My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

by Peter Biskind

  HJ: He was going to go to Germany? How do you know that?

  OW: It was in the papers. He was gonna go with paras, and two or three planes, escape the country. And this is the man who was known for being fearless. When they liberated Paris, he walked the whole length of the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the cathedral of Notre Dame. With everybody on the roofs with guns. And he never ducked when they were shooting, and he was eight feet higher than anybody else in Paris. And yet, he was ready to flee to Germany. It just shows how easily you get disoriented once you are in power if the people seem to be turning against you.

  Of course, Nixon also thought that the kids were gonna come and throw him out. I saw a little tribute to him on CBS the other night, saying he’s coming back, becoming a great commentator and elder statesman. I wish they’d stop interviewing him on great world topics. Because Nixon is a sort of semicomic Dickensian villain. But he’s become the only man who’s making sense! It drives me crazy! Of course, it’s easy to sound sane if you’ve got Ronnie to criticize.

  All Nixon and Reagan do is make me revise my judgment of the Eisenhower years. The economy was great. Eisenhower made the right decision on Suez. And Korea. Got us out. And at the end said, “Beware of the military-industrial complex.” And he turned over the country, at peace, in 1960. Despite that, we were all groaning, “Get us rid of this terrible president!” We’ve just got to admit that was a great eight years, you know?

  HJ: There were all the jokes about Eisenhower going off to play golf.

  OW: We underrated Eisenhower. We’ve got a president now who works much less hard than he did. Who doesn’t even know what’s going on. Unless it’s written on a card.

  HJ: I remember being shocked at the U-2 incident, Gary Powers, the pilot, remember? When Eisenhower said it wasn’t a spy plane. I didn’t think he would lie to the American people.

  OW: Every president lies. The spy plane didn’t bother me so much, because it seemed so obvious that we had spy planes. And it’s not like shooting somebody. What I couldn’t believe was the CIA stuff, the plot against Castro. In my innocence, I didn’t think that America, as a nation, was capable of planning murder as an instrument of policy. I didn’t think that was in our character!

  HJ: Well, now we know. We’ve lost some serious innocence. Is it true you considered running for office?

  OW: I have all the equipment to be a politician. Total shamelessness. But it’s lucky I never ran. In the years from [Joseph] McCarthy to now, I would have either been destroyed or reduced. I was lucky that Alan Cranston discouraged me from running for the Senate.

  HJ: Cranston discouraged you? I didn’t know that.

  OW: Yes. He was my man, given to me by Washington, to be sure that I could get the nomination in California. The year of McCarthy.

  HJ: ’52.

  OW: And it was Cranston who told me, “Not a chance. You’ll carry northern California, but never the Hollywood community.” Then I found out he had ambitions himself. That’s why, when I saw him run for senator, I always thought, “That’s my seat!”

  HJ: Now he’s busily running for president. Who do you think the Democratic candidate will be?

  OW: I would vote for John Glenn just because I think he’d win, and I believe in voting for who I think will win.

  I’ve just read Caro’s new biography of [Lyndon] Johnson, which will destroy him because it tells everything. It’s exhaustive to the point of—you know, when he put on his left shoe on Thursday, the twelfth of May, 1946. But there isn’t one good word about him in the book. He comes out of it a total monster. There’s gonna be three more volumes. This one only takes him up to getting into Congress, and he’s already a prick. He has very few defenders. There’s me and somebody out in Kansas, who I don’t know. But I think LBJ was a great tragic figure. That’s what interests me. A very tragic figure, with his monstrosity, and his energy, and his desire to be a president who counted. He gets almost no credit for the things he did domestically, because of his gross behavior. After the Kennedys, everybody in Washington was so used to Casals scratching on the cello that Johnson’s act didn’t go over. And he was haunted by Jack. And then Bobby coming up. But what could he do, other than be president? It was the only thing for him.

  HJ: I’m convinced Johnson would have made a great president had he run and won … Not like Roosevelt, but—

  OW: I don’t believe there could have been a great president in those years, only a good one. I think the presidential situation now is such that until there’s a hopeless crisis, and you have a semidictatorship, like Roosevelt’s, then we won’t see what we call a great president.

