Orson Welles: Hello Americans

by Simon Callow

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  Welles was now becoming sharply focused on the election campaign. Roosevelt, having won an unprecedented third term, was, in November 1944, offering himself for a fourth. His re-election was by no means a sure thing: the maverick Republican Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York, was making some headway; and there were still large sections of the electorate who distrusted Roosevelt, including some on the Left. Welles had squarely reposed his faith in Vice-President Wallace and his visionary, radical policies: he had introduced Wallace, with due metaphoric reference to his distinction as an agrarian reformer, at a meeting of the Independent Voters’ Committee for Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt (a fact duly noted by the FBI). ‘Henry Wallace,’ Welles said, ‘has counted up our debt to the complex past of nations and continents.24 His life is a celebration of that debt … the American spirit is not the love of possession. It is the love of growth. It is the sense of tomorrow. It builds against the wind. It plants against the winter. There are lessons for democracy in the art of farming and Henry Wallace has learned those lessons and taught them.’ Welles’s idealism, unforced and admirable, was entirely genuine. ‘The speaker you’ll hear now has always denied the necessity of hunger. He shares with Lincoln and Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt a perfect confidence in the capacity of the earth as a provider for all men and in the capacity of man to provide for man in a just abundancy. These are great days and there are great men for these days. Here is one of them. Ladies and gentlemen, the vice-president of the United States, Mr Henry A. Wallace.’

  For Welles, Wallace’s presence at Roosevelt’s side was democracy’s finest hope. It was therefore something of a shattering blow for him when, at the pre-election Democratic Convention in September, Wallace failed to secure renomination, being passed over in favour of the little-known senator for Missouri, Harry S. Truman. Roosevelt (not in good health) had played one of his inscrutable poker-games, endorsing neither man, though giving both reason to hope; in the end Wallace, who despised political trafficking, lost out to the greater master of the Democratic machine. Welles rushed to print in his Free World editorial to say as much: his emotionally charged analysis was explicitly critical of Roosevelt. ‘There is something to thank God for in the spirit of Henry Wallace.25 We can only regret that each of these great men has not a little of the other’s greatness. They were a wonderful team. If Roosevelt were even braver in pursuit of principle, and if Wallace had mastered a little more of the tricky craft of politics, perhaps the team would not have broken up.’ Welles’s identification with a man who couldn’t work within the system of his own party is striking; he makes this even clearer in comparing Wallace’s Chicago speech to one given in Wisconsin by Wendell Wilkie, the dissident Republican for whose One World Internationalist policy Welles had the highest regard. ‘Both men functioned within the framework of their political parties, both were at war with their party machines and party bosses, and both were disastrously reckless in that warfare.’ The system, as always with Welles, is the enemy. He contemplates Roosevelt’s reluctance to distance himself from the Democrats’ party machine in order to found the great liberal party ‘whose emergence is generally expected after his retirement’, a curious misreading of the American political scene. ‘Free World is certain that if liberal opinion remains a minority vote, democracy is doomed. Henry Wallace is the particular prophet of that opinion … his thoughts are often expressed with poetic intensity, but his common sense is the full measure of his sensitivity.’ In conclusion, he reaffirms his support for Roosevelt (as had Wallace): ‘the President remains, in spite of everything, the beloved liberal of the world, but his popularity at home seems to be all that holds together the left and the right wing of the democracy party, and his liberalism is in strategic hibernation … most progressives remain Roosevelt partisans even though few among them have forgotten his cheerful scuttling of Dr New Deal, just as few have forgotten that he was their most effective champion’. Like his colleagues at Free World and many others on the Left, Welles had an apocalyptic sense of the forthcoming struggle for the world’s soul, one with which Roosevelt would presumably not be involved; for the time being, ‘the beloved liberal of the world’ must be supported; there could be no more important task. But he was warming to the task personally. The creation of heroes and villains, in art as in life, was an essential part of Welles’s way of approaching the world; now, at Democracy’s critical hour, he did not have far to look to find them.

  He took to the campaign stumps, rolling up his sleeves and weighing in with fists flying. He was, he told the Hollywood Democratic Association, suspicious that if the war were to end earlier than expected, ‘they’ would try to get Roosevelt out.26 ‘You understand what I mean by “they”,’ he says. ‘You know who they are. They are not essentially Republicans, but they have seized the Republican party as a vehicle for their ambitions. They are the partisans of privilege – the champions of monopoly – the opponents of liberty – the adversaries of the small business man and the small farmer. They have been here a long time. They used to own the earth and run the world of men, but – just now – they’re losing out … they are the internationalists but their pacts and treaties are as secret as crime. Theirs,’ he says, in a striking anticipation of globalist theory, ‘is the internationalism of the cartel.’ He does not hesitate to get personal. ‘The background of Thomas Dewey is colourful – as spuriously colourful as the plot of a “B” movie. What of his backers? Well, here are some real names – Pugh, Raskob, Sloan, Hearst, Patterson, McCormack.’ In other words, industrialists, financiers, press barons.

