Citizen Kane

Rosebud.

News on the March.

Legendary was the Xanadu...

...where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome.

Today, almost as legendary, is Florida's Xanadu...

...the world's largest private pleasure ground.

Here on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain...

...was commissioned and successfully built.

One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble...

...are the ingredients of Xanadu's mountain.

Contents of Xanadu's palace:

Paintings, pictures, statues, various stones of other palaces.

A collection of everything.

So big it can never be cataloged or appraised.

Enough for 10 museums, the loot of the world.

Xanadu's livestock...

...the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, the beast of the field and jungle...

...two of each, the biggest private zoo since Noah.

Like the pharaohs...

...Xanadu's landlord leaves many stones to mark his grave.

Since the pyramids...

...Xanadu is the costliest monument...

...a man has built to himself.

Here in Xanadu last week...

...Xanadu's landlord was laid to rest.

A potent figure of our century...

...America's Kubla Khan:

Charles Foster Kane.

Its humble beginnings, in this ramshackle building, a dying daily.

Kane's empire, in its glory...

...held dominion over 37 newspapers, two syndicates...

...a radio network, an empire upon an empire.

The first of grocery stores, paper mills...

...apartment buildings, factories, forests, ocean liners.

An empire through which for 50 years...

...flowed in an unending stream...

...the wealth of the Earth's third richest gold mine.

Famed in American legend is the origin of the Kane fortune.

How, to boarding housekeeper Mary Kane, by a defaulting boarder, in 1868...

...was left the supposedly worthless deed to an abandoned mineshaft:

The Colorado Lode.

Fifty-seven years later, before a congressional investigation...

...Walter P. Thatcher, grand old man of Wall Street...

...for years chief target of Kane papers' attacks on trusts...

...recalls a journey he made as a youth.

My firm had been appointed trustee by Mrs. Kane...

...for a large fortune she recently acquired.

It was her wish that I take charge of this boy, Charles Foster Kane.

Chief, is it not, that on this occasion, Charles Foster Kane...

...personally attacked you after striking you in the stomach with a sled?

I shall read to the committee a prepared statement...

...which I have brought with me, and then refuse to answer questions.

Mr. Charles Foster Kane, in every essence of his social beliefs...

...and by the dangerous manner he has persistently attacked...

...American traditions of private property...

...initiative and opportunity for advancement...

...is, in fact, nothing more or less than a communist.

That same month in Union Square...

The words "Charles Foster Kane"...

...are a menace to every workingman in this land.

He is today what he has always been and always will be: A fascist.

And still another opinion...

Kane urged his country's entry into one war...

...opposed participation in another.

Swung the election to one American president at least.

Spoke for millions of Americans.

Was hated by as many more.

For 40 years appeared in Kane newsprint...

...no public issue on which Kane papers took no stand.

No public man whom Kane himself did not support or denounce.

Often support, then denounce.

Twice married, twice divorced.

First to a president's niece...

...Emily Norton, who left him in 1916.

Died 1918 in a motor accident with their son.

Sixteen years after his first marriage...

...two weeks after his first divorce...

...Kane married Susan Alexander...

...singer, at the Town Hall in Trenton, New Jersey.

For wife two, one-time opera-singing Susan Alexander...

...Kane built Chicago's Municipal Opera House.

Cost: $3 million.

Conceived for Susan Alexander Kane, half-finished before she divorced him...

...the still unfinished...

...Xanadu.

Cost: No man can say.

Kane, moulder of mass opinion though he was...

...in all his life was never granted elective office...

...by the voters of his country.

But Kane papers were once strong indeed...

...and once the prize seemed almost his.

In 1916, as independent candidate for governor...

...the best elements of the state behind him...

...the White House seemingly the next easy step in a lightning political career...

...then suddenly, less than one week before election...

...defeat. Shameful, ignominious.

Defeat that set back for 20 years the cause of reform in the U. S...

...forever canceled political chances for Charles Foster Kane.

