The Battle Over "Citizen Kane" Trancript （1） 　　 　　DAVID McCULLOUGH, Host: Good evening and welcome to The American Experience. Im David McCullough. 　　 　　Our film tonight is about two colossal Americans on a collision course. Its about the sparks given off by oversized egos holding forth at center stage in American life. Its also about the often-blurred, confusing boundary between reality and illusion in American life. In his time, each of our protagonists was the acclaimed master of his medium, and both vaulted to the pinnacle as boy wonders, each in turn catching the wave of revolutionary changes in mass communication and mass entertainment. Their timing was perfect. 　　 　　Beginning in the late nineteenth century, William Randolph Hearst transformed newspaper publishing. A man who adored sensation, he knew the power of lurid detail, of photographs, drawings and, if need be, manipulation. When his artist correspondent, Frederick Remington, arrived in Cuba in 1897 to cover an anticipated Spanish-American war only to find there was no war and cabled Hearst for permission to come home, Hearst reportedly cabled back, You provide the pictures, and Ill provide the war. 　　 　　Then, nearly fifty years later, came the theatrical prodigy, Orson Welles, who took to the new medium of radio as no one ever had, and in no time was off to Hollywood to make a movie to carry him higher still, a movie inspired by the career of William Randolph Hearst. Welles would direct the film and play the leading role. He would become Hearst. The movie was Citizen Kane, the Orson Welles masterpiece that many present-day directors and critics consider the greatest film ever made. 　　 　　But our story is about what happened when the real-life Welles and the real-life Hearst collided head-on--The Battle Over Citizen Kane, produced by Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein. 　　 　　CECIL B. DeMILLE, Director: Are you ready to take? 　　 　　CREW MEMBER: Already and turning, Mr. DeMille. 　　 　　CECIL B. DeMILLE: All right, now. Give me everything youve got, you people. Come on. Come up to it now. 　　 　　NARRATOR: In 1939, Hollywood was at the top of its game. That was the year Samuel Goldwyn was filming Wuthering Heights, RKO was finishing Gunga Din, MGM would issue Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. Make-believe didnt get any better. But none of these landmark films was the big news that year. The talk of the town was twenty-four-year-old Orson Welles, the boy genius from New York, and his new contract at RKO. No studio had ever offered such control, not even to Hollywoods biggest names, but to Welles, they handed the keys to the kingdom, and hed never even made a movie. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE, Writer: He had a gigantic ego. He realized that what he was doing was unique, and people were telling him it was unique. After all, he was still a kid. Who wouldnt fall victim to that kind of temptation? 　　 　　SAM LEVE, Set Designer: His failing was that, I could do no wrong. Thats the terrible thing--and, God damn it, he was great! Very few people like him, and thats the trouble. And the greatness drove him down to nothingness, cause he was careless. 　　 　　NARRATOR: When Welles got to Hollywood, one of the most important centers of power wasnt even in the town, but north in the mountains where William Randolph Hearst had built his castle. One of the richest men in America whod built an empire in newspapers, magazines, radio, film, Hearst lived on a property half the size of Rhode Island. He called it the ranch. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL, Historian: When Hearst went to San Simeon, what he did was to create a state within the United States in which he was the absolute ruler, the dictator. 　　 　　VERN WHALEY, Chicago Herald-American: He was so superior, he was like a god in the newspaper business. Nobody was like him. Nobody came anywhere near him. He was a tyrant, too. 　　 　　NARRATOR: San Simeon for years had been the gathering place for Hollywood--Charlie Chaplin, Norma Shearer, Clark Gable. And the studio brass was there, too--Thalberg, Mayer, Warner--guest lists that were less about joy than respect. One of every five Americans was reading a Hearst newspaper every week. 　　 　　NANCY LOE, Archivist, CalPoly State University: Thats where his power in Hollywood came from, was all the media outlets that he controlled. And its true, if he didnt like you, it was not going to be pretty. 　　 　　JIMMY BRESLIN, New York Journal-American: If you had a star and he did not, or she did not, attend the lunch with Hearsts representatives in Hollywood, the order would go out--Out of every newspaper, out of every Hearst newspaper, not the mention of his name, ever again--dead. You know, and those poor fools out there got scared, didnt understand until years later that the movies were more powerful than any newspaper ever could be. But they didnt understand that. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Less than a year after hed gotten to Hollywood, Welles would turn his filmmakers eye to that castle. Citizen Kane would be acclaimed as the greatest talking picture ever made, but it would scandalize the life of Hearst, plunge the film industry into crisis, and prove the undoing of the young Orson Welles. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [Citizen Kane] Rosebud. 　　 　　NARRATOR: This is the story of the battle over Citizen Kane, a fight so fierce that the movie was almost destroyed before the public ever got a chance to see it. The most powerful men in Hollywood tried to buy this film and burn every print. This is also the story of two outsized Americans. They were proud, gifted and destructive--geniuses, each in his way. They were men whod grabbed for power and achieved it. They would tolerate no one who got in their way. The fight that ruined them both was thoroughly in character with how theyd lived their lives. 　　 　　DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, Jr., Actor: My father once asked him--he said, Mr. Hearst, why dont you concentrate more of your energy on motion pictures, which has a world-wide audience, instead of journalism, which appeals to one city or one nation? He thought a minute, and he said, Well, Douglas, Ill tell you. I thought of it, but I decided against it, because I realize that you can crush a man with journalism, and you cant with motion pictures. That was his answer. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles was twenty-four when he set out to show the life of Hearst. He saw the fight coming, thought he could win. Hearst was seventy-six--to Welles he must have looked like a relic--but anyone who looked at that old man in the castle and thought he was through, thought Hearst would quit, was missing the main point of that life. 　　 　　The first things we know about William Randolph Hearst are the things he wanted. He was ten when he first toured Europe, and he said hed like to live in Windsor Castle. He asked his mother to buy him the Louvre. That he couldnt have--his palace would have to wait--but most things he got without delay. His father, George Hearst, was building one of the biggest mining fortunes in the West. When Will wanted ice cream, Dad tossed him a twenty dollar gold piece. Wills mother, Phoebe Hearst, was passionately devoted to her only son. It was she who showed Willie the worlds treasures, and she was charmed when he wanted them all. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW, Hearst Biographer: His father doesnt go with them on the grand tours of Europe. Hes involved in politics, he has mines all over the place, so he stays home and Phoebe writes him. And what she writes him--she writes about Willie and Willies consuming interest in objects of art, in architecture, in monuments. Hes insatiable. He understands that theres money. He understands that the money is almost in magical quantities--you know, it doesnt fall off trees, it comes out of the earth--and that money is for--is for him to spend. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL: He must have been the first man west of the Rockies to have his own Punch and Judy show at home, which his father could well afford, and he was always interested in putting on plays, being in plays, going to the theater. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW: He loved to go to the theater, and it was vaudeville. It was not--he didnt go to Shakespeare. He went to see melodrama, he went to see low musical comedy. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL: Well, he took it seriously to the extent that he thought perhaps he might be an actor, but I think wiser heads prevailed. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Will Hearst was on his way to flunking out of Harvard when he decided what he really wanted was a poor San Francisco newspaper his dad happened to own. His father was unenthusiastic--what about the Anaconda Mine, instead, or a million-acre ranch? No, just the paper. Theres only one thing thats sure about my boy, Bill, said George Hearst. When he wants cake, he wants cake, and he wants it now. And I notice that, after a while, he gets the cake. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW: This papers going to be the biggest, most spectacular paper that the world has ever seen. He is going to, first, increase and then double and triple and quadruple circulation until everybody in San Francisco and Oakland and everywhere the railroads can carry The Examiner are going to be reading it. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Will knew exactly what he wanted his paper to be: splashy, brash and common, with big type, pictures, and sensationally lurid news. At first he didnt have the staff or the presses to turn out any more than eight pages a day. No matter. His front page proclaimed The Examiner Monarch of the Dailies. 　　 　　JIMMY BRESLIN: He didnt care if it had been printed before or the story was around. Take it and make it ours, as if we just discovered it, and forget the other people. Let them die, you know. Its our story. Hearst put thirty-seven people on it. Lets go. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Will cut a strange figure in his city room. With dandified clothes and a walking stick, he still had the air of a college boy excited by his latest prank. He was personally shy, with exquisite manners, never ordering his staff about, but asking politely in his high, girlish voice. But they soon learned his requests were orders even it cost them months of effort or cost his father a fortune. 　　 　　NANCY LOE: He literally went out and created news. For example, he hired a woman to collapse in the streets just so he could test what kind of response the city had, and he published this damning expos--of how they treated indigent women. He had one of his reporters go out on a ferry into the middle of San Francisco Bay and jump overboard just to see how long it would take to have someone rescue them. 　　 　　JIMMY BRESLIN: Silly, childish, but delivered with excitement, and it was great. Men worked in places where you could barely see, which I think might have helped the stories, cause you didnt have to worry too much about facts, you just filled the pages--I guess they lied openly. There was first gaslight--wavery gas light--and they worked at like artists easels, and they wrote longhand, and they smoked pipes and cigars, no cigarettes. You needed something big that would make a lot of smoke. 　　 　　NARRATOR: From the clouds in his city room emerged a ferocious little paper. Hearsts staff called itself the wrecking crew. In a celebrated murder trial, The Examiner covered the prosecution, and then, when it was the defenses turn, Hearst pulled his reporter out of the courtroom. Hed already judged--the defendants were guilty. He went after his enemies in a way San Francisco had never seen. When he attacked the Southern Pacific Railroad, he didnt just investigate its service and its rates. He called its passengers survivors and printed the names of railroad directors with dollar signs in place of the letter S. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW: And Willie takes on the S&P in a way that no other newspaper had done in such sustained, concentrated and ferocious form. He doesnt let up. Hes like a--like a dog that gets hold of your leg, and no matter how much you shake, you know, or smack the dog over the head, hes not going to let go. Thats what Willie was. 　　 　　NARRATOR: His plan was bold, and it would take him a long way. Hearst was making a paper for the poor who never had one. The immigrants, the working masses--they would be his readers, and he would be their champion. He meant to raise the name of Hearst to heights his father never dreamed of. If that made enemies along the way, well, that was too bad for them. 　　 　　ACTOR: [Citizen Kane] I came to see you about this campaign of yours, this Inquirer campaign against the Public Transit Company. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Mr. Thatcher, do you know anything we could use against them? 　　 　　ACTOR: Still the college boy, arent you? 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Oh, no, Mr. Thatcher. I was expelled from college, a lot of colleges. You remember. I remember. 　　 　　ACTOR: Charles, I think I should remind you of a fact that you seem to have forgotten-- 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Yes, Mr. Thatcher. 　　 　　ACTOR: --that you are yourself one of the largest individual stockholders-- 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Mr. Thatcher-- 　　 　　ACTOR: --in the Public Transit Company! 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: The trouble is, you dont realize youre talking to two people. As Charles Foster Kane, who owns 82,364 shares of Public Transit Preferred--you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings--I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of one thousand dollars. 　　 　　ACTOR: My times too-- 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: On the other hand-- 　　 　　ACTOR: I am wasting-- 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: --I am the publisher of The Inquirer. As such, its my duty--and Ill let you in on a little secret, its also my pleasure--to see to it that decent, hard-working people in this community arent robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because they havent anybody to look after their interests. 　　 　　NARRATOR: In Citizen Kane, Orson Welles painted Hearst as a young man who tore at his enemies with a fierce joy. Was Welles unaware that Hearst would come after him just as fiercely? 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: And that would be too bad. 　　 　　ACTOR: Yes, yes, money and property. Well, I happened to see your financial statement today, Charles. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Oh, did you? 　　 　　ACTOR: Now tell me honestly, my boy, dont you think its rather unwise to continue this philanthropic enterprise, this Inquirer thats costing you a million dollars a year? 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Youre right, Mr. 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, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, Ill have to close this place in sixty years. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Orson Welles was just the man to understand young Hearst. Welles was another boy raised as a genius in his home. He was another born showman with a taste for sensation, and, like Hearst, Welles knew the value of a fight. In fact, by age twenty-four, Welles battles with authority had made him a household name. His career was built on controversy. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: Anything that Welles had done that involved controversy had benefited him, so it could well have been that whatever his motivation for taking on Hearst, he thought--he thought that the controversy that would stem from this could only be beneficial, and it turned out to be otherwise--terribly so, terribly so, horribly so. Big mistake. 　　 　　NARRATOR: In Orson Welles, we have a strange life story, one that didnt unfold or develop. He seemed to appear all of a sudden, fully formed and afire. That was illusion, of course, and the maestro of this magic act was Welles. Most of his childhood is a cloud of myth. He was said to have learned magic tricks from Harry Houdini at the age of five, said to be drinking mixed drinks at age eight, and writing a paper on the universal history of drama, after which, in his teens, he would take up bullfighting--or so it was said--and read the classics in the palace of the pasha of Marrakesh. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: When youre decreed to be a genius at the age of three, you become the repository of all kinds of story-telling. Orson himself constantly picked up on these things and accepted them as true. 　　 　　NARRATOR: But Welles seldom talked about the hard central facts. His parents separated by the time he was six. His mother died when he was nine. His father died from drink six years later. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: Orson Welles is somebody who essentially didnt have a childhood, because both of his parents were dead when he was extremely young. Welles was already off in boarding school, and I dont think theres any question that he was clearly a child prodigy and not just solely in the area of theater. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [1982] I painted, and they said, Nobodys ever seen such painting. I played--Nobodys ever played like that. And the--there just seemed to be no limit to what I could do. I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous, and I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didnt know what was ahead of me. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles arrived in New York in his late teens with one colossal idea. He was going to present historys greatest plays and stage them for the common man. He was going to revolutionize the theater. He was much talked-about from the first. One actor described his first sight of Welles--a preposterous energy pulsating through everything he did. There was also talk about his offstage debauches. That only added to his reputation. Orson meant to shock. Welles big break was on a scheme as improbable as he was. The Federal Theater Project was a part of the WPA, a Depression jobs program with a fraction for the arts, which was why one hundred and thirty-seven unemployed black actors and stagehands were supposed to put on Shakespeare--Macbeth--in Harlem. In the leftist climate of the theater world, art was supposed to be the property of the masses, but this was radical. All the better for Welles. 　　 　　THOMAS ANDERSON, Actor: Orson was a young white guy. Took off his coat, stood in front of me, and said, Just read for me. You dont have make--do anything special. Just read it. And if you could read it--hed listen and then [say], Yeah, I--I can do something with that. 　　 　　LEONARD DE PAUR, Choral Director, Macbeth; It was really ridiculous in a couple of instances, because there was no way possible that some of these souls were going to be able to read Shakespeare, but read they had to, because they were told to read, and that was twenty-one dollars and eighty-six cents a week. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: This guy had just barely turned twenty years old when he entered into this production. It opened before he turned twenty-one. Here hes dealing with a cast of eighty to a hundred people, seven or eight of which have professional experience. The vast majority of them have never been on a stage before, okay, and theyre entrusting their entire life to this--to this kid who has never--never directed anything--anything anywhere but at school. 　　 　　LEONARD DE PAUR: He knew what he wanted, and he was darn sure he was going to get it one way or the other. If it took somebodys life, that was tough. You know, he cracked the whip, he abused people. He yelled and screamed. I never saw him physically assault anybody, but he always seemed capable of it. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles kept rehearsing til dawn, bellowing orders at his huge cast. He was turning Macbeth into spectacle, a pop thriller set in Haiti--Voodoo Macbeth. He was legend in Harlem even before dress rehearsal. The Communist Party started a rumor that Welles was really staging a mockery, a minstrel show. Four men attacked him one night outside the theater. After that, he worked flanked by bodyguards. But Welles and his partner, the producer John Houseman, rallied Harlem to their cause. On opening night, public officials arrived to show support. A brass band paraded in uniforms of light blue, scarlet and gold. Traffic around the Lafayette Theater was backed up for an hour. 　　 　　THOMAS ANDERSON: These people had never done Shakespeare before, but with Orson in back of them, Orson could take them and change them into whatever he wanted. 　　 　　LEONARD DE PAUR: Orsons artistic ambition? [laughs] 　　 　　THOMAS ANDERSON: He felt that if he could do this with a group of black actors who were not versed in Shakespeare, what could he not do? 　　 　　ACTOR: [Macbeth] Hang on, Macduff, and cursed be he who first cries, Hold, enough. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: You can see just how this whole thing was choreographed. Every step is--is meticulously done. It looks like chaos, but it was very, very carefully contrived chaos. 　　 　　ACTOR: [Macbeth] And be these juggling themes no more believed. 　　 　　LEONARD DE PAUR: The way he developed in those performers a sense of the performers dignity and respect for himself--Orson somehow got those people to play those roles as though they had been preparing for them all their lives. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [1982] I think its the great success of my life. Everybody who was anybody in the black or white world was there, and when the play ended, there were so many curtain calls that finally they left the curtain open and the audience came up on the stage to congratulate the actors. Now that was--that was magical. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: Hearst was a critic of the WPA, part of which was the Federal Theater Project. The shining star of the Federal Theater Project was Orson Welles. It was inevitable that these two would come into collision at some point, and they did early on. And the attacks on Welles, directly or indirectly, began with the Voodoo Macbeth. 　　 　　ACTOR: [The Shadow] What was that? Somebody laughed here in this office. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Yes, Kelvin. It is the laughter that has echoed through the mind of many a killer. 　　 　　NARRATOR: With his fame on the rise in New York theater, Welles was also in demand on radio. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [The Shadow] The Shadow is here. 　　 　　NARRATOR: He wasnt just the voice of The Shadow, but a hundred other characters. Radio money poured in, but Welles didnt care about keeping money. He poured it back into his stage plays. 　　 　　WILLIAM ALLAND, Assistant to Orson Welles: We had three or four plays going on all at one time, but we needed money, so he kept doing his radio. And so he had to be able to get to the theater or to the studio and back. So--I think it was his idea, Ill tell you that, to get ambulances to come and pick him up. Theyd go with sirens out on the street and get to the theater, and he had it made. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Because I discovered there was no law in New York that you had to be sick to travel in an ambulance. So I hired the ambulance, and I would go from CBS to NBC. Theyd hold an elevator for me. Id go up to the fifth floor, go into the studio, whichever I was booked for. Id say, Whats the character? Theyd say, Eighty-year-old Chinaman, and Id go on and do the eighty-year-old Chinaman, and then rush off somewhere else. 　　 　　