Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” is famously based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, the flamboyant newspaper publisher and politician of the first half of the 20th century. But there’s at least one detail that Welles made up: Kane’s parents. In the film, Kane’s mother, played by Agnes Moorehead, inherits a fortune and abandons her young son to the care of a banker to protect him from his abusive father. In real life, Hearst’s mother, a San Francisco philanthropist and socialite, doted on him, while his workaholic father was largely absent. Hearst mère is the subject of “Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and...

Source: Wall Street Journal May 13, 2018 17:45 UTC