12 Best Old School Hollywood Feuds

Today Citizen Kane is widely hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, but back when it was first released in 1941 it wasn’t so warmly received. Why? Three words: William Randolph Hearst.

Partly based on the life of the media mogul, the intensely private Hearst took offence to his existence being fictionalised on the big screen and launched a vigorous smear campaign against Citizen Kane’s maker Orson Welles.

Apparently not one to do things by halves when it comes to exacting revenge, Hearst not only banned any mention of Citizen Kane in his own newspapers but also lobbied against the movie’s success at the 1942 Academy Awards – where it was nominated for nine Oscars but took home only one – and attempted to set Welles up in some kind of illicit tryst with an underage girl in an attempt to ruin his reputation.

Hearst’s smear campaign worked to an extent and it took a good few years until Welles’ film was reassessed as the cinematic masterpiece it’s revered as today. Nowadays, the hatchet is buried if only by death.

Hearst died in 1951 and Welles some thirty-odd years later in 1985, and in 2012 Hearst’s surviving ancestors opted to screen a showing of Citizen Kane at his Hearst Castle estate as part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.