Word: rko
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...exults Orson Welles (Liev Schreiber, right, with Roy Scheider), describing his concept for Citizen Kane (studio production No. RKO 281): "A titanic figure of limitless ambition...controlling the deceptions of everyone beneath him." Welles means William Randolph Hearst, the ruthless magnate he would nail in the movie that, owing to Hearst's power, almost went unreleased. The irony: like Hearst, the auteur was driven to selfish cruelty for his (artistic) ends. Despite Schreiber's intensity and charm, this film never plumbs its subject's soul as Welles' did, but it's an often absorbing study of free expression...
...only realized this year what a luxury it is not to get overexposed," says LIEV SCHREIBER. Rather than practicing false humility, the actor is acknowledging how intense media attention can hobble a career. As an example, he cites Orson Welles, whom he portrays in HBO's upcoming RKO 281, the story of the making of Citizen Kane. "When this movie was released," he says, "no one saw it because William Randolph Hearst hated it. So the press killed it." Schreiber has been drawing increased scrutiny as he rehearses Hamlet on Broadway and reprises his Scream role in December. And wary...
Maybe the Depression made Hollywood do it. Most of the studios were losing money by 1932 (RKO declared bankruptcy), and racy films brought in the money. But they also fanned the ire of state and local censorship boards. In 1934 the new Production Code had teeth, and under Joseph I. Breen, a former newspaperman, it bit hard. Dialogue was denatured from snappy to sappy; gowns hid what they once revealed; evil lost a lot of its seductive plausibility. And as studios sought to rerelease their pre-Code films, Breen insisted that cuts be made in the master negative, thus censoring...
...Hearst. Mank couldn't, anyway. He handed the script to Charles Lederer, who was both Davies' nephew and the new husband of Welles' ex-wife. It came back annotated by Hearst's lawyers. And that was just a hello. Soon the old man was promising scandal and lawsuits against RKO and any theater chain that dared exhibit the film...
...long run, of course, Hearst lost. What people know of him today is what they remember from the movie; the definitive biography, by W.A. Swanberg, is titled Citizen Hearst. But Welles lost too. His next film, The Magnificent Ambersons, is a magnificent shard in its surviving form; RKO pulled Welles off the film, cut it by a third, hired a hack to shoot a new ending. He was now "Hollywood's youngest has-been," condemned to haunt Hollywood and other film capitals till he died looking for work. People knew him only as the fat man, a butt of lame...