Tag: Orson Welles

What if William Randolph Hearst Could Hack?

The Interview Citizen Kane For a short time, it looked like hackers (initially reported to be from North Korea) might prevent Sony from releasing the movie The Interview in theaters. According to early reports, out of fear, Sony was going to pull the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy from distribution. Meanwhile, commentators debated the possibility of censoring the movie out of fear. But ultimately, freedom prevailed and Sony released the movie both in theaters and online.

The controversy surrounding The Interview reminds me of William Randolph Hearst’s attempts to prevent the release of Citizen Kane (1941). Hearst did not like the way Orson Welles re-imagined Hearst’s career and relationship with Marion Davies (who in real life was a talented actress), so he took a number of measures to try to prevent the release of the film. Fortunately for us, he was unsuccessful, and one of the greatest movies of all time sits in a DVD case on my shelf.

One good version of the story behind Citizen Kane is from The American Experience series on PBS.  Check out the episode The Battle Over Citizen Kane. [Update: Unfortunately it is no longer available for embedding.]  Another funnier source is Drunk History‘s retelling of the Citizen Kane story featuring Jack Black as Welles.

Unfortunately, technology has given censors a new avenue of attack, which is sad. But I suspect that humor and satire will find a way to survive.


What do you think of Sony’s decision? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Peter O’Toole and Orson Welles Discuss “Hamlet”

    O'Toole Hamlet
    We are sad to hear of the passing of the great actor Peter O’Toole. One need only to watch the classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to see O’Toole’s talent. But it is easy to forget the intelligence of some of the great classic actors. In the following video, O’Toole and Orson Welles discuss William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet in a type of intellectual conversation we do not see enough of on television. Thank goodness YouTube has something besides cat videos.

    The video excerpt is from the October 1963 episode of the BBC program Monitor, which ran from 1958 through 1965. The episode also features the series host, Huw Wheldon. In addition to Wheldon, Welles, and O’Toole, actor Ernest Milton contributes to the conversation too. According to YouTube, at the time of this video, O’Toole was playing Hamlet at the National Theatre in a production directed by Laurence Olivier. RIP.

    What is your favorite Peter O’Toole performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Orson Welles And the Pre-Internet “War of the Worlds”

    War of the Worlds Orson Welles On October 30 in 1938, the 23-year-old Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater Company broadcast a radio version of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds on CBS. Famously, the radio broadcast would cause some people to panic, believing that the world actually was being invaded by Martians.

    Orson Welles did not intend the broadcast as a hoax, even though it was broadcast like a news story. At the start of the show at 8:00 p.m., an announcement introduced the program as a reworking of the H.G. Wells story. But many viewers turned in late, including those who changed the station after listening to Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy on an NBC show that ended at 8:12 p.m.

    Reportedly, up to a million people around the country believed the radio broadcast covered a real invasion, and people panicked, doing such things as trying to get gas masks. During the broadcast, Welles went on the air again to remind viewers it was fiction. Slate, however, recently wrote about how the legend about mass panic really grew out of a very small number of instances.

    After the broadcast, Welles worried that the reactions would ruin his career. But, like today, most media attention is good attention. And Welles of course went on to bigger and better things.

    Today, sit back, close your eyes and imagine you are hearing the broadcast for the first time on the radio, with no cable news, Internet, or cell phone to let you immediately check everything.

    What is your favorite hoax? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Life As Seen By the Movies

    Movieclips put together a compilation of movie scenes tracing life from birth through death called “Birth to Death as told by Cinema – A Life in Film Mashup.” Some of the clips go by fast, but you will recognize many of them. And the effect of the way they are put together with narration from Orson Welle’s F for Fake (1973) is pretty cool. Check it out.

    The Welles narration largely comes from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Conundrum of the Workshops.” As Slate notes, the scenes are heavily male-centered, which is true of the movies in general. Movieclips has responded that he was trying to make it somewhat autobiographical and tell a coherent story connected together for one similar person (but he is appreciative of the revelation and will be more aware of the issue in future videos).

    What is your favorite part of “Birth to Death as told by Cinema”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Heart of Coppola

    Apocalypse Now Heart of Coppola

    Check out this video about Apocalypse Now (1979). In the short four-plus minute Heart of Coppola film, Brian Carroll uses scenes from the classic movie and the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness mixed with interviews of Coppola for a must-see video for fans of Apocalypse Now. The film also features Orson Welles reading from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the book that was the basis for the film.

    [2024 UPDATE: Unfortunately, the video is not presently available.]

    Slate and the Open Culture websites have some additional information about the film.

    What is your favorite part of Apocalypse Now? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • What if William Randolph Hearst Could Hack?
  • Peter O’Toole and Orson Welles Discuss “Hamlet”
  • Orson Welles And the Pre-Internet “War of the Worlds”
  • Life As Seen By the Movies
  • This Week in Pop Culture Roundup (18 Dec. 2011)
  • Treasure Island & Wallace Beery

    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)