NARRATOR: In 1937, Welles picked a fight with the WPA and, in a blaze of publicity, formed his own company. The Mercury Theater would stage the classics, but, as producer John Houseman said, with their original speed and violence. In other words, the Mercury would be just like its star. 　　 　　WILLIAM HERZ, Mercury Theater: Well, I can only tell you you had to have a strong, strong stomach, because he was a genius, but he was a difficult man to work with. 　　 　　SAM LEVE: I called him Mr. Welles, he called me Sam. He was three years younger than I was. I just couldnt get myself to call him Orson, because he exuded so much power, so much authority. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles could shine the glory of his attention on one actor until that poor player felt that only Orson ever understood him, or Welles could tear a play to bits, or an actor or a theater. When he didnt work, he drank, bragged, ran through women, ate like a beast and hated himself. Hed eat supper at his dressing table--two steaks, each with a baked potato; an entire pineapple; triple pistachio ice cream; and a bottle of Scotch. Appetite drove him. Applause wasnt enough. He wanted amazement, the gasp of a common crowd. His first play for the Mercury would be Julius Caesar, but with a showmans twist. 　　 　　SAM LEVE: He was going to do an idea, he was going to do a show against the Nazi regime, and the first idea that came to mind--I was there--Well do it as the Nuremburg Festival, all with lights, with no scenery whatsoever. 　　 　　NORMAN LLOYD, Actor: An imitation of the lights that Hitler used at Nuremburg. They went straight up in the air. 　　 　　NARRATOR: In 1937, Hitler and war were the diet in the newsreels. If Welles could bring out the dread in his audience, he would have his hit. If he couldnt, well, that was his own dread. Im doomed, Welles would say in the middle of some rehearsal. Then hed throw out a scene or refuse to work on it. By the night of the dress rehearsal, Caesar was full of holes. 　　 　　NORMAN LLOYD: The curtain came down, and there was no applause at all--the audience got up and walked out--and I vividly recall Orson standing in the center of the stage in a greatcoat he had, I believe, that he wore as Brutus, the company lined up beside him on either side of him, waiting for the curtain to go up, and taking a bow, which never occurred. Into this stunned atmosphere rushed Hank Sember, who was one of our publicity men, and he said to Orson, We didnt get a call, whereupon Orson, without moving, formed a great glob of saliva in his mouth and spit right into Hank Sembers eye. 　　 　　NARRATOR: The play was in trouble, and Welles was out of time. Those were always the conditions for his best work. There was a scene he hadnt even played that night about a minor character, Cinna, the poet, an innocent whos attacked by a mob. Now Welles brought the scene back, dressed the mob in Depression-era clothes, and gave them the stage in a swirl of menace straight out of the headlines from Europe. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: You would have seen this poor fellow walk into a pool of light, mumble a line or two, and then gradually people start circling around him, start coming out of the darkness. 　　 　　NORMAN LLOYD: I became aware that they were beginning to surround me. The lights were changing, and as they completely surrounded me, they rushed me down the ramp back from whence I came. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: Hes literally swallowed up by this mob, and offstage was a Hammond organ, and all the bass notes were hit at that moment, signifying the slaughter of Cinna. 　　 　　NORMAN LLOYD: It stopped the show. I mean, to use good old show business terms, it stopped the show. The applause lasted--some nights--for three minutes. You know, thats a whole evening. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: He created for his audience the same kind of tension and--and overwhelming dread that Shakespeares audience had when it saw the original production. That Julius Caesar--that production of Julius Caesar is still regarded as--I think, anyway, and I know a number of people who feel this way--still regarded as the single most important production of Shakespeare ever done on the American stage. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles was twenty-three years old. The editors of Time Magazine put him on the cover. The brightest moon that has risen over Broadway in years, they wrote, Welles should feel at home in the sky, for the sky is the only limit to his ambition. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [Citizen Kane] I know youre tired, gentlemen, but I brought you here for a reason. I think this little pilgrimage will do us good. 　　 　　ACTOR: The Chronicles a good newspaper. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: The Chronicles a good idea for a newspaper. Notice the circulation. 　　 　　NARRATOR: If a character of limitless ambition came naturally to Welles, it was also fair comment on his subject. 　　 　　NANCY LOE: Hearst went to New York, because San Francisco just simply wasnt a large enough stage. He was not a man who thought small about anything. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [Citizen Kane] Six years ago, I looked at a picture of the worlds greatest newspapermen. I felt like a kid in front of a candy store. Well, tonight, six years later, I got my candy, all of it. 　　 　　Welcome, gentlemen, to The Inquirer. 　　 　　Make up an extra copy of that picture and send it to The Chronicle, will you please? 　　 　　Itll make you all happy to learn that our circulation this morning was the greatest in New York, 684,000. 　　 　　