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

by McGilligan, Patrick

  I repeatedly referred to Andrea Janet Nouryeh’s painstaking and exhaustive thesis, “The Mercury Theatre: A History” (New York University, 1987), incorporating her sources, information, and observations for my chapters on the Mercury Theatre. “They were Welles’s shows . . .” and “Some of the people around him . . .” (JH) are quoted in France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “You were production material . . .” from Jean Rosenthal and Lael Wertenbaker, The Magic of Light (Little, Brown, 1972). I have consulted and quoted from Howard Pollack, Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World (Oxford University Press, 2012). Walter Ash (interviewed in 1979), George Coulouris (January 29, 1981), William Mowry Jr. (October 22, 1980), and Elliott Reid (August 17, 1980) are quoted from their oral histories in CCOHC. Maurice Bessy is quoted from Bessy, Orson Welles (Crown, 1971). Holly Gent Palmo, coscenarist of Me and Orson Welles, told me that the scene suggesting a girlfriend in the cast of Julius Caesar in the film “involves Orson and a character we dubbed ‘Ingenue.’ Orson refers to her as ‘Betty’ as he hustles her to her seat when Virginia arrives (‘Betty, I believe it was Stanislavsky who said—Ginny! What a surprise!’), but the Ingenue is really an anonymous character meant to represent his various flirtations.” Unless otherwise noted, Norman Lloyd is quoted from Lloyd, Stages: Of Life in Theatre, Film and Television (Scarecrow Press, 1990). “The hoodlum element you find . . .” is OW quoted in Alan Sinfield, Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading (University of California Press, 1992). “King actor” and “the fragility of great authority” from Leslie Megahey, filmed interview with Welles for the BBC’s two-part “The Orson Welles Story,” Arena (1982); an edited transcript is included in Estrin, Orson Welles Interviews. “At the box-office as well . . .” and “The plan is to open it . . .” from “News of the Stage,” New York Times, November 15, 1937.

  Sidney Slon and Ken Roberts are quoted from Martin Grams Jr., The Shadow: The History and Mystery of the Radio Program, 1930–1954 (OTR Publishing, 2011). I also consulted Walter B. Gibson, The Shadow Scrapbook (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). “I remember him arriving” from Elia Kazan, Elia Kazan: A Life (Knopf, 1988). “Major design concept,” the anecdote about Shoemaker’s Holiday and Lehman Engel’s “Often he tapped out rhythms . . .” are from Nouryeh, “The Mercury Theatre.” “Firk was promoted . . .” (Hiram Sherman) is from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “From the ordinary marts . . .” from “The Play: Mercury Theatre Adds Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday to Its Repertory,” New York Times, January 3, 1938. “He loved you to bite the cue . . .”: Arthur Anderson is quoted in France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “On the precise machine-like interplay . . .” from Lehman Engel, This Bright Day (Macmillan, 1974). Orson’s apron speech preceding the Shoemaker’s Holiday preview from Lloyd, Stages. “Boy genius” and all other Geraldine Fitzgerald quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from her son Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Luck and Circumstance. Fitzgerald’s “absolutely bowled over . . .” from a footnote quoting the actress in Houseman, Run-Through. VW’s discovery of OW’s apparent infidelity from Feder, In My Father’s Shadow. The OW-Losch correspondence is in Tilly Losch’s papers in Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections.

