Last night, I felt that there was some good information that I could glean from RKO 281, which is a film about the fight between William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles to stop the release of Citizen Kane. Now, I did get a bit of information about William Randolph Hearst's fall into receivership, and the help he received from Marion Davies. Overall, however, the most important thing that I learned was that William Randolph Hearst controlled much of the media, and he did not allow anything of interest to be printed. We have no public knowledge of his behavior outside of a possible murder and his relationship with Marion Davies. He stayed at San Simeon most of the time, and we do not know all that much about him as a person. Orson Welles took the facts of public knowledge and made them fantastical, and accrued a lifetime of animosity, because as Hearst was in receivership he could not stop the release of the film. I knew all that already, SO RKO 281 was a bit of a disappointment. I will now have to read Marion Davies' autobiography, The Times We Had.
Now in favor of the film, I will say that it was actually shot at San Simeon, which I found rather impressive. Also, I found out about another documentary, Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies. I have moved this to the top of my Netflix cue, so that I can treasure up more ridiculous knowledge to dolefully impart to some unsuspecting party goer.
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