by Simon Callow
Orson’s immediate revenge was in embroidering tales about his loathed grandmother to which he later gave vehement expression in press interviews and most vividly in his memoir:
The ballroom on the top floor of the old woman’s house had, at some remote period, mysteriously been converted into an enormous indoor miniature golf course full of wooden hills and nasty little sand traps, still partly covered with rotting green paper. Crowning the highest of the hills there had been erected, at a later date, what was unmistakably an altar. Representing some more recent epoch in Grandmother’s spiritual progress, it was no place for Christian sacraments. The feathers of many birds long dead lay about the golf course, and the altar itself was deeply stained with blood.65
This dreadful woman – dwarfish, obese, and evil-smelling – was a practising witch. On the occasion of her son’s funeral, celebrated in that huge house of hers (where my mother had never been allowed to enter) this hellish creature managed to sandwich some obscure passages into the ordinary protestant service, so that the wretched, weak-willed minister was confused enough to read out during the ceremony some of the more bizarre invocations employed by Madame Blavatsky, and great, reeking dollops of Aleister Crowley.
This startling passage is preceded by an assertion that ‘this dreadful woman’ had put a curse on his parents’ marriage, which is perhaps a clue to the intensity of his rage against her. He was looking for someone to blame for the fact that had blighted his life: the break-up of his mother and father which somehow split him up, too.
As for the truth of the situation: when Welles started telling these stories about his grandmother to journalists, they were reported to her. A 1941 article (‘Debunking the Orson Welles Myth’; it was the year of Kane) goes: ‘Mrs Mary Gottfredson is still living in the family home in Kenosha. She is now 92, blind, quite deaf, and bedridden, but the current stories have been read to her by her son, J.R. Gottfredson. She has been displeased and hurt.’ She is a Christian Scientist, the paper reports. There were no dead birds in her house. The funeral was perfectly regular – there were no ‘weird obsequies’. (Although Charles Higham was told by the subsequent owner of house that she had found on the top floor a wooden altar, inscribed with Latin text, adorned with pentagram and a stained glass window.) Just as he needed to romanticise his father, he needed to demonise his grandmother. Normally, an artist would have done this on a canvas, a writer in a novel or a film-maker on a screen. Welles avoided the autobiographical mode in his work, preferring to rewrite history in his on-going memoir, the story of his life as relayed to the press of the world over many years.
The local paper published a very decent obituary of Dick headed, erroneously, R.H. WELLS, 55, DIES SUDDENLY, (he was fifty-nine, and he had changed the spelling of his name at the age of twenty) noting his business career and background. ‘News of the passing of Mr Wells has caused profound regret among his wide circle of friends and relatives in Kenosha.’ They record his life of ‘semi-retirement and extensive travel’. A few days later, there was a further small item headed: ‘Dr Bernstein is named guardian of Welles’s son.’ Dick’s will had left it to Orson to choose his own guardian; he had immediately asked Skipper, wanting, obviously, to confirm his membership of that family. Skipper persuaded him that he must choose Maurice Bernstein, since it would break his heart not to be chosen. That is probably true, but we can imagine that with his children and Hascy implacably hostile to Orson, he may have had the preservation of his own family somewhat in mind.
So on 1 January 1931, Maurice Bernstein became Orson Welles’s legal guardian. Moving in with him, Welles was scarcely entering a haven of peace and light. Bernstein was now married to a remarkable woman: Edith Mason, one of the most distinguished American singers of her day, an outstanding actress and possessor of a voice whose silvery brilliance can be clearly heard on her surviving recordings. She had been married to Giorgio Polacco, an inspiring conductor, held to be Toscanini’s equal, but a somewhat diabolic human being. Bernstein had become her lover when the marriage to Polacco had broken down, marrying her in 1929. Polacco seems never to have been far from sight; eventually he moved back into Edith’s Lake Shore apartment. At one point, Bernstein, Edith, Polacco (all furiously abusing each other), their daughter Graziella (who loathed Welles) and Orson were all living in the same apartment. Mrs Leaming reports that Polacco, during a pause in the mutual invective, started to approach Orson sexually. Orson fled. This, though, was only the straw that had broken the camel’s back. There was a stream of male opera singers visiting the flat, who, pretty well without exception, were – according to Orson – drawn to him like bees to a honeypot, and were, too, soon involved in the laying on of hands. ‘You see, the Italians believe any young boy is meat for a quick seduction, and it will have no effect on him or on the masculinity of the grown man,’66 Orson informed Mrs Leaming, in a perhaps controversial piece of anthropology. ‘Everybody wanted me.’ His method of defence was traditional – ‘I always said I had a headache’ – but apparently effective. ‘I was like an eternal virgin.’
