SAN SIMEON, Calif. — Fifty film fans had the opportunity Friday to watch “Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles’ groundbreaking film partly based on the late William Randolph Hearst, at the media tycoon’s own private theater at Hearst Castle — a concession the magnate would probably not have made.
The screening with a price tag of $1,000 was part of the San Luis Obispo Film Festival. It benefited the nonprofit Friends of Hearst Castle, a preservation group.
Welles’ cinema classic was shown before in the Hearst Castle, but this was the first time the film was screened in the opulent, 50-seat theater at the hilltop estate.
Great-grandson Stephen Hearst, the vice president and general manager of Hearst Corp.’s Western Properties, gave his blessing to the festival to screen the film. He said he didn’t plan to attend the screening but that he saw it as an opportunity to show the differences between great-grandfather and Charles Foster Kane, the character played by Welles.
William Randolph Hearst sought to derail the movie, which portrayed the rise and fall of an obsessively controlling media mogul, but the film went on to win an Academy Award in 1942 and is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. The film, a searing critique of a newspaper magnate, never mentions Hearst but the similarities to his life are many.
Associated Press
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