  Chapter 14: JANUARY–AUGUST 1938

  The Sardi’s dinner anecdote from Virgil Thomson, Virgil Thomson (Dutton, 1985). Mrs. Patrick Campbell quoted from Cecil Beaton’s Diaries, 1922–1939: The Wandering Years (Little, Brown, 1961). Arthur Anderson’s helpful memoir is An Actor’s Odyssey: Orson Welles to Lucky the Leprechaun (BearManor Media, 2010). “An English cavalcade . . .” from “Gossip of the Rialto,” New York Times, February 27, 1938. “If possible . . .” and “progress report” from “News of the Stage,” New York Times, March 7, 1938, OW’s candidacy on the “liberal slate” for Equity leadership reported in the New York Times, March 19, 1938. OW discusses Vincent Price’s discomfort with Heartbreak House in Tarbox, Orson Welles and Roger Hill. Brenda Forbes’s recollections of Heartbreak from Five Minutes, Miss Forbes. The OW–Vera Zorina romance is pieced together from several sources: her papers, including correspondence with OW in the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton Library; her memoir, Zorina (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986); Leaming, Orson Welles; and the OW-RH phone transcripts. “Steaming up various hired cars . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. The Balanchine anecdotes from the OW-RH transcripts. “The entire Mercury Theatre company . . .” from “Welles to Direct Plays,” New York Times, June 12, 1938. “The less a radio drama resembles . . .” from Radio Annual 1939. “The Summing Up” is also in the New York Times, June 12, 1938. Besides Victoria Price, Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography (St. Martin’s, 1999), I also consulted James Robert Parish and Steven Price, Vincent Price Unmasked (Drake, 1974). “Some of you may have . . .” (OW) is quoted in Andrea Janet Nouryeh’s thesis “The Mercury Theatre” (New York University, 1987). “How could you feel part of a . . .?” and “Orson never so much as . . .”: Hiram Sherman as quoted in France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “A sizeable number of the Mercury . . . ,” “insure longer employment,” “The Mercury Fuehrer . . . ,” and “Coincidental with rumored . . .” from “News of the Stage,” New York Times, June 29, 1938. “He’s above taking . . .” from Whitford Kane, undated letter to AS and Florence Stevens (NL). “The high-livers were killing . . .” (Hiram Sherman) is from Nouryeh, “The Mercury Theatre.”

  “The most hair-raising . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. “Almost as a precocious child . . . ,” “an instinctive, intuitive understanding . . . ,” and “an improviser” (Bernard Herrmann) are from the documentary narrated by Leonard Maltin, which is part of the supplementary material for Theatre of the Imagination (1995), a multimedia CD about the Mercury Theatre radio broadcasts. “At the start of every broadcast . . .” from Steven C. Smith, A Heart at Fire’s Center. Richard Wilson is quoted from Theatre of the Imagination. “One of the greatest, simplest . . .” from Brady, Citizen Welles. “The greatest gagman . . . ,” “almost the greatest movie . . . ,” and “the most poetic movie . . .” from Biskind, My Lunches with Orson. “A bit of a wild man” from In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles, ed. Jeffrey Miller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994). For background about Harry Dunham, I also consulted Christopher Sawyer-Lauçane, An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989); Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (Knopf, 2007); and Russell Drummond Campbell, “Radical Cinema in the United States, 1930–1942: The Work of the Film and Photo League, Nykino, and Frontier Films” (thesis, Northwestern University, 1978). I interviewed John Berry extensively for Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (St. Martin’s, 1997). I also consulted Berry’s unpublished autobiography. Details concerning the film half of Too Much Johnson come from “Metro-Goldwyn-Mercury,” Stage Magazine, September 1938, the most extensive of the contemporaneous accounts of the filming. The Equity dispute is covered in Citizen Welles and reported contemporaneously in newspapers. William Herz and (below) Ruth Ford are quoted from Steve Taravella, Mary Wickes: I Know I’ve Seen That Face Before (University Press of Mississippi, 2014).

  Chapter 15: SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1938

  Previously cited sources contributing to the first half of this chapter include Vera Zorina’s archives and her memoir, Zorina (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986); Houseman, Run-Through; Howard Pollack, Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World (Oxford University Press, 2012); my interview with John Berry; and Andrea Janet Nouryeh’s thesis. George Coulouris’s reaction to the Danton casting is from Houseman, Run-Through. “He was very beastly . . .” Guy Kingsley, here and elsewhere in the book, is quoted from his oral history, December 17, 1980, part of CCOHC. Helen Ormsbee, “Actors Often ‘Live in Theater’ . . . ,” New York Herald Tribune, October 23, 1938. “Be changed or the show dropped . . .” from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “Because the cast and technical staff . . .” from “News of the Stage,” New York Times, Oct
ober 28, 1938.