According to Mrs Leaming, Welles’s mother confessor on all such matters, Orson had by now experienced the full delight of sexual intercourse with a girl on a boat – perhaps while travelling with his father. Thereafter, he had taken to slipping into Woodstock for assignations with the ever-obliging girls from the Presbyterian Church Choir. Somehow or another, some very explicit homosexual pornography had come into his hands: he was particularly troubled by a picture of some sixteen Swedish men sodomising each other – ‘in their socks!’ The socks were, it seems, the problem: he found them sordid. He had not lost his attractiveness to what he called ‘the older homosexual set’ and managed, according to John C. Dexter, to get a couple of teachers sacked for mild homosexual advances. He was also attractive, it would seem, to the older heterosexual set: a friend’s father suddenly laid hands on him in the middle of the night when he and Orson were sharing a bed. Orson, he told Mrs Leaming, hadn’t suspected a thing when the older man suggested that they share a bed.
What are we to understand by these incidents, all reported by Welles himself? Apart from anything else, it appears that Welles wants us to know how attractive he was at that age. It is true that he had changed from the plump rather bossy-looking child of earlier photographs. Between the ages of thirteen and fourteen he had rapidly grown to six foot in height, and in doing so had lost much of his plumpness. His large, long-lashed eyes stood out warmly in a face that now had cheek-bones; his full lips added a soft seductiveness, the dainty, almost retroussé, nose a certain vulnerability. And he had a splendid head of hair. His single greatest asset, stunningly complementing the rest, was his voice, quite simply a gift from God, a natural instrument equivalent, in speech, to the singing voice of a Gigli or a Chaliapin.
It is easy to see his appeal to anyone, of any age or sex. His body had caught up with his manner. From being a child who spoke and comported himself disconcertingly like an adult, he was, simply, a striking young man, who could have been anything from sixteen to twenty-one. To desire him was not an admission of paedophilia. No one could have guessed that he was fifteen years old; not until they got to know him a little better, and then they might have discovered that in some respects he was even younger than that.
Pretty well everyone must have felt some sort of sexual frisson in his presence. What happened next is more complicated. It is hard to believe – especially now that he was as tall as a baseball forward, with every appearance of being as strong as one – that men simply made lunges for him. To be blunt: he must have put out certain signals. He was looking for affirmation and approval specifically from men, and this is one of the ways of getting it. So, if you were a middle-aged man, you might have found yourself being looked at through those enormous brown eyes with unexpected intimacy. And you may have surprised yourself with your quickened pulse and tightening chest. It must have given him an enormous, and new, sense of power. Hard to resist. Also: he may have enjoyed it. Not
in the case of Signor Polacco, however, and all those lecherous opera singers. Basta was basta. He went back to school.
