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Focus on Citizen Cane

KaneA film (1941) based on a screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953), which looks back on the life and career of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles, who also directed the film).

Commonly listed among the best movies ever made, it was a thinly disguised biography of the real-life media baron William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) . Hearst was sharply aware of this fact, particularly of the similarity between the relationship between Kane and his wife, who dreams of a career in opera, and that between himself and his actress wife Marion Davies, and he tried to prevent the film's release, but failed when Welles himself threatened to sue RKO Pictures if they withheld his masterpiece. 

From CREDO Citizen: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

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