ORSON WELLES: In the original script [of Citizen Kane] we had a scene based on a notorious thing Hearst had done, which I still cannot repeat for publication. And I cut it out because I thought it hurt the film and wasn’t in keeping with Kane’s character. If I’d kept it in, I would have had no trouble with Hearst. He wouldn’t have dared admit it was him.
Bogdanovich may see Welles as the inspiration for his film, but I have no idea where Peros got his facts. If you turn to the entry under Thomas Ince—a Hollywood director, screenwriter, and actor who was once famous as a pioneering producer—in the 1979 edition of Ephraim Katz’s Film Encyclopedia you read: “On the night of November 19, 1924, [Ince] was mysteriously and fatally injured aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht, on which he had gone for a weekend of fun and frolic with several other distinguished guests. He died before regaining consciousness. The death was officially attributed to heart failure as a result of acute indigestion. But scandalous rumors persisted in Hollywood that Ince was shot by Hearst, who suspected him of carrying on an affair with his protegee, Marion Davies.” A similar story is offered by The Cat’s Meow. Bogdanovich, assuming that most viewers won’t know anything about Ince, has asked reviewers of the film not to reveal what happens on the yacht. I can’t comply with his request because I see no other way of discussing the film in any detail, so you may want to see the film before finishing this review.
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Ince’s name doesn’t appear in the index of either Robert Carringer’s The Making of Citizen Kane or Ronald Gottesman’s collection Perspectives on Citizen Kane, which contains Carringer’s near-definitive essay about the script’s authorship. But Ince’s name does appear in Pauline Kael’s less scholarly but more entertaining “Raising Kane”; her principal source was John Houseman, script supervisor for cowriter Herman Mankiewicz, and it seems safe to conclude, even without her prodding, that some version of the story must have cropped up in Mankiewicz’s first draft of the script, which Welles subsequently edited and added to. According to Kael, the only trace of the subplot left in the script is a speech made by Susan Alexander, who was loosely based on Davies, to the reporter Thompson about Kane: “Look, if you’re smart, you’ll get in touch with Raymond. He’s the butler. You’ll learn a lot from him. He knows where all the bodies are buried.” Kael writes, “It’s an odd, cryptic speech. In the first draft, Raymond literally knew where the bodies were buried: Mankiewicz had dished up a nasty version of the scandal sometimes referred to as the Strange Death of Thomas Ince.”
The strongest achievement of The Cat’s Meow may be the performances, especially those of Kirsten Dunst (Davies), Edward Herrmann (Hearst), and even Eddie Izzard (Chaplin), who takes some getting used to because, as other reviewers have noted, he bears a closer resemblance to Welles in his mid-30s than to Chaplin at the same age (Welles was only nine in 1924). This resemblance is surely deliberate on Bogdanovich’s part; he knew Welles much better than Chaplin and probably saw parallels between them. (Given Bogdanovich’s apparent identification with both figures, particularly insofar as he’s a controversial Hollywood filmmaker with a bumpy career and a ladies’ man who’s been both envied and hated, one might even hypothesize that his depiction of Chaplin adds up to a covert yet scathing autocritique—though it would seem outrageously arrogant if he dared own up to it.) If we can overlook Izzard’s lack of physical resemblance to Chaplin, his capacity to suggest Chaplin’s essence in other ways—more as a man than an artist—steadily grows as the film develops. (Similarly, Bogdanovich is more attentive to Hearst as a man than he is to Hearst as a public figure—and I would think that his own marriage to a woman much younger than himself bolstered his identification with Hearst.)
What’s masterful about Bogdanovich’s direction is the cumulative detail, which adds complexity to incidental as well as central characters. He has a graceful way of switching viewpoints from one character to another and an uninsistent yet mainly persuasive sense of period. He even presents a plausible version of Hearst’s taste. I remember being surprised when I visited Hearst’s mansion, San Simeon, in the 80s at how tasteful rather than vulgar much of it was; that was one of the main details Citizen Kane changed, undoubtedly for good reasons.
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Written by Steven Peros
With Kirsten Dunst, Cary Elwes, Edward Herrmann, Eddie Izzard, Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Tilly, Victor Slezak, James Laurenson, and Claudia Harrison.
