Orson Welles: Hello Americans (73 page)

He was one of 339 motion-picture celebrities who had protested against the investigation of the motion-picture industry by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he made no individual statement. Henry Wallace was again fiercely eloquent in denunciation, attacking ‘the group of bigots first known as the Dies Committee, then the
Rankin Committee, now the Thomas Committee – three names for fascists the world over to.
²⁴
roll on their tongues with pride’. But Welles, who had spoken with such courage on the most incendiary of topics, said nothing. And yet he was in the forefront of the attacks. Melvyn Douglas sent him a clipping from the
Denver Post
of 10 August 1947 describing how the vaudevillian, revue artist and character
actor Frank Fay had launched an attack on communists in Hollywood: ‘Orson Welles – red as a firecracker/Charles Chaplin – oh boy, probably one of the reddest Reds I ever saw/Melvyn Douglas – his real name is Hesselberg. He holds meetings in his house.’ And he ended with a call to arms: ‘Don’t let the reds get a hold anywhere – not even a little hold.’

Welles said nothing, nor is there any record
of any response of his to the telegram sent to him (and many others) by John Huston, William Wyler and Billy Wilder:
THIS INDUSTRY IS NOW DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF UNITY MUST BE RECAPTURED OR ALL OF US WILL SUFFER FOR YEARS TO COME YOUR AID IS REQUIRED IN THIS CRITICAL MOMENT … THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY PICTURE
²⁵
YOU EVER MADE.
Perhaps he was only interested if he initiated the
activity;
perhaps
his lawyers had advised him to keep quiet, though, as we have seen, he was not particularly vulnerable. The FBI, for all its vigilance, had never managed to establish him as a member of the Communist Party (and even had they been able to do so, of course, such membership was not a crime). But in the words of Eric Barnouw, historian of American radio, ‘the year 1947 was dominated by monomania.
²⁶
The concern of the nation was a search for traitors, who might be anyone, including your neighbour – especially your neighbour.’ John Cromwell, the director, described it as being like a small Terror, ‘with a small-town Robespierre and a committee doling out the future of a great many people’.
²⁷
In September of that year, the screenwriters and directors who came to be known as the Hollywood Ten
were subpoenaed; a month later they were brought before the committee, and a month after that, having refused to answer the sixty-four-dollar question (as Parnell Thomas called it) as to whether they were then, or ever had been, members of the Communist Party, they were in prison, for contempt of Congress. And still Welles was silent. The point is not to lay blame: Welles was perfectly within his
rights to keep his own counsel. It is simply that it was so unlike him. It would appear that he had given up on America.

His mood, in general, was not good, nor indeed was his health; he had been plagued by an ear infection throughout the early autumn, not throwing it off until October. Writing to Arthur Margetson, he observed that ‘even my few remaining friends like you have joined the majority
opinion on the Welles question.
²⁸
If you plan therefore to spit upon me in the streets be advised there is a considerable waiting list … my dearest love goes with this in case you care about that.’
FROM THE WAY YOU SOUND
, Bruce Elliott, author of
Magic as a Hobby
, wired him in response to a letter signed ‘your ever-erring chum’, apologising for non-delivery of a promised preface,
YOU SHOULD CHANGE
YOUR NAME TO WELLESCHMERZ THESE DAYS.
²⁹
THE ATOM BOMB GOT YOU? OR IS IT JUST YOUR MANIC DEPRESSIVE CYCLE?

BEFORE HE LEFT
for Europe, Welles had done a certain very limited amount of work on
Macbeth
. In fact, much of it was being done by Dick Wilson, with occasional visits from Welles to the editing suite. After one of these visits, he wrote to Wilson, apropos a particular sequence, an interesting note: ‘All of this stuff of lighting candles should occur either
before Macbeth’s soliloquy or Lady M’s lines, or after my soliloquy and before Lady M starts to talk to me or both.
¹
Don’t let the fact that I have a candle in my hand after I have risen and don’t before I rise bother you one bit because by cutting away from the full shot I think I can get away with it.’ This is illuminating concerning Welles’s indifference to rules of continuity, and also betrays
a certain general pragmatism. Unlike Hitchcock, he by no means had the precise sequence of the whole film in his mind as he shot; he was not the slave of the storyboard in the least. When he saw what he had filmed, he may have been surprised by the result. After the euphoria of shooting and the immediate excitement of the daily review of what has been shot (they don’t call them rushes for nothing),
one is faced with the reality of the material one actually has, viewed in sequence. If only this shot had been different, if only that performance had been faster/slower/louder/quieter/better! Some sort of compromise is then arrived at, given the available material; sometimes one has a chance to reshoot certain sequences.

