What did Ian Christie say about William Randolph Hearst as the model for Citizen Kane?

Ian Christie says Hearst was in effect the model, though Welles denied it for obvious legal reasons and only conceded that anyone making a film about a newspaper tycoon would be aware of Hearst. Hearst ran a national empire of yellow-press papers, saw himself as a player in world events such as the Spanish-American War, and signed up figures like Lloyd George as columnists. The closest link is Marion Davies, Hearst's Hollywood-star mistress, though the real couple were devoted while Kane's affair with Susan Alexander ends in anguish.

• Christie says Hearst's 1930s columnists included Trotsky, Mussolini and Hitler, whose pieces were sometimes written by Goering.
• Hearst shipped castles and antiques from Europe to America, the real-life source of Xanadu's hoard of treasures.

▸In their words

“He saw himself as a man intervening in world events.” Ian Christie · at 11:55 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

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