Orson Welles: Hello Americans

by Simon Callow

  Vargas continued to press forward with his modernising programmes during the internationally tense period of the European war. Skilfully, he avoided committing himself to either Axis powers or Allies: his essential sympathies might have been assumed to lie with the fascists (the population of Brazil, moreover, has always had a very strong German component), but he was mindful of his relationship with his Latin American neighbours, as well as with the United States. He had personally expressed his support for It’s All True when it was first mooted, and had caused the full (if sometimes ineffective) weight of the government Motion Picture Division under Assis Figuereido to be thrown behind it; a couple of weeks after Welles’s arrival, Vargas had personally hosted a reception for him in Petropolis, at which he expressed his delight that the jangadeiros’s story would be told. He had his own purpose in encouraging the film: he saw it as an advertisement for his modern Brazil, where even illiterate fishermen in the far north could be unionised and receive benefits. And he could show off his capital, Rio, in a permanent state of reconstruction, the rival of any European city with its fine hotels, its parks and its massive boulevards. The geographical heart of the Carnival, the old Praça Onze, had indeed recently been swept away and replaced, somehow inevitably, by Avenidad Getúlio Vargas. Grande Otelo’s samba in the 1942 Carnival, which became the enredo, the featured song of the year, lamented this:

  They’re closing down

  There will be no more samba school

  The shanty towns cry

  Favela, Salguiero

  Marquera, Estaçao Primera

  Put away your instruments

  The samba schools won’t be parading today.

  The song perfectly embodies one of Welles’s central themes, the disappearance of paradise – in this case not the gracious life of The Magnificent Ambersons, but the people’s pleasures. This theme would feature strongly in the film that was forming in his mind.

  This was not, of course, a theme that Vargas or his government wanted aired. As time went on, it became apparent that what Welles intended to film was very different from what any of his three masters – the I-AA, RKO and the Brazilian government – expected from him. For the moment, Welles was smiled on, and by way of return was happy to write to Getúlio Vargas to inform him that he would be doing a series of broadcasts from Brazil in which he intended to tell the story of The March on the West, ‘a true civic epic of your great political movement’, an extraordinary piece of ideological flexibility on his part, but one that was certainly in accord with US government policy – that is, to encourage Brazil by all means to declare war on Germany. The tension was at its height during the spring and summer of 1942: Catherine Benamou reports that during the period of the shooting of It’s All True, more than fifteen Brazilian vessels were torpedoed by Axis forces.

  Meanwhile Welles and the crew, having captured the actual Carnival from every possible angle, now set about the task of reconstructing large portions of it, in the hope of creating a coherent narrative. The central sequence of the Carnival section was to be the famous entertainment at the Urca Casino, which required restaging, relighting and strenuous organisation both of the performers and the audience. In effect, they found that they were now filming a musical, another form of which none of them had the slightest experience. Moreover the weather had turned. Distracted by social and formal engagements and absorbed in plans for the larger movie he was evolving, Welles himself seemed to be only partly focused on the work in hand. ‘On location 8 p.m., waited for Mr Welles until 9.30 p.m.’ is a fairly typical entry in the daily log of activities. Surprisingly, Lynn Shores, the production manager, was entrusted with responsibility for taking a large number of shots, mostly process and montage, but sometimes more than that. Unsurprisingly, he was not best pleased. On one occasion, having been told that Welles wanted to take certain shots, Shores secured, with some difficulty, the army searchlights they had just returned; Welles never showed up. Shores shot anyway (‘neither Harry Greene nor myself had the vaguest idea of exactly what he was after’); the following day Welles phoned to tell him to carry on for the next two days, which he did. At no point, Shores said, did he or anyone else know what they were shooting or why:

  I will not go into detail of my various attempts at trying to pin Welles down as to future plans. In a vague way he has given me to understand that we are to travel over most of South America with the Mercury Players, various units of Technicolor and black and white, radio set-ups, goodwill speeches, and general messing around for the next two or three months … it has become a horrible nightmare to me personally. I am carrying not only the working but the personal problems of practically twenty-seven individuals, each one with an axe to grind and a grievance of some sort at every hour of the day.

  He works, he says, twenty-hour days. Welles, it appears, wants him to carry on shooting, and will continue to want him to carry on shooting because of the radio shows he is planning. If so, Shores fulminates, he wants a new deal.

