Interview with George Coulouris and Bernard Herrmann on] “The Citizen Kane Book”

[Steve Paradis]

Gilling, Ted. “[Interview with George Coulouris and Bernard Herrmann on] “The Citizen Kane Book” Sight and Sound 41, no 2 (Spring 1972: 71-73
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“The Citizen Kane Book”
George Coulouris and Bernard Herrmann with Ted Gilling

(George Coulouris, one of the original Mercury Players, was assigned in Citizen Kane the role of Walter Parks Thatcher, Kane's guardian. Bernard Herrmann composed the film's music score-his first film assignment. Each separately examined “The Citizen Kane Book” prior to its British publication and national press reviews. )

HERRMANN: If anyone who hadn't seen Citizen Kane judged the picture by the quality of the frame enlargements in this book, I doubt if he would want to see it. They're very poor for a book which costs six pounds. I've seen better reproductions in small paperbacks like Focus on Citizen Kane. I'd have preferred a book of clear stills with a running commentary of the picture accompanying the script.

COULOURIS: I resent Pauline Kael's attempt to explain the film so largely in terms of Herman Mankiewicz's past work. If you look at Mankiewicz's credits at the back of the book, it's hard to connect any of the stuff he wrote with Citizen Kane. Most of it is superficial, shallow entertainment. The whole style of her essay is superficial. She tries to say that Orson copied this and that and that some of the film was connected with a previous assignment of Gregg Toland. That doesn't interest me in the least. The only thing that matters in the end is the quality of the finished picture.

“Young interviewers ... don't bother to check the statements of their subjects …and thus leave the impression that the self-aggrandising stories they record are history … If one trusts what appears in print, Welles not only wrote Kane but just about everything half¬way good in any picture he ever acted in.”(page 47)

HERRMANN: There seem to be two schools of film criticism. One wants to prove that directors like Welles and Hitchcock did everything and no one else got a look in. The other wants to prove that certain directors never did what they got credit for. Orson is evidently one of the latter in Miss Kael's view.

“Those who admire Citizen Kane, which is constructed to present different perspectives of a man's life, seem naively willing to accept Welles' view of its making, namely that it is his sole creation. (page 48)

[The secretary of Herman Mankiewicz] says that Welles didn't write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane.” (page 38)

HERRMANN: I've only worked with Orson once since Kane and that was on The Magnificent Ambersons. I've seen him only occasionally over the years, so I could hardly be considered sycophantic, or part of a Welles coterie. But I was associated with him, as Bernstein says, 'before the beginning….' and to try to take away the achievement of a remarkable artist at that period is terrible. He did give Herman Mankiewicz credit from the word go. This is an attempt to say just the opposite.

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COULOURIS: Supposing that you isolate the script. Whether Mankiewicz did it or not, it was still superior to 99 per cent of the material being shot in Hollywood at that time. I've always wanted to be in pictures that had guts and meaning. Actors want this sort of material because there's nothing that makes them look better. But the whole power of the film is visual; it's not dialogue. The first thing I learned in switching from the stage to films is that lines become subordinate. There's nothing worse than the endless dialogue you hear in those early talkies with Ruth Chatterton doing Frederick Lonsdale plays. So apart from the fact that Welles' direction was vital, the script has marvellous material and should be properly credited.

HERRMANN: Film being a mosaic art, that doesn't alter the fact that it's still Welles' film. Mr. Mankiewicz has not been in oblivion. The screenplay credit says 'By Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles'. That's what we should accept and be content to live with. His name has been on the credits for everyone to see from the beginning. I have the music credit for Kane, Welles didn't write it, but that's not the point. It's part of the picture. The newsreel in Kane was cut and scored by the newsreel department at RKO at Orson's request. He said they had their own crazy way of cutting and they were the only people to do it.

What Miss Kael doesn't understand is that the film in the end has nothing to do with the damn screenplay really. It's the springboard. Nobody goes to look at Kane just for the story. It's how it's done. Audiences are like children; they don't mind hearing the same story over and over again. It's how you tell it. It depends on so many factors. Lighting, camera work, set design, performances-anything could have upset the equilibrium and sabotaged the picture. Whoever wrote the script, it wouldn't have been Citizen Kane with anyone but Wells directing it.

