Orson Welles: Hello Americans (41 page)

In fact, Rita Hayworth was the principal bread-winner in the family, and had, early in their relationship, lent Welles some $30,000 to stabilise his finances. His sense of humiliation in having a wife who was not only immensely more famous than he was, but also richer, is not to be underestimated in explaining his compulsive absenteeism from her side. Interestingly, she shared his political
views, broadly speaking, and was indeed a considerable asset to him in his capacity as Free World activist. When he organised a conference in early 1945, shortly after the birth of Rebecca, she was the guest of honour; there was great anxiety when she feared that she might not be able to attend, and it was clear that in that context, of the two of them, Welles was the more dispensable. But when
they went to stay (as they frequently did) with the Dolivets at the Whitney mansion in upstate New York, she was expected to be quiet while the two men discussed the higher questions of strategy and philosophy; Hayworth and Dolivet’s wife, the brilliant actress – and no mean intellect – Beatrice Straight, were encouraged to repair to the verandah and take afternoon tea together, which they did,
uncomfortably. It was understood that Welles was being
groomed
for political office: Dolivet had plans for him as a possible secretary-general of the soon-to-be constituted United Nations Organisation, while Roosevelt – in whose court he had become, he said to Kathleen Tynan, ‘a kind of licensed jester’ – encouraged him to think that he might one day be President.
¹

In so far as this meant that
he would be leaving Hollywood (and taking her with him), Rita Hayworth was all for it; her loathing of the studios and everything that they represented was even greater than Welles’s, and perhaps with better reason. Somewhat to her surprise and entirely to her displeasure, at the beginning of 1945 he decided to act opposite Claudette Colbert in the film
Tomorrow Is Forever
. It was a second stab,
after
Jane Eyre
, at conventional Hollywood stardom. The film’s producer, Bill Goetz (who had produced
Jane Eyre
) announced that casting Welles in it was one of the most important casting assignments in the history of his company, which may have been so, but his excitement was not widely duplicated beyond the company. It is one of many wartime films that deals with the loss of loved ones: the somewhat
strained plot here has Welles being disfigured in action, having reconstructive surgery and returning to his wife under a pseudonym and with a foreign accent some twenty years later. It is a performance like none other in Welles’s career as an actor, interestingly pitched (once the somehow awkward opening sequence with him as the young American is over): very softly, very quietly, the impeccable
German accent used to striking effect, and with an undertow of real feeling, as if Welles was moved by what was happening inside him. The make-up (by Maurice Seidermann, whom Welles had discovered sweeping up the floor at RKO and had promoted to chief make-up artist on
Citizen Kane
) is curious: it is quite obviously artificial, as so often with Welles, although for once he uses his own nose, which
sits a little strangely with the bearded face, creating an uncommon feeling of vulnerability.

The performance itself – as distinct from the make-up – is as close to a full transformation as Welles ever comes on film, restrained and sensitive. It is his misfortune that his co-star gives one of her very finest performances, living wholly in the minute, going with pinpoint precision from emotion
to emotion, from the early dreaminess of her anticipation of her young husband’s return from war, through numb grief, to growing happiness in her new family, anxiety about her son’s desire to enlist and intuitive disturbance at the bearded stranger’s arrival. By comparison, Welles is somehow static – nothing moves within his conception of the character;
statement
of character follows statement
of character: intelligent, varied, feeling, sensitive, but without any of the involuntary surges of impulse to which the camera so eagerly responds. Welles is always
doing
the performance; it’s never simply happening, never out of his control, and his great climactic emotional moment, when he is called upon to speak the title line, is simply stagy. It is a very different kind of theatrical performance,
to be sure, from those he gives in
Kane, Jane Eyre
and
Journey into Fear
, but it remains essentially projected: the camera (and hence the audience) is never allowed to be make its own discoveries; it is always told what to feel, what to think. After
Tomorrow Is Forever
, Welles’s status as a film actor remained what it was before: he was thought of as a formidable presence who always seemed somehow
too big for whatever film he chose to appear in.

