Films with: Cramer, Richard Ben

Buffalo Bill

This film presents a portrait of the man who made the American West into the American story. For most Americans in the mid-1800s, the Wild West existed only in dime novels, but a young man from Kansas who had roamed the prairies in the war with the Plains Indians came to embody the picaresque frontier hero. As the frontier was rapidly disappearing, he realized he could market his life as entertainment, and millions around the world would pay for a taste of his Wild West. Tall, handsome, confident, and charismatic, he blurred the line between truth and entertainment, history and myth. Thus was a mere plainsman turned into an international celebrity and frontier hero, his meteoric rise to fame made possible by his genius and hucksterism. His name was William Cody, but the world remembers him as Buffalo Bill.

DVD 10366

Citizen Kane

An all-powerful press magnate, Kane, dies in his fabulous castle Xanadu, his last word being "Rosebud", which leads a reporter to seek the meaning behind the word and find the meaning of Kane. Prominant publisher, William Randolph Hearst, saw the film as a thinly disguised version of his career and attempted to suppress it.

DVD 1342

Citizen Kane 70th anniversary /

In Citizen Kane, following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance. In RKO-281, Orson Welles produces his greatest film, Citizen Kane, despite the opposition of the film's de facto subject, William Randolph Hearst.

DVD 12750