Well, I was always called when I was young as the self styled genius.
All I heard about was the self styled genius. So that's what I
took seriously, that I was styling myself a genius. And you know,
anybody can do that. Toast Jedediah to love on my terms? Was it
the only terms anybody ever knows. You know, my first picture would never
have been made, never, in a million years, if the producer had
lived in Hollywood, had had a knowledge of Hollywood. It was a total
accident, total piece of luck, like winning six hundred thousand dollars from a
quarter in a jackpot. And it couldn't go on. And I knew that
because they took my next picture away from me and butchered the end of it.
I was going to show them that they were wrong. And I have
spent the rest of my life showing people trying to prove that what is said
is wrong. And that's been an enormous waste of spirit and of energy.
That's a mistake that will be corrected one of these dates. Well, I've
always hated Hollywood, but I hate almost everything in the modern world, and
Hollywood is simply the most pleasant place to live in left. I don't know
how to run a newspaper, mister Patcher. I just try everything I can
think of. You know, I am a romantic, and I was a
romantic in the early nineteenth century way. I wanted every experience, every kind
of thing, and so I went to Hollywood in that spirit, and I
should have left in that spirit. There's only one person in the world to
decide what I'm going to do, and that's me. I don't believe there
is any wisdom and compromise unless you're a politician. And to the extent that
movies are politics, I don't belong in movies. My pictures don't work at
all unless they work my way. It's not because I think they're better that
way. They simply fall apart unless they're done my way. Oh, it
isn't nobility, it's a self protection. You're right, mister Thatcher. I
did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars
this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know,
mister Thatcher. At the rate of a million dollars a year, I
have to close this place in sixty years. Ask anybody of my age what
they feel about themselves when they're young, I think you'll get a very waffly
answer. I think of myself of having been an awfully nice fellow then,
and I may have blacked out, you know, whole sections of dreadful behavior,
but I've genuinely blocked them out. I don't remember them. I just
see myself. There's an Angelically movie from one show. I think I did
pretty well under the circumstances. I am going to make King Lear and a
picture called The Dreamers, and I'll go on saying that until I don't.
But it looks as though it's going to happen. But you know, I've
had a wonderful, fascinating life. I can't comply. I am the luckiest
person I know, and I'd rather be remembered as a good guy than as
a difficult genius. Those words you just heard were from legendary actor, director,
and personal all time favorite of this host Orson Wells. That clip was
filmed by Entertainment Tonight, one week prior to the death of Wells. It's
reflective and we can hear subtle regrets he has, most particularly with his first
film, Citizen Kane. Our story begins in nineteen thirty eight when orson wells
radio telling of War of the World's caused nass hysteria. Because of this,
RKO Pictures studio head George Schaefer wanted to work with Wells because he commanded attention.
Wells was facing monumental debt due to the failure of his most two recent
plays, so he took the Landmark deal for one hundred thousand dollars for two
pictures in full creative control. In July of nineteen thirty nine, he began
work on his first feature film that would look at a man that had wealth
and power, but his inability to love, care, and be open to
emotion shelters him and limits his happiness. That film would be Citizen Kane,
and to this day there is controversy surrounding it. It is still unknown if
Wells made this film as an attack against then media mogul William Randolph Hurst.
To make the film, Wells borrought on Hermann Mankowitz to help write the script,
and Greg Toland, a cinematographer. In our next clip from a nineteen
seventy the interview on The Dick Cabot Show, Wells discusses making his first film,
the issues with Hurst in the studio, and other aspects of note.
Though hear how charming Wells can be in self depreciating that is one of the
things that allowed Wells to get away with so much and keep some people in
the studio behind him during the filming of this film twenty six years old,
and you made Citizen Kane and they said you can't do these things. You
can't have the background and focus or whatever it was, or you can't shoot
a scene that way, mister Wells or young mister Wells or orson or whatever
they call you then and you knew that you could. And how did you
know this? Because I didn't know any better. And it's very much in
the line with what Jack was saying earlier in the show. It comes from
from just, you know, sheer dumbness. You're sure it's got to be
your good and your Gretcha's ignorance. There's no authority in the world like it.
But there's got to be something more than that. Technically, I mean,
how did you know that? You know technically that the whole bag of
movies can be learned in about a day and a half. Kids, you
not now, how does it work? How do you do it? You
get a guy who knows it and ask him and that's the end of it.
It is much harder than taking home movies. It's just about three points
fider. And all these guys who do it try to make a big mystery
of it because that's they're living. And I have the right to say it
because I had in my first picture, Inkane. The greatest cameraman who ever
lived was Greg Toland, and he came to my office and said, I
want to work in your picture. My name is Tooland I said, why
do you, mister Toland? He said, because you've never made a picture
and you don't know what cannot be done. And so I said, but
I really don't. Can you tell me? Says, there's nothing to it,
and he gave me the day and a half lessons. Then he was
right, the camera, that's right to do. And so we had the
day and a half and there it was. But the only thing was I've
been directing in the theater for years and I nowadays they have lighting people.