  The “War of the Worlds” broadcast is the subject of numerous articles and books. My account draws from multiple sources, but particularly these: JH’s memoir Run-Through; his revised account in Houseman, Unfinished Business: Memoirs, 1902–1988 (Applause Theatre Books, 1989); his earlier magazine piece, Houseman, “The Men from Mars,” Harper’s Magazine, December 1, 1948; Howard Koch, As Time Goes By: Memoirs of a Writer (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979); and John Gosling, Waging the War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic (McFarland, 2009). “Orson railed at the text . . .” from the unpublished memoirs of Richard Baer, later Barr, cited in Callow, Orson Welles. (Baer changed his name to Barr, becoming a noted stage director and producer, and president of the League of American Theatres and Producers from 1967 until his death in 1989.) Pauline Kael is quoted from her essay introducing Welles and Mankiewicz, Citizen Kane: The Complete Screenplay. Hadley Cantril’s book, the first to chronicle the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, is The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic (Princeton University Press, 1940). (Cantril’s book is treated at greater length in my Chapter Nineteen.) “A wave of mass hysteria,” “disrupted households . . . ,” “radio frequently had interrupted . . . ,” and “emphasizing its fictional . . .” from the front page, New York Times, October 31, 1938. “Looking for blood . . .” from Tarbox, Orson Welles and Roger Hill. Welles’s apology for the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, as filmed by newsreel journalists, can be viewed on YouTube nowadays. “For a few days . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. “Last Saturday night . . .” (Rabbi Jonah B. Wise) is from “Panic over Broadcast Linked to Fear of Hitler—Other Topics Discussed by Rabbis,” New York Times, November 6, 1938. Dorothy Thompson’s “On the Record” column “Mr. Welles and Mass Delusion,” New York Herald Tribune, November 2, 1938. Curiously, differing variations of Woollcott’s telegram have been published; mine is from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. “On Broadway . . .” I have quoted from Norton Russell, “Astounding Outcome of the ‘Martian Scare,’ ” Radio Mirror, February 1938. “Actually, it’s not a great play . . .”: Martin Gabel as quoted in Leaming, Orson Welles. The Max Reinhardt anecdote from Biskind, My Lunches with Orson. “That harum scarum production . . .” from Brooks Atkinson, “In Quest of the Mercury,” New York Times, December 18, 1938.

  Chapter 16: DECEMBER 1938–JULY 1939

  All Burgess Meredith quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from his memoir, So Far, So Good (Little Brown, 1994). Jean Rosenthal is quoted from Rosenthal and Lael Wertenbaker, The Magic of Light (Little, Brown, 1972). Howard Pollack is from Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (Henry Holt, 1949).

  The “towering” and “impressionistic rather than realistic” sets of Five Kings from Boston Globe, February 28, 1939 (review of the play). “Orson Welles Is an Amazing . . .” from John I. Taylor, profile, Boston Sunday Globe, February 19, 1939. The Benzedrine anecdote is from Meredith, So Far, So Good. “He is almost entirely . . .” from Leslie Megahey, in Estrin, Orson Welles Interviews. “Not Henry Irving, not Beerbohm Tree . . .” (Martin Gabel) is quoted in France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. “Materially shortened . . .” from “Five Kings Now Materially Shortened,” Boston Globe, March 2, 1939. “At least a year” from “Gossip of the Rialto,” New York Times, March 12, 1939. “Guild officials have been burning . . .” from Houseman, Run-Through. “Certain members of the Five Kings . . .” from Washington Daily News, March 24, 1939. “It’s [Welles’s] optimism I remember . . .” (Marc Connelly) is quoted in France, The Theatre of Orson Welles. OW’s telegram to Walter Ash also from France, The Theatre of Orson Welles.

  Details of the Charleston trip from “Orson Welles Here to Rest, Goes to Church, Five Parties,” Charleston News and Courier, April 11, 1939. “Looks better than I’ve ever seen her . . . ,” OW’s undated letter to his wife VW on Villa Margherita stationery is in the Feder papers at UM. “Welles has indicated . . .” from “Screen News Here and in Hollywood,” New York Times, March 30, 1939. The telephone call from Hollywood to OW, while he was meeting with bankers in Chicago, was reported in June Provines’s column “Front Views and Profiles,” Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1939. Foster Hirsch, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King (Knopf, 2007), helped with background of My Dear Children, starring John Barrymore (Preminger was the director). Unless otherwise noted, all of OW’s quoted comments about the Barrymore lineage, the crises with My Dear Children, and John Barrymore’s legacy are from Tarbox, Orson Welles and Roger Hill. “New developments regarding Welles . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. “The tour will probably continue . . .” from “The Hot Mikado Closes Tonight,” New York Times, June 3, 1939. Rita Myers Gagnon’s letter to the editor is from the Los Angeles Times, October 21, 1985. “That’s where they brought . . .” from Houseman, Run-Through. “Everything—but everything! . . .” from “Welles, Who ‘Scared the World,’ Gets a Dose of It from the IATSE in Pitt,” Variety, June 21, 1939. “At the first show he was Charles Laughton . . .” from “Tarkington Fete May Get New Play,” New York Times, June 23, 1939. “Who for two years spurned . . .” from “American Way Resumes Tonight,” New York Times, July 17, 1939. “When you don’t really want to go . . .” from Huw Wheldon’s televised BBC Monitor show, 1960, transcribed in Estrin, Orson Welles Interviews. “An almost unbearable bit . . . ,” from OW’s first letter to VW from California, July 22, 1939, one of the rare dated letters among their correspondence in the Feder papers at UM.

