In My Father's Shadow (46 page)

Some of the people I met at the retrospective had known my father personally. One was the writer and film scholar Joseph McBride, who confided one night over dinner that he had not been well received by the movie director he had so admired from afar. It seems that my father had been as cool and dismissive with Joe as he had been with Irwin. We speculated that perhaps Orson Welles felt uneasy or defensive with men who were extremely bright, well-educated, and opinionated about his work. Yet Joe was able to put aside lingering hurt and come to my father’s defense, when needed. In the workshop on
It’s All True
, Joe presented solid evidence that, contrary to the reports of Welles’s unbridled extravagance — a myth that haunted him to the end of his career — he was actually under budget when RKO killed the project.

Another associate of my father was the lively and perceptive French producer Dominique Antoine, who had been welcomed into his inner circle.
“Orson always treated me as his intellectual equal and his friend,” she told me. “He loved to discuss politics with me, especially American politics.”

Dominique began working with my father in 1971, becoming the producer for
F for Fake
and the incomplete feature
The Other Side of the Wind
. “But when you worked for Orson,” she told me, “you did a little bit of everything.” Laughing, she remembered her “bit” during the shooting of the erotic car scene in
Wind
. To create the effect of passing headlights reflected on the car, Dominique was enlisted to shake pieces of tinfoil in front of the floodlights while my father urged her, “Dominique! Your wrists. Be more supple, please.”

Dominique had come to Locarno for the express purpose of attending the workshop on
The Other Side of the Wind
, hoping she would hear that some progress was being made toward its final completion and release. This particular workshop drew the largest crowd of all — it snaked down the steep, uphill street all the way to the Piazza Grande. With the excited buzz of the crowd and flashbulbs going off like firecrackers, it felt like a Hollywood premiere. I had previously seen at the Film Forum the footage that was shown again in Locarno, and it was hard to tell from these episodic fragments what my father would have done with the film in his final edit. Only here and there did I feel the unmistakable rhythm, tension, and pacing of an Orson Welles masterpiece.

At the conclusion of the workshop discussion, the ultimate fate of
The Other Side of the Wind
remained as uncertain as ever. A substantial amount of finishing money still had to be raised and, equally if not more important, a distributor for the film needed to be found. “It will never be finished,” declared Dominique, adding that it was “obscene” that Orson’s last chef d’oeuvre could not be shown to the world. We trudged out of the theater, feeling dispirited, and I could see that revisiting
The Other Side of the Wind
had taken an emotional toll on Dominique. When we said our goodbyes a few days later, she told me the only positive thing that had happened to her in Locarno was meeting me.

The final workshop was devoted to Orson Welles the magician. Stefan asked me to be on the panel because at the age of five I had seen my father’s magic show for the troops. Although I knew the art of magic had fascinated him all his life, and I had vivid memories of his entertaining me as a child with magic tricks, I had always assumed he was an amateur. I had no idea that he was, in fact, a serious professional, or that he was esteemed by world-class magicians who saw him as a major figure in their secret society.

Attending the Orson Welles retrospective in Locarno, Switzerland, 2005 (from left to right: Abb Dickson, Stefan Drössler, Oja Kodar, Oja’s sister Nina, Gary Graver, Alexander Welles).

“If your father had done nothing else with his life, he would go down in the history books as one of the most important magicians of all time,” according to Abb Dickson, a jolly, rotund little man with a mischievous smile, who has been aptly described as “a three-hundred-pound pixie.” As one of the top magicians performing today, Abb was in a position to know what he was talking about. “Your father invented his own tricks,” he added.

“He did? How many?” I expected to hear a total of five or six.

“Hundreds. They’re written up in a secret bible of magic that’s circulated among professional magicians.” Of all the things I was learning about my father, this was the most astonishing.

Abb was another Locarno participant who had established his own unique relationship with Orson Welles. A frequent visitor to the house in Los Angeles where Orson lived his last years with Oja, Abb had spent hours closeted with Orson, trying out the latest magic tricks, which Orson would then radically change to make his own. Abb believed that the hours they spent together, practicing magic like mischievous schoolboys, released Orson from the frustration and disappointment that clouded his return to Hollywood.

Sometimes Orson invited Abb to accompany him to a meeting with studio executives. On these occasions Abb donned a suit and pretended to be Orson’s lawyer. At a certain point in the meeting Orson would announce that he had to consult in private with his lawyer. The “suits” would withdraw from the
room and Orson and Abb would spend the next half hour or so practicing magic, until Orson’s good humor was restored.

Chris in Locarno, Switzerland, for the Orson Welles retrospective, 2005.

It seems fitting that on the day of my father’s death, he was found slumped over his typewriter, where he had been at work on a script for his next essay film, to be called
The Magic Show
. “To me, magic begins and ends with the figure of the magician who asks the audience, for a moment, to believe that the lady is floating in the air,” he once said. “In other words, be eight years old for a moment.”

