Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (141 page)

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Actually Orson’s crush was a French actress, Barbara Laage, later in François Truffaut’s film
Bed and Board
. Orson had tried in vain to talk Harry Cohn into letting Laage star in
The Lady from Shanghai
.

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One footnote to the Oscar ceremony is that
Citizen Kane
lost in the category of Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture, which Bernard Herrmann won for
All That Money Can Buy
, a less distinguished RKO picture, directed by William Dieterle, that had followed
Citizen Kane
in Herrmann’s Hollywood career.

Herman Mankiewicz was also absent from the Academy Awards ceremony. Mank stayed home, believing that Hollywood lived in dread of Hearst and that he would be humiliated by a loss, according to Richard Meryman. The film’s hero, RKO studio president George Schaefer, took the stage to collect the golden statuette and had it delivered to Mank’s home with “congratulations and best wishes from a high-priced office boy.”