  HJ: Glenn is very Eisenhower-esque. But I don’t think he’s committed to very much. I mean, he’s just moderate—he’s just really moderate on everything.

  OW: That’s why I’m for him. I hate to think of myself as fighting for a moderate, but a moderate is what is desperately needed for this next period. We need antipolarization, you know. After Bonny Prince Ronnie.

  HJ: Is it just the nostalgia that makes the Roosevelt years seem so glorious?

  OW: No. They were glorious. Because you had a president who had made a hundred mistakes and never pretended he didn’t, and who was ready to try anything. And you had a fascinating cabinet, great personalities—everybody around him. And it was a happy time, even with all the misery. People were starving, but he pulled the country together. That’s when the labor movement really became a wonderful thing in America. We never crossed a picket line. Now the unions have no power. They’re nothing. Reactionary, even, corrupt and weak. But then they were a wonderful thing.

  You know Kissinger also believed that America was on the brink of civil war during the Vietnam years. Who was gonna make a civil war? How can an educated man permit himself to put that down on paper?

  HJ: You think he really believed it? He’s too smart to be so stupid.

  OW: I hate Kissinger even more than I hate Nixon, because I just can’t get over the feeling that he knows better, somehow. He must have talked himself into it. But he’s a selfish, self-serving shit.

  HJ: They’ve all forgotten Cambodia. They’ve forgotten the whole thing. It’s really amazing.

  OW: And the fact that Kissinger got free of Watergate, walked away without a scratch! Without a scratch! No wonder he worships Mitterand.

  HJ: Metternich.

  OW: Metternich.

  18. Charles “Laughton couldn’t bear the fact he was a homosexual.”

  In which Orson fondly remembers his friend, who lived in terror that he would be outed. He recalls that on London’s West End, actors had to be gay or pretend to be gay to get parts. Orson would have liked to have made his own version of The Dresser.

  * * *

  HENRY JAGLOM: Tell me more about Charles Laughton.

  ORSON WELLES: During the war, there was a great bond rally in Texarkana, Texas, with every known star in Hollywood. Charlie was going to do his well-known Gettysburg Address, which he made famous in Ruggles of Red Gap on the radio. I was the producer and director of that show. So I said to Buster—that’s what I called him—“Is there anything special that you would like?” He said, “I want a divan.” I said, “What?” He said, “Don’t be ignorant. You know what I want, a chaise lounge.”

  HJ: That’s great. He was so gay.

  OW: I said, “Buster, you can’t mean that. You’re not going to lie down on a couch like Madame Recamier and do the Gettysburg Address in front of all these people. Do you know where you are?” He said, “Yes. But that’s the way I feel.” So out of vengeance, I said, “All right, I’ll give it to you.” So he came out, lay down, delivered the address, “Fawr scawr … fawr scawr and seven years ago our fathers brought forth unto this continent a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal…” and he killed it. When he was great, he was so great.

  I was very fond of him. He was a sweet man. It was absolutely terrible what Larry did to him. Larry was sharing a season wit
h him at Stratford. Larry was doing—what’s that little-known Shakespearean play that Peter Brook directed with Larry and made a big success? Not Timon of Athens … Pericles maybe, and Laughton was doing King Lear and Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream. And everyone said he was very interesting in both parts. But in front of the entire company in Stratford, Larry said, “Charles, you are an amateur actor and you have never been anything else in your life. Don’t ask us to take you seriously.” And Laughton went away and cried, wept like a child.

  I told you what Larry did to Miles Malleson, the old character actor, in Rhinoceros. Larry put his arm around his shoulder and walked him up and down in front of the lights. And I heard him saying, “Miles … Miles, old boy, you know, you’ve had it. You’re washed up.” This defenseless old man. All so that Larry could take control and tell him how his part should be played.

  HJ: This was his way of tearing them down, or something stupid like that?

