Simon Callow on Orson Welles (BBC Radio, 8th May 2018)

[jbrooks]

It might be thinly sourced, but it hasn't been debunked.

[nickleschichoney]

Discredited, debunked... We're arguing semantics, now.

[Wich2]

Gore Vidal, when asked about where he heard this, could only reply that he got this factoid from Charles Lederer who got it from Marion Davies: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/08/17/rosebud/.

So, the rosebud-as-clitoris (I misremembered what exact part it was equated with) thing is total hearsay.

Hearsay is not always wrong.

(Would you expect such info to be in a notarized Court document?)

[jbrooks]

Discredited, debunked... We're arguing semantics, now.

It isn't semantics. Debunked means disproven. It hasn't been disproven. It's a Hollywood rumor/legend. It might be fabricated, but it also might be true. Certainly it's plausible that Lederer and/or Mankiewicz learned this from Hearst or Davies. It isn't the type of thing that is likely to have rock solid sourcing in any event.

[nickleschichoney]

Frank Brady couldn't trace this bit of hearsay any further than texts from the 1970s. Considering CITIZEN KANE was written about extensively beforehand, it should have appeared somewhere. That absence of trace pretty well debunks the rumor.

[nickleschichoney]

Hearsay is not always wrong.

But when it's not substantiated, it should be dismissed. If this story were true, it would have been found in texts written prior to the 1970s.

Certainly it's plausible that Lederer and/or Mankiewicz learned this from Hearst or Davies.

Perhaps, but that doesn't matter. The fact is that gossipers like Gore Vidal, writing 30-50 years later, are the sole sources that Mankiewicz and/or Lederer heard from Hearst or Davies that "Rosebud" referred to Davies's clitoris. It's worthless hearsay.

I honestly didn't think anybody still took this story seriously.

Can we talk about Jaglom taping Welles again? We got off-topic.

[jbrooks]

Frank Brady couldn't trace this bit of hearsay any further than texts from the 1970s. Considering CITIZEN KANE was written about extensively beforehand, it should have appeared somewhere. That absence of trace pretty well debunks the rumor.

Might there be a reasonable explanation for why this story (even if true) didn't end up in any published book or article before the 1970s? The rules of polite society were a bit different back then. I would expect that there were not too many books or respectable articles discusisng female private parts in 1941 or for the first few decades that followed. How many pre-1970s books or articles discuss Rock Hudson's homosexuality?

[Wich2]

Hearsay is not always wrong.

But when it's not substantiated, it should be dismissed.

Disagree. It means it should be considered, "Inconclusive Evidence."

If this story were true, it would have been found in texts written prior to the 1970s.

As already noted, that may have something to do with the tenor of the times.

-Craig

[nickleschichoney]

But it's not just that it wasn't reported before the 1970s. Unlike with Rock Hudson, for whose homosexuality there are several direct accounts from eyewitnesses who knew him, the "Rosebud" rumor's only witnesses are later provocateurs like Gore Vidal; John Houseman himself denied the Rosebud-as-clitoris story, and no serious Welles or Mankiewicz biographer I've read accepts it. It simply doesn't have a reliable pedigree.

This is not a case of inconclusive evidence. This is an absence of evidence.

It doesn't even make sense as an explanation. If Rosebud is Marion Davies's clitoris, why connect the name "Rosebud" to something from Kane's childhood and not, say, Susan Alexander? Why go to that length to include some salacious detail from Hearst's personal life but give it to something disconnected from anything inspired by Marion Davies? Granted, it's Susan's snowglobe that makes Kane think of Rosebud, but he's obviously thinking about his sled, not the snowglobe itself.

On the other hand, the explanation given by Mankiewicz in the Lundberg case (McGilligan's Young Orson, p. 697), that it was the racehorse Old Rosebud, makes much more sense. Mankiewicz bet on Old Rosebud, won, and celebrated -- in 1914, his first year at Columbia University. This event, for Mank, represented freedom from his berating father and family. Hence, the connection of Rosebud with Kane's childhood.

[nickleschichoney]

Can we go back to talking about Jaglom? This entire aside has been a diversion from the main topic.

[jbrooks]

It doesn't even make sense as an explanation. If Rosebud is Marion Davies's clitoris, why connect the name "Rosebud" to something from Kane's childhood and not, say, Susan Alexander? Why go to that length to include some salacious detail from Hearst's personal life but give it to something disconnected from anything inspired by Marion Davies? Granted, it's Susan's snowglobe that makes Kane think of Rosebud, but he's obviously thinking about his sled, not the snowglobe itself.