Then, in the first year of the Great Depression...

...a Kane paper closes.

For Kane, in four short years, collapse.

Eleven Kane papers merged, more sold, scrapped.

Is that correct?

Don't believe everything you hear on the radio.

- Read the Inquirer. - How were business conditions in Europe?

How did I find business conditions in Europe, Mr. Bones?

With great difficulty.

Are you glad to be back?

I'm always glad to be back. I'm an American.

Always been an American. Anything else?

When I was a reporter, we asked them quicker than that.

What do you think of the chances for war in Europe?

I talked with the responsible leaders of England, France, Germany and Italy.

They're too intelligent to embark on a project...

...which would mean the end of civilization.

You can take my word for it, there will be no war.

Kane helped to change the world...

...but Kane's world now is history...

...and the great yellow journalist himself lived to be history...

...outlived his power to make it.

Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace...

...aloof, seldom visited, never photographed...

...an emperor of newsprint continued to direct his failing empire.

Vainly attempted to sway, as he once did...

...the destinies of a nation that had ceased to listen to him...

...ceased to trust him.

Then last week, as it must to all men...

...death came to Charles Foster Kane.

News on the March.

That's it. Hello. Hello.

Stand by. I'll tell you if we want to run it again.

How about it, Mr. Rawlston? How do you like it?

Seventy years in a man's life.

That's a lot to try to get into a newsreel.

It's a good short, but what it needs is an angle.

All we saw on that screen was that Charles Foster Kane is dead.

I know that. I read the papers.

It isn't enough to tell us what a man did...

...you've got to tell us who he was.

Wait a minute. What were Kane's last words?

Do you remember, boys?

What were the last words he said on Earth?

Maybe he told us about himself on his deathbed.

- Maybe he didn't. - All we saw was a big American.

How did he differ from Ford, Hearst or John Doe?

Yeah, sure. - I tell you, a man's dying words...

What were they? - You don't read the papers.

When Charles Foster Kane died, he said one word:

"Rosebud." That's all he said? Tough guy.

Yes, "Rosebud." Just that one word.

- But who is she? What was it?

Here's a man who could've been president...

...who was as loved, hated and talked about...

...as any man in our time, but when he dies...

...something is on his mind called Rosebud.

- What does that mean? A racehorse he bet on once.

That didn't come in. - But what was the race?

Rosebud.

- Thompson. - Yes.

- Hold this up a week, two if you must. - Don't you think right after he's dead...

Find out about Rosebud. Get in touch with anybody who knew him or knew him well.

That manager of his... Uh...

Bernstein. His second wife. She's still living.

Susan Alexander Kane.

- She runs a nightclub in Atlantic City. That's right.

See them all. Get in touch with everybody that ever worked for him...

...whoever loved him, whoever hated his guts.

I don't mean go through the city directory of course.

I'll get on it right away.

Good. Rosebud, dead or alive.

It will probably turn out to be a very simple thing.

Miss Alexander.

This is Mr. Thompson, Miss Alexander.

I want another drink, John.

Right away. Will you have something, Mr. Thompson?

- I'll have a highball, please. - Who told you you could sit down?

I thought maybe we could have a talk.

Think again.

Can't you people leave me alone?

I'm minding my own business, you mind yours.

If I could just have a talk with you, Miss Alexander. I'd...

Get out of here.

Get out!

- Sorry. - Get out.

- Maybe some other time. - Get out.

Gino.

Get her another highball.

She just won't talk to nobody, Mr. Thompson.

Okay.

- Another double? - Yeah.

Hello, I want New York City.

Courtland 79970. This is Atlantic City 46827. All right.

Hey.

- She's, uh... - Yeah.

She'll snap out of it.

Why, until he died, she'd just as soon talk about Mr. Kane as any...

- Hello. - Sooner.

This is Thompson. Let me talk to the chief.

Mr. Rawlston? She won't talk.

The second Mrs. Kane. About Rosebud or anything else.