Orson Welles directed Citizen Kane at twenty-five — and Hollywood never forgave him for it. The film that is consistently voted the greatest ever made was a commercial failure on release, and Welles spent the remaining forty years of his career begging for financing, shooting films in fragments, and appearing in wine commercials to fund the projects the studios refused to back.

This episode traces Welles from his prodigy childhood through the War of the Worlds broadcast, Citizen Kane, the studio battles that destroyed The Magnificent Ambersons, and the decades of independent hustle that produced masterpieces nobody saw.

• Welles's prodigy childhood and the War of the Worlds broadcast that made him famous at twenty-three
• Citizen Kane — how a twenty-five-year-old made the greatest film ever and the Hearst backlash that buried ...