For Rita Hayworth, the period of shooting was a sort of nightmare. Convinced (quite rightly) that Welles was seizing the opportunity when he wasn’t actually on the set to have assignations with young women, she would appear at the studio in a frenzy of jealous rage; but he was well protected by his colleagues, and she would disappear again in an
anguish of frustration and humiliation. Meanwhile, and throughout the period of filming, Welles was writing his column for Ted Thackrey’s
New York Post
. It was Thackrey’s idea: he told Welles’s manager Jackson Leighter that they were ‘as excited as hell’ about it, and were looking forward eagerly to the first of them.
²
Tempting fate, Welles called the column ‘The Orson Welles Almanac’, preserving
the pot-pourri character of the failed radio show as well as its strained conceit of guyed fortune-telling in the manner of
Old Moore’s Almanac
or the
Farmers Almanac
. He was desperate to succeed in this latest incarnation, not only from financial motives – and if the column was successfully syndicated, he stood to make a very great deal of money – or even because he saw it as another platform
for his political causes, but because he genuinely wanted to do it well. He was as touchingly eager to make a go of it as he had been to be a radio comedian. In a sort of trailer for the column, he had filled in again for his old chum Leonard Lyons, the
Post
’s much-loved regular showbiz columnist. ‘What is it that makes a man want to write for the newspapers?’
³
he asks, confessing to his early
pulp writing again, name-dropping furiously – Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott (he calls him Alec) begged him to stop, he says. He repeats the tale of his ‘Inklings’ column in
Highland Park News
and his Dublin escapades. ‘All too often my public appearances have
had
more to thank presumption than equipment, so don’t ask me why I think I can write a column.’ In fact, his public appearances
had more to do with equipment than with preparation. ‘Compare me, if you will,’ he ended, with one of those after-dinner-speech flourishes to which he sometimes succumbed, ‘to my foolish and finny cousin the salmon, who toils and labours upstream against the most fearful odds, only to lay his little eggs.’

He started jauntily and with great industriousness, which is just as well: six columns
a week is a very serious undertaking. Declaring himself as nervous as a kitten, Welles promised Thackrey two solid weeks of columns in advance, asking for twenty-four more hours ‘to fuss’.
⁴
Thackrey was delighted with what he read:
ALMANAC VERY LUSTY FROM BIRTH,
he cabled.
⁵
SURE TO HAVE LONG USEFUL HAPPY EXISTENCE WITH NO ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION NECESSARY.
Financial indicators from the syndicate
were encouraging, promising a return of at least $15,000–20,000 a year, though Thackrey believed that the minimum would be $40,000 ‘up to eighty’ – a huge sum for 1945. Welles retained his researcher Geneva Cranston from the radio
Almanac
; working from Washington, she supplied him with regular analytical reports and insider gossip – ‘It looks as if the administration is going to have another hot
potato on its hands very shortly, possibly within the next few days.
⁶
I refer to the proposed senate investigation into violations of the mails by the Office of Censorship’ – which would form the substance of the political element of the columns, in which anniversaries, astrology, hard-hitting political analysis and Little Known Facts (‘The onion and the asparagus are members of the lily family’)
jostled for the reader’s attention.

The very first column, at the end of January, was particularly well stuffed. It started: ‘Our Astrology department says that this is a good day for all born under all signs, and for planting all things that grow above the ground’; then Welles told his readers that Byron was born on this day, as was D. W. Griffith.
⁷
He furnishes a quote from Woodrow Wilson about
the purpose of war; then he launches into the main matter, an account of Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration. ‘The whole affair was as simple as anybody can remember. If you’ve been married more than twice, you like your wedding to be small and quiet. I think that’s how the President felt about this inauguration. He played his part in the ritual like a veteran bridegroom. I was there and I got the
impression that this fourth term was his favourite wife. The inauguration of a President really is a kind of a betrothal – with promises to love, honour and obey. I
always
feel like crying at a wedding, and that’s how I felt Saturday.’ Quoting Roosevelt’s famous rallying cry, ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself, he ends: ‘I think the man who said that is man enough for America’s biggest job,
which is the biggest job in history.’ The tone is overtly political and treats his readers as if they are grown-ups with political opinions of their own. The big success of the column, of course, is his eye-witness account of the inauguration, which he wrote, as it happens, three days before the event.

