A First Feature Film Early 1941

You are advising George Schaefer, president of RKO Radio Pictures.

Orson Welles’s first feature film is finished. The newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst believes its main character is a portrait of him, and his organisation has begun a campaign against the film and the studio.

Known information

Hearst’s newspapers reach millions of readers and have started refusing to review or promote RKO’s films.
Rival studio executives, including MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, have discussed buying the film so the negative can be destroyed.
Some cinema chains are reluctant to show the film.
RKO has spent heavily on the film, and the studio is not financially strong.
Welles has threatened legal action if the film is not released.

Reveal what happened (spoilers: decide first)

Fact

What actually happened

RKO released Citizen Kane. (Release the film)

The film, Citizen Kane, premiered in New York on 1 May 1941. It received strong reviews and nine Academy Award nominations, winning one, for Best Original Screenplay, shared by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was not a commercial success on first release, and RKO put it back in its vaults. Revived in later decades, it has often been ranked among the greatest films ever made.

Important

Possible consequences · Analysis and speculation, not fact

Had the film been shelved or destroyed, one of cinema’s most influential works might have been lost, and Welles’s career could have developed very differently. The wider impact on film history is impossible to measure.

History does not reveal what would definitely have happened under the other choice. Many factors could have changed the outcome.

Context · Why it was decided this way

Hearst’s campaign included pressure on theatre owners and hostile coverage in his papers. Historians disagree about how much it hurt the film at the box office, compared with its unusual style and structure.

Schaefer’s decision was a gamble for a struggling studio. He left RKO in 1942, and Welles’s relationship with the studio broke down soon afterwards.