We did then, and I had some of the greatest lighting people in fact,
I think, but many of the shows I lit myself, and I
was supervised at and I thought a director did that in a movie. So
for the first ten days I was moving the lights around, you see,
and Toland was behind me, fixing it up and changing the readings and saying,
shut up, let him go on. I want to see what he's
up to, which was very chic of him, I think. And then
somebody told me, and then I went and got on my knees and apologized
and everything. I thought, that's what the directors did. Because if you
see a picture by Ford, for example, you were speaking of Jack Ford
earlier, he said, oh, must be in a one hundred cameramen in
his long career, and almost every forward picture you can tell from the look
of it that it's a forward picture, just from the physical look of it.
His signature is on it. You know. When every list of great
films, of course, many of them lead with Citizen Kane and say it's
it's the finest film made. Do you agree? No, certainly not My
next one is though, that's no, not the not the one after that,
the one I am preparing at this moment, or the next one that's
going to make history. Could you give us the title of that I have
decided what it is yet. Oh now, could I just check one other
thing with you? Is it true that the Hursts tried to actually have the
film destroyed before it was They tried to have it destroyed. They even tried
to frame me one well, in one town, I was doing some kind
of date I don't know what, bond tour, lecture, some kind of
a gig, and I was in a nightclub afterwards, waiting to go back
to my hotel. I have a little supper, and waiter came up,
says, as a police officer wants to see you. Well, I tried
to hide because if that ever happens, I'm sure I'm guilty. I don't
know how you are about it, but you know absolutely. Then I see
a cop. I know I did it. There was no way out of
it. I had to go see him, and he took me aside,
and he said, Austin, I don't know why. They almost called me
as He says, don't go back to your hotel room. And I said
why. He says, they've got a minor staked out there and a photographer,
a lady. Luckily a lady. I think I prefer to tell it
that way. I mean as opposed to r and they were going to frame
me. I would have been in jail if the you know, were the
cops waiting to jump in and arrest me. That was not mister Hurst itself.
It was somebody in that town who thought he'd get in good with the
boss by doing by doing a favorite. I don't think Hurst would have stooped
to that, would you change? Oh. I did have a conversation with
him about about the picture, which was in an elevator in San Francisco the
night had opened. We found ourselves going up together and he'd know my father.
I never met him, you know, And I introduced myself the things
you'll do when you're young, you know, And I said, would you
like to come to the opening tonight? And he didn't answer, and I
said, well, mister Kane would have come. And that's the difference between
the two people, because the character of Charles Foster k had enough class to
have gone to the opening, but he just very uptight. That was the
end of that. It wasn't really about him. It was made up of
a lot of people. What's the last time you saw it? I saw
it that opening in San Francisco and I snuck out right after it started.
I've never seen a picture of mine after I've finished it. You haven't seen
Citizen Kane in all these years. No picture I've ever made except as an
actor. But I never seen a picture I've directed. Only words yeah,
well a thousand times in the cutting room. But why wouldn't want to say
it now? Because I like to sit here and think how good it must
have been? You know? Cool? Is there is there any chance that
you would change any of it or do any of it again? Of course
everything you'd want to change everything, I think, you know, don't you
want to change things after you've done them? And a movie catvic No,
that was the whole thing. I just and I like to think, oh,
yes, and all those great pictures, and I know if I saw
them. Oh. The battle with Hurst is the key controversy with this film.
Hurst owned newspapers, magazines, and radio stations across the United States,
and with that came major influence. If anyone dared cross him or at the
slightest perceived disrespect, Hurst, with his power and influence, could take down
anyone or anything. Wells in this film used several allusions to Hurst from the
large incomplete mansion named Xanadu to King's second wives obsession with puzzles. Even the
word Rosebud, a Hollywood legend that Hurst gave this pet name to his mistress's
genitalia, were all fell by many to be shots at Hurst. To keep
this in other activities secret, Wells had to employ some secretive techniques, as
explained in this clip from the documentary The Battle Over Citizen King. When Menkowitz
proposed the story of Hurst, Wells seized on this as his last best chance.
