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Charles Foster Kane (c. 1863 – 1941) is the title character of Orson Welles's famous film Citizen Kane. Orson Welles played Kane (receiving an Oscar nomination), and he also co-wrote and directed the film.
Kane's "biography"
Kane was born in the fictional settlement of Little Salem, Colorado, of humble origins. A mine given to his parents (to settle a bill for room and board) happened to be rich in gold. To secure a better future for the eight-year-old boy, his parents gave him over to Walter Parks Thatcher in 1871, who raised him in luxury until he became an adult. However, Kane hated Thatcher immediately for ripping him away from his family and he attended numerous schools, all of which expelled him, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell.
As an adult, Kane took on the newspaper The New York Inquirer (sometimes spelled "The New York Enquirer") because he thought "it might be fun to run a newspaper," as well as the pleasure of harassing Thatcher's personal business interests and political goals, including ones Kane held stock in. One of his first acts was to publish a "declaration of principles," which stated his duty to tell his readers the truth. However, he almost immediately begins using yellow journalism tactics to blow stories out of proportion and outdo his rivals by raiding their staff as if they were collectables and encouraging a war with Spain. To finance this initially money losing business, Kane used his personal resources which he bragged would allow him to operate it, even at a million dollar annual loss, for decades.
Kane eventually married Emily Monroe Norton, the niece of the president of the United States. Unfortunately, the couple's relationship turned cold as Charles' imperiousness became plainer. As Kane's popularity and fortune increased, he ran for Governor of New York against reputedly corrupt boss J. W. Gettys. It seemed Kane had the election in the bag, until Gettys revealed evidence that suggested that Kane had been having an affair with a young "singer" named Susan Alexander. When Gettys contacted Kane's wife to use his weapon, Kane accompaigned her to see him. Even though his affair was found out, Kane refused to drop out of the race and threatened Gettys despite his position of weakness. As a result, the scandal went public and Kane lost the election decisively. Furthermore, Kane's best friend, Jedediah Leland, was profoundly disillusioned at his friend's haughty arrogance at humiliating his family and treating the electorate like his personal property and insisted on being transferred to Kane's Chicago paper to stay away from him.
Kane's wife divorced him in 1916 and died two years later in car crash with their son. Kane married Susan Alexander and tried to force her into a doomed and humiliating career as an opera singer. This effort cost more than money in Chicago, where Jedediah Leland, the paper's drama critic, refused to follow the company line praising Alexander, but could not bring himself to write a truthful review. While he was in a drunken stupor, Kane finished the review with the negative tone intact to show that he still had integrity, even while he simultaneously fired Leland for not cooperating in his obssession. In retaliation, Leland refused his severance package and mailed the torn up check and the original copy of Kane's declaration of principles to remind of what he had lost. However, Kane considered that personal statement obsolete and tore it up in anger.
After the dispondent Susan attempted suicide, Kane retired to Xanadu, his gothic chateau in Florida. The combination of business downturns and Kane's excessive spending habits cost him much of his control of his media businesses to Thatcher, although he still had considerable wealth. Susan, bored with living alone with Kane becoming a domineering hermit, eventually left him. There, alone and estranged from all his friends, Kane died of old age uttering the cryptic word "Rosebud."
Reporter Jerry Thompson was assigned to track down the meaning of "Rosebud," shortly after Kane's death. Though he interviewed all of Kane's living acquaintances, he never found it. In truth, the word "Rosebud" was written on the sled Kane had owned as a little boy when he lived in Colorado with his parents.
The sled, considered to be trash, was burned, representing the innocence and love Kane lost when he was taken from his parents.
Inspiration
It is almost universally agreed that Kane is meant to portray a fictionalized William Randolph Hearst. Though Citizen Kane is often considered one of the best films ever made, Hearst was allegedly not amused by how he (or his mistress Marion Davies, widely considered the inspiration for Susan Alexander) were portrayed, and he attempted to destroy both the film and Welles' career. However, other men have been suggested as a model for Kane including:
Welles was quoted as saying, "It is not based upon the life of Mr. Hearst or anyone else. On the other hand, had Mr. Hearst and similar financial barons not lived during the period we discuss, Citizen Kane could not have been made." However, in the film, Kane is given the line "You provide the prose poems; I'll provide the war," undeniably similar to "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war," a quote widely attributed to Hearst. The general consensus is that Hearst is the primary — but not the only — inspiration behind Kane. Some biographies of Welles posit that Welles himself was a source of inspration for the character; some of the character's dialogue on how to run a newspaper are direct quotes from Welles's comments on how to make a motion picture (though this was his first), and Welles's co-writer, Herman J. Mankiewicz, included dialogue about Kane's voracious appetite, also meant to echo Welles's character. The connection with Hearst is strengthened by the fact that Mankiewicz was a frequent guest of Hearst's mistress Marion Davies at Hearst Castle.
In recent years, Kane has been compared to contemporaries such as Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and Donald Trump.
Fictional newspaper publishers | Fictional media moguls | Fictional millionaires | Film characters
"Charles Foster Kane"