The First Lady of Hollywood

by Samantha Barbas

  Now that Welles was in Hollywood, all eyes were on the "would-be genius," as Louella dubbed him, to see when-and if-he would perform. Welles announced that his first project would be a screen adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart ofDarkness, and for the rest of the summer he locked himself away in an expensive rented home in Brentwood and, with John Houseman and Herbert Drake of the Mercury Group, worked on the script. Shooting for Darkness was scheduled for October, but by early fall, when Schaefer declared that the budget for the film was too high, the project was scrapped. Welles then started work on a second project, The Smiler with the Knife, based on a British thriller, but this project, too, was abandoned when Welles and Schaefer were unable to agree on the female lead. Meanwhile, Hollywood jeered. The young genius with the dream contract was failing; worse yet, he was playing the quintessential theater snob, running around in a beard, quoting Shakespeare, and making snide anti-Hollywood remarks to reporters. "I hope that Welles was misquoted in the interview in which he was supposed to have said `I shall proceed to refer to the movies only in terms of contempt.' Orson, I am afraid, is a young man who talks too much," Louella wrote. Others expressed their anger less politely. When Welles, now nicknamed "Little Orson Annie," invited important studio executives to a party, nobody came. An actor cut off Welles's necktie at the Brown Derby. After Dorothy Parker, who was screenwriting in Hollywood, was introduced to Welles, she said, referring to Welles's arrogance, "It's like meeting God without dying."22

  Welles was not the only one to come under attack that summer. Longtime MGM screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, an alcoholic, was finally fired by Louis B. Mayer over his drunkenness and gambling. The overweight, oafish "Mank," so accident-prone that he was considered by many in Hollywood to be a walking disaster, promptly went on a binge and ended up in a car crash. Bruised, bandaged, and laid up in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Mankiewicz received a visit from an old friend, Orson Welles. Out of sympathy, Welles offered Mankiewicz a job writing scripts for his Mercury Theater radio show, a long-running program that Welles continued to produce while in Hollywood. Mankiewicz accepted. Later that winter, as Mankiewicz followed Welles's saga of failure at RKO, he suggested to Welles that they make a film attacking William Randolph Hearst, an idea that Mankiewicz had toyed with for decades. Mankiewicz and his wife had been frequent visitors at San Simeon and, like many Hollywood liberals, hated the publisher for his media monopoly and red-baiting crusades. Though Welles's father had known Hearst, and though the Hearst theater critic Ashton Stevens, who was eventually the model for the character Jed Leland in the film that Welles was thinking about making, had been almost "an uncle" to Welles, Welles similarly despised the publisher, whose papers had criticized his leftist theater productions. After considering the possibility of making a movie around Hearst's alleged involvement in Thomas Ince's death, Mankiewicz and Welles agreed to make a "prismatic" film about Hearst's life, told from different points of view. The film would open with the death of Hearst-or rather, Charles Foster Kane, to be played by Welles-and would depict, in flashback mode, Hearst-Kane's rise to power, his tyranny over the American publishing industry, and his attempts to launch a talentless blonde opera singer, Susan Alexander, to stardom. Susan Alexander, of course, was based on Marion Davies.

  With reams of paper and several months worth of pills that were prescribed to conquer his alcoholism, in early 1940 Mankiewicz was shipped to the Campbell Ranch, a vacation retreat in the desert town of Victorville, where he would dictate the script, tentatively titled American, to his secretary. In April, the 350-page script was complete, and by July 1940, after significant editing by both Mankiewicz and Welles, shooting on American, now renamed Citizen Kane, was scheduled to begin. RKO, for the most part, kept the film's script and shooting plans under wraps; if news about the film were to leak out to the wrong places, Kane might never see the light of day.

