so I don't lightly dismiss the threads they offer to the tapestry of what was. As the film under discussion itself shows, History and Biography are complex things, composed of the subjective as well as the objective.

And the Truth? That is almost always somewhere in the middle...

Best,
-Craig

[Le Chiffre]

Carringer's research leaves little doubt that Welles wrote (or rewrote) some of the Kane screenplay. Whether his contributions warranted a co-credit is probably a matter of opinion. Obviously, Houseman and Mankewicz thought not, but then, Welles's contract called for him to direct, star in and write, so the writing credit was pretty much a no-brainer anyway. Interestingly, Welles told Bogdanovich that Houseman's own contribution to the screenplay was significant enough to warrant a writing credit, but Houseman wasn't interested. As Welles put it, "it gives him more pleasure to say I didn't write it."

As far as War of the Worlds goes, I believe it was actually Welles himself who started that controversy when he attacked Hadley Cantrill's 1940 book, "The Panic Broadcast", because it gave the writing credit to Howard Koch. Obviously, the two controversies put a chip on Welles's shoulder. With the exception of The Stranger and his late projects with Oja, he never again shared writing duties on any of his projects.

[Wich2]

>I believe it was actually Welles himself who started that controversy when he attacked Hadley Cantrill's 1940 book, "The Panic Broadcast", because it gave the writing credit to Howard Koch. Obviously, the two controversies put a chip on Welles's shoulder<

With again, the greatest of admiration for OW, that is exactly the kind of thing that I was alluding to above. That particular chip was one of those which was placed on Orson's shoulder by - Mr. Welles.

It was a very unwise move for several reasons, not the least of which is simple human charity.

-Craig

[Roger Ryan]

...With the exception of The Stranger and his late projects with Oja, he never again shared writing duties on any of his projects...

I think the word "credit" should be used in place of "duties". On a number of projects, including The Lady From Shanghai (initially scripted by William Castle), the book of Mr. Arkadin (credited to Welles even though Maurice Bessy is thought to have written all of it) and Touch of Evil (a first draft done by Paul Monash - arguably changed significantly by Welles), other writers were involved but only Welles received credit.

Given the way authorship is handled in the dramatic arts, and film in particular, I don't think Welles was better or worse at taking or denying credit. In the studio system, the director was seldom given a writing credit even if he/she contributed to the screenplay before or during production. Welles, along with Preston Sturges, helped change that tradition. Still, screenplay authorship remains a difficult thing to ascertain, especially given how the Writers Guild assigns credit after arbitration (just look at how many recent films will carry a credit that reads "Screenplay by 'X' & 'Y' and 'B' & 'C' with 'W'"). According to IMDb, the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz (1939) featured contributions from 19 different writers not including L. Frank Baum! The Mercury's own Journey Into Fear was primarily scripted by Ben Hecht with contributions by Richard Collins before Welles took over with the help of Joseph Cotten. In the end, only Cotten received screenplay credit.

As to Kane, we know that Welles was responsible for writing the "1929" scene where Kane signs over the Inquirer to Thatcher as well as the "breakfast" montage. Since I consider those sequences to be the best in the film, I have no problem with Welles receiving a screenplay credit, even if all the other alterations, edits and contributions he made would be considered standard directorial input.

[Wich2]

>I have no problem with Welles receiving a screenplay credit<

"A" is generally fine; it's when OW - or anyone else - grabs for a "THE" brass ring, that things become problematic...

-Craig
(Who has done several variations of collaborative writing himself, and knows that parsing out the end result can indeed be difficult!)

[Colmena]

Carringer's very important essay on "The Scripts of CK" is also found in Naremore's _Handbook on CK_ and Gottesman's _Perspectives on CK_ (1996).

But what's so surprising about the essay, since it is obviously relevant to what Welles contributed to the successive scripts, is that he does not complete the story, and take note of all the changes between the last screenplay and the movie itself!

[MartynH]

I've always been intrigued by the first line of dialogue in the film - apart from the narration - when Kane says 'Don't believe everything you hear on the radio.' I've always seen that as an obvious Orson Welles written line poking fun at the War of the Worlds broadcast. I don't think it's likely it could have been written by anybody else. Of course it is only one line,but to say Welles didn't write any the rest of the script is, to me, fanciful. Sometimes when people wants to emphasize a point they make an extreme claim. That is what I think is going on here with the script credit.