Part of the real fascination of Kane for me is that it's one of the few pictures ever made which constructs the portrait of a character. I've always thought that Orson was influenced by a popular novel of the time called “I Am Jonathan Scrivener”. All its characters talk about a man they know. In the last sentence, the doorbell rings and the butler announces Mr. Jonathan Scrivener. You never see him. It's famous and Orson was very fond of it. But there are always various influences when a work of art is developing.

“Mankiewicz was trying to give a comprehensive view of the contradictions that emerge when an idealist attempts to succeed in business and politics. Fragments of this are left, but their meaning is no longer clear. “ (page 60)

“[Mankiewicz] couldn't write the character as a tragic fallen hero because he couldn't resist making him funny. Mankiewicz had been hacking out popular comedies and melodramas far too long to write drama; one does not dictate tragedy to a steno-typist.” (page 73)

COULOURIS: I don't think Pauline Kael succeeds in building up Mankiewicz at Welles' expense because it's not consistent. Half the time, she's trying to prove that the movie is a shallow masterpiece-kitsch which Mankiewicz was suitable to do as a wisecracking, shallow person. The other half, she's saying the picture is marvellous.

HERRMANN: It's part of the whole current critical scene to belittle most of this century's achievements. Richard Strauss is kitsch and a second-rater like Mahler is suddenly a master. The trouble with this book is a confrontation between amateurs and professionals. These people who write books about Kane are amateurs. Why doesn't a first class director or cameraman write about it or get Mr. Welles to talk, as Peter Bogdanovich is doing?

“Welles had a vitalising, spellbinding talent: he was the man who brought out the best in others and knew how to use it. What keeps Citizen Kane alive is that Welles wasn't prevented from trying things out ... Kane is not a great work that suddenly burst out of a young prodigy's head ... It is a superb example of collaboration.” (pages 74-75)

COULOURIS: What you have to ask is what the result might have been with any other director. I think she hasn't completely understood the movie atmosphere at that time. She is right that there was an immense feeling of frustration in everybody; they all enjoyed making a lot of money and all yearned to do something marvellous. But the point is that Welles struck it lucky in another medium, got carte blanche in Hollywood and refused to throwaway a magnificent tactical position. I think that movies are particularly attuned to gigantic themes and Orson developed one in his first film. Whether you credit Toland or Mankiewicz for their contributions or not, Orson is still the focal point because of his breakthrough. He attracted talented people to himself and achieved, with their help, something special.

“For the people who did much of the work on Welles' projects, the temptation must have been strong to expose what they considered this saviour's feet of clay. “(page 38)

HERRMANN: I've done over forty films since Citizen Kane and none of them was in the same league. That doesn't make it the endall masterpiece, but if I'd had the luck to end my career working with Orson instead of starting with him, I'd still say that he was by far the most exciting person to make a film with because of his sheer creativeness. I've worked with other distinguished directors, but they're very secretive about their vision. With Welles, you always knew what he was looking for. He was precocious, with a great streak of originality. He has no intellectual backbone as an artist; he's a great improviser in the sense that Beecham was a great improvisational conductor. The Mercury Players were a superb orchestra. When Orson had his own people around him, things happened. I'm not saying that Mankiewicz didn't make a contribution. I daresay he did. Everybody did, including most of Orson's drinking partners like Preston Sturges and John Barrymore. Orson has never said it was his sole creation. Everybody made his own contribution and that's film-making. It's not a mystique.

“What I …now found almost mysteriously beautiful was Orson Welles' performance … Welles is one of the most self-conscious of actors, and this is what is so nakedly revealed when he's playing a young man of his own age and he's insecure about what's coming through… I think there's no doubt that he's more sure of himself when he's playing this somewhat older Kane ...” (page 55)

COULOURIS: Welles was rarely satisfied with his own acting. He felt nervous and uncomfortable and often took it out on somebody else. We had a peculiar relationship in which we made fun of each other. But I made many films after Kane and one thing I've noticed is its intensity and power-more than would be tolerable in many films. The scene in which we argue back and forth in the newspaper office is not conventional movie acting. With other actors or another director, it would have been 'brought down' a lot and lost a good deal. There were no great portentous conferences. It was pragmatic trial and error.