Returning to Todd was a holiday. He flung himself into his final production. His Richard III, sometimes spoken of as Winter of Discontent, is strikingly grouped and set, with a lit aperture at the back of the stage, at the top of a flight of stairs. It was an epic in scale: the programme tells us that TODD TROUPERS together with JUNIOR TROUPERS and LEARN PIGEONS Present a play called KING RICHARD THE THIRD. ‘Our sixth and final offering of the season,’ writes the director, ‘is something of a patchwork, a Shakespearean goulash. Four Histories and a tragedy have gone into its making, and of the original kill, only the choicest cuts have been preserved. Has this Stratford pot-pie a precedent? We think so.’ Here he quickly surveys the various versions and adaptations, Cibber and Co. ‘And so our RICHARD III is a composite of the later histories. Beginning with Edward’s return from exile and carrying through his reign and that of his deformed and unprincipled brother Richard, to the beginning of the Tudor line by Richmond … and so, we humbly add our little polyglot to the 315th volume of crime and sacrilege committed in the master’s name. Our offence is rank, it smells to high heaven, and we robustious periwig-pated fellows, whose names sully its pages, we are the “curst that move his bones”, rattle the flaggings in Trinity Church and turn William Shakespeare, gent., to a point of nausea in his grave. Rest, rest, Perturbed spirit!!!’ The boy was intoxicated with Shakespeare. In his passion – and it was the last production of the season – he had overstuffed the goose. The show ran for three and a half hours and had to be savagely cut shortly before the opening. His make-up as Richard (he was, needless to say, eponymous) out Lon Chaneyed Lon Chaney: his face unrecognisable, as if made from spare parts of several faces stuck together with huge pieces of sticking plaster, it is disturbing and powerful – a botched monster put together by a sadistic Frankenstein.
None of these shows was noticed by the national, or, as far as the record shows, by the Chicago press. In the school, of course, and among those who cared, Welles was thought of as a genius, but geniuses tend to come and go in schools. It is impossible to say, on the evidence we have, how good the shows were. The importance of all the work that Welles had done was that he was able to flex his theatre muscles without limitation of time or labour – his own or anyone else’s; to discover what was possible, what would work and what wouldn’t. Everything that had been brewing in his head could now be put to the test. Welles was able to allow his talent to develop almost in isolation. Because of the support he had from the Hills, and because of his own driving need to achieve something remarkable, he had done in rather extreme form exactly what Todd was supposed to make possible. He had learned by doing. Had he not gone to such a school, he would never have grown theatrically as he did. He might, on the other hand, have learned something more about adapting to other people’s needs, and to external conditions; although to a certain extent, he had created the circumstances in which he flourished. He made sure of the relationship with Roger Hill; he demanded time and facilities, and persuaded the school to extend its ambitions in terms of repertory. In all these things, he got his way. Sometimes, of course, a little resistance is a useful thing. At Todd, he knew none.
There remained the small question of his academic qualifications. Here the estimable Guggie was at hand to coach him. There were limits to what he could achieve – no word of Latin, no term of Geometry would enter that otherwise absorbent brain. The results were a testimony to Guggie’s skills as an instructor: both Orson and he made it on the highest honour medal when they were in the 8th grade; both got red and white ribbon representing school colours. In the same year, he and Welles both got the Grand Gold Medal, with two gold bars. Welles was actually one medal ahead of his chum. Unsurprisingly, he won the medal for elocution and acting. He passed summa cum laude. But he was not proud of this. In all subsequent interviews, he invariably attributed any success he had had in the examinations to Paul Guggenheim, who had crammed him. It was an important part of his personal myth, even at this age, that he had had no teachers. And, essentially, it is true. He refused what they had to offer, was by nature and conviction an autodidact. He did it his way. He had no intention of playing their game and being judged according to their rules. This again was willed. He knew that criticism was intolerable to him, so he put himself beyond it. He was a one-off, his own sternest critic, and woe betide anyone who attempted to set themselves up in judgement of him. In essence, Welles remained exactly the same academically at the end of his time at Todd as he had been at the beginning. Maurice Bernstein was desperate that Orson should continue his education. At sixteen, he was too young for university, but Bernstein wanted him to go on to higher education, prior to Harvard or Yale. He offered Paul Guggenheim $1,000 (quite a sum for anyone; for Maurice Bernstein a king’s ransom) if he could persuade Orson to go with him to Lake Forest pre-university college. Orson replied: Why should I waste my time going to college and teaching those goddam professors what I know?
The photographs of the period show him a lot jollier than in previous ones. Here he is, short-trousered, standing on a log, throwing back his head and roaring with laughter. However embattled he may have been, regardless of which demons he was wrestling with, laughter never deserted him entirely. He was not in himself an especially funny man, nor an especially amusing boy, but he was, like Lear, always susceptible to being amused. He had a deep love of comics and comedians, having seen and met many of them, no doubt, with his father.
