Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane

by McGilligan, Patrick

  “That hurt for a while . . . ,” “some picturesque black chef” and “I expect you to shine brightly . . .” from Callow, Orson Welles. I have quoted from OW’s letters of April 12 and May 2, 1934, to Hilton Edwards in the Gate Theatre Collection. “Now he had added to . . .” from MacLíammóir, All for Hecuba. AS’s column about Welles and the Woodstock Summer Theater, undated, is in his NL papers. “I wanted to go to Europe . . .” from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “A bevy of stage-struck high school kids” and other RH memories of the summer theater from Hill, One Man’s Time and Chance. “A combination Bayreuth and a strawberry festival” from Woodstock News, June 28, 1934. Details of the launch dinner at the Tavern Club from an undated clipping, Margot Jr., “Thursday Evening All Roads Lead to Woodstock Opera,” Chicago Daily News, in the Woodstock Public Library file. “Joseph Jefferson made a curtain speech . . .” from Margot Jr., “Woodstock, Ill., Never Saw Equal of Last Night’s Doings in All Its Mellowing Century,” Chicago Daily News, July 13, 1934. “Rather mean” and “He revered them . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. “Vigorous non-homosexual” and the debate about “pansies” are also from Leaming. After proclaiming young OW’s genius in the Chicago Tribune, Charles Collins questioned it in “Planting Chicago’s ‘Fresh Fields,’ ” New York Times, July 15, 1934. John Clayton again quoted from his profile of OW, Los Angeles Times.

  My section on The Hearts of Age is greatly indebted to Professor Russell Merritt and Joseph McBride. When I was still in high school, my older sister took me to one of Professor Merritt’s film classes, where I first heard him talk about and then viewed Citizen Kane for the first time at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. Later, as a student myself, I took every class Merritt taught. Joseph McBride, who was the first to write about The Hearts of Age—in “Welles Before Kane,” Film Quarterly, Spring 1970—was also an invaluable mentor dating back to those years; his investigation of Welles’s filmmaking from the first to last continues to this day. Charles O’Neal’s son Ryan and William Vance’s daughter Cynthia filled in with their memories. “It was a Sunday afternoon . . .” and “certainly nubile, probably a virgin . . .” from Brady, Citizen Welles. “A new star in the making” from Woodstock Daily Sentinel, August 21, 1934. “On the last regretful night . . .” from MacLíammóir, All for Hecuba. OW would “take a vacation . . .” from “Many Attended Final Showing of Tsar Paul,” Woodstock Sentinel, August 21, 1934.

  Chapter 10: 1934–1935

  The half dozen OW-to-RH letters and telegrams from 1934–1935, all at UM, are undated, and I have sequenced them in context. “They fell under . . .” from “Moral and Domestic,” Irish Times, April 4, 1941. The Nicolsons are characterized from Feder, In My Father’s Shadow. I relied upon Mona Z. Smith, Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee (Faber and Faber, 2004), for background on the relationship between OW and Lee. “Tybalt seldom gets . . .” from MAB’s notes for a memoir. “Your father was a virgin . . .” from Feder, In My Father’s Shadow. Marriage rumors were squelched in Judith Cass’s society column, Chicago Tribune, November 19, 1934; the betrothal was announced in “Orson Welles, Actor, to Wed,” New York Times, November 18, 1934. “In the manner”: Katharine Cornell again quoted from the Saturday Evening Post. “Friendly and good-natured” is Brian Aherne quoted from A Proper Job: An Autobiography of an Actor’s Actor (Houghton Mifflin, 1969). Wedding details from the December 24, 1934, Newark Star-Eagle and Newark Evening News. AS wrote about Everybody’s Shakespeare in his column in the Chicago American, January 18, 1935.

