Orson Welles, Vol I

by Simon Callow

  At first, however, he got a go-ahead, Schaefer and the RKO board approved the project. He started casting immediately. There was difficulty in finding the right actress for the part of Elsa. His ideal, Dita Parlo, the incandescent star of L’Atalante, was in Europe and hard to get hold of; Ingrid Bergman, newly arrived in Hollywood, demanded too much money; Carole Lombard turned the part down. They continued to search. This was the only casting problem, however: all the other roles had been specifically conceived for ‘his’ company, that informal troupe who had been with him on and off on his three-year meteoric journey, in triumph and in disaster, on stage and in the studio, loosely called the Mercury Company. Not one of them had ever stood in front of a camera. He made a big feature of bringing a group of fresh new faces to the screen, calculating at the same time, of course, that directing experienced movie actors when he had never stood in front of a camera himself might have been a challenge even to his confidence. The roles were distributed to actors from various areas of his working life: Edgar Barrier, John Emery, Erskine Sandford, Gus Schilling, Frank Readick from the recently disbanded Five Kings company; Everett Sloane and Ray Collins from radio work, Norman Lloyd and George Coulouris from the Mercury, and Chubby Sherman (having forgiven him, presumably, and been forgiven) from boyhood days. Another cooled friendship was restored in his concept of the Steersman (the African who falls overboard, whose life Marlow in the original story calls a greater loss than that of Kurtz); he wrote the role for Jack Carter, his Macbeth and Mephostophilis, companion of those steamy Harlem nights. The character is written up into a sort of Charon figure – as he had written all the roles with the specific actors’ qualities in mind, quirky characters encountered along the way, as Marlow chugs steadily closer to the nameless horror.

  All the actors were duly contracted, while Welles worked closely with his art director, the story-board artists and the make-up department. Locations in Louisiana were scouted, and found wanting; tests to explore the subjective camera went ahead (none too successfully); more conventional screen-tests for make-up were undertaken, revealing Welles’s wild-eyed, scarred and bearded Kurtz; the casting department wrestled with Welles’s request for 3,000 black extras. There were, they reckoned, no more than a thousand black extras in the whole of Los Angeles, and the cost of convincingly making up white people was considered prohibitive. RKO threw itself into preparing to realise the extraordinary and complex document that was the screenplay for Heart of Darkness with its usual thoroughness, despite alarm bells from the accounts department, which foresaw costs of over a million dollars. Suddenly, in the midst of all these preparations, Welles had a telegram from Schaefer, then in Europe: the date was 1 September 1939. The German army had just marched into Poland; France and England were about to declare war. Schaefer, like the good businessman that he was, was worried about business. Blackouts, curfews: it could only spell bad news for sales.

  ‘All this severe blow as you of course know,’15 wired Schaefer, ‘and puts us in position where I must make personal plea to you to eliminate every dollar and nickel possible from heart of darkness script and yet do everything to save entertainment value stop never in my twentyfive years in industry have we been so confronted with need using our ingenuity and eliminating all material not necessary for story value stop of course this is not encouraging to your good self but believe there is nothing else I can do … we must be prepared for the worst sincere regards’. Welles rallied to this heartfelt request with equal charm (but a fortnight later): ‘dear mr schaefer: you have my word because of conditions as you explained every cent will be counted twice in heart of darkness stop no single luxury will be indulged only absolutely essentials to effectiveness and potency of story stop because you have entrusted me with full authority in this i will be the more vigilant and painstaking about costs have already cut two production sequences from script and am working on innumerable changes in production method and approach stop please believe every possible effort will be made to justify confidence expressed in times when confidence is expensive stop am trying very hard to be worth it regards orson’16 which is Welles at his most boyishly ingratiating; it must have sealed their friendship. It is interesting to note the form of address: Orson/Mr Schaefer – the correct way for a nicely brought-up young man to address an older man. ‘Thanks so much for your wire of the 19th,’17 wrote back Schaefer. ‘It heartens us very much and comes at a time when we appreciate such assurances of co-operation … wishing you the best of success in your undertaking … I am sincerely yours, G.J. Schaefer.’ They would return to the original budget ceiling of $500,000.