In fact, this column is unlike almost all its successors, which suggests that Welles may have
decided at the last moment to scrap what he had written and go for a big story. This is a little dangerous, since it is crucial in a column to establish a voice and a format that becomes habit-forming for the reader. The second column (‘the Feast of St Ildephonsus and a good day for fishing’) is indeed much more heterogeneous, though not lacking in political content, including a rather dry account
of world reaction to the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, another news item about France’s frustration with Big Three diplomacy, a scoop about the Teheran Conference and a report, under the heading
JAPANESE INVENTIONS DEPARTMENT,
that they have invented a chemical antidote to B-29S. Welles signs off: ‘The sting of a bee does not make a muskmelon sweet.’
⁸
It is an awkward mixture of elements; the tone
seems misjudged.

Before he really had time to get into his stride as a commentator, the rest of the press was already providing its own commentary on him. No matter how brilliant the column might have been, he was not going to be allowed to get away with it: journalists are understandably unenthusiastic about amateurs muscling in on their patch. Under the heading
ACTOR TURNS COLUMNIST,
Time
magazine
reported that ‘Orson Welles, 29, precocious Master of a number of trades – and jack of several more – apprenticed himself to a new one: newspaper columning.’
⁹
Readers, the piece amiably continues, got: ‘1) excerpts from Welles’s favourite reading, the
Farmers Almanac
; 2) handy hints about cooking; 3) cocksure remarks about foreign affairs; 4) personal chitchat’. Then the writer swiftly and proficiently
goes for the jugular, casually revealing that Welles’s account of Roosevelt’s inauguration had been pure invention. Poor Welles, always being caught out! The
Time
writer expresses further scepticism about Welles’s ‘cocksure remarks about foreign affairs’, specifically his pretence of insider knowledge of events at Teheran. However, Welles was not to be daunted. In the same article, he is quoted
as dismissing such quibbles, staunchly informing the
Time
reporter that ‘right now I’m much more interested in politics and
foreign
affairs than I am in the theatre. I have set up my life in such a way that I can spend more than occasional time on these interests.’ Statements of that sort always enrage journalists.

He offered an even greater hostage to fortune to the
New Yorker
. ‘The column is
so important,’ he said, ‘that I plan to devote all my time to it as soon as I can.
¹⁰
I’ve given up all my Hollywood work except to act in one picture each year.’ He had already vexed the journalistic community with his anti-fascist lecture tour, which started in New York. ‘Until the other day,’ the magazine reported under the headline
DEDICATED WUNDERKIND
, ‘we regarded Orson Welles as simply an
actor, producer, writer, costumer, magician, Shakespearean editor, and leading prodigy of our generation, and then out of our mail fluttered an announcement that he was … delivering an oration called
The Nature of the Enemy
at the City Centre.’ The writer quoted the publicity leaflet verbatim and without comment: ‘Mr Welles’s understanding of international happenings,’ the leaflet stated, ‘has
been widely acknowledged. Not only has he the ability of analysis, but of prophecy, and he also has the master’s art of making his statements felt by everybody.’ His gift for prophecy had obviously been invaluable in his account of the presidential inauguration. The anonymous
New Yorker
journalist cornered Welles during a publicity-shot session to promote his lecture tour, and found him looking
‘the same as the last time we saw him – moon-faced, girthy, bland and authoritative’, noting ‘a considerable resemblance to the Boy Orator of the Platte’. Welles was still on the defensive. ‘Naturally,’ he says, ‘a lot of people are going to ask, “What’s a ham actor think he’s doing as an expert on international affairs?”’ His participation in public affairs, he argues, will prove that ‘international
matters are not as mysterious as Rosicrucianism or something. We’ve got to outgrow our Toy Tinker stage of anti-fascism and use a sophisticated approach.’ Welles is so intense about fighting fascism, the
New Yorker
snidely continues, ‘that he’s not only going to orate against it but also will give it hell in the newspaper column he’s launching this week in the
Post
.’ Welles is swift with his riposte:
‘The editor of this
Almanac
has been concerning himself with matters of state and the hope of a permanent peace for just about as long as the editors of the
New Yorker
.
¹¹
Indeed, he already has a big scrapbook full of indignant newsprint demanding his immediate return to the seclusion of the playhouse.’ He claims misreporting. ‘By inventing a queer string of surrealist sentences and attributing
them to him, this current issue manages to imply that his hatred of fascism is nothing but a rather
silly
fad. The
New Yorker
ought to be ashamed of itself. It knows as well as you do that anti-fascism is never silly, even when a movie director or a comic newspaper work in its behalf.’ A very understandable reaction, but his reply was not, perhaps, the best move; inevitably he ended up sounding
pompous.