  While Shores and the crew were baffled and resentful (Duke Greene, the Technicolor cameraman, was drinking heavily and ‘certainly does not make for N American goodwill in Rio’, according to a memorandum), Welles himself was investigating the Brazilian cinema; he saw some shorts that contained, according to Tom Pettey, ‘ideas he might wish to look into’.23 At the same time, the Brazilian cinema was investigating Welles; and it liked what it found. Kane was given a special showing in Rio; Welles got awards for best actor, best director, best picture. At supper with some journalists afterwards he was told that it was he who had really been King of the Carnival in Rio, and that ‘no other personality from the United States, especially from Hollywood, had won so many friends in Rio’.24 A group of artists and intellectuals gave a dinner in his honour, a Homenagem a Orson Welles: he was, they declared, ‘the outstanding figure in the motion picture world’ (he had at this point completed exactly one film). He gave every appearance of exhilaration in his reports back to George Schaefer.

  We’re working too hard down here for good letter writing, or even one good long letter.25 Since you are my most understanding friend, I won’t even attempt to explain my silence or alibi the brevity of this. I have great hopes for the film itself. Quite apart from its importance as a documentary, its entertainment value promises to be great. The carnival sequence alone … is going to mark a totally new departure in musicals. Indeed every aspect of this picture is as fresh as even you could ask for. – This is a big job and a tough one, and I am truly and deeply grateful for the opportunity. I do think our rewards will be great. This is real pioneering and – after all – [he added in the special tone he reserved for Schaefer] pioneering is what we like best. Fondest regards.

  In stark contrast to the evidence of the production reports or the admittedly biased letters of Lynn Shores, Welles wrote to Jock Whitney that they were definitely on schedule and – if anything – doing a little better than might have been expected. A certain amount of string-pulling had been deployed. ‘You may have heard that the city of Rio – and, for all I know, the United States of Brazil – was without anti-aircraft searchlights for more than a week.26 How we got them is a matter between Dr Assis Figuerido and his God. How they were transformed into plausible Technicolor units is a wonder of absolutely Old Testament proportions.’ He praises the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the team – ‘reflectors gleam and everywhere things buzz and hum and click’ – but they are still in desperate need of the promised supplies; ‘that boat’s got to come or we’ll all run screaming into the jungle’. Phil Reismann wrote to Whitney that Welles’s good humour was ‘positively Brazilian; his enthusiasm always informed; his tact is limitless. Besides which,’ he added, ‘he’s rare good company’, something no one had ever disputed about Orson Welles.27

  George Schaefer, meanwhile, quietly reminded Welles on 27 February that The Magnificent Ambersons – from which this Brazilian venture was, in RKO’s eyes, a mere (if worthy) diversion – was due for an Easter release. East
er Sunday that year fell on 3 April: a print would be with him for his approval by 15 March and must be immediately returned. PLEASE ORSON, Schaefer begged Welles, in the slightly pleading tone he so often adopted in their exchanges, DO EVERYTHING MAKE THIS POSSIBLE; and he added: HAVE HEARD OF EXCELLENT PROGRESS VERY HAPPY EVERYTHING WORKING OUT SO WELL. KIND PERSONAL REGARDS.28 Schaefer, with exceptional restraint, made no attempt to convey the precariousness of his situation. The studio was haemorrhaging money, by no means exclusively on the independent units such as the Mercury. Its star-packed Sing Your Worries Away lost $225,000; Valley of the Sun, a Western, lost $185,000. The board had been reluctant to renew George Schaefer’s contract: a new board was about to take over, and the old board was eager not to tie its hands. Schaefer had been allowed to continue as head of studio on an informal basis, but there had been ominous visits from New York, culminating in the sacking of two of Schaefer’s lieutenants, McDonough and Lesser. Joe Breen was on vacation, and Charles Koerner, also from head office, a famously tough cookie, stepped in for him; he never stepped out. The tumbrils were rolling; the days of Schaefer’s ancien regime were numbered.

  Far removed from all this, at the beginning of March, Orson Welles wrote, in his unmistakably open hand, a curious kind of a haiku, half reminder, half reassurance, placed firmly in the centre of a blank foolscap sheet of paper: somewhere, deeply buried beneath all that talent, arrogance and charisma, there was in Welles an unexpected vein of deep humility.

  Nothing has ever been too good for the public.