  John Houseman (JH) is always quoted from his memoir Run-Through, unless otherwise noted. “His British, rather wonderfully cool . . .” from Virgil Thomson’s review of Run-Through, New York Review of Books, May 4, 1972. Archibald MacLeish’s (AM) “Never heard of Orson!” and other remembrances of OW from the transcript of Bernard A. Drabeck and Helen E. Ellis’s interview with AM published as Archibald MacLeish: Reflections (University of Massachusetts Press, 1986). “Generally trochaic, sometimes dactylic . . .” from AM’s prefatory notes to the first published edition of Panic: A Play in Verse (Houghton Mifflin, 1935). “A rich blank-verse belly blow . . .” from OW, undated letter to AS, Stevens Collection. “A storm of controversy . . .” from “An Interview with Archibald MacLeish, Author of Panic, Play of Wall St. Crash,” Daily Worker, March 15, 1935. “Does not necessarily imply . . .” from New Masses, March 19, 1935. Joseph McBride and François Truffaut on OW playing “negative” characters from McBride, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? Jerome’s appraisal of Panic is in New Masses, April 1, 1935; described as the transcript of his “speech delivered as part of The New Masses-New Theatre critical symposium which followed the final performance,” it includes his line about “the hiss of the bourgeoisie.” “Did not come to like . . .” from AM, letter of March 18, 1935, to JH, included in The Letters of Archibald MacLeish, 1907 to 1982, ed. R.H. Winnick (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), and also cited in Scott Donaldson, Archibald MacLeish: An American Life (Houghton Mifflin, 1992).

  James Naremore is quoted from Naremore, The Magic World of Orson Welles. “Bright Lucifer” ultimately had its world premiere in 1997, when the Millennium Theater presented Welles’s three-act play in Madison, Wisconsin, using a copy of the script tucked away in the State Historical Society archives. “A face-saving offer . . .” and “the literary product of this period . . .” from RH’s notes for One Man’s Time and Chance on deposit at UM. “General subjects of the stage” from Woodstock Sentinel, May 13, 1935. As regards Man of Aran, whether or not young OW met Robert Flaherty on the Aran Islands, while the latter was shooting Aran, remains a mystery; although my research indicates that OW was long gone from the islands and ensconced in Dublin by the time Flaherty was filming, it is possible he found his way back to Galway and sailed to the islands on a weekend, upon hearing that Flaherty, one of his idols, was on the job. One reliable reference for Welles’s radio career is Orson Welles on the Air: The Radio Years (Museum of Broadcasting, 1988). Joseph Cotten’s autobiography, quoted in this chapter, is Vanity Will Get You Somewhere (Mercury House, 1987). I have drawn background from William C. Glaekin’s profile of Ray Collins, Sacramento Bee, November 16, 1957. “While known, are risky . . .” from “Rialto Notes,” New York Times, July 22, 1934. “If they borrow . . .” from Whitford Kane, letter of September 10, 1935, to AS and Florence Stevens (NL).

  Chapter 11: 1936

  Elmer Rice announced OW as director of the Negro Unit Macbeth in the New York Times, January 5, 1936. “Mythical place . . .” from Bosley Crowther, “Macbeth the Moor: Macbeth Transplanted,” New York Times, April 5, 1936. Steven Watson, Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism (University of California Press, 1995), provided good background on the Houseman-Thomson-Welles relationship. I also plumbed Kathleen Hoover and John Cage, Virgil Thomson: His Life and Music (Thomas Yoseloff, 1959), and Virgil Thomson, Virgil Thomson (Dutton, 1985). Thomson cooperated with JH for Houseman’s memoir Run-Through and is quoted in it. “Orson Welles knew nothing . . .” from Thomson, Virgil Thomson. “Instead of telling you . . .” from Callow, Orson Welles. I have quoted Federal Theatre Project historian Wendy Smith from Smith, “The Play That Electrified Harlem,” Civilization, January/February 1996, and have also drawn from Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 (Grove, 1994), and from Joanne Bentley, Hallie Flanagan: A Life in the Theatre (Knopf, 1988). “Fashion plate and man about Harlem” from “Jack Carter on Trial in Murder,” New York Amsterdam News, May 17, 1933. “Slightly derailed energy” from Leaming, Orson Welles. “Anyone who could read lines . . .” from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “I got fifty bucks . . .” and “Great fun . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. “He liked me . . .” from Dwight Whitney’s interview with Everett Sloane, “Beacon in a Sea of Mediocrity,” TV Guide, April 1, 1961.

