Dispute still rages over ownership of the original idea for the script, with many claiming that it was the brainchild of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz. In his school days, Orson Welles wrote a play titled "Marching Song." Though never produced, it was the exploration of a public figure through the testimonies of the people in his life. Mankiewicz certainly wrote the first draft of the screenplay, which took him about six weeks, though the draft only ran about a hundred pages and had only the broadest strokes for what would become the final script.