An Irishwoman’s Diary on Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst

On the trail of ‘Rosebud’

'Rosebud...." Any faraway tinklings, my little movie babes? Yes, it's from Citizen Kane, melancholy and brilliant portrait of an ego-driven tycoon. Modelled on real-life newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, it also did not spare his girlfriend Marion Davies.

Cowritten, acted and directed by Orson Welles at 26, it came out in 1941.

At 26, Welles had won carte blanche to skewer Hearst, a big fat target.

Hearst promptly did everything he could to scupper it, even trying to buy and burn the negative. But it won nine Oscars, eventually becoming "the best movie ever made" in polls (it was finally replaced by Vertigo in 2012).

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Yet until now, visitors to Hearst’s “enchanted hill” and castle above San Simeon on the California Coast never heard Orson Welles mentioned there, or his movie, or Marion Davies.

Visiting the Castle is always enchanting – a Cuesta Encantada, to give its real name, a magical hilltop studded with wildlife from Hearst’s private zoo, topped by an antique-stuffed fairytale castle (by Julia Morgan, using European imports) with zebras grazing outside.

Built by a man who was madly in love, and had so much money that he jrust couldn’t stop importing castles and medieval chapels, it’s bizarre – an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Hearst is mentioned reverentially.

The first time I sat in Hearst’s ruby-velvet-lined 200-seat theatre – sweetest little cinema ever – I watched mash-ups of his home movies of Chaplin, Cary Grant, Hoagy Carmichael, and Marx Brothers cavorting with the long-faced Hearst, who was at heart a prude. Hearst evicted guests for immoral behaviour. The ghost in the machine was poor Marion, flitting by in the distance, whereas really she’d been mugging like the great comedienne she actually was. Above all else I loved the gold-lined pools where guests had dived to escape scrutiny and censure.

Repartee

Returning to San Simeon five years ago I sensed a glasnost. David Niven’s complaint that wine here “flowed like molasses” was cited by two hilarious guides, Ed “Hoppo” and Scott Teck, whose snappy repartee didn’t quite expose Davies’ drinking, but did include mild quips about the host.

Now, 75 years after Hearst’s wine flowed like molasses, his grandson Stephen has concluded there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

On March 13th, 55 film fans coughed up a thousand dollars each to watch Citizen Kane in Hearst's private cinema, hosted by Ben Mankiewicz , grandson of Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote Citizen Kane with Welles, as part of San Luis Obispo Film Festival.

They got a night tour of the estate – now a state park – then partied on the patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean, attended by guides dressed as Cary and Harpo and Chaplin, all to benefit Friends of Hearst Castle. They raffled a pool party for 10, too.

Stephen aims to revise public opinion of his grandfather, calling it “clarifying the record, showing what an extraordinary human being WR was and what he accomplished”.

"Like screening Star Wars on the Death Star," screamed Hollywood's trade papers, who'd been under a gag order for decades. That ghostly rasping noise? Not Hoagy Carmichael on his umpteenth Stardust – just Hearst revolving stiffly in his shroud.

Rosebud

Aha, but what’s “Rosebud,” eh? Let’s clarify the record on Rosebud.

“Some people,” wrote critic Roger Ebert “have fallen in love with the story that Herman Mankiewicz happened to know that ‘Rosebud’ was William Randolph Hearst’s pet name for an intimate part of Marion Davies”.

Mankiewicz had stayed at Hearst Castle, but was thrown out for offensive drunkenness – by Hearst. He wrote the Citizen Kane script for $200 because he was broke, or so his grandson divulged at the screening.

Also on the "yes, maybe" side of "Rosebud" is the new movie about Welles made for his centenary, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles.

With plentiful archival footage of Welles at work and in his own words, it shows a Charlie Brown cartoon where Lucy debunks the Rosebud theory. Clearly everyone was in on it.

Irritating for Hearst? Be that as it may, the movie also shows Welles as a 16-year-old landing in Dublin and heading for the Gate, where Micheál Mac MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards are amused by his hubris. Mac Liammóir is grinning over Welles’s obvious lies about his age – he’d said he was 19, and their subsequent trips to act together.

“Well, I’m ashamed of ‘Rosebud’,” Welles confesses here. “It’s a tawdry device. It (the movie) deserves better.” He was also ashamed of his treatment of the Marion Davies character – Davies was a generous and funny lush. Knowing she was on a tight rein, guests hid bottles for her in castle restrooms so she could drink on the pretext of nature’s call.

Gifted comedienne

The movie skewers Marion as a talent-free drunk and Hearst as obsessing over Marion’s hidden bottles. But read David Niven’s

The Moon’s A Balloon

and you’ll learn she was also a gifted comedienne who sold her worldly goods for Hearst when he was down on his luck and dying.

As a younger editor, Hearst libeled Fatty Arbuckle, destroying his career, and promoted the Spanish-American war in his papers. He signed Mussolini and Hitler as columnists. So, he had it coming, right?

As the movie shows, not even Welles really thought that.