In an essay on the film Citizen Kane, Pauline Kael described the fascination with William Randolph Hearst in this way: A man like Hearst seems to embody more history than other people do; in his company a writer may feel that he has been living in the past and on the outskirts and now he's living in the dangerous present, right where the decisions are really made.
In this way, Ms. Kael describes the fascination with the subject which led Herman Mankiewicz to write a movie based on the life of the most powerful newspaper man in America at that time.
Another Kael quote characterizes the story which Mankiewicz finally produced and which so interested Orson Welles:
Kane may be a study of egotism and a movie about money and love but it isn't just another movie about a rich man who isn't loved; it's a scandalous, unauthorized, muckraking biography of a man who was still alive and – though past his peak influence – still powerful, so it conveyed shock and danger, and it drew its strength from its reverberations in the life of the period.
The script which Mankiewicz provided made Orson Welles a star. Contrary to what many people believe, Welles had nothing to do with writing the script for Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz had already started working on the idea when he proposed the idea to Welles. The two men were eager to begin the project, but as it progress Mankiewicz began to have second doubts about his brutal portrayal of Hearst and his po
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