“'Foible' is the word that Welles' former associates tend to apply to his assertions of authorship. “(page 40)

HERRMANN: Both of us have criticisms of Welles; we haven't even gone into his pros and cons, but it would be very difficult to sit by and see this kind of injustice done to him. Neither this nor Charles Higham's book on Orson has his participation. I'm sure he's having a giant, Falstaffian laugh at them because all these books and essays are like Kane itself. Everybody's trying to find out what Rosebud is ... But Orson is quite right. Why should he waste his time with these so-called intellectuals saying that he had a formula for something or that someone else did part of the work? I admire him for that. Kane was arrived at through an inner compulsion on the part of Orson Welles. Having known him as I did, I would say that it was part of the fibre of the man.

[Pauline Kael's essay refers to Ferdinand Lundberg's 1947 lawsuit against Welles. Mankiewicz and RKO for copyright infringement of the book 'Imperial Hearst'. Having examined Welles' testimony given in 1950. she concludes]. “He seemed more concerned with continuing the old pretence that the movie was not about Hearst than with refuting Lundberg's charge of plagiarism.” (page 81)

HERRMANN: Whatever inspires an artist is his own affair, whether it's William Randolph Hearst, Harold McCormick or Joe Doakes. There was a tradition in America, particularly in the Middle West, where Orson was born, of this type of millionaire. Orson heard all the legends, particularly about McCormick, when he was a boy. Dr. Bernstein told me that the picture was not specifically about Hearst. If old man Hearst hated Welles so much, why did he employ Welles' former guardian as one of his physicians? Bernstein said that

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Mankiewicz was trying to give a comprehensive view of the contradictions that emerge. Hearst had Kane run for him toward the end of his life and asked 'What's all the fuss about?' I think it's a bit of everybody of that period, about a man who has Aladdin's lamp and can do anything he likes. In a way, it's a dreamlike autobiography of Welles.

“When [Welles] was read a long list of events in the film that parallel Hearst's life … he came up with the surprising information that the film dealt 'quite as fully with the world of grand opera as with the world of newspaper publishing'.” (pages 81-82)

HERRMANN: When we were kids, there used to be a 'tune detector' called Sigmund Spaeth. He used to be able to prove that no matter what the orchestra was playing, it was from something else. Miss Kael is trying to be a 'script detector’. There are rumours about the identity of the girl on whom Schlesinger based Darling. But who cares? What counts is that it is a wonderful film. It reminds me of when Brahms wrote his great First Symphony, many supersensitive people pointed out to him that the melody of the last movement was the same as the Beethoven Ninth Symphony. He said, 'Any jackass would notice that.'

COULOURIS: It's all academic, isn't it? How many angels could dance on the head of a pin or what would the 'Eroica' have been if Napoleon hadn't become Emperor? While the researchers try to discover Napoleon's effect on Beethoven, who is assessing the symphony?

“Mankiewicz had been taken off Night at the Opera but what he and Welles---with the assistance of Bernard Herrmann---- did to the opera in Citizen Kane was in almost exactly the same style, and as funny ... As Mankiewicz planned it, Susan was to make her debut in Massenet's Thais ... but to use Thais would have cost a fee, so Bernard Herrmann wrote choice excerpts of a fake French-Oriental opera-Salammbo” (pages 66,67)

HERRMANN: Pauline Kael was never in touch with me while the book was being written. The musical information is rubbish. If the rest of her opinions are as accurate as her statements about the music, none of it is to be taken very seriously. She's trying to say that after bringing a group of people to Hollywood and paying them salaries for months, they couldn't have paid a modest fee for Thais. The truth is that no music in Thais or any other opera would create the impact of the scene-a terrified girl lost in the quicksand of a powerful orchestra. The orchestra plays for forty seconds to develop a tremendous tension before she sings. It had nothing to do with the Brothers Marx.