  Their perfect understanding was not enough to prevent rumbles from the outside world. The European crisis was a threat to all the Hollywood studios. The general tightening of belts and trimming of programmes caused widespread anxiety, which inevitably led to renewed focus on the fledgling outsider, the smart-ass who hadn’t even managed to announce the subject of his first offering. Wilkerson, editor of the influential industry paper, The Hollywood Reporter, wrote in his column ‘Trade Views’: ‘If Mr George Schaefer had come out with an announcement … that the Orson Welles picture was too much of a gamble to take during these critical times … the RKO president would have been a big guy in town yesterday. But Mr Schaefer evidently does not think that an investment of $750,000 or more with an untried producer, writer, director, with a questionable story and a rumored cast of players who, for the most part, have never seen a camera, is a necessary cut in these critical times.’18 The sniping continued. Herb Drake wrote sharply to a columnist who had implied that Welles was twiddling his thumbs by the poolside, describing how he had gone about producing Heart of Darkness screenplay: pasting the pages in the book, the discussions of shooting and character, the sketches for the art director; and the final shooting script. ‘I would say Welles has produced between 700 and 800 pages of double-spaced typing on 8 × 10 paper and another book of sketches. When I saw him on Sunday he said he had only four hours’ work left on the script.’ Drake was a pro, not a man to waste his time; he wrote at such length in such detail because it was crucial to counteract the growing rumours that the script was either unfilmable or – even more widespread – that it did not exist at all.

  Welles still had no relationship with the movie community as such. Whispers about his private life had been stilled by his new relationship with Dolores del Rio, the first in a succession of iconically beautiful consorts who were always to be found at his side for the rest of his life. They met at a party thrown by Jack Warner; he had, he told her, been in love with her since the age of eleven, and knew that one day they would be lovers (this pattern was repeated with his second wife, Rita Hayworth, whom he had determined to marry after seeing her photograph on the cover of Life magazine, making him some sort of serial fetishist). Del Rio’s image had exerted such a powerful hold on him that, spotting her in a New York night-club, he had followed her out of the club and some way down the street. She was married to the famous art director Cedric Gibbons, some years older than her; finding herself violently drawn to the twenty-four-year-old Welles, her junior by ten years, she determined immediately to divorce her husband. Her friend Fay Wray notes that ‘she apparently didn’t consider having an affair with Orson, but thought she must leave Cedric, get a divorce. She seemed herself a lady of purity.’19 She did, of course, start an affair with Welles, but only after informing her husband that it was all over between them; divorce followed in the fullness of time. Sexual attraction, though undoubtedly strong, does not seem to have been the essential ingredient in the relationship between her and Welles; she seemed to have had all too much of that with Gibbons. ‘He wants only to talk about sex,’ she told the judge when filing her application for divorce. Welles reported to Barbara Leaming that del Rio was as perfectly composed in bed as out of it. What was inspiring for Welles was to be associated with her glamour and beauty. ‘He was goggle-eyed that she would even hang around,’20 said James Morcom, Welles’s set designer on Five Ki
ngs. But equally, ‘she was so in awe of him and his genius, and he loved that, lapped it up.’ She gave him two things Virginia could no longer provide: glamour plus adulation; Virginia knew him too well, had known him too long. She did not sufficiently confirm the image of him in which he needed so deeply to believe.

  At first, to protect Gibbons, their relationship was conducted clandestinely; always a bonus for Welles. When not alone with her he fraternised with the Hollywood outsiders, attending (Frank Brady tells us) a ‘forbidden’ book launch, that of Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer, unmistakably based on the life of the key host and hostess of Los Angeles high society, the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, the comedienne Marion Davies. Only those who did not wish to dine, or who were no longer invited to dine, at Hearst’s Spanish gothic folly San Simeon on the coast near Santa Barbara appeared at the Huxley launch; Welles fell in with this crowd.

