N.d. [1940] 11 x 8 1/2 in., 89 pp. mimeographed typescript, secured with two split pins to left edge. Unprinted pale yellow card wrappers. Wrappers a little marked, but contents clean and very well preserved.
 
THE 'CORRECTION SCRIPT' FOR CITIZEN KANE, IN ITS FINAL STATE. FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE DIRECTOR AND CINEMATOGRAPHER NICOLAS ROEG, WITH A PENCILLED NOTE BY ROEG’S WIFE HARRIET TO TITLE PAGE CONFIRMING HIS OWNERSHIP. ONE OF ONLY TWO COPIES IN PRIVATE HANDS.
 
‘I remember my father coming back from the cinema after seeing Citizen Kane, saying, ‘What was all that business about the sledge?’ It was another form of telling a story, one that is different from the literary form. A boy looks at a sledge, he sees ‘Rosebud’ -- what the hell is Rosebud? It was completely baffling to people, but nowadays it’s so clear that you probably wouldn’t even have that shot. I’m happy that movies have such a long life because people can be confounded at first by what they see, especially if it goes against the conventions of the time -- and the studio.’ (Nicolas Roeg, The World is Ever Changing, Faber, 2013)
 
The letter presenting this copy of the script to Roeg is from his friend Kevin Kavanagh. Roeg and Kavanagh co-wrote the story on which A Prize of Arms, the 1962 British film starring Stanley Baker and Tom Bell, was based. When Roeg began to direct, Kavanagh continued to work alongside him: he was the Unit Manager on Performance (1970), and Assistant Director on Walkabout (1971) -- Roeg’s first two directing credits. Kavanagh’s presentation of this script to Roeg would seem to date from this period: Roeg and his first wife Susan Stephen (mentioned in Kavanagh’s letter) were divorced in 1977, and IMDB gives no credit to Kavanagh after Walkabout in any capacity.

The letter reads:

‘Nic, We are not, thank God, overly effusive you and I, but there is something that simply must be said. This trip -- this “world tour” -- is just about the best thing that has ever happened to me and it is all due to you. I’d hate you to think that I take it for granted, or feel less gratitude than is proper. This script can of course be no more than a token of that gratitude -- which is immense. There: I’ve said it. My love to Sue and the boys. Kevin’.
 
Citizen Kane -- directed by Orson Welles, written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and photographed by Gregg Toland -- is one of cinema's towering achievements. Its cast featured most of Welles’ Mercury Theatre repertory company, and was led by Welles himself in the title role. Released by RKO in 1941 Citizen Kane received enthusiastic critical praise but only a muted public response, its distribution having been hampered by the industry's fear of the press baron William Randolph Hearst, on whose life Citizen Kane is loosely based. It won a single Oscar in 1942, for Best Screenplay. Ten years later Sight and Sound’s critics’ poll voted it the best film ever made, and it stayed at No. 1 for the next fifty years. (In 2022 it was placed third.)
 
No film has generated more critical, analytical, historical and bibliographical literature than Citizen Kane, and the ongoing debate about exactly who wrote what, and when, has kept film historians busy for the last eighty years. Chief among them is Harlan Lebo, author of Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey, published by Doubleday in 1990, and in an expanded edition by Angel City Press in 2022.
 
Lebo cites seven different full drafts of the film, all dating from the first half of 1940, culminating in the version known as the ‘Third Revised Final’ issued on 16 July of that year. At this point Mankiewicz left the production, his work apparently completed. But, Lebo notes: ‘As written, the Third Revised Final version of the script would have been impossible to use to shoot Citizen Kane as we know it. Major edits were needed; for Welles, his best work as a writer and editor was about to begin. Comparing the Third Revised Final script -- still too long and soft-focused -- with the film as shot shows that Welles’s most daring and successful editing and writing occurred after the final version was completed.’
 
In our correspondence with him, Mr. Lebo says of the Correction Script version:
 
‘This is the inexplicable “final version” of the script for Citizen Kane -- an undated document, not logged or distributed through normal RKO channels, that appears to have been created at some point after the official “final” version of the script -- officially designated as the “Third Revised Final” -- was distributed on July 16 1940. No other official draft of the script for Citizen Kane includes texts and edits that so closely resemble the final film.’
 
Only three other examples of this draft, in two different versions, are known to exist:
 
1) University of Michigan, Special Collections Library. It is from this copy that the name by which this script is known derives: ‘Correction Script’ is written on the folder in which the copy is housed. This copy has no title page.
 
2) Museum of Modern Art, New York City. This copy has no title page. Copies 1 and 2 are textually identical, and are the earlier, unrevised issue of this draft of the script.
 
3) Copy offered for sale at Bonhams, Los Angeles, 7 December 2022 (Lot 68, unsold, with an estimate of $25000-35000). Described in the auction catalogue as ‘the only copy of the draft text for Citizen Kane in private hands.’ Title page present.
 
This, then, is the second copy in private hands -- and both have a title page, unlike the two institutional copies. Copy 3 and this copy also incorporate additional dialogue noted in copies 1 and 2 into the body of the text, and correct occasional punctuation and spacing typos present in copies 1 and 2 (as well as introducing one or two errors of their own). All of this results in the later two copies running to two extra pages. Copy 3 and this copy are later revisions than copies 1 and 2, making them the very last -- the final -- known versions in existence.
 
The last draft of the screenplay for the greatest film ever made, and one of only two known copies known in the final state.
 
(We are grateful to Mr. Harlan Lebo for his invaluable assistance compiling this catalogue entry.)