rita alexander citizen kane

David Fincher's film about the making of 'Citizen Kane' is a love letter to cinema and political cautionary tale. Raising Kane by Pauline Kael found a ton of success with movie buffs and casual readers alike. [6]:227 A celebrated wit, Mankiewicz was valued for his conversation and was seated near his hosts at dinner. One of the many questions Mank seeks to address is just why it is that Mankiewicz and Welles went so hard in Citizen Kane after media mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance). Travel back in time to check out the early roles of some of Hollywood's heavy hitters. As far as I could judge, the co-billing was correct. [15][n] Carringer studied the collection of script records—"almost a day-to-day record of the history of the scripting"—that was then still intact at RKO. Not coincidentally, it is also the Welles film that has the strongest story, the most fully realized characters, and the most carefully sculpted dialogue. [5]:236–237 Welles hesitated to officially agree to give Mankiewicz credit. But I thought, 'We'll see what he comes up with.'" "[j][11]:18 Houseman would openly say that Mankiewicz deserved sole credit for writing the film for many years[23]—right up until his death—without explaining the contradictions present even in his own personal papers. ", For the next five weeks Mankiewicz wrote the first draft of the script for MGM's. The preview shows Mankiewicz (Oldman), aka Mank, struggle to write the classic 1941 film Citizen Kane while contending with director Orson … In David Fincher’s “Mank,” Lily Collins’ character Rita Alexander hears that her boss, “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, helped 100 people flee out of Nazi Germany. [9]:185 Forty-four revision pages dated April 28 were given to Welles. [7]:498, "One of the things that bound his friends to him was his extraordinary vulnerability," Welles told Mankiewicz's biographer. https://screenrant.com/mank-movie-cast-character-guide-real-life [5]:553–554 Rosenbaum's 2020 preface to his earlier essay also references the fact that the 1972 Bogdanovich piece was ghost-written by Welles himself. "[4]:494 The mainstream press accepted Kael's essay—an extension of her dispute with Andrew Sarris and the auteur theory—based on her credibility as one of the country's top film critics. (Herman J. Mankiewicz’s response to assistant Rita Alexander when she asked him how the story of Citizen Kane would end.) 'Citizen Kane' Credit: RKO Radio Pictures . "He liked the attention he got as a great, monumental self-destructing machine. https://screenrant.com/mank-movie-cast-character-guide-real-life [6]:264–265, Mankiewicz's rancor toward Welles grew over the remaining 12 years of his life. He dictated it to a secretary, as was his habit. [5]:237 With his own secretary, Katherine Trosper, Welles was reworking the draft pages in Hollywood. [9]:55, 184–185 "Orson was from Chicago," said the Mercury Theatre's Richard Wilson, "and I believe he was as much influenced by Samuel Insull and Colonel Robert McCormick as he was by the figure of Hearst. ", "The by-line carried only my name," Bogdanovich later wrote, "but Orson had taken a strong hand in revising and rewriting. The “Citizen Kane” original screenplay, which was loosely based on the life of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, was the only Academy Award won by the movie, which was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor. "Houseman blandly ignores this fact. [4]:494–501, "Orson was vigorously defended," wrote biographer Barton Whaley, "but in less prominently placed articles; so, again, the damage was immense and permanent. Collins is best known for her performance in 'Rules Don't Apply'. "[6]:257[g] Welles had been editing and rewriting the script pages in Beverly Hills. Welles's first wife Virginia moved to Los Angeles shortly after their divorce,[5]:231–232[18] and on May 18, 1940, she married screenwriter Charles Lederer, favorite nephew of Hearst's mistress Marion Davies. Home / 2020 Trending shirts I fully intend to haunt people when I die I have a list shirt $ 25.99 $ It was really extraordinary. [6]:53, 72 Soon after moving to Hollywood in 1926,[6]:215 Mankiewicz met Hearst and Davies through his friendship with Lederer. There was continual communication with Welles,[15]:81 and Houseman often travelled to Los Angeles to confer with him. "That's why I left him on his own, finally," Welles said later, "because we'd started to waste too much time haggling. In Mank, Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz, Lily Collins is Rita Alexander, ... First trailer for ‘Mank,’ David Fincher's movie about Herman J. Mankiewicz and the Citizen Kane. He never wrote a word. "[15]:117, The screenplay for Citizen Kane received the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay), shared by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles.