In My Father's Shadow (37 page)

Chris and her second husband, Irwin Feder, on their wedding day in New York, 1970.

Although my father knew from the Hills that I was getting married, he did not send a telegram or a wedding gift. However, in early November, he wrote me a seven-page letter, remarkable in itself. Postmarked from Beverly Hills, the envelope was addressed to Mrs. Christopher Feder — so he did know my married name — and the letter began with the usual protestations.

Darling Girl,

Very nearly my first frustration, upon landing again on these shores, was to find that the Feders had moved. I should have remembered that New Yorkers always do that, but what good would it have done me? The migration of birds can be charted, New Yorkers are something else again. Forgot the name of your place of business — if indeed I ever knew it — so what to do? The Hills were no use to me. That tribe has a migration of its own: every autumn they leave Florida and commence, as I suppose you know, a protracted matriarchal (and maybe, slightly patriarchal) progress among the scattered fruit of their seed …

Why didn’t I think of Becky? Well, of course I did, but not as a source of information about you. We exchanged letters and a couple of phone conversations before it occurred to me to ask if she’d had any news of you. Oh, yes, was the answer, a letter had been sent to you only three weeks before (I seem to hear the tinkle of a sisterly tin cup).

So now, just before my return to the Old World, I’ve got your address. Next time you send for the moving van, do please slip a postcard either to [my secretary in Los Angeles] or to me [at my address in London] where I live with your youngest sister, who, by the way, ought to write you sometimes, and would be encouraged in her wavering belief that you exist if someday around yuletide she got a card to that effect.

I had read only the first two pages and I could hardly believe what he had written me. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to mention Irwin — perhaps he had “forgotten” the name of my new husband as well as the “place of business” where I had worked for the last three years — at the very least he might have acknowledged our recent marriage and offered his best wishes. Instead, “the Feders” had had the audacity to move without informing him. As the post
office was forwarding mail from my old address and the new one was listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, it should not have taken the deductive powers of a Sherlock Holmes to locate me.

His reference to “the tinkle of a sisterly tin cup” reminded me that I had told him Becky would write to me periodically, asking for small loans, which I would promptly send her. Then, a month or so later, she would return the money in full. “Becky gets plenty of money from me and her mother,” he had responded with a hint of irritation, “and so there’s no need for you to send her any.” But I felt that what Becky needed from me was not the pittance I sent her but the reassurance that I was there for her and that I cared. “Nonsense, Christopher! Your sister’s a born panhandler, just like my brother was. Did you know your Uncle Richard was always dunning me for money? The next time Becky rattles her tin cup, pay no attention.”

Finally, it was more than annoying to be told I should send Beatrice a Christmas card to encourage her “wavering belief” in my existence when I had sent Christmas presents for the whole family and heard nothing in return. Possibly my gifts had never arrived or I had sent them to the wrong address, but in any case, why was it entirely up to me? I hadn’t heard from Paola in years.

If the beginning of my father’s letter had ruffled my feathers, there was worse to come. The letter continued:

How do you feel about booze?

Would you be willing to touch some money earned … from a likker advertisement? I assume that, like all these other young whipper-snappers, you’ve gone to pot. I also assume that you could use a little extra bread. So if your conscience permits (and I’ll just bet it does) before the first crocus has pushed its way up out of the snow you’ll be cashing a nice check from a hootch company. The hootch company is nice, too. A hundred and seventy something years old and still in the same agreeable Kentucky family. Beam is the name, and they really do make the best bourbon you can buy. To get this message to the shrinking ranks of American drinkers they have launched a campaign. “Bridging the Generation Gap” is the theme. Meaning, I suppose, “Get off the Grass.” Or, “Alcohol is non-addictive and delicious” — something like that. The program calls for a series of clearly identifiable fathers
to be photographed clutching an offspring and a jar of juice, not necessarily in that order. The trouble is that the offspring of most celebrated American papas are pretty uptight about being seen in the same picture with even the smallest glass of any sort of blue ruin, booze or mountain dew. This, they seem to feel, would be betraying the Revolution. Well, in this case the price for treachery is pretty high. It has to be or there wouldn’t be any quislings at all.

When I was approached about this (as the father of two mature enough to be admitted to any saloon) my choice — in response to some ancient, Anglo-Saxon call of the blood — was for my eldest. But you had vanished. This brought me to Becky who jumped at the chance to set back the march of progress for a good price. She didn’t actually clutch a jar of the creature, but she clutched me, smiled widely and got photographed and paid.

Right here I’d like to mention what may well strike you as a most unlikely subject: my own conscience. For thirty odd years — quite a lot of them lean ones — I’ve stoutly resisted all the loot that’s been offered me to pose with products, alcoholic or otherwise. But now the devils were getting at me through my children. How could I deny them the chance to get their greedy little fingers on all that easy Madison Avenue gelt?

