Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (138 page)

Welles with fellow Illinoisian Gregg Toland, whose work on
Citizen Kane
humbled the director and elevated the film. Welles made the rare gesture of sharing his directorial credit card with the cinematographer.

The director and Toland cavorting with the female extras in the “Georgie’s” brothel scene, deleted by censors before
Kane
’s final cut.

Kane
was built, in part, around the stories of two mothers. The first was the boy’s mother, Mary Kane, played by Agnes Moorehead (
ABOVE
RIGHT
), whom young Orson met less than a year after the death of his own mother. Her unforgettable scene, in the film’s deep backstory, also featured the banker Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), Kane Sr. (Harry Shannon), and Kane as a boy (Buddy Swan).

Joseph Cotten, for whom the part of Jed Leland was closely tailored, was the brother Orson wished he had. They were chuckling companions long before
Citizen Kane
, and remained so until the end of Orson’s life.

The other mother was Ruth Warrick, whose son Charles Kane Jr. is also ill-fated in the story. Warrick is seen here in
Kane
’s famous breakfast-table sequence, an idea indebted to a Thornton Wilder play that Orson saw in Chicago as a youth.

The “love nest” confrontation scene, a pivotal moment in the story, brought together four important characters: (
FROM
LEFT
) Boss Gettys (Ray Collins), Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), Kane (Welles), and Emily (Ruth Warrick).

Dorothy Comingore was the true leading lady of
Citizen Kane
. Here Susan Alexander Kane makes her dismal opera debut—one of the film’s most magnificent concoctions.

Nightclubbing with Dolores Del Rio, the actress who became his girlfriend.

RKO president George Schaefer was the unsung hero of
Citizen Kane
: the studio chief who courageously (almost always)said yes.

Richard I. Welles, Orson’s older brother, returning from Reno and his marriage to Mildred Bill in 1941. When photographers confronted him at the airport, Richard demanded their plates. “Welles grasped the camera and a tug-of-war ensued before amused spectators,” reported the
Los Angeles Times
. “The photographer won.”

After
Citizen Kane
, Orson would go on to direct
The Magnificent Ambersons
for RKO. Although the picture was truncated by the studio, students of film prize Welles’s adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel, starring his Mercury family of players. (Welles even found a place for brother Richard as a carpenter on the set.)