Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles & Herman J. Mankiewicz
Posted @ 4/8/2012 9:08 PM by auditions_host |
Files in Film/ TV Monologues
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure
dome decree - - Legendary was the Xanadu where Kubla Khan
decreed his stately pleasure dome. Today, almost as legendary
is Florida's Xanadu, world's largest private pleasure ground.
Here, on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain
was commissioned and successfully built. One hundred thousand
trees, twenty thousand tons of marble are the ingredients
of Xanadu's mountain. Contents of Xanadu's palace: paintings,
pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace.
A collection of everything. So big it can never be catalogued
or appraised. Enough for ten museums - the loot of the
world. Xanadu's livestock: the fowl of the air, the fish
of the sea, the beast of the field and jungle. Two of each,
the biggest private zoo since Noah. Like the Pharaohs,
Xanadu's landlord leaves many stones to mark his grave.
Since the pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a
man has built to himself...
(continuing later) Twice married, twice divorced.
First to a president's niece, Emily Norton, who left him
in 1916. Died 1918 in a motor accident with their son. Sixteen
years after his first marriage, two weeks after his first
divorce, Kane married Susan Alexander, singer at the Town
Hall in Trenton, New Jersey. For wife two, one-time opera
singing Susan Alexander, Kane built Chicago's Municipal Opera
House. Cost: $3 million dollars. Conceived for Susan Alexander
Kane, half-finished before she divorced him, the still-unfinished
Xanadu. Cost? No man can say...