Plot Summary for
RKO 281 (1999) (TV) More at IMDbPro »

Coming to Hollywood as a celebrated boy genius featuring a spectacular career arc in New York including his "War of the Worlds" radio hoax, Orson Welles is stymied on the subject for his first film. After a dinner party at Hearst Castle, during which he has a verbal altercation with Hearst, Welles decides to do a movie about Hearst. It takes him some time to convince co-writer Herman Mankiewicz and the studio, but Welles eventually gets the script and the green light, keeping the subject very hush-hush with the press. When a rough cut is screened, Hearst gets wind of the movie's theme and begins a campaign to see that it is not only never publicly screened, but destroyed. Written by Greg Bulmash <greg@imdb.com>

When Orson Welles moved to Hollywood the 24 year-old was hailed as the boy genius and everyone eagerly anticipated his first film for RKO studios. Welles had made a name for himself on the New York stage and in radio dramatizations, particularly his adaptation of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. He was given carte blanche by RKO studio head George Schaefer but he took his time and after a year, still hadn't come up with an idea. After having dinner at San Simeon, William Randolph Hearst's castle-like mansion, he comes up with the idea of a film on the life of a larger-than-life American whose style and foibles defined much of American entrepreneurship. Working with his good friend Herman J. Mankiewicz they develop a script for what would become Citizen Kane (1941). When Hearst becomes aware of the film however, he instructs his newspapers' Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper to go to any lengths to stop it from being released. Written by garykmcd

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