  OW: It was heartbreaking for him. Laughton never got over it. He was like a little fourteen-year-old boy, totally immature. Laughton couldn’t bear the fact he was a homosexual, you know. He was so afraid the world would discover it. He believed in art, and all of that, always searching for something that went beyond what acting can be, or writing, or anything. Really, he was really looking for the bluebird.

  HJ: He found it a few times.

  OW: You bet he did. When he made that speech in I, Claudius.

  HJ: For me, he was also wonderful in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  OW: I can’t judge that, because I am such a partisan of the Lon Chaney performance, I just can’t buy anybody else doing it. I think Chaney was one of the great movie actors. Everything he did I adore. To me, Charlie in Hunchback was the village idiot, the fellow where you say, “That’s the unfortunate Perkins boy.” You don’t want to look at him.

  HJ: Oh, no, he was much more than that. I felt he put all his feeling of not belonging into that role … And don’t forget Laughton’s Rembrandt.

  OW: Laughton’s Rembrandt has him pose as King David. He puts on this robe and he puts on a crown and he transforms himself. I still don’t understand how he did it. Who played the beggar in that? I can’t remember his name now. He was even better than Laughton and that’s something.

  HJ: Oh, my God! That’s my favorite actor.

  OW: He was a dear friend. He only died about four years ago. He was the leading man in a movie directed by Gregory Ratoff with Myrna Loy, Intermezzo.

  HJ: I’m still trying to think of the man’s name.

  OW: He was a wild left-winger rabblerouser. He was on the barricades for forty years. So of course he only played degenerate aristocrats, and dressed like an awful-looking don at a small university with torn patches. When he arrived in Rome, Ratoff, in his Russian accent, says, “He can’t play Myrna Loy’s leading man looking like a bum. Take him to your tailor.” So I take him to the tailor to the King of Italy. By this time, I’m speaking Italian. I say, “This is a distinguished actor from England and he is—”

  HJ: Roger Livesey!

  OW: Right. Mr. Roger Livesey. And I say, “He’s going to play the leading role in this picture, and he has to be dressed like an English gentleman. Money is no object.” The tailor looks at him like he is an insect, and he says—I’m loosely translating—“This establishment doesn’t live for money. What can we do with these schmattas?” I say, “Not what he’s wearing—if you are an artist, you can make him look like a prince.” So he begins to measure him. But then the tailor throws down the tape measure and says, “No I can do.” So I say, “Look, you cannot put me in a position like this. I’ve brought you this distinguished man, and I’ve told you that no matter what he looks like, he’s playing a principal role opposite Myrna Loy.” He says, “Opposite Loy, what he play?” I say, “Her husband.” And he says, “Do she betray him?” I say, “Sure, she betrays him.” “She make horns on him?” “Yes, cornuto. He’s a schmuck.” And he says, “All right. I dress him!”

  HJ: He’s in the single most romantic movie I’ve ever seen. Which has the unromantic title, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. [Michael] Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger used him in everything. Stairway to Heaven, A Matter of Life and Death.

  OW: Hated those guys. Not my cup of tea. To me, they never made a good film.

  HJ: Did you know Pressburger?

  OW: I know Powell better. I think Pressburger’s the more talented of the two. But I don’t share your admiration for either one of them.

  HJ: The Red Shoes is kitsch to you?

  OW: Yeah, total dreck. Total dreck. I even saw part of it again and switched it off.

  HJ: Stairway to Heaven? A Matter of Life and Death?

  OW: Awful.

  HJ: One of Our Aircraft is Missing? Do you remember that? No?

  OW: Yes, with Ralph [Richardson], who was very good in it, but the picture was abominable.

  HJ: I’m in love with Powell. I saw all of the Powell-Pressburger films when I was a teenager.

  OW: If you see them at the right age, you see them differently. You see the real value of them, what they really are.

  HJ: It’s true: how you feel about a film has to do with how old you are when you see it.

  OW: In the theater, I can pretend that it’s all happening right there in front of me. But I see movies through such a mist of years, I am incapable of feeling the thrill of them, even the greatest ones, because I cannot erase those years of experience. I’m jaded. I know I don’t see movies as purely as I ought to see them. Before I started making movies, I’d get into them, lose myself. I can’t do that now. That’s why I don’t think my opinions about movies are as good as somebody’s who doesn’t have to look through all those filters. I think all films are better than we think they are.