His last contribution to the school as a student was to edit the new catalogue: The Book of Todd, 1931. It is his most extended achievement to date in projecting his public persona; it also gives a comprehensive view of the world that he was about to leave behind. He may not have participated in every aspect of it, but it was the cradle of the man he became. He dominates the entire book. The cover (by him) is a boldly executed aerial view of the school, set in its bosky surrounds. The first article introduces not only Todd but its boyish editor.
HOW THIS BOOK STARTED: THE EDITOR SPEAKS: ‘I have a job for you,’ said Skipper, one afternoon in May. ‘That’s fine,’ I answered, ‘but I’ve more jobs now than I can finish this year. The murals in the history room are only half-done and that primary play I’m directing –’. ‘It isn’t exactly your job, it’s for the Seniors, but I want you to take charge of it,’ he countered, and then of course I fell, for who doesn’t like to boss a task?
This is vintage Orson in tone and in content: he advertises both his talents, and his relationship with Skipper. Facing the page is a picture of murals in the History Room (simply stylised, but attractive) ‘done by our editor, Orson Welles’.
We decided not to sign any of the articles or works of art in this book as it would make it even more confusing than it is now … however, we are over-riding our Editor’s authority in this one spot and stating that he drew the maps of the campus on the cover and is responsible for most of the better written articles in this book. Also he has been our leading light in dramatics this year, acting as Student Director of the Troupers.
It is not hard to imagine the reactions of most alumni to this naked piece of mock-modest self-promotion. He proceeds to a guide to the institutions of the school, most of which are found to be in an advanced state of democracy. Then: the enemy:
TEACHERS: The 20 men and women who share our life at Todd are all the type one loves to work with, to play with, and to live with. There is a great array of impressive degrees among the group but under the Skipper’s humanising influence, they have forgotten about them all and, like the boys, their rating in our life is determined solely by their contribution to its joy and its usefulness.
Certainly faculty members may have been found grinding their teeth as they read this. Orson goes on to describe the school’s extraordinary craft facilities, which give Todd the feel of a mediaeval village: the machine shops (‘some boys have made complete gasoline engines’), the print shop,
turning out the weekly school magazine, and the textile shop with its sixteen looms and facilities for rug designing and making. There were even – to gladden Dick Welles’s troubled spirit – facilities for cartooning. The catalogue is littered with talented examples of that art, almost all signed O.W. The articles on sport – evidently wonderfully well catered for – are notably less exuberant than the rest, and evidently by another hand.
It is predictably the theatre that dominates the catalogue. He makes a bold statement, claiming it as the activity of activities, uniting all the school’s elements:
DRAMATICS: The activity that has made the school famous, and the activity that touches every boy here and gives him a chance to express any talent he has. It is not a single activity but a combination of all.
It is a measure of the force of this sixteen-year-old’s personality that in a boys’ school run by a sports master, sport should have assumed second place to what is generally considered a specialised interest – or at least it did in the catalogue, edited by that same sixteen-year-old. The photographs testify to the originality and sophistication of the boys’ work, from the youngest, as Skipper had decreed, to the eldest. Since the standards they aspired to were entirely professional, make-up was a crucial art. The boys were supposed to look like adults – men and women. Orson became a master of this art, and a whole page is devoted to a photo-collage of characters: SOME PRODUCTS OF THE MAKE-UP CLASS: ‘The boy in the center is 13 years old and many of the others are younger.’ It’s an impressive display. By a remarkable act of self-restraint, Orson only includes three photographs of himself out of the twelve: as Richard III, a turbanned, bearded Manson in The Servant in the House, and an unnamed character with impassioned, upward-turned face – cunningly lit to conceal tubbiness – the expression questing and apprehensive, full lips barely parted, eyebrows raised from the centre to furrow the brow, nostrils slightly flared, retroussé tip to the nose giving an impression of vulnerability. It is this face, out of all fourteen on the page, which immediately catches the eye: it is one of the essential faces of Orson Welles. He is playing Francis Lightfoot, the genius.