NARRATOR: With seven and a half million dollars--his mothers share of the Anaconda Mine--Hearst moved his operation into New York. Another man might have thought twice. In 1895, New York had fourteen papers, and at the top of the heap, Joseph Pulitzer and his New York World. But Hearst had a simple plan. He sent his calling card to Pulitzers top editors, and when they sat down at lunch, hed pull out a giant wad of cash. That solved two problems. Hearst had a staff. Pulitzer had to go looking for one. 　　 　　JIMMY BRESLIN: Grab, just take it. What rules? Everybodys up for grabs. They werent getting any money. What is this--whats this, a sin to steal a staff from somebody? Forget about it. Hearst--Hearst paid them, put up money. He was all right with money, you know. 　　 　　NARRATOR: People who saw Hearst spend thought him mad, but he was spending for a purpose. Circulation he could use for more than commerce. Now Hearst was after real political power. New York was going to launch him onto the world stage. Pulitzer just happened to be the first man in his way. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL: Street sales were the all-important thing, and so Hearst was immediately competing with Pulitzer on the street. And when they both heard about what was going on in Cuba--which actually didnt amount to much at the beginning--they seized on this as a grand opportunity. 　　 　　NARRATOR: The Cuban revolt wasnt new, but it was perfect for Hearst. It was a chance for the vigorous Americans to kick the stuffing out of the hollow old Spanish empire, a chance for The Journal to do the same to old Pulitzer daily on the streets of New York. A war between the U.S. and Spain would serve all of Hearsts ambitions--political, journalistic and even theatrical. 　　 　　NANCY LOE: Theres a thread, a really strong thread in this incredibly long line of Hearsts toward entertainment, toward anything thats flashy, and I think you see that in journalism in the way that he approached things. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Hearst could shape a story so it satisfied like the nickel theater he loved as a boy. Evangelina Cisneros, a rebel girl, a pretty seventeen-year-old, was clapped into a Spanish jail. Hearst heard about it in his New York office and laughed aloud. Weve got Spain now. The truth was Evangelina Cisneros tried to lure a Spanish commander into bed and then kill him, but Hearst didnt want that story. Evangelina was the flower of Cuba. She must be saved. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW: It was a wonderful story. Heres a story of--of embattled innocence, of a woman whose virtue is in danger because she tries to save her father, get her father out of jail. Most of it was made up. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Evangelina ornamented Hearsts front page for months--great for sales. A Hearst reporter could have bribed her out of jail--in fact, the bribe was paid--but that wasnt good enough. Mr. Hearst preferred to rent the house next door so a ladder could be slid across to the jail where iron bars must be hack-sawed. Evangelinas cellmates must be drugged and Evangelina spirited away in a carriage. Why so many twists and turns? Mr. Hearst was at the theater three times a week, and he knew every melodrama had at least three close calls. When the U.S. finally invaded, Hearst went to forty-three special editions. The Journal was selling a million papers a day--more than Pulitzer--but that wasnt enough for Hearst. He wanted more, much more. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW: I mean, Hearst tries to offer himself as a Navy commander. The Navy turns him down. He charters his own yacht, takes newspapermen and moving picture cameramen with him to Cuba to participate in the war, and he does participate in the war. He jumps right in. This is his moment of glory. He, as the publisher, and his newspaper, they are making history as well as reporting it. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Hearst captured twenty-nine Spaniards himself, and made them sing Three Cheers for George Washington. One reporter was ordered to purchase a steamship and be ready to sink it in the Suez Canal if Mr Hearst chose to delay the Spanish navy, and a reporter was dispatched to the King of Spain to offer Mr. Hearsts terms for peace. Hearst was now acting for the people of the United States, even if he hadnt been elected yet. 　　 　　NANCY LOE: Its pretty clear that Hearsts ambitions always were for the White House. I think that anyone who was raised by Phoebe Hearst was taught to aim the highest and aim for the best. 　　 　　JIMMY BRESLIN: Be everything. Be the publisher, be the President. If theres a higher post than that, Ill be king. He would just--Whatever it is, I want it, I want to be it. 　　 　　NARRATOR: But the humble arts of politics--back-slapping, handshaking--those were not Hearsts way. He was thinking bigger than that. He saw that the working poor, the immigrants would be the future of his party. He would be their champion. He campaigned for the eight-hour day, the income tax. He was far ahead of his time, and far too bold. 　　 　　DAVID NASAW: He ran for Congress and was elected, went and served two terms in Congress, but he never showed up. He apparently had the worst attendance of any congressman before or since, and he was proud of it. He said, I would be wasting my time sitting through these boring speeches and these stupid roll calls. Im out--you know, where power is. 　　 　　JIMMY BRESLIN: Desperate judgment, but absolute belief in his own--you know, that he could carry everything off. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL: For a while, he was very optimistic. He could scarcely believe that he couldnt buy the presidency as easily as he could buy anything else. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Hearst set out to buy a future in politics by buying papers--Chicago, L.A., Boston, Atlanta. His was the first nationwide chain. For the first time, one man could shape--or, as he thought, dictate--public opinion all across the country. It was a soapbox of a size no candidate had ever enjoyed. He would build it, whatever it took. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL: The newspaper wars, as they were called, in that period were very fierce. People were killed. 　　 　　VERN WHALEY: They were shooting each other and raiding the stands and stealing papers so that the customers had to buy the opposition paper instead of the paper they wanted. It was violence, all right. Yeah, rough--it was a rough business then, really rough. 　　 　　NARRATOR: This courtly man with his soft manners now had thugs on his payroll, and if that bothered him, he showed no sign. His own staff was sometimes aghast at the violence of his public positions or the way his crusades turned to personal attacks. Hearst papers called not once, but twice, for someone to put a bullet into President McKinley. Then someone did, and the President was dead. 　　 　　JOHN TEBBEL: People were outraged. Hearst was hanged in effigy, his papers were banned from some libraries and schools. He was denounced from the pulpit by eminent ministers. He got death threats practically every day for a while, the public indignation was so intense about this. 　　 　　NANCY LOE: He simply didnt care what others thought of him. He really, I believe, was a law unto himself. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Hearst was a visionary builder, but his own imperial will was against him when he tried to be the simple servant of the people. He ran for mayor of New York, and he lost. He ran for governor and lost. He ran for President at the next Democratic convention, but never got near the nomination. He formed his own party, and he lost. By 1912, he was a public joke. He was William Also-Ran-Dolph Hearst. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [Citizen Kane] Hello, Jedidiah. 　　 　　ACTOR: Im drunk. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Citizen Kane followed the sweep of Hearsts career, the violence of his wanting, the deep disappointments, but Welles had the effrontery to hijack the story of a powerful living man, to strip it bare, make it simple, and use it as clay for his drama. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [Citizen Kane] Thats the way they want it. The people have made that choice. 　　 　　JOSEPH COTTON, Actor: You talk about the people, as though you own them, as though they belong to you. Goodness. As long as I could remember, youve talked about giving the people their rights, as if you could make them a present of liberty. 　　 　　NANCY LOE: You know, as you watch the film unroll on the screen, the sense of irony seems to me to be terribly present. For the first time ever, the means that Hearst had used to lay bare the lives of others had been used on him. 　　 　　JOSEPH COTTON: You dont care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love em so much that they ought to love you back, only you want love on your own terms, something to be played your way according to your rules. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: Toast, Jedidiah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows--his own. 　　 　　RADIO ANNOUNCER: The Columbia Broadcasting system and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the Air in The War of the Worlds. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Just as Hearst had seen the boom in popular newspapers and turned it to his own ends, so Welles grabbed for the medium of radio. Now, for the first time, a single mans voice could reach into living rooms everywhere. Welles not only seized this power, he used it more inventively, more recklessly than anyone else. 　　 　　WILLIAM HERZ: He only looked about twenty-one, and maybe he might have been twenty-two. He was awfully young, and he was a man who--he didnt think. He just did. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles was a young man who courted danger. That was always an element of his success. In the theater, he demanded magic. Characters had to appear from nowhere, or levitate into the sky. Actors were at risk. There were broken bones, fistfights. He liked the reflection of light on a real dagger, but one night he ran a fellow actor through, severed an artery and almost killed him. It was a risky way to live even when it did work and audiences cheered. When they didnt love Welles or his shows, that was worse. 　　 　　WILLIAM HERZ: He went on a tear one night, and he went through the Ritz Carlton Hotel--one floor--breaking down all the doors, and scaring the inhabitants to death, most of the inhabitants being fellow actors. The next day, the manager called and said, Theres about forty thousand dollars worth of damage. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Radio was supposed to pay the bills, but with Mercury Theater on the Air, Welles was even worse. Hed just make up shows as he went. 　　 　　PETER BOGDANOVICH, Director: There was nobody that did radio the way Orson did. I mean, Orson was, you know, so daring and so unbound by rules that, you know, it was always--you always knew Orson would break the rule if it was worth breaking. He told me how it worked. They would rehearse for a week without him, or for five days without him, and hed get there in the morning and theyd run it for him and then hed start to change things. And hed be changing them usually right up until just before air time. 　　 　　WILLIAM ALLAND: We would come to the studio with the book with pages, with scissors and pencils and wed be sitting there right til the last minute, putting together the damn show. It happened many, many times, and that happened even with the--with War of the Worlds. 　　 　　RADIO ANNOUNCER: [War of the Worlds] Ladies and gentlemen, the director of The Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts, Orson Welles. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: We know now that, in the early years of the twentieth century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than Mans and yet as mortal as his own. 　　 　　