Orson Welles, Vol I

by Simon Callow

  For a moment, it seemed as if Welles was going to attempt to create the theatrical heavenly kingdom on earth. This was not foisted on him: he and Houseman had made such bold declarations when they founded the Mercury that hope for this elusive vision was born again; now it appeared that he hadn’t really meant it. Instead, he simply offered a lively alternative to what was on offer elsewhere. Welles later insisted that there had never been a possibility of creating an ensemble because the real talent was never available to him. This is shameful nonsense. He had the pick of the younger profession, and chose well. Certainly in his first season, the company had the makings of a world-beating team. For a multitude of reasons, he failed to keep them together. The Danton’s Death company was equally promising: with players like Joseph Cotten and Mary Wickes in tiny roles, he had a strength in depth which is the essential requirement of a serious acting company. But he did nothing with them; had no plans for them.

  The Mercury was a maverick actor-manager’s outfit, existing to support the leading actor’s performances and serve his brilliance as a director. ‘I think it might almost go without saying,’ wrote Sidney Whipple in his aggrieved article, ‘that some of the most valuable talent has been lost to the Mercury because, to the actor, the road lying ahead was so uncertain. It is not security alone that actors want. Their great desire is to demonstrate and enlarge their artistic abilities. The question of a program should be determined by joint consideration and the plays that are chosen should have not only the best of direction, which is Mr Welles’s forte, but the best of writing and the best of acting.’ This was simply not the way Welles functioned. Whipple was dreaming, as so many American theatre people had for so long dreamt, of a National Theatre, an organisation nourished by and nourishing talent; a company with roots, capable of growth; an ensemble, in fact, in the tradition of the great European ensembles, the Comédie Française, the Moscow Art Theatre, the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Schiller in Berlin.

  In contrast to all these other groups, the Mercury had neither theory nor vision, neither craft nor continuity. It depended on justifying the moment – providing thrills. Its particular originality was that it did this with classical plays. As such, it may have been a wonderful antidote, but it was incapable of sustained growth. Clurman, defending himself and his theatre against accusations that the Group was rigidly theory-bound and lacked a sense of humour, noted that ‘Behind [all this] is the need to be free, to pick up or drop any notion according to convenience, to avoid choice, lest one be caught in the rigidity of a definite position, for in that lies difficulty and even danger.’ The Mercury was never dangerous; was, according to Clurman (who cannot of course be described as an objective witness, though his point is well made) ‘sensational and not controversial. It had the rebel air of a “hep” and hearty youth that suited the rejuvenated epoch of the late 30s. The Mercury was safe. It treaded on no toes, but rather kicked the seat of plays and traditions for which our reverence is more advertised than real … the theatre in our slippery society has become very much like gambling. The reviewers, like the financiers, hate to back a loser.’ The Mercury was a speculators’ delight; once it was bust, it proved to be perfectly dispensable.

  And it had been a beacon: in its verve and fearlessness, it had seemed to revitalise the idea of the theatre, for a while. In their 1938 play The Fabulous Invalid, Kaufmann’s and Hart’s survey of the theatre’s indestructibility, an eager little group, led by THE YOUNG MAN, appears at the end of the play, when all seems lost.

  THE YOUNG MAN

  Well, you know why we’re here, everybody, and what we’re going to do. There’s only one thing I want to say today. We’ve got our own theatre. It’s not in a very good neighborhood; it’s been closed for years, and it’s in pretty bad shape. But it’s a theatre, and it’s ours. It’s got a stage, and it’s got seats, and that’s all we care about … they’ll tell you it isn’t important, putting make-up on your face and play-acting. I don’t believe it. It’s important to keep a thing alive that can lift men’s spirits above the everyday reality of their lives. Remember, you’re going to be kicked around, and a lot of the time you’re not going to have enough to eat, but you’re going to get one thing in return. The chance to write, and act, say the things you want to say, and do the things you want to do. And I think that’s enough.

  No Broadway theatre-goer in 1938 had the slightest doubt as to which particular YOUNG MAN was supposed to be doing the talking. He ran the flag up for the theatre, for a while. Time for someone else to take over.