  Rosetta LeNoire quoted from Bonnie Nelson Schwartz, Voices from the Federal Theatre (Terrace Books
, 2003). “Houseman never came to [Macbeth] rehearsals . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. “It was really ridiculous . . .” and “He knew what he wanted . . .”: Leonard de Paur as quoted in Mona Z. Smith, Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee (Faber and Faber, 2004). “I never scream at actors . . .”: OW told this to RH during their phone calls. A “posture” to win him “the authority . . .”: de Paur as quoted in Leaming, Orson Welles. The report of “prevalent” views about the “blackface” Macbeth: “WPA Players Set to Give Macbeth with Tropical Locale to Give Color,” New York Amsterdam News, March 28, 1936. “Orson was constantly on Feder’s back . . .” and “Orson began to get very abusive . . .” (Edna Thomas) are from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “Orson trusted my opinion . . .” is Virginia Welles (VW) quoted in France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “To drink white wine . . .” (Virgil Thomson) is from Houseman, Run-Through. Welles’s contemporaneous notes on Macbeth to cast and crew are from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. The “geographically irreverent Macbeth . . .” from New York Times, April 5, 1936. “Just a matter of an appalling lack . . .” from Noble, The Fabulous Orson Welles. Carlton Moss is quoted from Douglas Bell’s oral history (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1995).

  “Excitement . . . fairly rocked the Lafayette Theatre” from Brooks Atkinson’s opening-night review, New York Times, April 15, 1936. “A dwarf with gold teeth” and “I realize on reflection . . .” from Noble, The Fabulous Orson Welles. Besides contributing to my understanding of The Cradle Will Rock, Barry B. Witham provided me with “Percy Hammond and the Fable of the Scottish Play,” his dissection of the “myths” surrounding the Voodoo Macbeth, including the death of Hammond (supposedly caused by voodoo), New England Theatre Journal, 2007. “That was magical . . .” from Smith, Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee. “The heat” and “Harlem simmered yesterday . . .” from “News of the Stage,” New York Times, July 17, 1936. “The only time anybody’s . . .” and “I would go up . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. David Thomson and Peter Conrad are quoted from their books Rosebud and Orson Welles, respectively.

  “No sooner would you open . . .” from New York World-Telegram, cited in Leaming, Orson Welles. “The WPA, in a throwaway leaflet . . .” from “L.N.,” review of Horse Eats Hat, New York Times, September 28, 1936. “I would read a speech . . .”: Edwin Denby is quoted here and elsewhere in this chapter from Noble, The Fabulous Orson Welles. “Within ten minutes of our meeting . . .” (Paul Bowles) is from Callow, Orson Welles. “So I went, ‘Whoop!’ . . .” (Bil Baird) is from John O’Connor and Lorraine Brown, Free, Adult, Uncensored: The Living History of the Federal Theatre Project (New Republic Books, 1978). “A jovial cross between P. T. Barnum . . .” from OW, letter of August 28, 1936, to RH (on Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne Inc. stationery), furnished to the author by Todd Tarbox. “Two long pieces of continuity . . .” from Virginia Spencer Carr, Paul Bowles: A Life (Scribner, 2004). I also consulted Conversations with Paul Bowles, ed. Gena Dagel Caponi (University Press of Mississippi, 1993). The malted milk anecdote and “kind, intelligent, generous . . .” from Arlene Francis’s oral history, August 14, 1979, in the Columbia Center for Oral History Collection (CCOHC). I also consulted Francis, Arlene Francis: A Memoir (Simon and Schuster, 1978). “Sitting in the barbershop . . .” from Biskind, My Lunches with Orson. Everett Dirksen’s attack on the “salacious tripe” of the Federal Theatre Project quoted from “By Act of Congress,” TAC Magazine, Issue 12, 1939. Harrison Grey Fiske wrote that the Federal Theatre Project plays were “full of Communists,” attacking the Voodoo Macbeth and Horse Eats Hat among other productions, in “The Federal Theater Doom-Boggle,” Saturday Evening Post, August 1, 1936. The Marc Connelly–John Dos Passos anecdote is from Connelly, Voices Off-Stage: A Book of Memoirs (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968). “I thought it was the best . . .” (Joseph Losey) is from Michel Ciment, Conversations with Losey (Methuen, 1985). Hallie Flanagan (“even sorrier for those who didn’t enjoy it”) is quoted from Callow, Orson Welles. The reminiscences of George Coulouris (January 29, 1981) and L. Arnold Weissberger (August 14. 1979) come from their oral histories in CCOHC.

