Erich von Stroheim was regarded as one of the greatest directors of the silent era. When he landed on Ellis Island in 1909, he claimed that his name was Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, and that he was descended from Austrian royalty, although in reality he was the son of a hat maker. He did some acting and writing, and directed himself in Blind Husbands (1919). Three years later, he clashed with Thalberg over the length of Foolish Wives. Von Stroheim will always be mentioned in the same breath as his most notorious film, Greed (1924), an eight-hour epic based on Frank Norris’s novel McTeague. Eventually, he edited it down to six hours, then four, and offered to reduce it further, to three, but Thalberg took it away from him, and it was hacked to pieces, becoming a symbol of studio stupidity, to which Welles could all too strongly relate. Von Stroheim went on to direct The Merry Widow (1925) and The Wedding March (1928), and eventually devoted the remainder of his career to acting. Although it was no more than a footnote to a great directing career, he will always be remembered for playing Gloria Swanson’s butler in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Louis B. Mayer’s masterpiece was not a movie but the sickly “boy wonder” Irving Thalberg. He was already vice president in charge of production at Mayer Pictures when three companies merged to form MGM. Still under twenty-five, he quickly became a legend in his own right. Thalberg innovated in several areas, introducing story conferences, previews, and reshoots. MGM produced four hundred pictures during his tenure, and he was credited with making the studio the powerhouse it became with pictures such as Ben Hur (1959), Grand Hotel (1932), Camille (1936), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and The Good Earth (1937). He suffered from congenital heart disease and was told as a child that he would die before he was thirty. He in fact died in 1936 at the age of thirty-seven, and was survived by his wife, actress Norma Shearer.
Gregg Toland, a legendary Hollywood cinematographer, was under a long-term contract to Sam Goldwyn, who lent him to Welles for Citizen Kane. His name is invariably associated with the deep-focus cinematography for which Kane is famous, where objects in the foreground and background are equally sharp.
Darryl Zanuck headed what would become Twentieth Century Fox from 1933 until he left in 1956 to shoot in Europe. In his heyday, he was known for prestige films that tackled social issues, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). Once in Europe, his films became vehicles for a succession of girlfriends, including Bella Darvi, Irina Demick, Geneviève Gilles, and Juliette Gréco. He returned to Fox—sinking fast under the weight of Cleopatra (1963)—riding the success of The Longest Day (1962). He made his son, Richard, head of production, but was ousted by him, with the help of the board, and left for good in 1971.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank Henry Jaglom for making his conversations with Orson Welles available to me, and for doing so without any thought of benefitting financially from his close friendship with him. I would also like to acknowledge Eugene Corey, the heroic transcriber, who put in countless hours over many months, transforming what were sometimes no more than barely intelligible grunts recorded in a noisy restaurant into coherent transcripts. My sharp-as-a-tack agent, Kathy Robbins, helped me in more ways than I can count, while my good friend and genius editor Sara Bershtel steadfastly refused to let anything slip by her. Thanks also to transcript wranglers Sharon Lester Kohn and Courtney Kirkpatrick, in Jaglom’s office. And finally, to my wife, Elizabeth Hess, for her forbearance while I shut myself away to finish the manuscript, coming out of my office only to bore her with Orson stories that I had already told her.
Notes
The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.
Introduction: How Henry Met Orson
“Everyone will always owe”: Jean-Luc Godard, quoted by Michel Ciment, “Les Enfants Terribles,” American Film, December 1984, p. 42.
“crushing ego”: Chris Welles Feder, In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles (New York: Algonquin, 2009), p. 27.
“We used to talk”: Henry Jaglom, author interview (hereafter AI), July 23, 1993.
“He won’t do it”: Peter Bogdanovich, quoted by Jaglom, AI, March 5, 2012.
“You’re the arrogant kid”: Orson Welles, quoted by Jaglom, AI, March 5, 2012.
“Yeah, I’m very moved”: Bert Schneider, quoted by Jaglom, AI, March 5, 2012.
“Jack was ready”: Schneider, AI, February 19, 1995.
“I had begun to think”: Jaglom, AI, no date.
“I’ve lost my girlish enthusiasm”: Jaglom, e-mail, June 26, 2012.
“It’s not that he didn’t”: Jaglom, AI, March 5, 2012.
“Orson couldn’t get a movie done”: Jaglom, AI, July 23, 1993.
“three weeks later”: Jaglom, AI, July 23, 1993.
“is a man who has”: Welles, quoted by Jaglom in a memo to Jack Nicholson, May 20, 1982.
“The Big Brass Ring was about”: Jaglom, AI, July 23, 1993.
“if I got one of six”: AI, July 23, 1993.
“he needed to bring”: Jaglom, e-mail, June 8, 2012.
“Then he made me”: Jaglom, AI, March 5, 2012.
“shower curtain”: Patrick Terrail, A Taste of Hollywood: The Story of Ma Maison (New York: Lebhar-Friedman, 1999), p. 46.
“the fanciest French restaurant”: Charles Perry, “Ma Maison, the Sequel,” Los Angeles Times, October 25, 2001.