  None the less, Welles was keenly aware of the need, not merely to fight back, but actively to improve his image. Under Drake’s brilliant tutelage, he now started to cultivate the Hollywood media. In practice, this meant those arch-rivals, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, queens of poolside gossip, both of whom he now courted assiduously and with due care not to favour one above the other. To be caught in the crossfire between them could be fatal, as he was later to discover. His fabled charm worked its familiar magic on them. ‘Too bad Orson Welles isn’t an Englishman,’ wrote Hopper (by far the sharper of these two weird sisters) in September of 1939. ‘If he had been, Hollywood would never have given him such a run-around. We reserve that for our own citizens. Mr Welles doesn’t scare easily and I’m thinking he’ll make Hollywood sit up and beg for mercy.’ A month later, Parsons was writing: ‘If Mr Welles makes a great picture, I’ll be the first to say so … we cannot deny that Mr Welles is a brilliant young man.’ Drake’s counter-campaign was beginning to take. He identified an insatiable interest in the legends surrounding ‘the Christ Child’, and, having issued a summary of the salient miraculous events for the attention of editors, he applied to Dr Bernstein for more.

  Even that arch-idolator had become aware of the absurdity of some of what was written. ‘As for the chronological story of Orson the thing which is definitely known is the fact that he arrived in Kenosha on the 6th of May 1915. On the 7th May, 1915, he spoke his first words, and unlike other children who say commonplace things like “mamma” and “pappa”, he said “I am a genius.” On May 8th, 9th and 10th, 1915, little was heard about him in THE PRESS, but on May 15th he seduced his first woman. After that date, things happened fast since the Rajah of Geek came through Kenosha in the guise of a Fuller Brush man and gave Orson a brush which he uses as a beard and set out on his theatrical career playing, as you and the whole world knows, Peter Rabbit.’21

  Welles continued to be in close contact with Bernstein (still, after all, his legal guardian for another two years) and the Hills. Roger and he were still business partners in the Mercury Shakespeare on discs; their plan to bring out a fourth (Macbeth) to add to the already available Caesar, Twelfth Night and Merchant of Venice was to engender correspondence throughout the next eighteen months. Hill had, in his own sphere, been passionately promoting Welles: in a circular for Everybody’s Shakespeare (now, seemingly, called Orson Welles’s Shakespeare) he writes under the headline THE FOREMOST NAME IN AMERICAN AESTHETIC LIFE TODAY: ‘I have seen no movement appear upon the education horizon comparable in immediate importance and in future hope to the instantaneous success and worldwide acclaim of Orson Welles and his Elizabethan offerings. Hailed throughout the press as the white hope of the American theatre, Orson Welles’s destiny is, to my mind, of even greater magnitude than this. He is also the white hope of the American classroom. The contagious enthusiasm for great literature which should be part of every student’s heritage is today woefully lacking.’ The Mercury can be persuaded out on the road, he says, if only there are enough postcard requests to him to do so. ‘I have told Orson that he owes it to himself and that he owes it to America to found a truly National Theatre – to spend at least six months out of each year carrying his stimulating offerings to aesthetically undernourished students and adults throughout the length and breadth of our country.’ Welles had, apparently, promised that the 1938 tour would last till the following winter. Hill’s final sentence explains the momentary coolness between them since Welles had taken up residence in Hollywood. ‘The young man who finds no temptation in fabulous movie offers can be persuaded I hope not to confine his performances to the few large cities that can offer long and completely underwritten performances.’