  Nothing has ever been good enough for the public.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Only Orson and God

  WELLES’S RESPONSE TO Schaefer’s telegram of 27 February was to put everyone working on The Magnificent Ambersons at RKO on triple shifts. He had wired Robert Wise to make as many alternate cuts of dissolves, sound and music as possible, and now asked Jack Moss, in charge of the Mercury office in Hollywood, to start running the film nightly, and to take active command of the production. GET IN NORMAN JO DOLORES FOR JURY AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE EVERY OPINION MUST BE COVERED BY AN ALTERNATE, he told Moss.1 This was, in the most literal sense, editing by committee, Moss being the chairman. YOU HAVE BEEN AWAY FROM AMBERSONS LONG ENOUGH TO BE FRESH AND YOU KNOW I TRUST YOU COMPLETELY – an extraordinary act of faith in a man who, until two years before, had been an obscure vaudevillian, one who, moreover, had never written, directed or produced a film in his life, and whose only appearance in one had been mute. The note of panic in Welles’s communication and in the many that followed is unmistakable. He telegrammed Schaefer to reassure him that he was in almost daily contact with the office, and that the studio was working on the film ‘at breakneck speed’. He had, he said, conceived an idea that the world premiere should be in Buenos Aires, the day before the Hollywood premiere; he wanted to do the narration himself in Spanish and Portuguese. RESULTANT INTERNATIONAL PUBLICITY WILL BE ENORMOUS SHOWMANSHIP TERRIFIC, he insisted, continuing with a touch of deluded grandeur, MAGNIFICENT PAN-AMERICAN GESTURE BESIDES KEEPING ARGENTINE FROM FEELING LEFT OUT OF OUR S AMERICAN PICTURE.2

  Schaefer replied with understandable exasperation that he had no objection to a Rio world premiere of The Magnificent Ambersons (he wired Phil Reismann to the effect that a Buenos Aires opening was out of the question), but he was absolutely desperate to get on with the American one since the picture had already cost more than $1m – $150,000 more than the strict limit he and Welles had agreed. His own position at RKO was now vulnerable in the extreme. The ruthless Charles Koerner was daily strengthening his position there, laying plans for the studio’s return to financial health. His first target was the Mercury. ‘With respect to Orson Welles or Mercury Productions in which we are interested,’ he stated in a crisp memorandum, ‘please make sure that no commitments of any nature whatsoever are entered into without first checking with the writer.’3 In so far as the erratic communications system, now rendered even more unreliable by wartime restrictions, would allow, Welles was in constant contact with the Mercury office, not only about The Magnificent Ambersons, but also about Journey into Fear. In the light of the current international situation, he now felt that the latter film required some reshooting; to this end he proposed to shoot cutaways of himself in Rio, for which he would need the full Colonel Haki wardrobe and, most importantly, his false nose. In the meantime, he hastened to assure Schaefer: EVERYTHING HERE PROCEEDING BEAUTIFULLY IN SPITE OF NON ARRIVAL OF BOAT STOP CANNOT OVERSTATE OUR ENTHUSIASM CONFIDENCE EFFECTIVENESS BEAUTY SOLID ENTERTAINMENT VALUE SHOWMANSHIP THIS PICTURE.4

  He was the only person who thought so. In the absence of the boat bearing the additional equipment required, the team’s activities were at best desultory, at worst non-existent. The weather, which had broken at the end of Carnival, had never recovered and continued to be appalling, bitterly cold with rain and thunderstorms. They shot the samba clubs in Technicolor in the afternoons and at night; Welles was not present for this work, which would have been second-unit material, if they had had a second unit, and was generally supervised by the grossly disaffected Lynn Shores. Despite the fact that Welles had arranged a rise in salary for him – AS FAVOR TO ME, he had wired the front office – Shores’s festering resentment continued to inform his reports back to RKO’s Walter Daniels.5 ‘I have a lot of things in my mind which may explode before you receive this letter,’ he wrote to his master.6 ‘We have not made a shot worth while this week, and if we had been shooting continually all week, the shot would still not have been worth while. I do not like to be pessimistic on this trip but the longer we are here the more involved we get and seem to be working toward no end … Welles is definitely throwing the shooting of this picture onto my lap. Confidentially I believe there is nothing promising here. The shooting of the carnival was a big disappointment to all of us, and I know to him personally.’ The crew was unhappy. ‘I am working under continuous pressure from both ends. Welles wants me all night for meaningless conferences, and the boys want me all day for shooting and general lending ear to their beefs. Whatever they feel about Welles they are taking out on me.’ He hoped that on arrival at the studio ‘the lights and equipment will keep the boys occupied to the extent of keeping them out of too much unoccupied mischief … I am doing everything humanly possible to preserve law, order, morale and progress.’ Almost any human group has its Lynn Shores, grimly rejoicing in the prospect of disaster; here he had material in abundance to feed his schadenfreude. ‘I hate to continually bombard you with pessimistic letters,’ he avers. ‘Someone has got to be a little truthful about this jaunt … the details of the daily manoeuvre down here would fill a book and be most amusing. Someday I may write that book.’ Tom Pettey was writing to Herb Drake to much the same effect. The crew was deeply unhappy, not only about the work or lack of it in Rio, but about the low profile of the venture: ‘everyone in Hollywood will forget about us and we will become forgotten men’.7

