{"id":126158,"date":"2020-12-04T01:54:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T22:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/citizen-kane-writer-herman-mankiewiczs-wild-life\/"},"modified":"2020-12-04T01:54:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T22:54:06","slug":"citizen-kane-writer-herman-mankiewiczs-wild-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/citizen-kane-writer-herman-mankiewiczs-wild-life\/","title":{"rendered":"#’Citizen Kane’ writer Herman Mankiewicz’s wild life"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#’Citizen Kane’ writer Herman Mankiewicz’s wild life<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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When you think of \u201cCitizen Kane,\u201d considered by many critics to be the greatest movie ever made, one name comes to mind: Orson Welles. That towering auteur with a smoldering voice directed and starred in the 1941 film. He wrote it, too.<\/p>\n

Or did he?\u00a0<\/p>\n

For many years, experts such as New Yorker critic Pauline Kael have controversially speculated that another man, his co-writer Herman Mankiewicz, was the sole brain behind the \u201cKane.\u201d <\/p>\n

The new Netflix film, David Fincher\u2019s \u201cMank\u201d starring Gary Oldman, hews to that version of the story, which is still disputed by many others. Herman\u2019s late son, Frank, also thought his dad deserved all the credit in his 2016 memoir \u201cSo As I Was Saying . . . : My Somewhat Eventful Life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father used to quote Rita Alexander, played so wonderfully on the screen by Lily Collins, when asked about how much Welles wrote of the screenplay,\u201d Herman\u2019s grandson and TCM host Ben Mankiewicz told The Post. \u201cHer response was, \u2018Not one word.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMank\u201d is the rare Hollywood film about a screenwriter, a job so vital to the movie business, but lacking the glitz, name recognition, control of a dressing room or the director\u2019s chair. Mankiewicz, however, was no normal screenwriter.<\/p>\n

During the roaring \u201920s in New York, Mankiewicz was the theater critic for the New York Times and would luxuriate in daylong poker game<\/a>s with Ring Lardner and Harpo Marx. By the time he arrived in Hollywood in the late \u201920s, he was a notorious wit \u2014 and drinker. <\/p>\n

When Mankiewicz was writing the script<\/a> for \u201cCitizen Kane\u201d in 1940, Welles put him up in a ranch house in the Mojave desert to create in peace, but the man\u2019s boozy reputation preceded him. \u201cNo pair of internal revenue agents could have been more diligent in their daily inspection of Mank\u2019s room for intoxicants,\u201d producer John Houseman said in Sydney Ladensohn Stern\u2019s book \u201cThe Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak and Hollywood.\u201d \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Orson
Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz circa 1940s.<\/figcaption>
Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cHe was drunk a lot, but my dad says never mean, ever,\u201d Ben added. \u201cExcept maybe to studio moguls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mankiewicz found the perfect arrangement for his blunt honesty that regularly lost him jobs and friends. A pal who respected him, 25-year-old Broadway hotshot Welles, had a two-picture deal with RKO that specified no studio interference. He asked Mank to write a first draft, and the pair decided on a nervy topic \u2014 power-publisher William Randolph Hearst. <\/p>\n

Mankiewicz knew the guy well. Hearst was the owner of the largest news<\/a>paper chain in the country and a former congressman, who hosted notables such as Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Amelia Earhart at his giant San Simeon manse in California, the model for Xanadu in \u201cKane.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was Mankiewicz who often scored the coveted seat at the dining table right next to the influential host he would soon eviscerate in the Oscar-winning film. <\/p>\n

\n
\"Herman
Herman Mankiewicz<\/figcaption>
Corbis via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how complimentary it was,\u201d his wife Sara told Stern of the assigned seat. \u201cBecause the rest of the party was sometimes quite uninformed, let us say, about all of these things, and Herman was a very astute student of politics and literature.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mankiewicz liked Hearst, too, despite his occasional support of European fascists. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was impossible not to be completely captivated by him,\u201d Mankiewicz said a decade after \u201cKane.\u201d \u201cThough you differed violently with what at the moment he stood for politically, which on the other hand, might be the exact opposite the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two eventually had a falling out according to Stern, in part due to Mankiewicz\u2019s alcoholism that enabled Hearst\u2019s mistress, actress Marion Davies.<\/p>\n

The stand-in for Hearst in \u201cCitizen Kane\u201d is called Charles Foster Kane, memorably played by Welles. Not only do we see him die of old age at the beginning of the film, but also watch as he goes from brilliant entrepreneur to psychotic hermit. His wife Susan, modeled after Davies, leaves him.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Herman\u2019s
Herman\u2019s grandson and TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.<\/figcaption>
Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Hearst wasn\u2019t pleased at his depiction, or that of Davies, and after the film screened in Hollywood, he commanded that none of his mighty publications run ads for it. \u201cCitizen Kane\u201d barely squeaked by at the box office, and won just one of its nine 1941 Oscar nominations \u2014 Best Screenplay, for Welles and Mankiewicz. <\/p>\n

And, to think, Mankiewicz nearly wasn\u2019t named as one the film\u2019s writers. Welles was contractually guaranteed sole credit by RKO, but in the end, Mankiewicz asked and Welles relented, cementing his collaborator\u2019s legacy. Mankiewicz died 12 years later in 1953 at age 55, his career having largely fizzled out.<\/p>\n

\u201cHerman blew things up,\u201d Ben said. \u201cHe blew things up with studio bosses that cost him his job. He blew up his own finances. He cost himself his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cHerman was fighting these demons, this constant shame that he had not fulfilled his potential, and was doing something meaningless,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd asking for the credit on \u2018Kane\u2019 was the moment he realized he\u2019d written something great \u2014 something that mattered.\u201d\u00a0\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#’Citizen Kane’ writer Herman Mankiewicz’s wild life” When you think of \u201cCitizen Kane,\u201d considered by many critics to be the greatest movie ever made, one name comes to mind: Orson Welles. That towering auteur with a smoldering voice directed and starred in the 1941 film. He wrote it, too. Or did he?\u00a0 For many years,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":126159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/mank-featured.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[82534,14318,14319,5021,1377],"class_list":["post-126158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-3-20","tag-citizen-kane","tag-david-fincher","tag-hollywood","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}