RICHARD FRANCE: He recognized the fact that his audience was sensitized to having their favorite shows interrupted by news of some disaster, some latest disaster, be it in Europe or be it in the Far East, but something that was threatening, something that was encroaching, something that was terrifying. 　　 　　RADIO ANNOUNCER: [War of the Worlds] Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight oclock Central time, Professor Farrell at the Mount Jennings Observatory in Chicago, Illinois reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectrascope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving toward the Earth with enormous velocity. We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel situated in downtown New York. 　　 　　LOUETTA SANTUCCI, Hopewell Resident: Hopewell is a small country town where all the people usually knew each other. Thats where I worked for seven years as a telephone operator. When I would come to work around five or six oclock at night on Sunday night, it was very slow, so slow that you could almost read a book or do a little crocheting or whatever. 　　 　　WILLIAM HERZ: People were switching dials all the time, and we were on between Winchell and Jack Benny, and we were not a--a very popular program. 　　 　　NARRATOR: Welles knew the bulk of the audience was tuned into rival NBC, and the Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy show, but he also knew that, twelve minutes in, Bergen and his dummy would take a break, cut to music. Thats when Welles landed his Martians. 　　 　　ACTOR: [War of the Worlds] Something wriggling out of the shadow like a great snake. They look like tentacles to me. Why, I can see the things body now. Its large and--large as a bear. Ladies and gentlemen, its indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, its so awful. Its eyes are black. 　　 　　GLORIA WIDELOCK: I had just finished my homework. My older sister had gone in to take her Sunday night bath, because the next day was school. And the first thing I realized was that my parents were shushing us. They kept saying, Quiet. Somethings going on. 　　 　　ACTOR: [War of the Worlds] Wait a minute, somethings happening. Whats that? Its a jet of flames springing from that man in a big sweater. It strikes him head on! Lord, to tell you--the flames. There are gas tanks, tanks in the automobiles. Its spreading everywhere, coming this way now, about twenty yards from my right-- 　　 　　GLORIA WIDELOCK: There was a point when we heard nothing. It seemed like they cut away and there was silence, and that only intensified our interest more. 　　 　　PETER BOGDANOVICH: Orson held the pause and he--everybody was waiting for him to cue it, and it was up to him--he was actually directing it from the floor. And Orson just held that moment. He just kept holding it, and he wouldnt let anything happen. And then he finally said, All right, and everybody said, Oh, my God. You know, he just held this silence. 　　 　　LOUETTA SANTUCCI: I guess about quarter of nine, I realized that something was radically wrong, because it would be very slow ordinarily at that time. Well, we had a board--a switchboard like this with numbers and lights, and they lit up like a Christmas tree. 　　 　　RADIO ANNOUNCER: [War of the Worlds] Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grovers Mill by telephone. Just one moment, please. At least forty people, including six state troopers, lie dead in a field east of the village of Grovers Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition. 　　 　　WILLIAM HERZ: Well, during the course of the broadcast, which was an hour, we noticed uniformed policemen in the lobby. 　　 　　WILLIAM ALLAND: Thats when I knew, Oh-oh, somethings wrong. Is something wrong with the show, or are they after Orson for something he did or what? I had no idea, but there was--we knew something was wrong. And shortly after that is when Davidson Taylor came out while we were in the middle of the show, and he whispers to Orson, For Gods sake, you know, interrupt this thing and tell everybody its only a show. And Orson said, No way, he wouldnt do it, you know--no, no, no, no, he wouldnt do it--when all of a sudden, the executive in charge walks up to you and says, Listen, my God, youre scaring people to death. Please interrupt and tell them its only a show. And Orson said, What do you mean, interrupt? No way. Theyre scared? Good, theyre supposed to be scared. Now let me finish. 　　 　　ORSON WELLES: [War of the Worlds] The bells you hear are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the cities as the Martians approach. 　　 　　GLORIA WIDELOCK: And my mother said, Turn it to another station. We did, and they were having their regularly scheduled program, and my mother said, Theyre not as sharp as CBS. My father was quite upset, and he hung wet dishcloths all around the windows. He said it would absorb the gases. I remember my mother wanted to call on the telephone. Her father and her sisters lived in New York, and she couldnt get through. The lines were busy. She just wanted to call to say goodbye. 　　 　　RADIO ANNOUNCER: [War of the Worlds] This is the end now--black smoke drifting over the city. People in the street see it now. Theyre running toward the East River, thousands of them, dropping in like rats. 　　 　　WILLIAM ALLAND: When we went out of the studio, every--we started answering the phones. Whats going on? and Where are they? and it was unbelievable. And I never--I looked down the end of the hall there, and there was Paley, the head of CBS, in his bathrobe and slippers. Thats who was holding court, wanting to know what the hell was going on. It was absolutely bedlam. It was bedlam. 　　 　　WILLIAM HERZ: Its the only time that, in all the years that I worked with Orson that I ever saw him slightly afraid. I dont think that he quite knew what was going to happen. Its very possible that he thought that this could have ended his career, but it did exactly the opposite.

原文2005年3月7日 发表于http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kane2/kane2ts.html  浏览：921

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