On the other hand, why should one daughter run off with all the boodle just because her father didn’t know her older sister’s address? Who likes money just as much as the rest of us? Beatrice, of course . . . Well, as you know, you have a Solomon for a father, and here’s the wise old man’s solution. For descending into the Los Angeles smog and sweating under the photographers’ lights (and for being available for these risks) Becky is to get the biggest cut — in fact, one half of the pie. The other half will be divided equally between her two sisters for staying at home and maintaining the dignity of the family. …

The implication behind my father’s jocular tone that his “greedy” daughters had driven him to violate his conscience and prostitute his talent deeply offended me. Never in my life had I asked him for money, nor would I dream of doing so. Since the age of seventeen, as he well knew, I had been supporting
myself with no help from anyone. When I cooled down, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt: Perhaps this was his way of sending me a wedding present. Yet the promised check from the Jim Beam advertisement never materialized. What I did receive from Becky were copies of the full-page “likker” ad. The strong physical resemblance between Orson Welles and his middle daughter suggested why Becky had been chosen rather than Beatrice or me. For Becky’s sweet sake, knowing how close she lived to the edge, I hoped she walked away from the photographers’ lights carrying bagfuls of “boodle.”

The Jim Beam bourbon ad featuring Orson Welles and Rebecca in Beam’s famous fathers and daughters campaign.

I
RWIN AND
I would often joke to our friends that two of his siblings had met my father before he ever did. It happened like this. His younger brother Jack, a psychologist then in his early forties, was traveling with his girlfriend in northern Italy and decided to stay in a luxurious resort hotel
outside Vicenza, the town in which the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio had lived and worked. On their first evening, they were standing on the terrace overlooking the gardens when they heard the unmistakable voice of Orson Welles. He was speaking at full volume to the lovely young woman they did not know was Oja. “You can keep all your miniskirts. Just give me this view in the moonlight.” Never one to be shy, Jack walked up to my father and introduced himself as “the brother of the man who is going to marry your daughter.”

“Oh really?” My father bathed him in a gracious smile. “And what are you doing in this part of Italy?”

“We’re looking at Palladian mansions,” Jack replied.

My father eyed him with renewed interest. “Buying?”

“No, just looking.”

“Oh. Well. Give my love to Christopher.” He took Oja’s arm and disappeared into the night.

“As soon as he realized I wasn’t a multimillionaire, he lost all interest in me,” Jack told us on his return to New York. At the time, none of us realized how much of my father’s life had to be spent wooing the wealthy. In one of his last interviews, he would divulge the heartbreaking fact that ninety-five percent
of his time had been spent trying to raise money to make or complete his films, which had left him precious little time to function as a creative being.

When I told my father in 1978 that Skipper was “at loose ends,” he made him the surprise guest at the American Film Institute’s seminar “Working with Welles.”

The next unlikely encounter between Orson Welles and one of Irwin’s siblings took place in a Hollywood restaurant early in 1975. My father was in town to accept the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, a high honor in Hollywood but one that is usually given at the end of a distinguished director’s career. Not yet sixty, my father had reason to feel that many productive years still lay ahead of him, and that the award was being bestowed prematurely. As Irwin and I watched the ninety-minute award ceremony on network television, I was awash in my own feelings of irony. At one point, “the family” was asked to stand up and take a bow. I stared incredulously at a “family” of two people: Paola and Beatrice.

The very next day, Irwin’s sister Marlene called to tell me she had spotted my father in a restaurant where she was lunching with a friend. Being a Feder, she marched right up to him. “I have to introduce myself to you, Mr. Welles,” she began, “because
my
brother is married to
your
daughter.” Pause. “I understand you haven’t been in touch with Chris in quite a while, and I really think you ought to be.” Another long pause during which I can imagine my father’s astonishment and discomfort as he surveyed the attractive blond bearing down on him. Clearly she was not going away until she got a satisfactory answer.

Finally he said, “I don’t think I have the right address for her.” In fact, he went on to explain, he had written me recently, but his letter had been returned.

(
Yeah, sure
, I thought when I heard this, but it turned out to be true. After my father’s death, the unopened letter was found in his papers and sent on to me. It had been addressed to Ms. Chris Welles, and the name on my mailbox for the past five years had been Chris Feder.)

“Oh,” cried Marlene, eager to help, “I have Chris’s address at home.” Elaborate arrangements were then made so that Marlene could call Orson’s agent and give him my address and telephone number. Now Marlene was calling to let me know what she had accomplished so that hearing from my father wouldn’t come as “a bolt out of the blue.” I promised her I would not hold my breath waiting for him to call.

The phone rang early the next morning. “This is your father speaking.” From the first sonorous syllable, I knew it could not be anyone else. We were polite and cautious, as we would be when talking to a stranger. I told him we had watched the Life Achievement Award ceremony on TV and how pleased I was that Hollywood had given him this honor, long overdue.