“The restaurant had become”: Terrail, AI, June 2012.
“They’ll fly you”: Terrail, AI, June 2012.
“crotch”: Terrail, AI, June 2012.
“I am flattered”: Terrail, AI, June 2012.
“HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?!”: Jaglom, AI, March 7, 2012.
“People would say”: Jaglom, AI, March 7, 2012.
“You have to do something”: Jaglom, AI, March 7, 2012.
“was often surreal”: Gore Vidal, “Remembering Orson Welles,” The New York Review of Books, June 1, 1989.
“that’s the only thing”: My Lunches with Orson, p. 79.
“Underrated”: My Lunches with Orson, p. 186.
“Ruined by all the French chefs”: My Lunches with Orson, p. 250.
“Everyone treated Orson badly”: Jaglom, AI, May 10, 1995.
“single most destructive enemy”: Welles and Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles, New York, 1998, p. xxi.
“Houseman started out”: Barbara Leaming, Orson Welles: A Biography (New York: Viking, 1989), p. 81.
“two dishes of flaming”: Simon Callow, Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (New York: Viking, 1995), p. 477.
“Are you OK?”: Jaglom, AI, March 7, 2012.
“Even Orson was shocked”: Jaglom, AI, March 7, 2012.
“It just shows me”: Barbara Leaming, “Orson Welles: The Unfulfilled Promise,” The New York Times, July 14, 1985.
“Orson is an enigmatic figure”: Jaglom, “Who was that masked man?” Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 29, 2004, p. 3.
“The final scene of The Lady from Shanghai”: Jaglom, “Who was that masked man?” Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 29, 2004, p. 3.
“Wait till I die”: Jaglom, “Who was that masked man?” Ibid.
“I gave him”: Jaglom, AI, March 7, 2012.
Part I
“Unless we made a 35 millimeter blimp”: A blimp is an enclosure that surrounds the camera for the purposes of deadening the sound the camera makes when running.
“So a check came”: According to a document cited by Simon Callow in the second volume of his biography of Welles, the sum was $5,000. Cf. Simon Callow, Orson Welles: Hello Americans (New York: Viking, 2006), p. 8.
Part II
“balling Deanna Durbin”: According to Samantha Barbas, in her book The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parson
s, Hopper “falsely” accused Cotton of having an affair with Durbin.
“Susan Smith”: a pseudonym.
“But this fellow Carringer found the smoking gun”: Nowhere in his memoir, Unfinished Business, does Houseman flat-out deny there was a second Welles script, but nowhere does he mention it, either, and gives full writing credit to Mankiewicz. I could not find a reference in Carringer’s book to finding a telegram from Houseman to Welles favoring Welles’s script over Mankiewicz’s, although there is a footnote referring to a telegram Houseman sent to Mankiewicz in which the former wrote that he “liked most of Orson’s new scenes” (p. 153).
“He has a description of me”: I have not been able to find a passage that states that Welles put his arms around Carringer. Carringer himself has not responded to queries.
“use of the word collaborative”: Welles misremembers, slightly. The passage in question appears in Carringer’s essay “Orson Welles and Gregg Toland: Their Collaboration on ‘Citizen Kane,’” not in his book on Kane. It reads: “… the very mention of the term collaboration at a wrong moment can be enough to send him into a rage.”
“this producer wants me to say no”: It may very well be that the “bad Welles legend” poisoned Mitterand, whom Welles considered his ace in the hole. In a telegram he sent to Kodar on the occasion of Welles’s death, he wrote that Welles “may not have been able or may not have wanted to have followed to an end this film.” The implication, bizarre at best, is that by not financing the film, France was fulfilling Welles’s conscious or unconscious desire. Quoted in Jonathan Rosenbaum, Discovering Orson Welles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 86.
“terrible wine again”: Henry Jaglom, “Orson Welles: Last Take,” Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1995.
Appendix
“It’s an essay on Spain”: Mary Blume, International Herald Tribune, 1983.
“Up to now”: Mary Blume, Ibid.
“You gotta take the sour with the bitter”: A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (New York: Riverhead, 1998), p. 396.
“Mr. Skunk”: Edward Baron Turk, Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 219.
About the Editor
Peter Biskind is the acclaimed author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Down and Dirty Pictures, Seeing is Believing, and Star, among other books. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He is the former executive editor of Premiere and the former editor-in-chief of American Film, and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
MY LUNCHES WITH ORSON: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN HENRY JAGLOM AND ORSON WELLES. Copyright © 2013 by Peter Biskind. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover art credit: © David Farrell / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Jaglom, Henry, 1939–
My lunches with Orson : conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles / edited by Peter Biskind.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8050-9725-2 (hardback)
1. Jaglom, Henry, 1939—Anecdotes. 2. Welles, Orson, 1915–1985—Anecdotes. 3. Motion picture producers and directors—United States—Anecdotes. I. Welles, Orson, 1915–1985. II. Biskind, Peter. III. Title.
PN1998.3.J276A5 2013
791.4302'33092—dc23
2013000291
e-ISBN 9780805097269
First Edition: July 2013
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles Page 28