I
T WAS MY
big
night in the Piazza Grande, yet I had no idea of what was about to happen. While I waited to be called to the stage, Irwin stood next to me, holding my hand.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s funny, but I’ve never felt so sure of myself.”

“Do you know there are seven and a half thousand people out there? Irene told me every seat’s been taken. And you don’t feel even a little nervous?”

“No. I can’t wait to walk out on the stage …”

“You’re your father’s daughter all right.” Irwin stared at me in amazement. Then, after telling me “to break a leg,” he went to join the festival directors, who were sitting in the front row.

When a few moments later I came on stage and was introduced as Orson Welles’s daughter, I was greeted by thunderous applause. I was standing under the mammoth movie screen, facing the huge crowd but unable to see beyond the first rows. Darkness swallowed up the rest of the audience. Yet I could feel the faint hum of its presence, its suppressed energy, like a crouched animal waiting to roar. How calm I felt, how at home on that stage in Locarno under a clear, starlit sky. A pretty young woman stood beside me, waiting to translate my remarks into Italian. Directly below the stage, a video crew was projecting our image in one corner of the screen so that even those in the back row could see us in close-up.

I was there to say a few words about Orson Welles’s
Macbeth
, which would be shown later in the evening. After thanking the festival directors in Italian for their generous hospitality, I continued in English. “I am so happy to be here with you tonight, celebrating my father and his great achievement in the world of cinema. Once I told my father how distressed I was that he couldn’t raise the money he needed to complete his films. My father replied, ‘Christopher, don’t you worry your pretty little head about me. They’re going to love me when I’m dead.’ And in Locarno, we do!” When this was translated, the crowd went berserk.

It was quite a while before I was able to continue. “The other night I was invited to a banquet and the president of our festival, Marco Solari, got up to speak. He said, ‘Orson Welles was one of the greatest creative forces of the twentieth century.’ And I agree!” The crowd replied with a prolonged standing ovation.

This is my father’s legacy
, I thought,
to me and to the world. And through his work, I am connected to him forever
.

From then on it didn’t matter what I said. The crowed roared and stamped and clapped and cheered. I could feel waves of love rolling toward me, and it felt as though my whole life had been an arduous journey to this moment — but now I was here. I had arrived. Of course, I knew that the ovation was for my father, but it was partly for me as well. And somewhere in the darkness my father was looking down on me with a tender smile, saying, “You’re my darling girl.”

THE END

M
Y HUSBAND
I
RWIN
likes to say I was “born under a lucky star.” I think he might be right when I consider the exceptional people who assisted in the birth of my book, beginning with my agent, Joan Raines. Joan stood by me during the early struggles and false starts, never losing her faith that in the end I would get it right. Yet much as I relied on her warm support during the six years it took to produce a final manuscript, I came to appreciate even more her counsel, sharp editorial eye, and skill with a red pencil.

My next stroke of good fortune was to have Chuck Adams as my editor at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. No author could ask for a more intelligent, perceptive, and sensitive editor. I was similarly blessed to have my manuscript copyedited by the late Bob Jones, who completed his excellent work on my book shortly before his untimely death.

My thanks go to Peter Workman of Workman Publishing, who read my book in manuscript and approved its publication by Algonquin Books. I also thank my publisher, Elisabeth Scharlatt, for responding so positively to my book. I am grateful to everyone at Algonquin who has helped transform my manuscript into a book of quality.

My good friend Gregory Downer did a fine job of restoring the vintage photographs in my private collection so that they sparkle on these pages. I am indebted to Welles scholar Catherine Benamou, who introduced me to the treasure trove of photographs in the Orson Welles Collections, which she helped establish at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Both Catherine and Peggy Daub, director of the Special Collections Library, were most helpful throughout my stay in Ann Arbor. I wish to thank Sally Vermaaten, who assisted me at the library, and Sarah Rentz, who scanned over fifty photos so that I could take them home on compact disks.

In addition to contributing photos and artwork from her own collection, Oja Kodar vetted the last chapters of my manuscript. During his final decades, no one knew more about my father and his entourage than Oja, his beloved companion, and I deeply appreciate her corrections and constructive comments.

My close friends Meredith Rose, Denis Forster, and George Dickerson read the manuscript in its early stages and offered important feedback. The one person I have yet to mention is my husband, Irwin, my most valuable reader and critic. His steadfast love and support make clear that I
was
born under a lucky star.

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© 1944 Universal Pictures Company, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLLP.

page
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Peter Stackpole/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. © 1983 Time, Inc. Used with Permission.

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17
,
108
,
175
,
226
,
229
; photo insert page 7, top Courtesy of the Welles-Kodar and Wilson-Welles Collections, Special Collections Library, The University of Michigan.

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© 1948, renewed 1975 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

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© 1944 Twentieth Century Fox. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.

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© 1948 Paramount Pictures Corp. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

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© 1949 Canal+ Image UK Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Canal+.