'Citizen Kane' to air at Hearst Castle

LOS ANGELES -- When the film "Citizen Kane" came out in 1941, William Randolph Hearst gave it an unequivocal two thumbs down.

Just before its release, one of his allies in Hollywood tried to buy the footage in order to burn it. Another approached FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who launched a decade-long investigation of Orson Welles, the film's 26-year-old director, producer, co-writer and star.

But rosebuds bloom in unlikely places. Seventy-one years after Hearst's effort to derail it, "Citizen Kane" will be shown at Hearst Castle's visitors center, with the blessings of the Hearst family.

The March 9 screening on the five-story-tall screen at the theater is part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.

Wendy Eidson, the festival's director, said the film probably has never been seen on Hearst's sprawling estate. Since 1958, the landmark, which Hearst called "La Cuesta Encantada" (The Enchanted Hill), has been open to the public as a state park.

"I tossed out the idea of screening 'Citizen Kane' there as a joke, and they didn't laugh," Eidson said. "I was sort of floored."

Steve Hearst, the mogul's great-grandson, said the event will present the film as a work of fiction rather than as a documentary about the life of the patriarch known to family members as W.R.

"It's a great opportunity to draw a clear distinction between W.R. and Orson Welles, between the medieval, gloomy-looking castle shown in 'Citizen Kane' and the light, beautiful, architecturally superior reality," he said.

"Citizen Kane" is the unflattering portrait of a character resembling Hearst, a sensationalistic newspaper tycoon with political ambitions, a young mistress in show business, a jaw-dropping mansion and an insatiable zeal for collecting art.

The parallels between Hearst and Charles Foster Kane are obvious, but so, too, are the differences, said Steve Hearst, who manages the family's ranches and other business interests.

One big difference was in the film's portrayal of Kane's love interest, a booze-soaked singer forced by Kane into a disastrous operatic career. Hearst's real-life mistress, Marion Davies, was a talented comic actress later described by Welles as "an extraordinary woman -- nothing like the character."

Though Hearst knew enough about "Citizen Kane" to dislike it immensely, he never actually saw the film.