page_title: Sources for Citizen Kane
section_title: Susan Alexander Kane
hierarchical_section_title: Sources for Citizen Kane / Susan Alexander Kane
caption_attribution_description: English: Polish-born American opera singer Ganna Walska (1887-1984)
context_page_description: The sources for Citizen Kane, the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, have been the subject of speculation and controversy since the project's inception. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick. A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Writing for Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles.
context_section_description: It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story, but the man was not Hearst. Susan, Kane's second wife, is not even based on the real-life soprano. Like most fictional characters, Susan's resemblance to other fictional characters is quite startling. To Marion Davies she bears no resemblance at all.
  — Orson Welles
  The assumption that the character of Susan Alexander Kane was based on Marion Davies was a major reason Hearst tried to destroy Citizen Kane. Davies's nephew Charles Lederer insisted that Hearst and Davies never saw Citizen Kane, but condemned it based on the outrage expressed by trusted friends. Lederer believed that any implication that Davies was a failure and an alcoholic distressed Hearst more than any unfavorable references to himself.
  In his foreword to Davies's posthumously published autobiography, Welles drew a sharp distinction between his fictional creation and Davies: "That Susan was Kane's wife and Marion was Hearst's mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today's changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. … The mistress was never one of Hearst's possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than 30 years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane."
  Welles called Davies "an extraordinary woman—nothing like the character Dorothy Comingore played in the movie."
  He cited Insull's building of the Chicago Opera House, and McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife, Ganna Walska, as direct influences on the screenplay. Contemporaries said Walska had a terrible voice; The New York Times headlines of the day read, "Ganna Walska Fails as Butterfly: Voice Deserts Her Again When She Essays Role of Puccini's Heroine" and "Mme. Walska Clings to Ambition to Sing".
  "According to her 1943 memoirs, Always Room at the Top, Walska had tried every sort of fashionable mumbo jumbo to conquer her nerves and salvage her voice," reported The New York Times in 1996. "Nothing worked. During a performance of Giordano's Fedora in Havana she veered so persistently off key that the audience pelted her with rotten vegetables. It was an event that Orson Welles remembered when he began concocting the character of the newspaper publisher's second wife for Citizen Kane."
  Lederer said that the script he read "didn't have any flavor of Marion and Hearst." Lederer noted that Davies drank and did jigsaw puzzles, but this behavior was exaggerated in the film to help define the characterization of Susan Alexander.
  Others thought to have inspired the character are film tycoon Jules Brulatour's second and third wives, Dorothy Gibson and Hope Hampton, both fleeting stars of the silent screen who later had marginal careers in opera. The interview with Susan Alexander Kane in the Atlantic City nightclub was based on a contemporary interview with Evelyn Nesbit Thaw in the run-down club where she was performing.
  Susan Alexander's last name was taken from Mankiewicz's secretary, Rita Alexander.
caption: Ganna Walska after her marriage to Harold F. McCormick, who lavishly promoted her lackluster opera career
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