INTERVIEW: For TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, ‘Citizen Kane’ is personal

Photo: Orson Welles stars in the classic movie Citizen Kane, which is celebrating 80 years in 2021. Photo courtesy of Turner Theatrical Library / Provided by TCM with permission.

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TCM host Ben Mankiewicz lives and breathes movies for a living. He is a welcome presence on the movie network, inviting audience members to various screenings of classic films, and providing helpful contextual and historical information about directors, writers and actors. He also has a personal stake in old-time Hollywood because his grandfather, Herman Mankiewicz, wrote the screenplay for arguably the most important movie of all time: Citizen Kane.

Herman left his creative mark on many films throughout his decades in the business, but none of his scripts or contributions would rise to the level of Citizen Kane. In fact, Herman’s story is such an interesting one that it was dramatized last year in the Oscar-nominated film Mank.

Now TCM is celebrating Citizen Kane’s 80th anniversary with two special screenings through its Big Screen Classics series, courtesy of Fathom Events. Audiences can relive the classic movie, directed by and starring Orson Welles, on both Sunday, Sept. 19 and Wednesday, Sept. 22.

“I think it says something about certainly corporate control of the media and the dangers certainly of misusing power,” Mankiewicz said in a recent interview about the continued impact of Citizen Kane. “I always think about CBS News, right. No one would deny the power of the CBS Corporation, but there was a hands-off approach where they left the news division alone. That began to change in the ‘80s, and now that’s just the acceptable model that we have.”

Citizen Kane follows the central character of Charles Foster Kane, who dies in the opening minutes of the film. He is alone in his palatial estate of Xanadu, and his final word is “Rosebud.” The film then travels back in time to track the meteoric rise of Kane, essentially filling in the blanks and letting the viewer understand why “Rosebud” was so important to the media mogul. Along the way, the audience learns about the corruptibility of power and negative influence of the media industry.

“This is specifically the politics and the power of one man dictating news coverage to millions and millions of Americans,” Mankiewicz said. “It’s a little bit different now, though obviously there are some direct parallels even with Charles Foster Kane now and media control, but in general … we’re a corporatist society and a consumerist society. … It is rare for independent, free-thinking journalism to break through.”

Mankiewicz said he believes independent voices can break through the media storm in little ways, but the landscape is largely controlled by multinational corporations. In his estimation, what people today perceive as bold, independent, breakthrough journalism is actually the opposite. He called it “contrarian nonsense steeped in very little fact or information and then standing on the broad shoulders of, hey man, I’m just thinking for myself.”

He added: “Real independent journalism is so rare that we don’t even know it when we see it. … I’m a giant consumer of journalism, and I love it and was in it for a long time. I’m not knocking all these individual journalists who work for giant corporate entities who are out there busting their ass doing critically good work on a daily basis, but overall, man, it’s tough to break through the corporate groupthink that pervades throughout the journalism most of us read on a daily basis.”

That’s a lesson 80 years in the making.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

TCM Big Screen Classics presents the 80th anniversary of Citizen Kane Sunday, Sept. 19 and Wednesday, Sept. 22 in movie theaters. Click here for more information and tickets.