It was perfect, an American saga, a giant who brings ruin to
all and to himself. Housman was dispatched a babysit mank in a little desert
town called Victorville, you know Mac, which was a drunk jake Rosie keep
him off the Booswell he wrote this thing, and Hausman and myself were sort
of the go between. We would drive up to get the part of the
script from bring it back to Rushamton, back and forth. Mank called his
script American, which was the title Hurst always claimed for himself. But as
Hausman remembered, we were also creating a vehicle suited to a man who at
twenty four was only slightly less fabulous than the hero he would be portraying,
And the deeper we penetrated into the heart of Charles Foster Kane, the closer
we seemed to come to the identity of Orson Wells. As Wells got the
pages from Victorville, he attacked the script with all of his craft and with
all of his life to that point. The boy's loss of his mother that
never happened to Hurst, It happened to Wells. He visualized himself as that
character. See once he could see himself playing that character. I mean that
was it, you know. I think they thought that they could get away
with I don't think they really realized how touchy the old man was, and
that this was Hollywood. Then it would be hell to pay. They knew
enough to run it by the lawyers. From that point of view, they
weren't at risk anyway. If Hurst sued, that would be great. The
film would be news everywhere. They'd write in some lines about Marion's drinking and
those horrid puzzles. No one in Hollywood could miss the joke. They'd even
put in Rosebud, the secret word, which they claimed was Hurst's pet name.
For Marion's private parts. They'd drive the old man crazy, turned the
town on its ear. Got called in on Monday morning by Jim Wilkinson,
the head of the editing department. My boss was saying, listen, you
know that fellow Orson Welles has come to the studio. I said, yeah,
I know, I'm seeing him. Well, he's pulled a fast food
on the studio. I said, what do you mean. He said,
well, he's got this new picture and he asked him for okay to make
three what he called test for this picture. And they gave the okay and
he shot the tests, so called tests, and he said they looked at
the scenes and realized there's scenes for the picture. They're not just tests,
so they've come him a green light to go ahead and make the picture.
I never saw anybody more focused. He knew exactly what he wanted, and
he and Greg Tolan were on a completely single wavelength. I never forget the
day I came in and that they had sawed a hole out of the board
floor, which you could do, and they were both in their hands and
knees throwing out the dirt like children in a sandbox. He was totally absorbed
in himself with the picture of what he was doing. But you couldn't look
at those rushes coming in every day those films shot the day before. They
were not realizing they were getting something quite extraordinary about the photography and the angles
and the shooting. One of us. It was just one of us.
He was at okaio with his drug blosh deals and he would not let the
executives with that studio come anywhere near the set. They came in and the
oce and said, who's got a who's got a baseball? Let's play some
catch. So so everybody started to playing catch. But of course it jove
the breast, absolutely looney. With his sound stage closed, with control over
everything on his set, Wells thought, at last he had his project in
hand. Nothing stopped it. After one fall down a flight of steps,
he acted in steel ankle braces and directed from a wheelchair. He still said
he hated Hollywood, but at the studio he'd found the biggest magic kid on
earth. Then, much like today, nothing stays secret in Hollywood. Eventually
the word got at out in Hurst immediately went on the attack. He refused
to allow his newspapers and radio stations to advertise the film. He sicked his
gossip columnists from many newspapers on RKO Pictures and Wells, and he threatened to
blackmail studio heads with photos in evidence of them committing sexually deviant behavior. This
led to other studios trying to buy the film from RKO Pictures to destroy it.
In our final clip for Today, from the HBO film RKO two eighty
one, which is a biopic about the making of Citizen Kane Wells played by
liv Schreiber, makes an impassioned plea to the heads of the major studios to
let his film be released as he made it good. Afternoon today, er
man from Germany invaded Greece. He's already swallowed UH, Poland Denmark, Norway
and Belgium. He is bombing London as I speak. Everywhere this man goes
he crushes the life and the freedom of his subjects. He shows yellow stars
and their lapels, He takes their voices. MM. In this country we
uh, we still have our voices. We can argue with them, and
we can sing, and we can be heard because we are for the moment
free. No one can tell us what to say or how to say it,
can they? Gentlemen? I am one voice. That is all.
My picture is one voice, one view, one opinion, nothing more.
Men are dying in Europe now and Americans soon will be, so that we
can surmount the tyrants and the dictators. Will you send a message across America
that one man can take away our voices? So who is mister Hurst and
who is mister Wells? Well? Mister Hurst built a palace of brick and
mortar, and little wars and corpses piled high. Mister Wells built a palace
of illusion. Sir, what we call a matte paintings, a camera trick.
It's nothing, nothing but a dream. Today you have the chance to
let the dream triumph. Thank you. Was it successful or did Hurst win
in his battle to destroy it? And what is the everlasting legacy of this
picture? I hope you will join me next week when we will answer those
questions and kickstart our month long tribute to Orson Wells with the review of,
in my opinion, in the opinion of many others, the greatest film of
all time, Citizen Kane for W. M. N. H. And
Mat Connorton Unleashed. This has been a classic film revue with Eric Pilcher