Bowled Over

On 3 January 1941, a select group of journalists gathered in a viewing theatre at the studios of RKO in Hollywood. They were there for an advanced screening of Citizen Kane the first film by the wonder boy Orson Welles, whose unique contract with the studio had made him the envy of the motion picture capital. As a writer-producer-director-star, Welles had managed to wangle an unprecedented amount of control over this and any subsequent films. The screening marked the start of the publicity campaign. It was, as it were, the first chord in the young man’s triumphal march through Hollywood.

Most guests were bowled over by the film but one, the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, was alarmed. According to her autobiography, she saw strong similarities between the fictional Charles Foster Kane, a power hungry newspaper magnate, and William Randolph Hearst who in real life was, well, a power hungry newspaper magnate. She called him the following morning. The precise nature of the conversation is unrecorded, but it may well have set in motion the flurry of attack, counter-attack and plain skulduggery that was to plague the film right up to the Oscar ceremony in the February of the following year.

That phrase “may well have” is a mantra that runs throughout John Evangelist Walsh’s entertaining but very speculative study of the war between Welles/RKO and William Randolph Hearst. His main contention is that the old yellow journalist had a direct hand in the campaign to scupper the film, but given the lack of hard documentary evidence, he is compelled to fall back on supposition, wily guess work and reconstructed conversations in which interpretation is made to look like hard proof and all the protagonists sound as if they had drifted in from the stilted world of an airport novel. There is no doubt that Hearst’s minions, like the appalling Louella Parsons, and his right wing buddies, such as Louis B. Mayer, connived and bullied on his behalf. Hearst himself, however, retained an Olympian silence and never wrote any incriminating memos. The book batters on his door, demanding answers, but WRH refuses to answer the summons.

Whatever the truth about the old dinosaur’s exact involvement, the battle was dirty and at times almost desperate. A few days after Hopper’s phone call, Parsons descended on RKO with a collection of lawyers and demanded to see the film. Once the cat was out of the cinematic bag, the Hearst machine swung into well-oiled action. Using tactics honed by their master, hacks used threats, innuendo and general insinuation to keep Kane off the screen. Heart’s only effective trick, however, was to get the large theatre chains to boycott the film. RKO did not own many theatres, so this was a heavy blow right in the bank balance. When New York’s prestigious Radio City Music Hall withdrew from holding the premiere, George Schaeffer, RKO’s president, delayed release.

Still, this only marked a change in tactics, not the end of the war. Using private screenings for writers and commentators, Schaeffer built up a considerable head of critical steam; the film was hailed as a masterpiece that should and must be shown. Hearst and his cronies fought back with attacks on Welles’ political leanings and draft status; in later life, the director even claimed that there was a failed attempt to frame him for having sex with a minor. All these efforts failed. In the end, Citizen Kane was launched, with the usual ballyhoo, in May 1941.

The hero of this saga must be Schaeffer. He had had the courage to hire Welles in the first place and, when the storm broke, the tenacity to play the game through to the end. Judging from Walsh’s account, the studio head’s chutzpah was based on the calculation that no matter how much Hearst might huff and puff, he would not bite the bullet and sue; doing so would mean admitting things that the magnate would prefer...