  HJ: Maybe that’s why Spencer Tracy is so fantastic to me, and Humphrey Bogart, too.

  OW: Of course. Your age. I still see Lon Chaney as I saw him when I was eight years old. But I have had some disillusionment since I left movies, I must say.

  When are you leaving for Paris?

  HJ: Tomorrow night.

  OW: I will give you two or three scripts. And you can drop them off where they need to go.

  HJ: All right. Now, I want to be sure that I understand the sequence of—

  OW: Still Lear first. If Lear collapses, Dreamers is always good. It doesn’t date.

  HJ: Is there anybody in particular you want me to see?

  OW: There’s a man who’s head of TNF, French television. It’s like the BBC. He said he would raise the three and a half million for Lear by selling it all over the place. But I don’t know. He’s no Henry Jaglom.

  HJ: So this is three times the other French offer. And it has nothing to do with Lang, or the government, or anything at all?

  OW: Nothing. He thinks this will be the jewel in his crown. But I still don’t want to shoot in Paris. And they don’t have anyplace except Victorine, although I’ve heard that it’s been remodeled. It’s now owned by Americans and is OK.

  HJ: Despite the airplanes.

  OW: Yes, because I now know when the air traffic is light. I would shoot from four in the afternoon until eleven at night, you see—something like that.

  HJ: I can certainly find out what kind of reputation he has, what other people there think—

  OW: He doesn’t have a reputation. He’s just got a position. I’m afraid he’s never gonna sell Lear to anyone. Besides, he’s demanding that French television must be the center of everything. And asking me to wait three months while you try to raise the money. And if he doesn’t, you see, I’ve wasted three months. It’s a real gamble. Also, I have to know that he’s not going to make me cut the picture in France. And we need to negotiate how the profits are going to be dealt with. Instead of taking a salary out of the budget and taking some money after everything is paid off, I’d like to have two or three territories. In fact, I would even like to have my company or a company associated with me be a minor co-producer. He may no
t like it, but I don’t like to have a monolithic boss.

  HJ: Absolutely not. Because he could end up owning your picture and—

  OW: I won’t do it. And I think I can break him now, because he has nothing else. He’s so hot for it that I think he’ll give in.

  HJ: What about England?

  OW: You’re big in England. I was never big in England. I’m dreaming of when I will be.

  HJ: Every time I mention Lear to them, they say, “Oh, wouldn’t that be nice.” I was worried that Olivier’s Lear would hurt us. It was on TV. But I think it helped. They don’t like Olivier in England.

  OW: No, they don’t. They’ve never gone to his Shakespearean movies. ’Cause they never go to any Shakespearean movies. They want to see Shakespeare on the stage, not in a movie theater … You know, everybody may be interested. But are we really going to carry the movie around by bus from country to country so we can make it a national event in every country?

  HJ: Do you know who Victoria Tennant is?

  OW: Who?

  HJ: Victoria Tennant.

  OW: A member of the Tennant family?

  HJ: She is a daughter of the Tennant family. Quite a beauty. Her most famous role here was in the miniseries The Winds of War. She played opposite [Robert] Mitchum. Anyway, she lives with Steve Martin. He’s not your favorite, I know. She begged me at a party Saturday night to tell you that she believes that there’s no one who could do Cordelia as well as she.

  OW: Not a chance.

  HJ: All right, good. I like clear answers. They make things very simple. I don’t have to tell you all about her, and what she did and didn’t do, and what she said and didn’t say.

  OW: Too bad about Steve Martin. The Tennants controlled the English theater for forty years. They had the whole West End by the short hairs. When there was a West End, that is—it was totally Tennant. But very hard to get a job there if you weren’t homosexual. Really. A real Mafia working against the few straights who were around. Even Donald Wolfit couldn’t get on the West End stage. Everybody, unfairly, made fun of him because he was the only non-queer actor alive in the golden age of acting.