  As the election drew closer, Welles became rougher and tougher: at a registration-week luncheon he spoke at length against those who claimed the war could not be won. ‘What happened to the men who raised that question?27 Our freedom here is such a perfect thing that even today – even those wicked men – are free! What happened to them, the doubters and the dissenters … the men who thought we couldn’t win, and the men who said we couldn’t produce to win … what are they up to now? One of them’s running for President. Thomas Dewey, you’ll remember, told us it was silly to even think of producing fifty thousand airplanes for the war effort.’ He starts to hector, making wild accusations. ‘Do I hear someone say that Dewey should not be smeared by associating his name with treachery? Even this late in the war, even in the course of an American Presidential campaign, it is a matter of proof and record that Dewey associates with traitors.’ His oratory becomes a little hair-raising, as if he were not entirely in command of his emotions. ‘I know that Dewey stands everyday before the cameras smiling in the company of the wicked men … Wendell Wilkie would not smile with them and would not stand with them … we know what happened when he found out what Thomas Dewey well knows – when he found out what forces had seized power in the Republican party – I cannot guess what Dewey’s men have contrived for him to say about a man whose presence in the world was an embarrassment to him and a rebuke. It may be possible that Dewey is even greedy enough to electioneer at that funeral. But I know,’ he says, blustering, ‘I tell you that I know … what Wendell Wilkie thought of him. It is for Wilkie’s closest friends to decide when and in what manner they will make that public. Meanwhile the Dewey forces would be well advised to hold their silence.’ This is the voice of Charles Foster Kane denouncing Boss Jim Gettys. ‘I have used strong words here today. I am using them in this election. Strong words are called for. I say that dangerous, woefully, terribly dangerous forces foisted this present candidate on the Republican Party. I say that those forces are the consecrated enemies of American progress and the professional wreckers of world peace.’ The speech was a great success and was repeated frequently; at the same time he was making broadcasts – ‘This is Orson Welles speaking’ – on behalf of the American Labor Party, defending Labor’s record against Dewey’s accusations, quoting General Marshall to that effect, listing Labor’s programme and urging all to register and to vote for Roosevelt, ‘the man who saved the coun
try in 1933’.28

  On the subject of Roosevelt he became more and more eloquent, particularly after he had been invited to meet him on board the presidential train. ‘I cannot believe that there are many serious people who privately deny the greatness of Roosevelt,’ he told the Herald Tribune Forum on False Issues and the American Presidency.29 ‘I think that even most Republicans are resigned to it, that when the elections are over and the history books are written, our President will emerge as one of the great names in one of Democracy’s great centuries.’ Welles had exhausted himself in the first weeks of the campaign, and had to take to his bed; Dadda Bernstein had rushed out a note to the Food Rationing Board certifying that Mr and Mrs Orson Welles were under his care and that they required additional supplementary meat. ‘They are both suffering from malnutrition and low metabolism,’ he stated.30 ‘They require at least six pounds of lamb and beef per week for a period of eight weeks.’ Roosevelt, notified of Welles’s increasingly strenuous efforts on his behalf, had wired him: I HAVE JUST LEARNED THAT YOU ARE ILL AND I HOPE MUCH YOU WILL FOLLOW YOUR DOCTORS ORDERS AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FOR YOU TO GET WELL AND BE AROUND FOR THE LAST DAYS OF THE CAMPAIGN.31 This intimation of the value of his contribution had an understandably galvanising effect on Welles. ‘Dear Mr President,’ he replied:32

  This illness was the blackest of misfortunes for me because it stole away so many days from the campaign. I cannot think I have accomplished a great deal but I well know that this is the most important work I could ever engage in. Your wonderfully thoughtful and generous message reached me at exactly the moment when the doctors and I had decided that I couldn’t do anything but get worse. Your wire changed my mind.

  Welles was up and on his feet for the final week of the campaign, and on the eve of the election he spoke of Roosevelt more personally than usual, in strikingly emotional terms: this is the vocabulary, not of politics, but of hero-worship:

  At such a time as this none of us, however he intends to vote, can fail to think of our President without some feeling of tenderness and affection.33 In days of darkness and in nights of doubt he has borne heavy burdens – he has borne them without murmur or complaint. Abused as none but the great are abused, reviled and rejected by many of the rich and powerful in his own land, he has never faltered in his faith – his faith in the limitless capacity of the people, in the ultimate and perfect justice of the people’s will. I’m sure that tomorrow the people he believes in will show their confidence in him.

  Meanwhile, Welles’s attacks on Dewey became wilder:

  Some years ago, I put on a show of acts of magic and prestidigitation for the amusement of the armed forces stationed in southern California. The public was very kind to my few acts … but within the past few months, the starch has been taken out of me. A show has been making the rounds of the country, headed by a far greater illusionist, trickster and conjuror than I can ever hope to be: I admit it: I yield the palm to the master illusionist, the Republican candidate for president, Thomas E. Dewey. There has been nothing like it before. The acts are stupendous; the deceptions colossal; the cast takes in some of our biggest industrialists, our most unyielding politicians. To the old tricks of the trade a new repertory has been added. The illusions are almost (but not quite) convincing.

