Editing Citizen Kane (section)

===Screenplay===
{{main|Screenplay for Citizen Kane}}
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| image1    = Herman-Mankiewicz.jpg
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| caption1  = [[Herman J. Mankiewicz]] co-wrote the script in early 1940. He and Welles separately re-wrote and revised each other's work until Welles was satisfied with the finished product.
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| caption2  = [[Pauline Kael]]'s controversial essay "[[Raising Kane]]" was published in ''[[The New Yorker]]'' and in ''The Citizen Kane Book'' (1971).
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{{blockquote|I wished to make a motion picture which was not a narrative of action so much as an examination of character. For this, I desired a man of many sides and many aspects. It was my idea to show that six or more people could have as many widely divergent opinions concerning the nature of a single personality...There have been many motion pictures and novels rigorously obeying the formula of the "success story". I wished to do something quite different. I wished to make a picture which might be called a "failure story".|Press statement issued by Welles regarding the impending release of ''Citizen Kane'' (January 15, 1941)<ref>{{cite web |last= |first= |date=February 25, 2013 |title=Rosebud meaning in ''Citizen Kane'' as given by Orson Welles|url=https://www.wellesnet.com/orson-welles-the-meaning-of-rosebud-in-citizen-kane/ |website=Wellesnet |location= |publisher= |access-date=February 9, 2025}}</ref><ref name="Brady"/>{{Rp|283–285}}}}

One of the long-standing controversies about ''Citizen Kane'' has been the authorship of the screenplay.<ref name=Meryman>{{cite book |last=Meryman |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Meryman |title=Mank: The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz |publisher=[[William Morrow and Company]], Inc. |location=New York |date=1978 |isbn=978-0-688-03356-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/mankwitworldlife00mery}}</ref>{{Rp|237}} Welles conceived the project with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was writing radio plays for Welles's CBS Radio series, ''[[The Campbell Playhouse (radio series)|The Campbell Playhouse]]''.<ref name="Carringer TMOCK"/>{{Rp|16}} Mankiewicz based the original outline on the life of [[William Randolph Hearst]], whom he knew socially and came to hate after being exiled from Hearst's circle.<ref name=Meryman/>{{Rp|231}}

In February 1940 Welles supplied Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes and put him under contract to write the first draft screenplay under the supervision of [[John Houseman]], Welles's former partner in the [[Mercury Theatre]]. Welles later explained, "I left him on his own finally, because we'd started to waste too much time haggling. So, after mutual agreements on storyline and character, Mank went off with Houseman and did his version, while I stayed in Hollywood and wrote mine."<ref name="Welles TIOW">{{cite book |last1=Welles |first1=Orson |author-link1=Orson Welles |last2=Bogdanovich |first2=Peter |author-link2=Peter Bogdanovich |last3=Rosenbaum |first3=Jonathan |author-link3=Jonathan Rosenbaum |title=This is Orson Welles |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] Publishers |location=New York |date=1992 |isbn=0-06-016616-9|title-link=This is Orson Welles }}</ref>{{Rp|54}} Taking these drafts, Welles drastically condensed and rearranged them, then added scenes of his own. The industry accused Welles of underplaying Mankiewicz's contribution to the script, but Welles countered the attacks by saying, "At the end, naturally, I was the one making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. I used what I wanted of Mank's and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own."<ref name="Welles TIOW" />{{Rp|54}}

The contract stated that Mankiewicz was to receive no credit for his work, as he was hired as a [[script doctor]].<ref name="Callow">{{cite book |last=Callow |first=Simon |author-link=Simon Callow |title=Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu |publisher=[[Viking]] |location=New York |date=1996 |isbn=978-0-670-86722-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/orsonwellesvolum00simo}}</ref>{{Rp|487}} Before he signed the contract Mankiewicz was advised by his agents that all credit for his work belonged to Welles and the Mercury Theatre, the "author and creator".<ref name="Brady"/>{{Rp|236–237}} As the film neared release, however, Mankiewicz began wanting a writing credit and even threatened to take out full-page advertisements in trade papers and to get his friend [[Ben Hecht]] to write an exposé for ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]''.<ref>{{Cite book| last=Stern| first=Sydney Ladensohn| title=The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics| publisher=University Press of Mississippi| year=2019|isbn=978-1617032677|location=Jackson| pages=}}</ref> Mankiewicz also threatened to go to the [[Screen Writers Guild]] and claim full credit for writing the entire script by himself.<ref name="Leaming OW"/>{{Rp|204}}