[35]. "[4]:54 In February 1940,[3]:444, 448 Welles arranged a lunch at New York's 21 Club and persuaded Houseman to return to California. Like that of Citizen Kane, the play’s plot is structured around a journalist attempting to understand Brown by interviewing people who knew him and have different perspectives on him. [2]:12 "His behavior, public and private, was a scandal," wrote John Houseman. Pauline Kael's 1971 New Yorker article "Raising Kane" claimed that Orson Welles didn't write a single line of the shooting script. But Mankiewicz also called the footage "magnificent" and said he liked it "from an aesthetical point of view." "[9]:201[10]:517 When RKO released the film in May 1941, the souvenir program included a double-page spread depicting Welles as "the four-most personality of motion pictures … author, producer, director, star. Only four of the five scripts reached the air: "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", "Dodsworth", "Vanity Fair" and "Huckleberry Finn". Much like Citizen Kane , a character profile is built of Mank throughout these flashbacks which piece … [4]:66[5]:230 When Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1939 everyone was talking about Aldous Huxley's new book, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, a novel that dealt with the film colony and seemed to be a portrait of Hearst. [5]:230, Welles did not know Hearst, but he knew much about him through drama critic Ashton Stevens. His principal contributions were the story frame, a cast of characters, various individual scenes, and a good share of the dialogue. [15]:98, 116 Carringer found clues in the second draft that Welles was guiding the script, and in the third draft he documented Welles's direct involvement[15]:105 and responsibility for the first major revisions. [26]:206–207, "Raising Kane" angered many critics, most notably Bogdanovich, a close friend of Welles who rebutted Kael's claims in "The Kane Mutiny", an October 1972 article for Esquire. The question was resolved in January 1941 when RKO awarded Mankiewicz credit. [9]:204, Mankiewicz began threatening Welles to get credit for the film. [9]:185, On February 19, 1940, Mankiewicz signed a contract with Mercury Productions to work on the screenplay. And people loved him. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1971/02/20/raising-kane-i [15]:81–82 Welles respected her for her service on the unproduced Heart of Darkness script. "[4]:53, Welles and Mankiewicz soon settled on the idea of using newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst as their central character. So Mank sets to work, scrawling out the words himself or dictating them to Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), the pert British stenographer and hand-holder who’s been assigned to him. Mankiewicz proved very useful, particularly working with Houseman as editor,[6]:240–242 and wrote five scripts for Campbell Playhouse shows broadcast between November 12, 1939, and March 17, 1940. … The final version of the screenplay … was drawn from both sources. Two weeks after Mankiewicz joined the RKO payroll, he and Houseman departed Hollywood for Victorville, at the time a small agricultural community in the desert ninety miles east of Hollywood. Loved him. The Citizen Kane script was the product of both of them. [6]:212–213 By 1936, however, Mankiewicz was no longer welcome in Hearst's circle due to his drinking and political arguments. [9]:204, After lodging a protest with the Screen Writers Guild, Mankiewicz withdrew it, then vacillated. The official credit reads, "Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles". Top 35 "Simpsons" movie-referencing quotes ... RUN-OFF Poll: 100 Greatest Movie Quotes (Part 4). Gary Oldman is delectably droll as the screenwriter of "Citizen Kane" in Fincher's time-machine trip through the Hollywood of the '30s. [4]:356 To Welles, his departure was a relief. [15]:116, Carringer observed that Citizen Kane is one of the few Welles projects based on an original story idea rather than an adaption of existing work. With the Victorville script now in hand he cut it by some 75 pages, and added or revised more than 170 pages. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick. And that probably gave the picture a certain tension, the fact that one of the authors hated Kane and one loved him. "I Missed It at the Movies: Objections to 'Raising Kane, "The 14th Academy Awards (1942) Nominees and Winners", It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Screenplay_for_Citizen_Kane&oldid=1000199691, Films with screenplays by Herman J. Mankiewicz, Articles needing more detailed references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 14 January 2021, at 02:24. [20] Kael's unacknowledged primary source was Houseman. [6]:230 Mankiewicz and Lederer delighted in concocting facsimile newspapers that needled Hearst and his publications, for the amusement of Hearst and Davies. "According to Kael, the script was written almost entirely by Mankiewicz, and Welles had actively plotted to deprive him of any screen credit. "[6]:260 Mankiewicz had made a study of Hearst over many years, and he had firsthand knowledge as one of his frequent guests at San Simeon; but he also drew on published accounts about Hearst for the script. "I felt it would be useless," Welles said later, "because of Mank's general uselessness many times in the studios. [15]:119 Welles came to suspect that Houseman had turned Mankiewicz against him. [5]:237[6]:252 Author Clinton Heylin wrote that Mankiewicz "… probably believed that Welles had little experience as an original scriptwriter … [and] may even have felt that John Citizen, USA, Welles's working title, was a project he could make his own. As the film shows, the intermediate period between when Mank completed the script and the release of ‘Citizen Kane’ was filled with contention between Welles and Mank over the writing credits. He was a performer, as I think all very successful personalities are. [k][9]:203–204, "The major focus of Kael's essay is its defense and celebration of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as the principal, neglected creative force behind Kane," wrote film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. So does the screenplay of Citizen Kane which Mank is to write but he just can’t get it right. ", Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay), "Joseph Campbell and Jean De Blasis Interview", "Citizen Kane Remembered [May–June 1969]". Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, Herman's secretary Lily Collins (Getty Images) Actor Lily Collins will play the role of Herman's secretary who was the inspiration behind Susan Alexander Kane's name. [5]:244, "There is a quality in the film—much more than a vague perfume—that was Mank and that I treasured," Welles said. In 1947 Ferdinand Lundberg sued the creators of, Act Three of Houseman's 1972 autobiography, In May 1969 Houseman recorded in his journal that he had a long lunch with Kael, who "seems highly agitated over her 'discovery' of Herman Mankiewicz. [5]:244 Carringer summarized: Mankiewicz (with assistance from Houseman and with input from Welles) wrote the first two drafts. Assisted by his secretary-for-the-occasion, Rita Alexander (Lily Collins, Netflix’s Emily in Paris series), Mank writes round the clock, barely sleeping until he figures out how to open the liquor cabinet for a nightcap. The guild credit form listed Welles first, Mankiewicz second. "[6]:270, Mankiewicz had seen rushes of the film shortly before this and said he was unhappy with the footage. "[14]:43, Mankiewicz and Houseman worked together in seclusion at the ranch for 12 weeks. Why shouldn't he? Joining Mank is stenographer Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), a German nurse (Monika Gossmann), and the memories of his glory days in Hollywood. "[3]:447 Orson Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that "Nobody was more miserable, more bitter, and funnier than Mank ... a perfect monument of self-destruction. [6]:257, "Despite Houseman's description of himself and Herman paring every excess out of American, it was 325 pages long and outrageously overwritten, even for a first draft," wrote Meryman. [10]:484 By late January their disagreements over plot details were more frequent and their collaboration less creative. Its only Oscar win was in the best original screenplay category. [6]:212, Described by biographer Simon Callow as "a keen student of power and its abuses",[10]:484 Mankiewicz was fascinated by Hearst,[6]:212 and Hearst in turn was interested in the former journalist with so much political knowledge. "He always denied it," wrote Carringer, "but coincidences between American and Ferdinand Lundberg's Imperial Hearst are hard to explain." I gave her all the information I had and will send her more. It was really extraordinary. However, Mankiewicz's assessment of the footage was full of contradictions. "[6]:168, Welles further said this to Mankiewicz's biographer: "I have only one real enemy in my life that I know about, and that is John Houseman. In David Fincher’s “Mank,” Lily Collins’ character Rita Alexander hears that her boss, “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, helped 100 people flee out of Nazi Germany. [15]:82, 114 "After seven complete revisions, Welles finally had what he wanted," wrote Brady. [15]:21 The RKO legal department warned