  Partly to counteract this, early in March, Pettey concocted one of his striking press releases, which does not entirely dispel the impression that no one really knows what he’s doing, least of all Welles: ‘The glimpse into the future that follows may go through as outlined, may be changed, may be done altogether or in part. No one can tell as no one knows what difficulties may be encountered in a war-ridden world. Anyhow, here’s the story as it stands today. A big smiling man in a plum-coloured suit – easily the most stared-at man in the salon of the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro – leaned across the coffee table and began talking with a couple of newsmen …’8 The picture, the much-stared-at Welles tells them, will be a long one. ‘We don’t know how much it will cost because we don’t know what difficulties we may have to face in the way of delays and transportation.’ Then he outlines a general plan: ‘Devices – pictorial, musical and by sound – will be utilised at the opening to establish a mood, bring all sections of South and Latin America to the screen.’ Over it all, apparently, will be ‘the Welles voice’. Bonito will follow, and l
ead into the jangadeiros’s story. There will be sequences shot in countries other than Brazil, including, for example, a short account of the conquest of Peru, to be shot around Lima. More than half the picture will be shot in Brazil. ‘I’m not trying to make a documentary film,’ Welles concluded, ‘nor am I interested in making a travelogue. I want to tell some of the stories of South America in an interesting manner and bring certain phases of Latin entertainment to the movie-going world. The picture will have music, colour, romance, and will be of the land, the sea and the cities.’ Pettey reports that Welles is fully aware that he is facing tremendous difficulties. ‘It’s a safe bet that out of Welles’s South American trek will come a new and novel production. It will be a great production if he gets an even break with fate,’ says Pettey, gamely. ‘In a few weeks Rio will have a first class movie studio. It may result in fine pictures being made right here in Brazil … the Welles crew and the man will be remembered in Brazil for years to come. They brought something to the country and are taking nothing away except pictures …’

  The horror with which George Schaefer and the heads of production at RKO must have read this press release may well be imagined, the prospect of restaging the conquest of Peru perhaps bringing a touch of the surreal to the situation. In fact, Welles’s extrapolation of the possible contents of the film hark back to his radio past, where the conquest of Peru could be easily and effectively knocked off in fifteen minutes of air time, and everything could be changed on the floor (indeed, only a few months hence he was to produce just such a sequence for his programme Hello Americans). But if Welles was still unclear about the film he wanted to make, he was by no means unengaged by its possibilities. Tom Pettey described seeing him one evening, apparently set up for ‘a night of relaxation’.9 But no: as he passed Welles’s hotel room much later, ‘the lights were burning at 3 a.m. and the typewriters going’. Welles’s thoughts were turning increasingly to the story of the jangadeiros and their charismatic leader, Mandel Olimpio Meira, known as Jacaré. He was planning a reconnaissance trip to the far north, to Fortaleza, to the town from which the rafters’ odyssey had set out. Lynn Shores was darkly suspicious: ‘I believe Welles’s intentions are to leave me at Fortaleza to finish the jangada picture and bring one complete unit back to Rio where he will start filming dips and dabs of the carnival cut-in.10 The trip is assuming all the proportions of a typical Orson Welles production in that we are attempting to start three or four different things at once instead of sticking on one till it is accomplished. Welles has not seen a camera since the finish of carnival two weeks ago.’