At about this time Welles had written in the usual affectionate terms (‘My
Beamish Beanie’) to Bernard Herrmann, who was going to write the score, that he had hoped the rough-cut would be ready sooner, but alas it would not be. ‘Good news is that picture looks wonderful,’ he added.
²
Passing through London a couple of months later, however, he told Alexander Korda: ‘Some of the individual scenes are the best things I’ve done, but when they are stuck together, the picture
may be a complete flop.’
³
Any film-maker might have said
the
same about his work at the beginning of the post-production period. It is perfectly possible, though, that when Welles spoke to Korda he meant what he said: that he was genuinely disappointed with what he had, and that he had indeed lost conviction in the film. This would certainly explain his lack of drive in the matter of achieving
a final cut, which had bewildered his colleagues at Republic, exhilarated as they were by what they had seen, both on the set and in rushes. The news that Welles was decamping to Rome and would continue to work on the film there was greeted at the studio with dumbfounded disbelief: their first, not unreasonable reaction was to want to charge him for the cost of transporting the rushes and an editor
to Italy, a demand that Wilson was reluctantly obliged to accept.

Welles meanwhile was established on location, lording it over
Cagliostro
, a troubled production. The usually shrewd producer Edward Small was experiencing difficulties with a film that, thanks to a lethal combination of logistical and temperamental factors, had run into innumerable problems. The delightfully incomprehensible Gregory
Ratoff, who was directing, was under such huge pressure that he was genuinely grateful for a strike in the middle of filming: it meant that he could at last catch up on his sleep. To some of his colleagues, he seemed close to a nervous break-down. Welles was by far the most powerful personality on the set; his co-star Nancy Guild, already something of a film noir favourite, was at the beginning
of a brief career whose subsequent high-light was
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man
; for the rest he was surrounded by Russian actors from Ratoff’s stable, one of whom, Akim Tamiroff, thereafter became part of Welles’s stable. Language problems were one of the many difficulties facing the film. Welles was not shy of offering helpful input. ‘Being a director at heart,’ reported the studio
apparatchik, Warren Doane, to his superiors, ‘he does bother Gregory by his suggestions.
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At the same time,’ Doane continued, ‘Gregory is the first to admit that many of his suggestions are good. They do result in delay, since Gregory likes to lay his work out and then follow through. All in all,’ he concluded, ‘the delays are not losses in all cases.’ Understandably, though, Welles’s ‘input’
– and he would not be the man to offer his suggestions modestly, in private, but in full view of the crew at top volume in that uniquely carrying voice – had not endeared him to his fellow-workers. ‘He is adequately cooperative, and friendly enough – at least to our faces,’ continued Doane. ‘He is, as you know, most unpredictable and thoroughly disliked by all and sundry.’ He had been ill: ‘we are
having some
trouble
with colds but no one has been really sick abed but Welles. We don’t know how sick he actually was, but undoubtedly he was sick.’