Welles that it was too close a portrait of Hearst and that if the script was not changed a suit for libel or invasion of privacy was almost certain. [5]:236 Welles's attorney, Arnold Weissberger, did not want to give RKO any cause to break Welles's contract should they wish to promote the film as solely his work. A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles. "[6]:270[24] Mankiewicz wrote his father, "I'm particularly furious at the incredibly insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. Welles biographer Barbara Leaming believes that Mankiewicz reacted this way out of fear of getting no credit at all. He told Welles that there were "not enough standard movie conventions being observed" and that he disliked the theatricality and lack of close-ups in the film. [6]:237 Mankiewicz was enraged when an August 1940 column by Louella Parsons quoted Welles as saying, " … and so I wrote Citizen Kane. “Raising Kane” was originally intended (and eventually published) as the introduction to a screenplay book on the movie titled The Citizen Kane Book (1971). These pages were given to RKO script supervisor Amalia Kent, who broke the material down in continuity form for the production units. Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, Herman's secretary Lily Collins (Getty Images) Actor Lily Collins will play the role of Herman's secretary who was the inspiration behind Susan Alexander Kane's name. He respected Hearst's knowledge and was privileged to be invited to his private office where he mingled with Hearst's editors and columnists. He dictated it to a secretary, as was his habit. Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins and Charles Dance have joined Gary Oldman in Mank, David Fincher’s drama about the writer who co-wrote the screen classic Citizen Kane with Orson Welles. Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz was a notorious personality in Hollywood. Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore) in ‘Citizen Kane’ was named after Rita Alexander. Mankiewicz and his wife were part of the social set invited to Hearst Castle on several occasions. The film also stars Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer, ... the newspaper tycoon who was the inspiration behind Citizen Kane… "[4]:52–53, Welles admired Mankiewicz, and had met him in New York in 1938[5]:234 at the time of the Mercury Theatre's Broadway successes. Mankiewicz made the difference. [9]:213 "When Mank left for Victorville, we were friends. Mank saw him simply as an egomaniac monster with all these people around him. Leaming notes, "This assertion will seem odd to anyone who has examined Houseman's personal papers deposited at UCLA. "[16]:6 Roger Hill, head of the Todd Seminary for Boys and Welles's mentor and lifelong friend, wrote that Welles once told him about a project he was considering: "He had outlined to me, years earlier, a plan for a stage play based on the life of an American tycoon who would be a composite of Insull, McCormick and Hearst. Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore) in ‘Citizen Kane’ was named after Rita Alexander. Welles's irritation with Mankiewicz passed quickly, and he spoke of him with fondness. [7]:102 The title was contributed by RKO studio chief George Schaefer,[4]:82 who was concerned that calling the film American would seem cynical and identify too closely with Hearst, whose newspapers included the American Weekly and the New York Journal-American. Collins is best known for her performance in 'Rules Don't Apply'. But we got pretty quickly to the press lords. For comparison purposes, author Harlan Lebo summarizes the plot of the original script, which "varies greatly from the finished film". [2]:32[13]:221 Welles wanted the work done as inconspicuously as possible,[11]:17 and the ranch offered the additional advantage of prohibiting alcohol. [11]:26–27 "By far the most serious dramatic problem in American is its treatment of Kane," wrote Carringer. For the article, she interviewed John Houseman and the secretary, Rita Alexander. Rita Alexander: Citizen Kane. [20]:20 "There were two castes in Hollywood," wrote Meryman, "those who had been guests at San Simeon and those who had not." [15]:109–110 "That the subsequent installments are also attributable chiefly to Welles is indicated both by the circumstances and by the nature of the revisions," Carringer wrote. "Mankiewicz was hired to furnish him with what any good first writer ought to be able to provide in such a case: a solid, durable story structure on which to build," Carringer wrote. [5]:218–219 How much Huxley's book influenced Welles's choice of subject is unknown; Brady wrote that "a more personal coincidence, however, might have helped fuel the idea." [4]:44 He also said that his father and Hearst knew each other. [7]:132 "It was something [Mankiewicz] had been thinking about for years," Houseman wrote, “the idea of telling a man’s private life (preferably one that suggested a recognizable American figure), immediately following his death, through the intimate and often incompatible testimony of those who had known him at different times and in different circumstances.”