CITIZEN KANE

Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), an enormously wealthy media proprietor, has been living alone in Florida in his vast palatial estate Xanadu for the last years of his life, with a "No trespassing" sign on the gate. He dies in a bed while holding a snow globe and utters "Rosebud..." the globe slips from his lifeless hand and smashes. Kane's death then becomes sensational news around the world. Newsreel reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) tries to find out about Kane's private life and, in particular, to discover the meaning behind his last word. The reporter interviews the great man's friends and associates, and Kane's story unfolds as a series of flashbacks. Thompson approaches Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), now an alcoholic who runs her own club, but she refuses to tell him anything. Thompson then goes to the private archive of Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), a deceased banker who served as Kane's guardian during his childhood and adolescence. It is through Thatcher's written memoirs that Thompson learns about Kane's childhood. Thompson then interviews Kane's personal business manager Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), best friend Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), Susan for a second time, and Kane's butler Raymond (Paul Stewart) at Xanadu. Flashbacks reveal that Kane's childhood was spent in poverty in Colorado (his parents ran a boarding house), until the "world's third largest gold mine" was discovered on an apparently worthless property his mother had acquired. He is forced to leave his mother (Agnes Moorehead) when she sends him away to the East Coast of the U.S. to live with Thatcher, to be educated. After gaining full control over his possessions at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business with sensationalized yellow journalism. He takes control of the newspaper, the New York Inquirer, and hires all the best journalists. His attempted rise to power is documented, including his manipulation of public opinion for the Spanish American War; his first marriage to Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), a President's niece; and his campaign for the office of governor of New York State, for which alternative newspaper headlines are created depending on the result. Kane's marriage disintegrates over the years, and he begins an affair with Susan Alexander. Both his wife and his opponent discover the affair, simultaneously ending his marriage and his political career. Kane marries his mistress, and forces her into an operatic career for which she has no talent or ambition. Kane finally allows her to abandon her singing career after she attempts suicide, but after a span of time spent in boredom and isolation in Xanadu, she ultimately leaves him. Kane spends his last years building his vast estate and lives alone, interacting only with his staff. The butler recounts that Kane had said "Rosebud" after Susan left him, right after seeing a snow globe. At Xanadu, Kane's vast number of belongings are being cataloged, ranging from priceless works of art to worthless furniture. During this time, Thompson finds that he is unable to solve the mystery and concludes that "Rosebud" will forever remain an enigma. He theorizes that "Mr. Kane was a

man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost." In the ending of the film, it is revealed to the audience that Rosebud was the name of the sled from Kane's childhoodan allusion to the only time in his life when he was truly happy. The sled, thought to be junk, is burned and destroyed by Xanadu's departing staff in a basement furnace.

William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863 August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World which led to the creation of yellow journalismsensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, but ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909, for Governor of New York in 1906, and for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1910. Nonetheless, through his newspapers and magazines, he exercised enormous political influence, and is sometimes credited with pushing public opinion in the United States into awar with Spain in 1898. Hearst was born in San Francisco to millionaire mining engineer George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. George Hearst's paternal grandfather, John Hearst, who was of Scottish origin, emigrated to America with his wife and six children in 1766 and settled in South Carolina. Their immigration to America was spurred in part by the state government's policy that encouraged the immigration of Protestants. The names "John Hearse" and "John Hearse Jr." appear on the council records on the 26th of October, 1766, being credited with meriting 400 acres (1.6 km2) and 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land on the Long Canes (in what became Abbeville District), based upon 100 acres (0.40 km2) to heads of household and 50 acres (200,000 m2) for each dependent of a Protestant immigrant. The "Hearse" spelling of the family name never was used afterward by the family members themselves, or any family of any size. A