  Chapter 12: 1936–1937

  “Rather too unsympathetically . . .” and “We didn’t have the time . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. For background on the radio Hamlet, I drew on Bernice W. Kliman, Hamlet: Film, Television and Audio Performance (Rutherford, 1988). (Kliman gives September 19, 1936, as the air date for the show, but this must be the script date; contemporaneous news clippings indicate the last installment of the two-part broadcast aired in November.) “Everything originated . . .” (Paula Laurence) is from Callow, Orson Welles. “In the icy, strained light . . .” and other passages from OW’s letters to VW from a series of undated radiotelegrams and letters, 1937–1939, in the Welles-Feder Collection at UM. “He was pleasant . . .” (Augusta Weissberger) is from Noble, The Fabulous Orson Welles. “I was probably the only person . . .” from Brady, Citizen Welles. In this chapter and elsewhere I have quoted Bernard Herrmann (BH) from Steven C. Smith, A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (University of California Press, 1991). Some quotes are culled from Herrmann’s “Score for a Film,” New York Times, May 25, 1941 (it is reprinted in Gottesman, Focus on Citizen Kane). I have also drawn from Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (Henry Holt, 1999). “The music is vigorous . . .” from Virgil Thomson, “In the Theatre,” Modern Music, no. 15, 1938. Welles’s dustup with Ernest Hemingway has many variations; I have gravitated to OW’s version of events, which I find plausible, while incorporating details from others. “Pompous and complicated . . .” from OW’s basic account as told to Juan Cobos, Miguel Rubio, and J. A. Pruneda in 1964, published in Cahiers du Cinéma in English, no. 5, 1966, and reprinted in Estrin, Orson Welles Interviews. Peter Viertel tells Hemingway’s side of the story in Viertel, Dangerous Friends: At Large with Huston and Hemingway in the Fifties (Nan A. Talese, 1992). Jeffrey Meyer, in Hemingway: A Biography (Harper and Row, 1985), is among those who have described OW’s account as “quite fanciful.”

  OW’s fictional re-creation was published as The Cradle Will Rock: An Original Screenplay (Santa Teresa, 1994). I have drawn extensively on Barry B. Witham’s impressively researched “Backstage at The Cradle Will Rock,” Theatre History Studies, vol. 12, 1992. Witham kindly supplied his discovered transcript of the Washington, D.C., meeting between OW and Federal Theatre Project officials. “Recitatives, arias, revue patters . . .” from Blitzstein’s “Lines on The Cradle,” New York Times, January 2, 1938. “Figurative prostitution—the sell-out . . .” (Brecht) is as quoted in Houseman, Run-Through. “He and Virgil were in a huff . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. “Crazy” and “terrified about it . . .” from Callow, Orson Welles. “Orson and Jack are optimistic . . .” from Blitzstein, letter of March 3, 1937, to his sister Josephine, in the Blitzstein papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research, Wisconsin State Historical Society. “He never tired . . .” from Lehman Engel, This Bright Day: An Autobiography (Macmillan, 1974). “In about four weeks . . .” from “News of the Stage,” New York Times, May 11, 1937. Lawrence Morris is reported to have described Cradle as “magnificent,” in Noble, The Fabulous Orson Welles. “Amateurs Will Be First to Go,” New York Times, June 12, 1937. “Irrepressible energy and . . .” from Marc Blitzstein, “Out of the Cradle,” Opera News, February 13, 1960. “Ingenuity, speed and daring” from Jean Rosenthal and Lael Wertenbaker, The Magic of Light: The Craft and Career of Jean Rosenthal (Little, Brown, 1972). “You may not appear . . .”: OW is quoted by Blitzstein in “Out of the Cradle.” “Too-long speech” and “the situation, the scenes . . .” (Lehman Engel) are from Engel, This Bright Day. “The most beautiful voice . . .” is quoted from Leaming, Orson Welles. An invaluable source on Welles’s contribution to the political culture of the 1930s and 1940s is Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twen
tieth Century (Verso, 1998).

  Chapter 13: 1937–1938

  “One of the happiest . . .” and “Orson devoted himself . . .” from Feder, In My Father’s Shadow. “It was easy to detect that Helen Menken . . .” from “Radio’s Twelfth Night,” New York Times, September 5, 1937. “That was part of her great charm . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. David O. Selznick and OW are quoted from Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (Knopf, 1992) and from Thomson, Rosebud. Goldwyn a “monster” and Mayer “the worst of them all” from Biskind, My Lunches with Orson. “Much of the speed and violence . . .” is from the OW-JH proclamation, New York Times, August 29, 1937. “He stared at me . . .” from Feder, In My Father’s Shadow. OW letters to VW from Crawford Notch are in the Feder papers at UM. “The same kind of hysteria . . .” is cited in Michael Denning, “The Politics of Magic: Orson Welles’s Allegories of Anti-Fascism,” in Naremore, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane: A Casebook. “There was never a production . . .” from Everybody’s Shakespeare (Todd Press, 1934).