Orson Welles: Hello Americans (39 page)

This relatively new manifestation of Welles’s persona naturally attracted ironic comment: earlier in the year,
Time
magazine had mocked one of his speeches, and he had wired them a dignified defence of his right to be taken seriously:

We filmmakers realise our community is a gorgeous subject for satire.
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We grant,
or anyway most of us do, that we are the world’s funniest people. You can write more jokes about us than you can about plumbers, undertakers or Fuller brush salesmen. Hollywood is guilty of deliberate withdrawal from the world. It seeks to entertain and we suspect that the success of that withdrawal is what makes Hollywood funny. But let
Time
magazine view with alarm or point with pride but not
laugh off Hollywood’s growing recognition that every movie expresses or
at least
affects political opinion. Moviegoers live all over the world, come from all classes, and add up to the biggest section of human beings ever addressed by any means of communication. The politics of moviemakers therefore is just exactly what isn’t funny about Hollywood.
Time
mentions room temperature burgundy and chopped
chicken liver as though these luxuries invalidate political opinion.
Time
, whose editors eat chopped chicken liver and whose publishers drink room temperature burgundy, knows better.

Meanwhile, his absence from screen and stage had not gone unnoticed. While
The Orson Welles Almanac
was still running, Hedda Hopper had written a ‘Whither Welles?’ piece; it well expresses the general bafflement
about his career. Welles had sent her one of his comically blustering letters of complaint concerning something she had written about Rita Hayworth earlier in the year: ‘I send you herewith a number of ancient Irish Curses, all unprintable, eve under the audacious banner of your own by-line.
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You were my family’s only syndicated friend and now you are publicly on the side of the Savage of Gower
Gulch [Harry Cohn]. This is to remind you that the good God sees everything that we do, and that it is never too late to repent. I’m still a watery-kneed invalid, but I’m just strong enough to raise a palsied fist and shake it in your direction … I remain, wounded but adoring, yours always’– a remarkably playful letter to have written to a woman who, with her co-harpy, Louella Parsons, had done
everything she could to have
Citizen Kane
not merely suppressed, but physically destroyed.

Under the heading
GENUS GENIUS
, Hopper reports on Welles’s present situation, his abandonment of
War and Peace
and his radio show.
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Helpfully, she tells him that he’s not a comedian and should give it up and attempt another
War of the Worlds
. New laws introduced after that show, he solemnly tells her,
mean that no such thing could ever be done again. What about his proposed reading of the Bible with symphony orchestra? ‘Those who were interested in the Bible before,’ says Welles, who must have been enjoying himself enormously, ‘think it’s too slow now.’ He recounts yet again the legend of his career, with the usual imaginative touches, and, specially for her, adds a brilliant new detail: he bumped
into Gordon Craig when he was fifteen, he tells her, in the American Express office in Paris, and immediately fainted at his feet, whereupon he was taken home by Craig, who taught him stage design and took him to Florence to meet all the great artists (Michelangelo, Piero
della
Francesca and Benvenuto Cellini, one presumes). Daringly, Hopper mentions
Citizen Kane
and, even more daringly, acclaims
it: he got more praise for it, she asserts, than people who had been producing for years; then – more and more daring – she mentions the great beauty of the footage from
It’s All True
, which she has evidently seen. ‘If by some miracle he can get hold of it and make it a successful picture,’ she says, risking the displeasure of some powerful figures in the industry, ‘he will have justified himself
and made liars of those who defamed him. I don’t think Orson is the greatest actor we’ve ever had. In fact,’ she goes on, in her artless way, ‘I don’t think he’s a great actor. There’s very little warmth in him on screen. He doesn’t stir you the way Frank Sinatra does. But I do think he’s a great producer.’ She trails his lack of a producing credit on
Jane Eyre
, but he won’t be drawn on that subject,
and describes his domestic contentment. It is a curious, elegiac piece, almost compassionate, halfway between an obituary and a doctor’s report. ‘How many folks do you know who, at the age of thirty’ – he had actually just turned twenty-nine – ‘have done so many things? All the ingredients for greatness are there, but will he ever reach the goal he’s striving for? Only time will tell. But
to me, Orson Welles has only scratched the surface of Orson Welles.’ It is an unexpectedly interesting summary, all the more so for its naivety; in fact, like virtually everybody else, including some very sophisticated people, Hopper quite genuinely didn’t know what to make of him. His new-found political activities, increasingly high in profile, only further confused the picture.

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.
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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.
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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.
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‘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?
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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 country in 1933’.
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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.
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‘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.
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This intimation of the value of his contribution had an understandably galvanising effect on Welles. ‘Dear Mr President,’ he replied:
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