After lodging a protest with the Screen Writers Guild, Mankiewicz withdrew it, then vacillated. The question was resolved in January 1941 when the studio, [[RKO Pictures]], awarded Mankiewicz credit. The guild credit form listed Welles first, Mankiewicz second. Welles's assistant [[Richard Wilson (director)|Richard Wilson]] said that the person who circled Mankiewicz's name in pencil, then drew an arrow that put it in first place, was Welles. The official credit reads, "Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles".<ref name=Meryman/>{{Rp|264–265}} Mankiewicz's rancor toward Welles grew over the remaining twelve years of his life.<ref name="Whaley">{{cite book |last=Whaley |first=Barton |date=2005 |title=Orson Welles: The Man Who Was Magic |url=https://www.lybrary.com/orson-welles-the-man-who-was-magic-p-400.html |publisher=Lybrary.com |asin=B005HEHQ7E |access-date=December 21, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171222104859/https://www.lybrary.com/orson-welles-the-man-who-was-magic-p-400.html |archive-date=December 22, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{Rp|498}}

Questions over the authorship of the ''Citizen Kane'' screenplay were revived in 1971 by influential film critic [[Pauline Kael]], whose controversial 50,000-word essay "[[Raising Kane]]" was commissioned as an introduction to the shooting script in ''The Citizen Kane Book'',<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|494}} published in October 1971.<ref name="CK Book Coming">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Citizen Kane Film Book Due in Fall |newspaper=[[The Bakersfield Californian]] |date=June 6, 1971 |quote=On Oct. 28, Atlantic–Little, Brown will publish ''The Citizen Kane Book'', an outsize volume that will include not only 'Raising Kane' but also, as Miss Kael had always intended, the complete, original text of the Mankiewicz–Welles shooting script, published here for the first time.}}</ref> The book-length essay first appeared in February 1971, in two consecutive issues of ''[[The New Yorker]]'' magazine.<ref name="Welles TIOW"/>{{Rp|494}}<ref name="Raising Kane">{{cite book |last1=Kael |first1=Pauline |author-link1=Pauline Kael |last2=Welles |first2=Orson |author-link2=Orson Welles |last3=Mankiewicz |first3=Herman J. |author-link3=Herman J. Mankiewicz |year=1971 |title=The Citizen Kane Book |chapter=Raising Kane by Pauline Kael |chapter-url=http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/raisingkane.html |location=Boston |publisher=[[Little, Brown and Company]] |pages=1–84 |oclc=209252 |access-date=August 18, 2015 |archive-date=June 20, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060620060353/http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/raisingkane.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
In the ensuing controversy, Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges.<ref name="Whaley"/>{{Rp|394}} The essay's thesis was later questioned and some of Kael's findings were also contested in later years.<ref>{{cite news |last=McCarthy |first=Todd |author-link=Todd McCarthy |date=August 22, 1997 |title=Welles pic script scrambles H'wood history |url=https://variety.com/1997/voices/columns/welles-pic-script-scrambles-h-wood-history-1116678396/ |newspaper=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] |access-date=January 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150112143336/http://variety.com/1997/voices/columns/welles-pic-script-scrambles-h-wood-history-1116678396/ |archive-date=January 12, 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Patterson |first=John |date=September 6, 2001 |title=Exit the hatchet woman: Why Pauline Kael was bad for world cinema |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/sep/07/artsfeatures |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=January 6, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150107222152/http://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/sep/07/artsfeatures |archive-date=January 7, 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Rich">{{cite news |last=Rich |first=Frank |author-link=Frank Rich |date=October 27, 2011 |title=Roaring at the Screen with Pauline Kael |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/books/review/roaring-at-the-screen-with-pauline-kael.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=August 18, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150825010419/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/books/review/roaring-at-the-screen-with-pauline-kael.html |archive-date=August 25, 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Questions of authorship continued to come into sharper focus with Carringer's 1978 thoroughly researched essay, "The Scripts of ''Citizen Kane''".<ref name="Carringer Scripts"/>{{efn|First published in ''[[Critical Inquiry]]'', "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" was described by Rosenbaum as "the definitive piece of scholarship on the authorship of ''Kane''—and sadly one of the least well known". He wrote that many biographers may wrongly assume that Carringer included all of its facts in his later book, ''The Making of Citizen Kane''.<ref name="Discovering OW">{{cite book |editor-last=Rosenbaum |editor-first=Jonathan |title=Discovering Orson Welles |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley, California|date=2007 |isbn=978-0-520-25123-6}}</ref>{{Rp|18, 247}}}} Carringer studied the collection of script records—"almost a day-to-day record of the history of the scripting"—that was then still intact at RKO. He reviewed all seven drafts and concluded that "the full evidence reveals that Welles's contribution to the ''Citizen Kane'' script was not only substantial but definitive."<ref name="Carringer Scripts">{{cite book |last=Carringer |first=Robert L. |editor-last=Naremore |editor-first=James |title=Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: A Casebook |url=https://archive.org/details/orsonwellessciti00nare |url-access=limited |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2004 |orig-year=first published 1978 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/orsonwellessciti00nare/page/n89 79]–121 |chapter=The Scripts of ''Citizen Kane'' |isbn=978-0-19-515892-2}}</ref>{{Rp|80}}