#371-Orson Welles, the Next 44 Years-Conclusion
If you read the last post I produced on the best 5 years of Orson Welles’ life, you would just be scratching the surface of his career if you thought he arrived in Hollywood like a man on fire.
But after a smear campaign by William Randolph Hearst and some really underhanded dealings by him, (blackmailing all of the major studio heads in Hollywood to raise a million dollars to buy the negative print of ‘Citizen Kane’ and burn it, or he would release all the ‘private and dirty little secrets’ that the CEO’s had, to the newspaper,) kept many places from even showing the film. Yet it still won best screenplay for best original screenplay.
This, coupled with his next picture, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” arriving as America had just entered WWII, that gave us one of the bleakest endings ever known to man at a time when the industry demanded ‘feel good’ flics, Orson found himself on shaky ground.