separate theory purports that one branch of a "Hurst" family of Virginia (originally from Plymouth Colony) moved to South Carolina at about the same time and changed the spelling of its surname of over a century to that of the emigrant Hearsts. Hearst's mother was of Irish ancestry; her family came from Galway. Following preparation at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, Hearst enrolled in the Harvard College class of 1885, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Alpha chapter), the A.D. Club (a prestigious Harvard Final club), and of the Harvard Lampoon prior to his expulsion from Harvard for giving several of his professors expensive chamber pots with their names elaborately painted on the inside.[5] In 1903, Hearst married Millicent Veronica Willson (18821974), a 21-year-old chorus girl, in New York City. Evidence in Louis Pizzitola's bookHearst Over Hollywood indicates that Millicent's mother Hannah Willson ran a Tammany-connected and -protected brothel quite near the headquarters of political power in New York City at the turn of the last century. Millicent bore him five sons: George Randolph Hearst, born on April 23, 1904; William Randolph Hearst, Jr., born on January 27, 1908; John Randolph Hearst, born in 1910; and twins Randolph Apperson Hearst and David Whitmire (ne Elbert Willson) Hearst, born on December 2, 1915. Conceding an end to his political hopes, Hearst became involved in an affair with popular film actress and comedienne Marion Davies (18971961), and from about 1919, he lived openly with her in California. The affair dominated Davies' life. Millicent separated from her husband in the mid-1920s after tiring of his longtime affair with Davies, but the couple remained legally married until Hearst's death. Millicent built an independent life for herself in New York City as a leading philanthropist, was active in society, and created the Free Milk Fund for the poor in 1921. After the death of Patricia Lake, Davies' supposed niece, it was speculated that Lake was in fact Hearst's daughter by Davies. Beginning in 1919, Hearst began to build the never-completed Hearst Castle, on a 240,000 acre (97,000 ha) ranch at San Simeon, California, which he furnished with art, antiques and entire rooms brought from the great houses of Europe. Hearst later paid $120,000 for an H-shaped Beverly Hills mansion in 1947. This home is now perhaps the "most expensive" private home in the U.S., valued at $165 million (81.4 million). It has 29 bedrooms, three swimming pools, tennis courts, its own cinema and a nightclub. Lawyer and investor Leonard Ross has owned it since 1976. The estate is for sale for $95 million as of 11/24/2010. The Beverly House, as it has

come to be known, has some interesting cinematic connections. According to Hearst Over Hollywood, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy stayed at the house for part of their honeymoon, watching their first film together as a married couple in the mansion's theater (a Hearst-produced film from the 1920s). Later, long after Hearst's death, the house was the setting for a gruesome scene in the film The Godfather, depicting a horse's severed head in the bed of a film-producer, Jack Woltz, head of a film company called International, the name of Hearst's early film company. San Simeon was also used in the 1960 film Spartacus as the estate of Marcus Licinius Crassus (played by Laurence Olivier). Hearst's mother also owned the Hacienda del Pozo de Verona at Pleasanton, California, now demolished. He also had a property on the McCloud River in Siskiyou County, in far northern California, called Wyntoon. Wyntoon was designed by famed architect Julia Morgan, who also designed Hearst Castle

The Battle over Citizen Kane.

The Battle Over Citizen Kane is a 1996 documentary about the clash between newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst and actor/writer/director Orson Welles over Welles' 1941 motion picture Citizen Kane, which is widely regarded as one of the time. The Battle over Citizen Kane originally aired as an episode of the Public Broadcast System's The American Experience series and was narrated by actor Paul Winfield. The Battle over Citizen Kane was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, but lost to Anne Frank Remembered. However the documentary has come under serious criticism by several Welles scholars and critics. Jonathan Rosenbaum writes that, "Perhaps the cardinal failing of The Battle Over Citizen Kane, a 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary, is its nearly groundless argument that Hearst and Welles had a lot of things in common." David Walsh writes that, "This sort of superficial comparisona cat has a head, a dog has a head, therefore a cat equals a dogconceals far more than it reveals." He adds that, "The documentary filmmakers fail to make any reference to this social and political context. Furthermore, because they identify success with a stable career and a steady income, they think Welles's subsequent work hardly worth considering."