  Welles and Houseman were in it for the pleasure and the gain of the moment. It is hard not to think of them (however affectionately) as opportunists and buccaneers. Certainly they shed no tears for their lost theatre, whose lease, the one Welles had insisted would keep them in business for at least five years, was made over to Laurens and Benjamin, for their children’s theatre; later it passed to the radical Yiddish group ARTEF. The neon sign which had raised such a cheer when it was installed a mere fifteen months earlier remained incongruously in place till the demolition men moved in four years later to knock the theatre down.

  Welles and Houseman had gone rapidly on to the next projects, the first of which, significantly, involved further dismantlement of the Mercury in its other shape: the Theatre of the Air. The radio programmes were about to undergo a change of gear, with the arrival of a sponsor (always referred to by Houseman as The Soup Company) and a change of name. Now the programme was The Campbell Playhouse. ‘I guess they figured if we could sell the end of the world,’ said Houseman, ‘we could sell tomato soup, too.’36

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Campbell Playhouse/Five Kings

  THE MERCURY Theatre of the Air made its last transmission on 4 December with The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Welles’s old mentor Thornton Wilder. The broadcasts had, astonishingly, continued their ambitious and sparky course through the débâcles of Too Much Johnson and Danton’s Death and The War of the Worlds sensation. Adaptations of Schnitzler (Anatol), Chesterton (The Man Who Was Thursday), Dumas (a thrilling Count of Monte Cristo) and Brontë (Jane Eyre) jostled with Jules Verne, Saki and Sherwood Anderson. For Julius Caesar, Welles again stressed the contemporary parallel, this time having the relevant chunks of Plutarch read by the foremost political commentator of the day, H.V. Kaltenborn, whose mid-European accent, regularly heard by millions of listeners describing the gathering storm in Europe, must have given a peculiar urgency to the story for contemporary listeners. There were larky versions of The Pickwick Papers (featuring Welles’s Sergeant Buzzfuzz) and Sherlock Holmes, a somewhat sketchy version of Heart of Darkness as part of a triple bill, and a genuinely First Person Singular adaptation of My Little Boy by Carl Ewald (a shamelessly sentimental but curiously affecting piece which is perhaps the most experimental production they had so far attempted, pioneering an almost stream-of-consciousness approach). In addition, with Clarence and Seventeen Welles celebrated his affection for the work of the Middle West’s great chronicler, Booth Tarkington, an affection that resulted first in his radio adaptation, then his film, of The Magnificent Ambersons.

  The programming – eclectic, middle-of-the-road, but always stimulating and personal – was as characteristic as the versatile and witty performances by the regular team, a tight-knit group of masterly radio actors – Ray Collins, Agnes Moorhead, Gabel and Coulouris foremost among them. The tone was only occasionally reverential, more often blithe, high-spirited, dashingly dramatic. Not all of that was lost with the reinvention of the programme as The Campbell Playhouse, but it was a radically different animal, and it made of Welles a rather different animal, too. The first show, Rebecca, set the pattern; being the first show, it was launched with fanfares, both musical and verbal, quite unlike anything heard on the Mercury Theatre of the Air. Bernard Herrmann’s specially composed Hollywood-style musical call to attention merges into a new treacly allargando version of the opening of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, over which the announcements a
re made. If the Mercury Theatre of the Air had seemed to glorify Welles, this was his apotheosis.

  ‘I am here,’ the announcer tells us, ‘to introduce the white hope of the American stage as the director and star of The Campbell Playhouse – he writes his own radio scripts and directs them, and makes them live and breathe with the warmth of his genius.’1 Having lamented that there is no time to adventure into the story of his life, the announcer feverishly recapitulates the familiar events, culminating with his foundation of the Mercury Theatre and his operation of it ‘with magical success’; news of its disbandment had clearly not yet reached Campbell’s Soup. ‘He had four hits last year on Broadway, which beats Noël Coward’s record from here to Kalamazoo. And he’s generally recognised today as being the most gifted stage director and actor of our time.’ Referring to his radio productions, the announcer tells us that though Orson Welles is ‘the master of realism over the air on radio, unique, exciting – he shocked you, he sent the cold shivers racing up your spine – that is not the thing he does best, or best likes to do. He loves,’ the announcer consoles us, ‘to tell a story, a great human story, welling up from the heart, brimming with deep and sincere emotion and lively with comedy.’ Such are the stories, apparently, that he will bring to The Campbell Playhouse.

  Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, the announcer finally comes off the fence about Welles in a thrilling peroration. ‘Because of all his gifts, his genius at playwriting, his ambition, his dynamic direction, his amazing character acting, he has been selected by Campbell’s as the ideal man to conduct The Campbell Playhouse. And so tonight Orson Welles makes his bow as the outstanding programme director of the air, and I have the very great pleasure of presenting him now. Mr Orson Welles.’ Welles, quite unabashed by the preceding hosannas, briskly takes the microphone, telling us that it’s a great big chance for him and a great big challenge, pledging himself to tell good stories ‘from everywhere, from the stage, from moving pictures and from literature … and to try to tell ’em as well as I know how,’ finally staking a claim to quality which was, perhaps, a message to his sponsors as much as it was to his audience. ‘You know the makers of Campbell Soup don’t believe in all this talk about the radio audience having the average mentality of an eight-year-old child. I can only hope that what I do with The Campbell Playhouse will prove how much they mean it and how right they are.’ He reiterates his familiar commitment to radio radiophonic as opposed to radio theatrical. ‘We have no curtain real or imaginary and as you see, no audience. There’s the only illusion I’d like to create; the illusion of a story.’

  So far, so Mercury. Then the announcer brings up one of the innovations. ‘But the star too is important, Mr Welles is that not so?’ The massive enhancement of the budget had enabled Welles to employ the biggest names in Hollywood and on Broadway; his usual team continued to work for him, but no longer in leading roles. Welles eagerly agrees about the importance of the stars: ‘Yes, indeed. I’d like to say how very fortunate I am in having with me tonight the loveliness and the magic gift of Miss Margaret Sullavan.’ This is a new tone, quite different from his Mercury manner: what would later become familiar as the manner of the chat show, but which in 1938 was the unmistakable tone of the sponsored programme. It is about selling, about puffing. The puff here extends to the book being adapted. ‘It’s this year’s contender for the five-foot shelf, your best bet for anything from a weekend to a desert island and it’s a book you should read, the ideal Xmas gift to yourself.’ Then the double puff: of self and author. ‘Miss Du Maurier has flattered me with her confidence in permitting The Campbell Playhouse the great privilege of making for radio the first dramatisation of her book.’ She will be listening to the programme; at the end they will talk ‘by special shortwave communication from London’. He signs off (or rather signs on; the programme proper hasn’t started yet) ‘so ladies and gentlemen and Miss Du Maurier, The Campbell Playhouse is Obediently Yours’ – the famous tag has a slightly ironic feel; the multiple genius to whom we have just been so comprehensively introduced makes an unlikely servant.

  We are suddenly plunged into Rebecca by means of Bernard Herrmann’s luscious waltz-laden score, full of sudden intensities created by the Lohengrin instrumentation of trumpet and tremolo strings. Hardly have we begun, though, than we are rudely interrupted. ‘Here’s an important message from a man who keeps one eye on the dining table and another on the pantry …’ There follows an apostrophe to chicken and the soup derived from it by Campbell’s. ‘Why not plan to have Campbell’s glorious chicken soup tomorrow?’ Innovation number two. The commercial breaks always occur at cliff-hanging moments, a curiously dislocating effect; they are elaborate and emotional, including an extraordinary tribute from the announcer to ‘the good hardworking honest men’ who make Campbell’s Soup. ‘I know the Campbell kitchen, the Campbell soup, the Campbell men: their success is due to the human side of this business, its policy.’ No doubt, accustomed to sponsored broadcasts of which this was quite typical, listeners’ ears simply glazed over during these interludes, but the layers of fiction involved in the broadcast are somewhat bewildering: palpably unreal tributes to soup by paid announcers are seamlessly interwoven with Mrs Danvers’s tributes to her dead mistress, overlapping with overwrought accounts of Welles’s career and fevered sales pitches for the novel and forthcoming film.