Welles was clearly not wholly engaged by his work on
Cagliostro
, whether as actor or backseat driver. He had already been studying the
Macbeth
footage and sent his responses to Dick Wilson via a Dictaphone-like device called a SoundScriber (sales
pitch: ‘Winston Churchill used it’); both he and Dick were rather boyishly excited to be among the first to have one. ‘There is too much footage of Banquo in the opening scene unrelieved by shots of me,’ says Welles.
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‘I think the feeling of moving in will help it … and I also think I will look better moving down there without my gut sticking out. Go to closer shot. That doesn’t mean going to
closer shot we made. It wasn’t very good, was it?’ He offers detailed suggestions as to how Herrmann’s music will function in specific scenes. The dubbing of certain performances displeases him. ‘Doctor too theatrical, much too theatrical. Much too theatrical. I begged, begged you not to let him get that way and he is. Much too theatrical! It should be clinical. He is trying to get like the third
witch, he’s, you know, bitchy.’ There was much more of the same.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Wilson was dealing with a very angry front office (as well as with Welles’s domestic requirements, such as buying sweaters for Dr Bernstein). ‘Several sections of Republic Pix expressed a certain unhappiness that there remains more to do on the picture.
⁶
I might even say that questions were raised in
the strongest language, and displeasure might be spoken of as the common denominator in the entire production organisation.’ Wilson was doing some pick-up shots, and had been hoping to get the sound looping done before the return of Herbert J. Yates. He was trying to get it finished ‘before I’m presented with some hideous fait accompli’. He was taking the brunt of Republic’s anxiety. ‘Yesterday
I had a two-hour meeting (or inquiry) in Chairman Newman’s office. I felt like the 19 hostile witnesses rolled into one.’ The tone was ugly. Bob Newman said that if Louis Lindsay, the editor, didn’t have it done in a couple of days, ‘then Lindsay will be fired and a cutter will replace him who will!’ Wilson reports an explosive conversation with an apoplectic Bernard Herrmann (the phrase is no doubt
tautological) who would not consider doing the picture until it was completed. ‘A series of irrational statements were made. Bernard, on this occasion, blew his top,’ saying that he’d been lured to Hollywood under false pretences, and refusing to be involved unless Welles was there ‘to
back
him up on every argument’. In this he showed a shrewd knowledge both of Welles and of the studio system.
Citizen Kane
, his first film as a composer, set a standard for his contribution to the process of film-making, which he refused to compromise. He had told Robert Newman that he simply would not be involved ‘if Welles runs out on the picture, which,’ Wilson reminded Welles, ‘demands that you be there while he scores and dubs’. And that was impossible. Newman had no patience with Herrmann, saying
that Ernst Toch should score it. (It is worth noting that Republic had a certain class: Toch was no hack like Roy Webb or Heinz Roemheld, but a hugely distinguished teacher and composer of excellent scores for
Catherine the Great
and
The Cat and the Canary
; they could have done worse.) The upshot was that Herrmann, who had come to Hollywood on the. understanding that he would be shown a completed
cut, and broke his holiday to do so, had taken the first flight back to New York. Even the ever-optimistic Wilson realised that Herrmann perhaps meant it this time and would not be returning, so they started to think of alternatives. The name of Marc Blitzstein was brought up and summarily dismissed, while Newman raged about the need to meet deadlines for trailers, main titles, and so forth. Wilson
was in an impossible position; he had no answer to any of these perfectly sensible objections to Welles’s behaviour. There had been some talk of Wilson going over to Italy, but he was of the firm opinion that ‘somebody from our side should be here practically all the time until you return, if only to watch and to reason over unwise action’.

A couple of days later Herbert Yates, now back from
his travels, stopped Wilson on the lot, and had a nice, moderate conversation with him. He was anxious about Bernard Herrmann, but seemed satisfied with the work in progress, although, says Wilson, ‘the whole lot – executives and artisans – are buzzing and making with the jokes about any little thing that has to be done’.
⁷
Yates’s biggest problem, he told Wilson, was promoting the film. ‘His most
ominous sentence was in this section of the conversation, in which he said, “Anything that we might be doing to the picture now, really isn’t going to make a big difference. It’s either there or it isn’t.”’ Yates added, mildly, that he thought Welles was making a big mistake by not completing it swiftly, and what a shame the whole thing was. Wilson’s letters over the next month continue in the
same vein, explaining the situation at Republic, charting the resentment and the rage of the studio, the despair and confusion of their collaborators, his own loyalty and attempted good cheer,
and
Welles’s non-communication – ‘for Christ’s sake write!’ Meanwhile, at the end of November, Louis Lindsay had flown out to Rome with the sound-effects and the footage, and Welles worked directly on the
material.
⁸
Slowly. He had started to think about
Cyrano
again, talking to Alexandre Trauner, Carné’s great art director, about possible designs; he fitted in
Macbeth
between shooting
Cagliostro
and the infinitely more agreeable sessions with Trauner. He had discovered that the distinguished French composer Jacques Ibert was in Rome as director of the Académie de France, and accordingly – to the
considerable pique of Republic – hired him to write the score for
Macbeth
. It was, he felt, a bit of luck that such a distinguished and experienced composer was there: Ibert had written a great deal of incidental music for the Paris stage (
Antony and Cleopatra
and
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream
among them) and a number of film scores, including two particularly fine ones, for Pabst’s
Don Quixote
starring Chaliapin and for Julien Duvivier’s
Golgotha
, as well as a score for a radio production of
Dr Faustus
, which must have delighted Welles. They spent four very pleasant hours together, watching the film together, discussing it after every two reels, after which Welles disappeared and Ibert, under the guidelines they had established, worked alone.