Circa 1941 A.D., Orson Welles shares the ‘written by’ credit with Herman J. Mankiewicz and grabs the Academy Award for the same. After sixty seven years, even today, people remember the overhyped and subtly explained word ‘rosebud’. The word shows a void in the character of the protagonist Kane; a void that engulfed Welles too.
Herman knew W.R. Hearst, on whose persona Kane was modelled, personally and he caricatured a movie around him. The person Kane himself in the movie had an undercurrent of both the authors’ lives woven around Hearst’s career. This supports the credits’ claim that is shared by both of them. However, many people who were close to Herman openly opposed the sharing of credits. They always claimed that the authorship of the movie-screenplay entirely belongs to Mankiewicz as Welles had no role in drafting it.
On the other hand, the poster of the movie before the release read- ‘the one-man band, directing, acting, and writing’; and the man in picture was Welles. More fuel was added to the feud by Welles quote- ‘So I wrote Citizen Kane’. Up to this point the credits were with Welles and it appeared that he had no intention to share them. This was enough to blow Herman’s brain out of places and he went to Screen Writers Guild. He claimed complete authorship while Welles said that he was planning to share the credits. Guild finally settled the feud by directing Welles to share the credits and take the second place in the list pacifying Mankiewicz’s claim. Welles had a void in personal and professional life and the zeal to be the one man army was a medium to fill up the void. Rosebud!
It is really interesting that the man who performed and directed brilliantly in the most reputed movie of all times, won the Academy Awards for the controversial screenplay of the same movie. A controversy that had bitterness on tongue left a lingering sweetness on lips.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
