In August 1939, RKO chief George J. Schaefer signed a theater and radio director with zero film experience to a contract that gave him final cut, total artistic control, his own unproven cast and crew, and no obligation to show the studio a single frame of daily footage. This episode explores how Orson Welles, fresh off the War of the Worlds broadcast, used that unprecedented deal to make Citizen Kane, and how the film’s reception nearly ended his career.

The conversation covers the failed attempts at Heart of Darkness and The Smiler with a Knife, the writing partnership with Herman J. Mankiewicz and the decades-long credit dispute later stoked by Pauline Kael and settled by Robert Carringer’s archival research, and Welles’ crash course that included watching Stagecoach roughly 40 times. It examines Gregg Toland’s deep focus, the secret shooting disguised as camera tests, the painful contact lenses and broken ankle, William Randolph Hearst’s media blackout, and the film’s resurrection in Paris through critic Andre Bazin.

• Why Toland sought out a director who did not know the rules of Hollywood
• The lightning mix and overlapping dialogue Welles imported from radio
• How a pinhole aperture and blinding arc lights kept every plane of the frame razor sharp
• Hearst’s threats to theater owners and Welles’ offer to buy the film for one million dollars
• Losing final cut, the recutting of The Magnificent Ambersons, and 50 years atop the Sight and Sound poll