Rare ‘Citizen Kane’ scripts fetch over $102,000 at auction

NEW YORK — Orson Welles’ personal manuscripts for “Citizen Kane,” including the film’s final revised shooting script, brought over $102,000 at auction.

The three screenplays were offered by Profiles in History on Tuesday. They illustrate the evolution in the creation of the classic masterpiece.

An original first rough draft of “American,” the working title for “Citizen Kane,” written in 1940 by Welles’ collaborator Herman Mankiewicz sold for $32,000.

The Calabasas, California-based auctioneer says the next draft featuring a fuller evolution of the script brought $25,600.

The third and final revised shooting script fetched $44,800. It includes Welles’ handwritten annotations, directing notes and camera-angle diagrams. It’s signed by most of the cast principals.

The seller was a close friend of Welles who acquired the material from the filmmaker, who died in 1985.

The sale also included a rare original 49-page CBS-issued transcript of the 1938 Mercury Theatre radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” — an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ science-fiction novel — and the cover letter from the network apologizing for the mass hysteria created by the realistic dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth. It came from another collector and sold for $28,800.

In addition, a typed manuscript with Welles’ handwritten directorial notes for a proposed television adaptation of “Citizen Kane” in the 1950s brought $20,480.

Welles, who directed and starred in “Citizen Kane” about the rise and fall of a publishing tycoon, was 25 when the movie debuted in 1941.