When filmmaker Orson Welles created Citizen Kane, drawing from the private life of publisher William Randolph Hearst and exposing him to public scrutiny and ridicule, Hearst used his considerable influence to suppress the film. Through film clips and materials from the Library of Congress and The Wolfsonian Library, chief librarian Dr. Frank Luca will uncover fact from fiction in Welles's portrayal of the rise and fall of an American media mogul—a masterpiece of cinema that almost never made it to the theater.