  The press followed him closely. At another meeting of the Independent Voters’ Committee for Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt, when Welles happened to scowl, a news photographer obligingly caught it on camera. ‘You can sell that to the Hearst press at a premium,’ Welles quipped.34 ‘It shows me in my angry Communist mood. And this’ – he said, smiling – ‘is my benevolent Communist mood.’ He told the newsmen how happy he was that writers and artists were becoming increasingly interested in politics. He had persuaded the independent producer, Walter Wanger, he told them, to buy Howard Fast’s biography, Citizen Thomas Paine, for him to turn into a movie, but didn’t yet know how; otherwise he was engaged in ‘educational stuff’ and editing Free World. ‘I’m doing a lot of research,’ he said. ‘I spent a deal of last year learning, not doing.’ He’d done nothing to earn a living, except occasional guest appearances, since the Almanac went off the air a month or two before. ‘Pictures? I’ve done nothing but turn them down. They don’t do very good pictures today, I find.’ The question arises: did Welles never want to work again as an actor – or, indeed, director? For the time being, a certain part of his nature – the articulator, the teacher, the spokesman – was satisfied. His passionately held convictions mattered more to him than any mere film, part or play. He had made a desultory attempt for the producer Billy Rose to mount a play, Emily Brady by the humorist and screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart. Rose had rather wittily created the Rosebud production company to present it, but Welles – having offered a key role to his old colleague Walter Huston and been turned down – immediately concluded that the play was impossible to cast, and sent a telegram to Stewart withdrawing from the production. Stewart replied with a sharp dig at Welles’s magical activities: I AM AFRAID I DON’T UNDERSTAND.35 ONE DOESN’T SAW A WRITER IN TWO SO CONVENIENTLY. ON ANY BASIS OF RESPECT FOR EITHER ME OR MY PLAY I THINK YOU OWE ME SOMETHING MORE THAN A TELEGRAM. But with the world on the brink of Götterdämmerung, Welles really had no interest in the theatre.

  He was very clear about what concerned him. Addressing a group of journalists, the surprised recipients of a weightily considered summary of his political philosophy, he assured them that he was not running for office and expected no special or personal rewards for his efforts. ‘It is precisely for this reason that I think you may respect me enough to want to hear me out.36 I am a serious student of world affairs and the editor of a serious magazine on that subject.’ He insisted that he was nobody’s lobbyist, simply democracy’s friend. ‘Communism,’ he says, ‘has never been an issue in this country. Liberalism, on the other hand, has been an issue in every American election since the days of Jefferson. The Republican strategy makes it important to say again that liberalism and Communism are not partners. They are competitors. I am an American liberal and I am jealous of the prestige of Communism as a world idea.’ His view of the relationship between communism and what he calls liberalism is possibly a little rose-tinted, but is the result of mature reflection: ‘We need not fight Communism; our duty is to compete with it and so live to see Communism out-rivalled by our democratic achievements. As to foreign policy, I believe that it must remain in essence an extension of the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, who believes that America with England and Russia and all other freedom-loving governments are entered upon a wholesome rivalry to do good.’ He concludes with a quite unexpected goal: ‘To realise peace on earth, to ease the burdens of man and to secure for him a free and friendly world where he may finally realise his divinity’. This exalted vision seems to echo back to the intense conversations he and George Fanto had had on the beach at Fortaleza in the far north of Brazil, with their intimations of numinosity. It was rare for Welles to express himself in this manner, but a Blake-like sense of the perfectibility of man is consonant with everything else we know of Welles’s world-view, closely associated with his frequently demonstrated sense of paradise lost, of a vanished realm of natural decency, generosity, benevolence. The reverse of this, of course, is a sharp sense of the malign and poisonous forces of the post-lapsarian world. He never expressed himself less than lovingly about his fellow-human-beings – in general. Individuals were another matter.

  He shared in the general jubilation at the largely favourable outcome of the presidential election, and was swift to analyse the significance of the result in Free World; for him – perhaps a little surprisingly – the crucial issue had been race. ‘The racist and all the other liars failed.37 Their argument may have been heard by ears that never heard such arguments before, but the arguments have been answered by ballot. The people have discredited the racist advertisements. The lies of reactionaries were blown to bits on November 7th.’ The other great success of the cam
paign, he claims, was the Labor movement, with its ‘new capacity for politics and vitality which leaves no doubt of labor’s future as an influence in the largest affairs of the government’. And he notes that the Republican campaign has been a failure in spite of the fact that at least six times more was spent on it than the Democrats could afford. This, he insists, proves beyond doubt that ‘the majority of our people are in the broadest and best sense of the word, progressive’. He allows himself a personal reminiscence:

  Among the politically unsophisticated, your Editor discovered the most wholesome, whole-hearted understanding of Roosevelt’s contribution to the beauty and security of American life, and an equal understanding of the basic assumptions of Roosevelt’s liberalism. Your editor comes out of this campaign convinced that liberalism is no longer a small voice. It is loud and sure. In 1944 it can be heard above all other voices in our nation. We are sure that the next four years are going to be great years … as world citizens we march into the first days with the most perfect pride.