  Chapter 17: JULY–DECEMBER 1939

  OW letters of July–August 1939 to VW are undated, but I have done my best to sequence them. “Need Fresh Pix Directors,” Variety, July 26, 1939. OW was cornered at the Helen Hayes party in “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1939. (He was photographed sitting between Norma Shearer and Helen Hayes at a table at the Trocadero party, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1939.) Louella Parsons put quotes around the word “genius” in her first column about Welles, “Welles’ Contract Shatters Records,” Los Angeles Examiner, July 30, 1939. (Later, for her syndicated column, datelined August 24, 1940, Parsons visited the set of Citizen Kane, where she shared memories of Dixon, Illinois, with Welles and revised her opinion, removing the skeptical quotes and calling him “indeed a brilliant youth.”) Edwin Schallert’s first interview with Welles was “Welles Sees Television Boon to Dramatic Arts,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1939. “The only way I was able . . .” and “This is what was said . . .”: George Schaefer is quoted in Brady, Citizen Welles. “A kind of parable of fascism” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. The Huxley tea-picnic is recounted in David King Dunaway, Huxley in Hollywood (HarperCollins, 1989). The Dolores Del Rio–Jack Warner birthday party is reported in Maxine Bartlett’s column “Screen Society,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1939. “That’s when I fell in love . . .” and “that sightless, beautiful . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. I have drawn from Linda B. Hall, Dolores Del Rio: Beauty in Light and Shade (Stanford University Press, 2013). I relied heavily on Richard Meryman’s excellent biography of Herman Mankiewicz (HM) for material including details in this chapter of Mank’s pre–Citizen Kane career. “A heavy cast from under . . .” and “A certain man can be . . .” are from HM’s testimony in the Ferdinand Lundberg case.

  “Became a different man . . .” from HB, undated letter to OW (LL). MAB’s noticing William Alland’s “pale lemon yellow” complexion, and the subsequent surgery, from Long Beach Independent, August 31, 1939. “Most wonderful vacation . . .” from HB, letter to OW, September 20, 1939, (LL). OW and Lucille Ball were photographed at the Stanley and Livingstone premiere, Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1939. Schaefer’s telegram (“RKO WOULD HAVE LOST MONEY . . .”) and OW’s reply (“YOU HAVE MY WORD . . .”) from Brady, Citizen Welles. A version of the “Actors and garbage!” anecdote, carried in many show business columns in late 1939, is told in Decla Dunning, “Energy Machine” (profile of OW), Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, December 24
, 1939. Jack Sher’s syndicated profile, “The Legendary Orson Welles,” was an installment of his column, “Fantasy on 58th Street,” Port Arthur (Texas) News, November 19, 1939. “He sings a siren song . . .” from an undated memo, Diana Bourbon to Ernest Chappell (LL). “Overproduced” and “We’re not in the business . . .” from Brady, Citizen Welles. “Any ‘siren song’ I’ve sung . . .” from Welles’s eight-page reply to Bourbon, October 12, 1939, (LL). “The further development of the . . .” from Edwin Schallert, interview with OW, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1939. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Pat Hobby and Orson Welles,” Esquire, May 1940. W. R. Wilkerson decried RKO’s “gamble” on Welles in his column “Trade Views,” Hollywood Reporter, September 26, 1939. Sheilah Graham’s syndicated column recording OW’s candid views on Hollywood stars, “The Sun Is Bright, Too: Orson Welles Not One to Hide His ‘Genius,’ ” Kansas City Star, December 5, 1939. “Good friends pulled us apart . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. The Ward Bond anecdote concerning The Last Hurrah (footnote) from Scott Eyman, John Wayne: The Life and Legend (Simon and Schuster, 2014). “Orson Welles’s popularity . . .” from Jimmie Fidler’s column, Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1939. “Logically, they should have . . .” and “I think that’s a wonderful . . .” from Leaming, Orson Welles. “They weren’t all of them . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. The anecdote about Stevens on the set from Joseph McBride, “Some Thoughts on George Stevens,” sidebar to McBride and Patrick McGilligan, “George Stevens: A Piece of the Rock,” Bright Lights, no. 8, 1979. “What a sense [Ford] always has . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. “As many as forty times” from Brady, Citizen Welles. “After dinner every night . . .” from Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles. The Playboy interview of March 1967, is included in Estrin, Orson Welles Interviews.