Welles' first draft for Kane?

[Colmena]

In his essay on "Mank" (found here) Joseph McBride refers to
"the parallel draft of the script Welles was working on in Beverly Hills at the same time Mank was writing his long draft in Victorville."

Did this simultaneous first draft survive? If so, where is it?
Did it have a title?
Did Welles combine material from his draft and Mank's?

I can't recall anyone claiming to have read it. I don't believe it was referred to in Carringer's essay on the seven scripts of Kane. My recollection is that he (RC) focused on the progressive alterations of Mank's "The American" by Welles, without pointing to the interpolation of his Beverly Hills draft. Since Welles and Mank discussed their shared topic beforehand, these two drafts would have overlapped, to some degree.

-- thank you,
And have a Happy New Year!

[Le Chiffre]

Good question, Colmena.

Here's part of an interview that Joseph McBride did with Susan King of GoldDerby recently:
https://www.goldderby.com/article/2020/ ... kane-mank/

King: Pauline Kael wrote her controversial ‘Raising Kane’ two-part piece in 1971 and you also wrote a rebuttal that year to her piece. I was wondering while you were doing ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ if he ever talked to you about Kael’s piece.

McBride: I never talked to Welles about that. Actually, the only interesting thing was in May of 1971, when we were shooting ‘The Other Side of the Wind.’ There’s a scene where I get kicked out of John Huston’s car and I’m standing [on the road] in Coldwater Canyon and in the background, you see a white ranch house. Welles pointed to it when we were shooting. He said ‘Do you see that house? Contrary to what you’ve read, that’s where most of ‘Citizen Kane’ was written.’ In other words, that’s where he was writing his drafts and doing his rewrites. That’s the only thing he said to me about that piece

As I mentioned earlier in the Mank thread, if Welles's Beverly Hills/Coldwater Canyon draft were found, it would probably put an immediate end to any script credit controversy. Amazing that it was apparently lost. So is Welles's word the only evidence we have that it ever existed?

In the 1987 South Bank Show with Houseman, he is asked how much of the Victorville draft that he and Mank worked on became part of the finished film. Houseman replies almost all of it, in terms of character and plot.

However, even if Welles created no material for the Kane script, but simply modified Mankiewicz's material, it was still a no-brainer for him to take screenwriting credit, because that was part of his original contract with RKO. Robert Carringer and Harlan Lebo have since provided evidence that clearly shows that Welles's contributions or modifications to the script were quite extensive.

Pauline Kael even offered a later retraction of sorts in her book 5001 NIGHTS AT THE MOVIES when she indicated in her CITIZEN KANE writeup that the script was "written by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles."

[MartynH]

I would take what Houseman said with a pinch of salt as he was very bitter to Welles. I recall in an interview he was talking about someone he was working with at the time - can't recall when - and he mentioned Welles. I recall he said something like "we're making real films"

[Colmena]

"Pauline Kael even offered a later retraction of sorts in her book 5001 NIGHTS AT THE MOVIES when she indicated in her CITIZEN KANE writeup that the script was "written by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles."

Thanks for that factoid!

It's notable that "Raising Kane' was not contained within the 860 page PK compilation published by the Library of America.
I'd like to know why not?

In the recent PK doc, "What she said, the art of PK" for two seconds you see the title page of the Suber essay /thesis? that she ripped off, i.e. took credit for. With not even a footnote of acknowledgement. It's a big shame that Suber never published his work on Kane!

But in asking about this supposed first draft, I wasn't re-visiting the PK topic, which I take to be a closed case. It's just that this draft would be a fascinating document, if it exists.

[Le Chiffre]

I would take what Houseman said with a pinch of salt as he was very bitter to Welles. I recall in an interview he was talking about someone he was working with at the time - can't recall when - and he mentioned Welles. I recall he said something like "we're making real films"

That reminds of the story, maybe in Leaming's book, that when Burt Reynolds was approached as one of the "six bankable stars" that Welles needed to get financing for THE BIG BRASS RING, his agent wrote back to Welles that his client was too busy doing "real movies" instead.

Also in the Houseman South Bank Show from 1987, Mercury player Norman Lloyd is seen offering the following opinion: "After (Citizen Kane), Houseman still had interesting things to do in his life. Orson Welles became a beached whale. Particularly the last 20 years...nothing! Never mind all these movies that the film societies rave about, and that no one will ever see...or would even be interested in seeing."

I don't know how bitter Welles and Houseman were towards each other. They did plenty of bickering and swiping at each other in print, but the fact that they had what is generally described as a "cordial" reunion on Merv Griffin in 1979 suggests that they didn't hate each other that much. I thought Bogdanovich describing Houseman's giving his side of the story in RUN-THROUGH as "treachery" was stretching the point a bit, but that's just my opinion.