  At the end of the adaptation (which barely accounts for two-thirds of the broadcast) Welles, still quite recognisably Maxim de Winter, and Margaret Sullavan, as husky and breathless as she was as the second Mrs de Winter, have a chat. ‘Two things I like are good stories and good soup,’ says Miss Sullavan, ‘and when I tell you my idea of a great soup is Campbell’s chicken soup, that, Mr Welles, is no story.’ A curiously coy exchange follows. ‘Until we met for rehearsals,’ says Welles, ‘I’ve never – to put it bluntly – had the pleasure of your acquaintance, and now in six and a half minutes, you’ll have gone out of my life. The point is – the point is – I’m the director of a theatre, the … the …’ Sullavan: ‘The … Mercury Theatre?’ Welles: ‘The Mercury Theatre, thank you. I’m talking to you as a theatre director. What are you doing next year? I’ll bring you a script tomorrow. Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, for trying to date up one of the nation’s most gifted and attractive young actresses. I’m sure you’ll sympathise and I hope Miss Sullavan understands.’

  Finally, incongruously after all this smooching, comes the conversation with the author, her fastidious vowels singing out loud and clear across the Atlantic, her consonants clipped: ‘Thenk you for an ebsolutely splendid broadcast.’ She gives Sullavan instructions on how to visit the ‘real Manderley’; there is some pleasant banter about the heroine’s name, which she playfully cuts short. Welles signs off, Obediently Ours.

  For Welles on the air, omnipresence was no innovation. The Welles of The Campbell Playhouse however was a significantly different person to the Welles of the Theatre of the Air: master of ceremonies, celebrity, leading actor, salesman, he had become appreciably more a product of the image makers. Sincerity and intellectual urgency are replaced by flannel and a sort of confidential charm. The leader of the avant-garde, the dashing and daring adventurer has become a cosier, less challenging figure, authoritative but unthreatening.

  He has, above all, gone commercial, the selling of the sponsor’s product and his own indistinguishable from one another; both indistinguishable from the selling of himself. The tone in which he extols the beauty of radio as a medium is the same as the one in which he lauds the makers of Campbell’s Soup. It is one more stage in the abolition of the boundaries between Welles’s persona and his work, and represented a great increase in his public prominence; the process that Houseman described shortly afterwards, not without bitterness, as ‘the situation of Orson becoming a great national figure (a figure only less frequently and vastly projected into the news and the National Consciousness than Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler and maybe N. Chamberlain). This has happene
d in almost exactly inverse proportion to the success of his artistic and professional endeavours.’2 He overstates; but there was increasingly in Welles’s work a confusion as to whether he was selling it or doing it.

  As for Rebecca, insofar as one can disentangle it from the surrounding puff and pitch, all of the skills developed for the Mercury Theatre of the Air are as ingeniously deployed as before (with one or two quite startlingly effective new sound effects), Herrmann’s score is if anything more powerful and imaginative (he later used large sections of it for the film Jane Eyre), and the performances of the staple radio repertory are admirable. Of the guests, Mildred Natwick is disappointingly mild as Mrs Danvers (despite the heart-freezing leitmotiv Herrmann wrote for her); Margaret Sullavan is fresh and true. Welles himself is a gruff and generalised de Winter; powerful, but not haunted. Though not vintage, the programme thrilled its new audience – one of whom was David O. Selznick; describing the show as ‘one of the greatest successes the radio has ever known’ he sent a transcript of the broadcast to Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he was then struggling over the screenplay for the forthcoming movie. ‘A clever showman,’ he wrote to a perhaps less than enthralled Hitchcock, ‘Welles didn’t waste time and effort creating anything new but simply gave them the original. I hope we will be equally astute. If we do in motion pictures as faithful a job as Welles did on the radio, we are likely to have the same success the book had and the same success that Welles had.’ At a stroke, The Campbell Playhouse had established itself; Welles was now reaching more people than he ever had, and many of those people were highly influential.