  But Hollywood is Hollywood, where scandal is the coin of the realm and news travels fast, and by the time shooting was scheduled to start, many in the film colony ("just about EVERYONE," the Hollywood Reporter later claimed) knew that the film dealt with Hearst.23 That is, everyone except Louella, who had spent most of the summer out of town. In May 1940, she had asked Joe Connolly of the International News Service for a vacation: "I want to take the Doctor away because he seems very run down since his operation-and nervous. Maybe it will help my disposition too." Connolly gave his blessings: "Your stuff this year has been the best in your entire career," he wrote.24 After a six-week trip to Hawaii, Louella and Harry returned to California and went to San Simeon, where she spent "one of the nicest two days [she] had ever spent at the ranch." "It was such fun being with you and Marion without a lot of people," she told Hearst.25 Shortly afterward, with Adela Rogers St. Johns, she traveled to Chicago to cover the Democratic convention, where Roosevelt was to be nominated for a third term. By 1940, Louella had switched her party affiliation from Democratic to Republican and, like Hearst, was an opponent of Roosevelt; she supported the Republican presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie. "You will be interested to hear that Hollywood without exception intends to vote for Wendell Willkie," she told Hearst shortly after the convention. "Of course I suppose this community represents the money part and probably does not reflect the attitude of the entire US [,] but so many people feel that he represents America, the land which has always meant opportunity."26

  In mid-July 1940, she returned to Hollywood to find an invitation from Welles to a cocktail party on the Kane set, a standard courtesy that most directors extended to columnists. But because Louis B. Mayer had scheduled another event, the preview of the latest Clark Gable film, for the same afternoon, Louella and most of the other columnists did not attend. "Orson Welles, who was upset because most of the press attended the `Boom Town' preview the afternoon of his cocktail party, wanted to toss another `watch him work' shindig. But RKO nixed it because after all the bearded genius can only start work on his picture once!" Louella wrote. During the next few weeks, however, as Louella began to hear rumors that the film depicted Hearst, she asked Welles if they could meet, and the two arranged to have lunch in his RKO dressing room. The conversation that transpired became the subject of a feature article in the Sunday Examiner, in which Louella concluded that Welles was "a brilliant youth."27

  Indeed, Welles was brilliant, and his genius never showed more than in his talk with Louella that afternoon. Rather than open the conversation with Kane, Welles, knowing Louella's strong ties to rural Illinois, asked Louella whether it was true that she was from Dixon. Her eyes lit up. Welles had grown up in Grand Detour, only six miles from Dixon, and that made them virtually neighbors, he explained. Instantly Louella's image of Welles transformed. No longer a contemptible theater snob, Welles was "just folks"-a real "hometown boy," as she would later dub him in her column, who had come to Hollywood to "do good." With newfound trust in Welles, Louella at last broached the subject of Kane. Was it true, as she had heard, that the film was about communism? Or, as another rumor suggested, that it depicted the life of Hearst? "It deals with a dead man," he replied. "You know when a man dies there is a great difference of opinion about his character." A film about a dead man? Louella asked. "I cover a great span of life," he continued, ,,and the widow of the man is really the heroine." Louella was confused, but nodded and smiled. Since she was on the RKO lot, she asked, could she see the set?28

  At that point, the troupe was filming what would become one of the most famous scenes in the film-an allusion to When Knighthood Was in Flower, in which Susan Kane, the character based on Davies, was performing disastrously in an opera that had been financed and publicized by Kane. "This is just a phoney opera without any real music. It's an opera that never existed," Welles explained. Again, Louella did not understand, but she left the set feeling convinced that the "hometown boy" was on the level. Welles's description of Kane "sounded very complicated to me," Louella told her readers, "but it must be all right because Gregg Toland is the photographer. Gregg wouldn't
be a part of a movie he didn't believe in." Earlier that summer, when Hearst heard rumors that Kane was based on his life, he had planned to cancel RKO ads in his papers. Confidently, Louella told Hearst that he could drop the proposed ban.29