“Mankiewicz, catering to the public, gave it the empty, stupid, no-talent blonde it wanted ... Movie audiences assumed that Marion Davies was a pathetic whiner like Susan Alexander ... “(page 70)

HERRMANN: Miss Kael is so wrong when she pokes fun at Susan. The girl arouses Kane's protective instincts. He wouldn't have been attracted by a glamorous beauty. He saw them all day long. Orson is the greatest Romantic director the films have ever had, and next in line is Hitchcock.

“[Mankiewicz and Welles] were big eaters, big talkers, big spenders, big talents; they were not men of what IS ordinarily called 'good character'. They were out to get not only Hearst but each other. “(page 33)

COULOURIS: Imaginary twaddle.

HERRMANN: I found that in my professional dealings with Orson, he was always a pro. What he did the rest of the time is his personal life and nothing to do with our work. It's of no interest to me whatever.

“There are monsters and there are also sacred monsters. Both Welles and Mankiewicz deserve places in the sacred monster category ... [They] wanted to do something that would cap the invasion of the Martians ...” (page 32)

HERRMANN: Rubbish.

COULOURIS: Quite legitimate, I should think. Why the hell not? Showmanship is part of movies. Why not a subject which would electrify, and startle people? I waited ten months to do the picture while they prepared it. Orson called me to his house one evening. It was on a mountain top outside Los Angeles. We went out on to the terrace and saw the whole city lit up. The war was on. 'Look,' he said, 'one of the few cities left in the world with the lights on.' Then he described Citizen Kane to me, outlining the whole story, standing there with the stars above and the lights of Los Angeles below. They were working on the script then.

HERRMANN: I think that part of the resentment Miss Kael shows toward Kane stems from the fact that it's not from a play or book, but from an original screenplay. It's always written that Hitchcock, for example, created Psycho or Vertigo. They were written from Robert Bloch by Joseph Stefano, and by Alec Coppel and Sam Taylor from Boileau and Narcejac. Hitchcock didn't have the idea of Psycho, but Orson had the idea of Kane.

“The scope of Welles' reputation seems to have infuriated Hollywood; it was a cultural reproach from the East.” (page 40)

HERRMANN: That is true. All of us were resented for coming to Hollywood. In my own case, I was told by the heads of many music departments that there was no room for people like me there. They had a tight little corporation going.

COULOURIS: There was no resentment of the actors. I had to take a job with Warner Brothers in All This and Heaven Too because I was off the payroll while they were preparing Kane. I didn't find any resentment at the studios, but it was different for Benny because he's a very good musician and he would be taking a whole department away from somebody and they are all scared of that. But they're not scared of an actor in the same way. I thought it was a wonderful idea for Orson to use radio actors whose faces weren't known, to make a fresh impact.

“American writers ... went to Hollywood and ... experienced it as a prostitution of their talents ... Though more than one fell in love with movies and thus suffered not only from personal frustration but from the corruption of the great, still new art ...” (page 10)

HERRMANN: I think the greatest thing that ever happened to Herman Mankiewicz, whatever his contribution, was that he met Welles, not the other way round. If Welles hadn't created Kane, he would have made some other equally remarkable picture. Mankiewicz's credits don't show any other remarkable scripts. His only moment in the sun was when he came across Orson Welles. And none of us on the film, including Mr. Mankiewicz, ever thought that this was anything anybody was going to worry about. It's a job of work one did, a part of one's professional life.

You know, most screenwriters of the period were 'the Great American Novelist' being whores and hoping for better things. They were always about to write a great novel or great play while demeaning themselves with movie writing. I was at a party at William Dieterle's house which Thomas Mann attended. One of these writers, quite drunk, came up to him and said something like 'How could a wonderful writer like you even talk to miserable whores like us?' Mann looked at him and said, 'My dear sir, you are not big enough to make yourself so small.'

[Colmena]

Thanks so much for posting this!
I've been hoping to read it... for a long time.
There are number of good quotes here,
and so relevant because GC and BH were right there, present at the creation.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks a bunch, Steve. That's a fascinating interview.