RKO 281 (1999) on Netflix
Orson Welles comes to Hollywood to make his first film. Dinner at William Randolph Hearst's castle gives him the idea for a picture about the publisher, written with Herman J. Mankiewicz.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Orson Welles has made his name in the New York theater and in radio, and RKO Pictures brings him to Hollywood to make his first film. The studio's head, George Schaefer, gives him a free hand, but a year goes by and he still has no idea. Dinner at San Simeon, the mansion of the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, supplies one: a film about a monumental American whose style and foibles shaped much of American business. Welles wants to make it, and his friend Herman J. Mankiewicz argues against the project before agreeing to write the script with him, the screenplay that becomes Citizen Kane.
Cast
- Simeon Andrewsas John Houseman
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about RKO 281 (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Ridley Scott wanted to shoot at the real Hearst Castle but was denied access, so the production doubled it with London locations, filming the castle's Gothic stairwell at the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel.
- Hearst's private quarters were recreated in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Gamble Room, using a marble fireplace mantelpiece that had been salvaged from London's Dorchester House before that building was demolished in 1929.