[3]:448–449, Welles himself had worked with the concept. [5]:235 Over the next five weeks Welles spent many long evenings brainstorming plot ideas in the bedroom of the small rented house where Mankiewicz was in traction with his shattered leg. I can tell you positively he didn't." "[Welles] claims he wrote a parallel script," Houseman told Leaming. But in his hatred of Hearst, or whoever Kane was, Mank didn't have a clear enough image of who the man was. That was his role, and he played it to the hilt. Here are four documentaries from 2020 with powerful and unique takes on unraveling true crimes. It was a sensational essay that asserted Welles stole credit from Mank, who had dictated the original drafts of the script to his secretary, Rita Alexander, while Welles was not present. https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/mank-trailer-1078853 [11]:17 Mankiewicz was to receive no credit for his work as he was hired as a script doctor; a similar clause was present in the writers' contracts for The Campbell Playhouse. The authorship of the screenplay for Citizen Kane, the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, has been one of the film's long-standing controversies. Rosenbaum also reviewed the controversy in his editor's notes to This is Orson Welles (1992). "[16]:6, But at the same time, Houseman was stirring controversy, lunching with film critic Pauline Kael and giving Mankiewicz total credit for the creation of the script for Citizen Kane. As a teenager in 1932 he wrote a play about the life of abolitionist John Brown called Marching Song. Mankiewicz also threatened to go to the Screen Writers Guild and claim full credit for writing the entire script by himself. This included threatening to post full-page ads in trade papers and getting his friend Ben Hecht to write an exposé about their collaboration in the Saturday Evening Post. "[15]:80, Carringer found that the issues raised by Kael rested on the evidence of an early draft of the screenplay, primarily written by Mankiewicz,[15]:80 which "elaborated the plot logic and laid down the overall story contours, established the main characters, and provided numerous scenes and lines that would eventually appear in one form or another in the film. He couldn’t be affectionate or loving outside his family. Welles then "adapted it with the same freedom and disregard for authority with which he adapt[ed] a Shakespeare play or a thriller by Nicholas Blake. Mank liked it, so we started searching for the man it was going to be about. That towering auteur with a smoldering voice directed and starred in the 1941 film. He also transformed Kane from a cardboard fictionalization of Hearst into a figure of mystery and epic magnificence. "[10]:484, During March, April and early May 1940, Mankiewicz dictated the screenplay, titled American. Rita Alexander remembers: “He began with the title, the description of the scene, the indications of the camera movement, the dialogue, and so on. When he came back, we were enemies," Welles told biographer Richard Meryman. Welles removed a great deal of Mankiewicz's Hearst material, but Lundberg would eventually file suit nevertheless. However, Peter Bogdanovich interviewed Orson Welles for the 1972 Esquire article "The Kane Mutiny." You never felt you were basking in the warmth of his friendship. "Mank always needed a villain. "[6]:260, For some time, Mankiewicz had wanted to write a screenplay about a public figure—perhaps a gangster—whose story would be told by the people who knew him. When you think of “Citizen Kane,” considered by many critics to be the greatest movie ever made, one name comes to mind: Orson Welles. Mankiewicz was accompanied by a nurse, secretary Rita Alexander, Houseman, and a 300-page rough script of the project that Welles had written. Citizen Kane is the only major Welles film on which the writing credit is shared. "It was a kind of controlled, cheerful virulence … I personally liked Kane, but I went with that. [6]:230 "For the first time Herman's Hollywood pleasure merged with his political scholarship", wrote Meryman. [a][7]:98 Houseman and Welles were partners in the Mercury Theatre,[4]:55 but when Mercury productions moved from New York to California the partnership ended and Houseman became an employee, working primarily as supervising editor on the radio shows.

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