RKO 281

When Orson Welles moved to Hollywood, the 24 year old was hailed as the boy genius and everyone eagerly anticipated his first film for RKO Studios. Welles had made a name for himself on the New York stage and in radio dramatizations, particularly his adaptation of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. He was given carte blanche by RKO studio head George Schaefer but he took his time and after a year, still had not come up with an idea. After having dinner at San Simeon, William Randolph Hearst's castle-like mansion, he comes up with the idea of a film on the life of a larger-than-life American whose style and foibles defined much of American entrepreneurship. Working with his good friend Herman J. Mankiewicz they develop a script for what would become Citizen Kane (1941). However, when Hearst becomes aware of the film, he instructs his newspapers' Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper to go to any lengths to stop it from being released.