  Meanwhile, Hollywood snickered as Louella, enchanted by Welles and immersed in plans for her upcoming personal appearance tour, overlooked press reports, including articles in Daily Variety and Newsweek, that clearly stated the film's plot and intentions. In the September issue of a magazine called Friday, an article titled "Wellesapoppin" previewed Kane and printed six film stills from the production. A caption under the photo of actress Dorothy Comingore in the role of Susan Alexander described her as a "ringer for Marion Davies." Blindly, Louella continued to praise Welles in her column. "Let's give credit where credit is due. We all said enough about Orson Welles and the $700,000 he cost RKO before he ever faced a camera. George Schaefer, head of RKO, is in town and he was given a private preview of Citizen Kane. His own words are `I am prouder of this picture than any screenplay RKO has ever made.' He was so delighted after he saw it that he gave the youthful genius a carte blanche to go ahead with his next," she told her readers. That November, when Louella saw Welles in Chicago-Louella was on the last leg of her tour, and Welles was speaking on a lecture circuit-she asked once again if the film concerned Hearst. Welles insisted that it did not.30

  Louella returned to Hollywood in December for a quiet Christmas with Harriet and Harry. The personal appearance tour had been a success, and Louella announced to friends that she was in the process of lining up a sponsor for a reprise of the Hollywood Hotel radio show. The day was typical, with Louella's famed holiday turkey, many drinks, and expensive gifts from the studio heads and the "312 friends" in her circle. Noticeably absent was a present from Orson Welles. Ever the showman, he saved his spectacular gift for last.

  On January 3, a small announcement appeared in the Hollywood Reporter: "Orson Welles is showing Citizen Kane to a very small group of friends tonight."" The private screening for the editors of Life, Look, and Redbook, the three periodicals that had reached their deadlines for February publicity, was to be secret. But after receiving a tip, the Hollywood Reporter broke the news and tucked the sentence quietly into its "Rambling Reporter" gossip section on the second page. That same day, Daily Variety ran its own blurb about Kane: "Nationally distributed magazines and even house organs are carrying the story, in both wordage and stills in current issues, which merely report what Daily Variety reported several months ago." "Citizen Kane," it reported, "is patterned somewhat after the biog of none other than William Randolph Hearst."32

  Though Louella missed the blurb, Hopper spotted it, and, enraged that she had not been invited to the screening, she called Welles and left a message that she would be coming, whether Welles liked it or not. Hopper and Welles had known each other since 1934, when Hopper's son appeared in one of Welles's Broadway productions, and Welles had promised Hopper, as a friend, that she would be among the first to see Kane. "Dearest Hedda: I owe you the biggest apology of my life and here it comes," Welles wrote in a telegram to Hopper. "The magazine people Look and Life have to meet their deadline so we must show them the picture no matter how bad or incomplete very soon. Fully realize I have broken a solemn promise that you'd be the first to see Kane. Please understand and forgive. Come tonight if you must but it stinks. Many key shots are missing or only the tests are cut in and we need music like Britain needs planes. Love, Orson." Hopper went to the preview anyway, and when the lights came on at the end of the film she was stunned.33

  Like most of the Hollywood community, Hopper had known that the movie was about Hearst. But she had no idea that Welles's depiction would be so dark and damning. In the film, Charles Foster Kane, the son of a silver miner turned millionaire, builds a New York publishing empire through deceit, manipulation, and sensational "yellow journalism." After an unsuccessful bid for the presidency, he pours millions of dollars into the operatic career of his untalented young lover. Kane provides Susan Alexander with costly singing lessons, builds an opera house for her, and fills his papers with glowing reviews of her performances. But no amount of money or press can turn her into a star, and she and Kane live miserably in Kane's castle, "Xanadu." Kane, bitter in his old age, becomes a violent tyrant, and Alexander a hysterical alcoholic. The parallels between Hearst and Kane are obvious-the yellow journalism, the blonde mistress, the cavernous mansion on a hill. Yet in his depiction of Hearst as violent, Marion Davies as talentless, and their relationship as cold and abusive, Welles cruelly exaggerated.

  At the end of the film, Hopper stood up and shouted that Kane was "an outrage against a great American." As she left the screening to call Oscar Lawler, Hearst's lawyer, she shouted at Welles, "You won't get away with this."34 Though Hopper was genuinely outraged by the film's depiction of Hearst and Davies, she also saw an opportunity to curry favor with Hearst, who was still considering placing her column in the New York Mirror. On the phone, she described in detail Welles's depiction of Hearst and Davies, claiming them defamatory and potentially libelous, and Lawler began conferring with the other Hearst lawyers.