  It is one of the many uncommon aspects of Welles’s life that he, a grown and famous man, should remain in constant contact with these two openly adoring and demanding older men, neither of whom was either his father or his lover. He remained highly responsive to both of them, affectionate and considerate, even through the more tedious of Dr Bernstein’s demands, and even at times of greatest pressure. Bernstein was invited by Welles to California; he came (‘I have never been happier in my life’) for a stay at the Château Marmont, then, returning to Chicago, he decided that he should settle in Los Angeles for good, partly to be close to ‘Pookles’. In order to do so, he asked Welles for a yearlong loan to establish him; the letter is couched in Bernstein’s usual terms of emotional blackmail: ‘I never stood in your way and never imposed on you and will not start now. But I know that you are in a position to help me without a great sacrifice on your part … you can imagine how unhappy this writing makes me and what a battle it was to decide to do this. But I am driven to distraction and have no alternative … lovingly and distractedly, Dadda P.S. Whatever you decide will make no difference in my feelings for you.’22 Then, handwritten, he adds: ‘you have helped many stranded actors who meant nothing to you. I hope that I mean more than they did to you.’

  It worked, of course; he moved to California, where Welles, in addition to helping him financially, attempted to get him employed as RKO’s medical consultant. Failing in that, he used him as his personal physician; accident prone as Welles was, this kept Bernstein busy until he was accepted by the California Medical Board as a regular practitioner. He was, at any rate, (and despite the occasional whimsy) an excellent source for Herb Drake, who had secured a major coup for Welles: a three-part series on him to be written by Saturday Evening Post’s star reporters Fred Smith and Alva Johnston, who needed all the colourful detail they could get. Drake wrote to Bernstein asking for childhood pictures of Welles, especially those relating to ‘the fabulous Dick Welles’ about whom, he says, Alva Johnston wanted to do a separate article, shamelessly adding that the doctor would be the next subject.

  Welles, meanwhile, had submitted his 19 November Final Shooting Script to the Hays Office for their comments. ‘We are happy to report,’ wrote the secretary, Joseph H. Breen, ‘that the basic story seems to meet the requirements of the Production Code.’ There were minor cavils: in the introductory prologue ‘some censor boards may delete scene of gun being fired … many censor boards will delete scene in death chamber.’ Racial issues seemed to concern them above all: ‘care will be needed with the costumes of all natives … there must be no suggestion of nudity, of course, and the breasts of the women must be covered at all times … the same care should apply to heads on poles, etc … please take care to avoid any inference of miscegenation.’ Blasphemy was, of course, out of the question (‘the expression “Thank God” must be changed’) and, interestingly, they warn that the British Board of Censors will not like the portrayal of Kurtz as being partially insane, not the burial service. With these few reservations, Welles had the go-ahead from that troublesome quarter. There now seemed no further obstacle; shooting could at last begin, silencing the still virulent scepticism. The war in Europe, however, began to loom larger with every passing day. Schaefer became more and more nervous about the film, urging Welles to drop the overt political parallels (the very possibility which had at first reco
mmended the project to him); Welles immediately agreed. Too late; the final blow, in December, was the costing estimate for the Final Shooting Script: $1,057,761, more than double the agreed figure.

  A great deal of the expense was due to the particular requirements of the subjective camera: in order to preserve the continuity crucial to the notion, Welles wanted to maintain enormously long takes over considerable distances. The only solution to this problem was the elaborate technique of feather wiping: the camera is locked off at the end of a shot; the next shot resumes at the same place, and the camera moves off again. As Robert Carringer describes it: ‘if Marlow was standing on the deck of a boat that had just docked, his eyes would pan to the side of a building on the shore. The pan would continue in the new shot and come to rest as Marlow engaged in conversation.’23 A concomitant of this method was that the special effects would have to be created before principal photography began; Vernon Walker’s department estimated twelve or fourteen weeks for this work. This meant, as Carringer points out, delaying the start of shooting till March at the earliest; the actors would have to be laid off till then. Schaefer and a desperate Welles met in New York to discuss the situation. Welles brought with him a script he had been working on alongside Heart of Darkness: The Smiler with a Knife, from a thriller by the Anglo-Irish poet C. Day Lewis under his nom-de-plume Nicholas Blake. Based squarely on the English fascist Sir Oswald Mosley and his plans for a coup, it was witty, topical – and cheap. He could make it, Welles assured Schaefer, while the Special Effects for Heart of Darkness were being prepared, for as little as $400,000. He would take no salary, just a cut of the profits; this was agreed.