CHARLES FOSTER KANE

'Charles Foster Kane II'^[1] is the title character of Orson Welles's film ''Citizen Kane''. Orson Welles played Kane (receiving an Oscar nomination), with Buddy Swan playing Kane as a child. Welles also co-wrote and directed the film.

Contents

Biography

Relationships

Susan Alexander

Jedediah Leland

Walter Thatcher

Political views

Inspiration

References

Biography

In the film, Kane was born of humble origins in the fictional settlement of Little Salem, Colorado, circa 1863.^[2] A mine given to his parents (to settle a bill for room and board) happened to be rich in gold. To secure a better future for the eight-year-old boy, his parents gave him over to Walter Parks Thatcher in 1871, who raised him in luxury until he became an adult. However, Kane hated Thatcher immediately for ripping him away from his family and he attended numerous colleges, all of which expelled him, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell.
As an adult, Kane took on the newspaper ''The New York Inquirer''^[3] because he thought "it might be fun to run a newspaper" and for the pleasure of harassing Thatcher's political goals and personal business interests, including ones Kane held stock in. One of his first acts was to publish a "declaration of principles," which stated his duty to tell his readers the truth. However, he almost immediately begins using yellow journalism tactics to blow stories out of proportion and outdo his rivals by raiding their staff, as if they were collectibles, and encouraging a war with Spain. To finance this initially money losing business, Kane used his personal resources which he defiantly bragged to Thatcher would allow him to operate it, even at a million dollar annual loss, for decades.
Kane eventually married Emily Monroe Norton, the niece of an apparently fictional president of the United States.^[4] Unfortunately, the couple's relationship turned cold as his wealth and power fed his megalomaniacal ego. As Kane's popularity and fortune increased, he ran for Governor of New York against reputedly corrupt boss J. W. Gettys. It seemed Kane would secure the election easily, until Gettys revealed evidence suggesting Kane had been having an affair with a young "singer" named Susan Alexander. When Gettys contacted Kane's wife to use his weapon, Kane accompanied her to see him. Even though his affair was found out, Kane refused to drop out of the race and threatened Gettys despite his position of weakness. As a result, the scandal went public and Kane lost the election decisively. Furthermore, Kane's best friend, Jedediah Leland, profoundly disillusioned at his friend's haughty arrogance at humiliating his family and treating the electorate like his personal property, insisted on being transferred to Kane's Chicago paper to stay away from him.
Kane's wife divorced him in 1916 and died two years later in a car crash with their son. Kane married Susan Alexander and forced her into a doomed and humiliating career as an opera singer, despite the fact that this form of theater was seriously out of her depth. This effort cost more than money in Chicago, where Jedediah Leland, the paper's drama critic, refused to follow the company line praising Alexander, but became too drunk at the difficult task of writing a truthful review against his friend's wishes. While Leland was in a stupor, Kane finished the review with the negative tone intact to show that he still had integrity, even while he simultaneously fired Leland for not cooperating in his obsession. In retaliation, Leland refused his severance package and mailed the torn up check and the original copy of Kane's "declaration of principles" to remind him of what he had lost. However, Kane considered that personal statement obsolete and tore it up in anger.
After the despondent Susan attempted suicide, Kane released from her from the operatic career and retired to Xanadu, his Gothic chateau in Florida. The combination of business downturns and Kane's excessive spending habits cost him much of his control of his media businesses to Thatcher, although he still had considerable wealth. Susan, bored with living alone with Kane becoming a domineering hermit, eventually left him. There, alone and estranged from all his friends, Kane died of old age in 1941 uttering the cryptic word "Rosebud."
Reporter Jerry Thompson was assigned to track down the meaning of "Rosebud," shortly after Kane's death. Though he interviewed all of Kane's living acquaintances, he never found it. In truth, the word "Rosebud" was written on the sled Kane was given by his parents as a little boy before he first moved in with Thatcher. The original sled remains in the snow for years on the Kane ranch in the early scenes of the movie. Later, as a token effort by Thatcher to help Kane settle into his new home, Kane receives a fancier sled for Christmas. That sled, considered to be trash, was burned after Kane's death along with other possessions seen as trash by the bank. The sled represents the innocence and love stolen from Kane when he was taken from his parents. It also represented how Thatcher tried to satisfy his need for a father but didn't know what he needed as he was too old.

Relationships

Susan Alexander

Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore) was Kane's second wife. She is evidently low class and did not recognize Kane when they first met in the mid-1910s. While Gettys found evidence that implicated Susan as Kane's mistress, the film does not make it clear whether or not she really was. However, a mere two weeks after his first wife divorced him in 1916, Kane married Susan.
Susan was an aspiring opera singer when she and Kane first met, but is not particularly talented. Despite this, Kane tried to force her into a career as an opera singer, even building an opera house specifically for her, but he was unsuccessful. Susan is the last of Kane's friends to leave him as well as the original owner of the snow globe he drops after saying "rosebud". As of 1941, she is still living and running a nightclub ("El Rancho") in Atlantic City, which is where she is interviewed by Jerry Thompson.

