Talk:Samuel Insull

= Citizen Kane =

Untitled
I removed the following text from the article, as I removed a similar version a couple months ago:


 * Some aspects of Insull's life were used by Orson Welles for the character of Charles Foster Kane. In 1929 Insull built the huge Chicago Civic Opera House, supposedly for his lover soprano Mary Garden.

While the first sentence is true, the second repeats a long-discredited "Citizen Kane" myth. Insull built the Civic Opera House, but it was a monument to his own ego, not a showcase for a specific opera singer. As any Chicagoan can tell you, the "opera house" is actually a huge office building. Insull, an opera lover, came up with the idea that if you built an opera house at the base of a skyscraper, the rental income from the office space would subsidize the opera. Once the Civic Opera House was built, he moved his headquarters to the new building and ran his industrial empire from there.

As for Citizen Kane, screenwriters Mankiewicz and Welles have said they based the character of Charles Kane on several American industrialists, including Hearst, Insull, and Harold McCormick. McCormick, another wealthy Chicagoan, divorced his heiress wife (a Rockefeller) and married a mediocre opera singer whose career he desperately tried to promote. McCormick's story was clearly the model for the fictional Kane's 1st and 2nd marriages.

I don't know if Insull had an affair with Mary Garden. They were both part of the Chicago social scene and certainly knew each other. But when the new opera house was constructed, Mary Garden was already a world-renowned opera singer who had been a big draw in the city for 20 years. She was 55 years old and close to retirement - hardly in need of a showcase for her talents.

I suppose all this could be included in the article, but I think it's inappropriate to muddy up a biography with a mixture of fact and fiction.InNuce 15:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Someone that wasn't born in America could not possibly be an Anglo-American! Samuel Insull was Jewish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.186.168.14 (talk) 19:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

According to dictionary.com, the noun "Anglo-American" is defined "a native or descendant of a native of England who has settled in or become a citizen of America, esp. of the United States." I would suggest this is a commonly accepted definition of the term and most english speakers would understand the term this way. This definition certainly fits the facts of Insull's life. If he was Jewish, this would not imply he was not also an "Anglo-American" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Turbine1 (talk • contribs) 18:18, 1 January 2010 (UTC) Turbine1 (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Expand section tag added, or a new section
With recent (September'10) article improvements, I have removed the 'No footnotes' and 'Refimprove' tags; the article is now adequately cited and referenced, for what it contains. It does however, still lack significant notable and relevant information regarding Mr Insull's dealings, both individually and with Edison/General Electric; these include the exploitation of "a financial innovation known as the 'Holding company'", their abuse, the progressive context of the times, as well as when the US gov't clamped down. How this all developed seems better covered here, than in the current article, which has the pieces, but with them less-than-adequately assembled. This reference, which I consider an RS, discusses the emergence of electrical utilities in America and Insull's part; it has been inserted only as a reference for one specific number, for now, but is formatted for more extensive use. Hopefully, it is used. Regards, CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 06:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://24.15.236.20/public/zecom/museum/Chiradhist/wenr.htm#WENR

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External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Samuel Insull. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110715110419/http://www.post-trib.com/news/1026442,SSHISTORY629.article to http://www.post-trib.com/news/1026442,SSHISTORY629.article

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Disembodied statement
During a Chicago meeting on October 8, 1918, he introduced Professor Thomas Garrigue Masaryk as the president of future Czechoslovak Republic, de facto and mentioned his legions too.
 * This does not relate to anything preceding or following. The mention of 'his legions' seems particularly irrelevant. Valetude (talk) 12:27, 22 October 2019 (UTC)