Assuming the rumor is true, it would not have been meant as an explanation of anything. Rosebud in the film was the sled from Kane's childhood -- the symbol of all that Kane had lost. The viewer would not have been expected to know anything about Hearst's pet name for Marion Davies' private parts or to recognize the reference. It simply would have been an inside joke -- intended to amuse Mank and his friends or possibly intended to annoy Hearst.

If Houseman did deny it, that would be significant evidence against, since he would presumably have known about the reference if true -- given his close work with Mank on the script.

I would note also that Frank Mankiewicz -- Mank's son -- denied it too. But his explanation differs from what Mank apparently said in the Lundberg case.

Frank Mankiewicz also disputes the legend that his dad provocatively named the film’s famous Rosebud sled after Hearst’s supposed nickname for a private part of his mistress, actress Marion Davies.

The son writes that Rosebud was actually the brand of his dad’s first bicycle, stolen from in front of the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, public library “the very first day my father had it’’ — a theft that a researcher confirmed in police records from 1908. The father was traumatized because his parents refused to replace the bicycle and often discussed this with his psychoanalyst around the time he was writing “Citizen Kane.’’

[nickleschichoney]

I guess we're not going back to Jaglom after all.

The viewer would not have been expected to know anything about Hearst's pet name for Marion Davies' private parts or to recognize the reference. It simply would have been an inside joke -- intended to amuse Mank and his friends or possibly intended to annoy Hearst.

And since it was such an "inside joke" that no one outside Mank's and Hearst's circles would get, it would have been far more sensible for Mankiewicz to link it to the Marion Davies character Susan Alexander, and NOT to a part of Heart's (Kane's) childhood. That would be the most logical way to take advantage of such an inside joke -- to actually put "Rosebud" where it would make sense for those in on the joke!

If Houseman did deny it...

He did, to Philip French...

I would note also that Frank Mankiewicz -- Mank's son -- denied it too. But his explanation differs from what Mank apparently said in the Lundberg case.

A variation on that explanation is found in Richard Meryman's biography Mank: "Rosebud, the symbol of Herman's damaging childhood, was not a sled. It was a bicycle" (p. 20); "Herman's bike meant freedom from both his father, the primary cause of his early scars, and from his home, where he did not get enough love" (p. 21).

There's nothing about Rosebud-brand bicycles here -- hence, the origin of the name "Rosebud" is unexplained in this older account. Frank Mankiewicz seems to have mixed things up and said "Rosebud" was the brand of the bicycle to explain where the name came from.

But THE POINT IS THIS: No one worth their salt (except later 9/11-truther Gore Vidal) takes the Rosebud-as-clit story seriously.

[Wich2]

I guess we're not going back to Jaglom after all.

One poster's Thread Drift is another's Interesting Conversation.

But THE POINT IS THIS: No one worth their salt (except later 9/11-truther Gore Vidal) takes the Rosebud-as-clit story seriously.

By golly, I guess YOU told US!

-Craig

[jbrooks]

And since it was such an "inside joke" that no one outside Mank's and Hearst's circles would get, it would have been far more sensible for Mankiewicz to link it to the Marion Davies character Susan Alexander, and NOT to a part of Heart's (Kane's) childhood. That would be the most logical way to take advantage of such an inside joke -- to actually put "Rosebud" where it would make sense for those in on the joke!

I don't understand this point at all. The word Kane says on his deathbed has to relate to his childhood because that's the entire point of the movie. So it can't relate to Susan Alexander Kane because she's not what Kane is lamenting. Are you suggestng that Mank should have changed the entire point of the script to make his inside joke more direct?

The way I'd imagine this played out is that Mank gets the idea for Kane to say this one cryptic word that the reporters need to spend the film trying to understand. And since Mank knows that "Rosebud" is Hearst's pet name for Davie's privates, Mank picks that name because it amuses him to do so. But he wasn't going to change the main theme of the film just to serve his inside joke. And he wouldn't have intended anyone outside of his or Hearst's inside circle to "get it."

[nickleschichoney]

The word Kane says on his deathbed has to relate to his childhood because that's the entire point of the movie. So it can't relate to Susan Alexander Kane because she's not what Kane is lamenting.

Then you still have a problem of why Mankiewicz picked a pet name for Marion Davies's clit to denote a part of Kane's childhood. Why not pick some other bit of Hearstiana that's actually related to Hearst's childhood -- one that would have annoyed Hearst just as much? If you go with the idea that Mank needed a name for a childhood object of Kane's, then why did he pick Hearst's pet name for a part of Davies's genitals to apply to it? Did Mank do it just to randomly stick in a private joke, however much it didn't fit the content of his own script?

By golly, I guess YOU told US! -Craig

Please don't get indignant with me. This is a story that's been shot full of holes a thousand times and you're both still defending it for goodness-knows-what reason.

One poster's Thread Drift is another's Interesting Conversation.

This "Interesting Conversation" would only interest trolls...