Jedediah Leland

Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) was a close friend of Kane and is generally acknowledged to represent the morality and idealist beliefs Kane himself loses as the film progresses. According to Mr. Bernstein; he came from a wealthy family that lost all their money and met Charles Foster Kane in college. In 1941 Jedediah lives in a nursing home in Manhattan, where he was interviewed by Jerry Thompson.

Walter Thatcher

Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris) is a banker described by the opening newsreel as a "grand old man of Wall Street". He became Kane's legal guardian in 1871, but Kane resented him and used the ''Inquirer'' to harass him. In a scene in the newsreel set around 1925, Thatcher tells a congressional investigation that Kane is a Communist. When Thatcher asks Kane what he would have liked to have been, Kane replies "everything you hate". Clearly getting on in years during Kane's youth, Thatcher was still alive in 1929 and was dead by 1941.

Political views

Kane's political views are complex and difficult to define. This is epitomized in the film's opening newsreel where Thatcher calls Kane a "Communist" followed directly by a scene at a workers' rally where Kane is denounced as a "Fascist". Communism and Fascism represent the opposite ends of the Left-Right political spectrum. Kane's reply reveals another element of his political beliefs; his patriotism. He says "I am, have been, and will be only one thing - an American." Later in the newsreel, he says that he is firstly an American and secondly a reporter.
As implied by his support of the Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelt, Kane seems to believe in the concept of a benevolent American Empire. However, given his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I, he apparently favors isolationism in regards to conflicts abroad. These convictions suggest a conservative viewpoint on his part. Kane's social views, on the other hand, are decidedly liberal for his time given his attacks on big business and that he holds up the "working man" as a model for society. His election campaign billed him as the "the fighting liberal", perhaps suggesting that he prefers to be viewed as a liberal.
Although he uses his incredible fortune to buy statues in Europe, build Xanadu, etc., Kane does not appear to care about making money given that he chooses to run the ''Inquirer'' over more lucrative means and that he specifically attacks his own business interests in the paper. In a 1935 interview depicted in the newsreel, Kane said that war would not happen in Europe since its leaders were "too intelligent to embark on a project which would mean the end of civilization as we now know it". He, of course, is mistaken as World War II had already begun at the time the film was written. In the same newsreel, there is footage of Kane talking casually with Adolf Hitler.
Much of Kane's 1916 campaign for New York governor, at least what is seen of it in the film, is based on the notion that he will look out for the working class over his own interests. Despite this, he loses the election. Jedediah Leland suggests this is because Kane offered the working class their rights as his personal gift rather than as what they were due. Specifically, Leland said that Kane believed he "owned" the people and that he was offering them their rights as a "reward for good behavior". All this fits in with Leland's view that Kane was using his newspaper and his attempted political career to earn the people's love. If true, this would suggest Kane's politics were based off his desire to find love, or perhaps regain the love he lost when Thatcher took him from his parents, rather than on any particular political ideologies.

Inspiration

It is almost universally agreed that Kane is meant to portray a fictionalized William Randolph Hearst. Though ''Citizen Kane'' is often considered one of the best films ever made, Hearst was allegedly not amused by how he (or his mistress Marion Davies, widely considered the inspiration for Susan Alexander) were portrayed, and he attempted to destroy both the film and Welles' career.
Welles was quoted as saying, "It is not based upon the life of Mr. Hearst or anyone else. On the other hand, had Mr. Hearst and similar financial barons not lived during the period we discuss, ''Citizen Kane'' could not have been made." However, in the film, Kane is given the line "You provide the prose poems; I'll provide the war," undeniably similar to "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war," a quote widely attributed to Hearst. In addition, Kane's unsuccessful attempt to make his second wife an opera star parallels Hearst's effort to make his mistress a serious dramatic movie actress despite critics' complaints that she was miscast and better in light comedy roles. The general consensus is that Hearst is the primary — but not the only — inspiration behind Kane. Some biographies of Welles posit that Welles himself was a source of inspration for the character; some of the character's dialogue on how to run a newspaper are direct quotes from Welles's comments on how to make a motion picture (though this was his first), and Welles's co-writer, Herman J. Mankiewicz, included dialogue about Kane's voracious appetite, also meant to echo Welles's character. The connection with Hearst is strengthened by the fact that Mankiewicz was a frequent guest of Hearst's mistress Marion Davies at Hearst Castle.
However, other men have been suggested as a model for Kane including:

★ Basil Zaharoff

★ Howard Hughes

★ Jules Brulatour

★ Samuel Insull
In recent years, Kane has been compared to contemporaries such as Rupert Murdoch^[5] and Ted Turner.^[6]

References

1. Since his son is named Charles Foster Kane III, at least according to the film's end credits, and Kane has the same name, it logically follows that Kane's full name must be Charles Foster Kane II, although this is never actually stated in the film.
2. This is estimated from Kane being eight years old in 1871. This is also the same year William Randolph Hearst was born.
3. Some reviewers have spelled the name of Kane's newspaper "The New York Enquirer," but it's always spelled "Inquirer" within the film itself.
4. Kane refers to the President as being "Uncle John" from his wife's perspective, but there was not a president with the given name of John during the period this portion of the film is set.
5. Rupert Murdoch: Bigger than Kane from BBC News
6. 'Citizen Kane' a masterpiece at 50 from Roger Ebert