  The following day, the magazine Friday hit the newsstands. Billing itself as "the magazine that dared to tell the truth," the sensationalistic publication printed exaggerations, trumped-up scandals, and, in some cases, outright lies. In its January issue, Friday claimed that its reporters had seen a sneak preview of Kane. In reality, the closest the magazine's staff had come to the film was a press release and series of film stills that had been sent to the publication by Welles's publicist, Herbert Drake. According to Welles's biographer, Frank Brady, Dan Gillmor, Friday's editor, concocted a story by "taking each photo and writing a caption for it that proved to his own satisfaction that the film was about William Randolph Hearst." Hoping to stir up controversy, the article concluded with the statement that "Louella Parsons, Hollywood correspondent for the Hearst newspaper chain, has been praising Welles lavishly, giving Citizen Kane a terrific advance build up. When informed of these outbursts of praise, Welles said: `This is something I cannot understand. Wait until the woman finds out that the picture's about her boss.' "35

  Welles had never made that comment, and when he saw it in Friday on January 8, he panicked.36 Immediately he dispatched a telegram to Louella, explaining that "Friday magazine this week carries a vicious lie.... Citizen Kane isn't about Mr. Hearst [and] my remark was somebody's cruel invention." "A good deal of nonsense has been appearing lately about KANE," Welles continued. "Since it has been learned that the picture concerns itself with a fighting publisher, who lives in a big country house, it has been assumed that KANE is about Mr. Hearst. People seem to have forgotten Bennett, Munsey, Pulitzer, and McCormick, to mention only a few you could name. Not that it matters; KANE isn't any of them. Of course, if there hadn't been great publishers I couldn't have created a fictitious one, and some similarities to these men are unavoidable. I do hope you can make this distinction clear.... May we have lunch sometime next week, and when may I show you CITIZEN KANE?" he concluded. "My sincerest gratitude for all the wonderful things you have done for me and my very best to you."37

  But Welles's attempts at civility were in vain. When Louella got the telegram, she was on the way to a party in Beverly Hills, and shortly after her arrival she received a call from Hearst. He had seen the issue of Friday, he explained, and the matter was urgent. Could Louella go to RKO immediately and screen Citizen Kane? "Yes, Yes, Chief," Louella was reported to have said, and though Hearst gave few details about the article, Louella knew that Welles had lied about the film. At midnight, as Hearst issued a directive to his newspapers to ban all publicity on RKO, Louella plotted revenge.38

  The next afternoon, January 9, 1941, Louella arrived at the RKO lot with Oscar Lawler and A. Laurence Mitchell, Hearst's lawyer in Los Angeles. The trio, along with Welles and Drake, watched Kane quietly; since the sound track had not been added and neither Louella nor the lawyers spoke during the f
ilm, the screening proceeded in a tense and eerie silence. When the lights came on at the end of the film, Louella was trembling. ("She was purple and her wattles were wobbling like a turkey gobbler," recalled Kane actress Ruth Warrick.) Furious, Louella glared at Welles. She stood up, turned, and walked out the door. Quietly, the battle over Citizen Kane had begun.39

  Like Hopper, Louella began by contacting San Simeon. She told Hearst's secretary Joe Willicombe that the film was all that they had suspected-and worse. Around five thirty that evening, she received instructions from Hearst to stop Citizen Kane.

  After first contacting movie czar Will Hays, whose help she hoped to enlist in the war against Kane, she placed a call to RKO. Claiming that "it was a matter of life and death to RKO," Louella demanded George Schaefer's telephone number, then proceeded to call the studio boss at home. When Schaefer's secretary answered and said that he was out, Louella threatened that unless she spoke to him immediately-within five minutes, she said- RKO would have on its hands "one of the most beautiful lawsuits in history." When Schaefer returned her call later that evening, Louella demanded that he withhold the release of Kane pending possible legal action. Schaefer refused, and Louella exploded. "If you boys want private lives, I'll give you private lives," she told Schaefer. If Kane were to be exhibited, she threatened, the Hearst papers would publish exposes on the private lives of every one of the RKO board of directors. When Schaefer held fast, insisting that the film would be premiered in February, as planned, Louella slammed down the phone.40