bar". Mankiewicz was accompanied by a nurse, secretary Rita Alexander, Houseman, and a 300-page rough script of the project that Welles had written. The preliminary work consisted of dialogue and some camera instructions. Author Clinton Heylin wrote that Mankiewicz "... probably believed that Welles had little experience as an original scriptwriter ... [and] may even have felt that John Citizen, USA, Welles's working title, was a project he could make his own."

Mankiewicz and Houseman worked together