Orson Welles, Vol I (14 page)

His last contribution to the school as a student was to edit the new catalogue:
The Book of Todd, 1931
. It is his most extended achievement to date in projecting his public persona; it also gives a comprehensive view of the world that he was about to leave behind. He may not have participated in every aspect
of it, but it was the cradle of the man he became. He dominates the entire book. The cover (by him) is a boldly executed aerial view of the school, set in its bosky surrounds. The first article introduces not only Todd but its boyish editor.

HOW THIS BOOK STARTED: THE EDITOR SPEAKS:
‘I have a job for you,’ said Skipper, one afternoon in May. ‘That’s fine,’ I answered, ‘but I’ve more jobs now
than I can finish this year. The murals in the history room are only half-done and that primary play I’m directing –’. ‘It isn’t exactly your job, it’s for the Seniors, but I want you to take charge of it,’ he countered, and then of course I fell, for who doesn’t like to boss a task?

This is vintage Orson in tone and in content: he advertises both his talents, and his relationship with Skipper.
Facing the page is a picture
of murals in the History Room (simply stylised, but attractive) ‘done by our editor, Orson Welles’.

We decided not to sign any of the articles or works of art in this book as it would make it even more confusing than it is now … however, we are over-riding our Editor’s authority in this one spot and stating that he drew the maps of the campus on the cover and is
responsible for most of the better written articles in this book. Also he has been our leading light in dramatics this year, acting as Student Director of the Troupers.

It is not hard to imagine the reactions of most alumni to this naked piece of mock-modest self-promotion. He proceeds to a guide to the institutions of the school, most of which are found to be in an advanced state of democracy.
Then: the enemy:

TEACHERS:
The 20 men and women who share our life at Todd are all the type one loves to work with, to play with, and to live with. There is a great array of impressive degrees among the group but under the Skipper’s humanising influence, they have forgotten about them all and, like the boys, their rating in our life is determined solely by their contribution to its joy and
its usefulness.

Certainly faculty members may have been found grinding their teeth as they read this. Orson goes on to describe the school’s extraordinary craft facilities, which give Todd the feel of a mediaeval village: the machine shops (‘some boys have made complete gasoline engines’), the print shop, turning out the weekly school magazine, and the textile shop with its sixteen looms and
facilities for rug designing and making. There were even – to gladden Dick Welles’s troubled spirit – facilities for cartooning. The catalogue is littered with talented examples of that art, almost all signed O.W. The articles on sport – evidently wonderfully well catered for – are notably less exuberant than the rest, and evidently by another hand.

It is predictably the theatre that dominates
the catalogue. He makes a bold statement, claiming it as the activity of activities, uniting all the school’s elements:

DRAMATICS:
The activity that has made the school famous, and the activity that touches every boy here and gives him a chance to express any talent he has. It is not a single activity but a combination of all.

It is a measure of the force of this sixteen-year-old’s personality
that in a boys’ school run by a sports master, sport should have assumed second place to what is generally considered a specialised interest – or at least it did in the catalogue, edited by that same sixteen-year-old. The photographs testify to the originality and sophistication of the boys’ work, from the youngest, as Skipper had decreed, to the eldest. Since the standards they aspired to
were entirely professional, make-up was a crucial art. The boys were supposed to look like adults – men and women. Orson became a master of this art, and a whole page is devoted to a photo-collage of characters:
SOME PRODUCTS OF THE MAKE-UP CLASS:
‘The boy in the center is 13 years old and many of the others are younger.’ It’s an impressive display. By a remarkable act of self-restraint, Orson
only includes three photographs of himself out of the twelve: as Richard III, a turbanned, bearded Manson in
The Servant in the House
, and an unnamed character with impassioned, upward-turned face – cunningly lit to conceal tubbiness – the expression questing and apprehensive, full lips barely parted, eyebrows raised from the centre to furrow the brow, nostrils slightly flared, retroussé tip to
the nose giving an impression of vulnerability. It is this face, out of all fourteen on the page, which immediately catches the eye: it is one of the essential faces of Orson Welles. He is playing Francis Lightfoot, the genius.

The catalogue was his farewell to the campus. It became ‘one of the Merrie Englands’, a kingdom of which the king was a boy: him. Before he left Todd, there was one
thing to be done: one of the school’s hallowed rituals. Each boy on becoming a senior was given a sled, which he kept as long as he was there. When he left, he handed it over to an upcoming senior; solemnly, this is what he did, in May 1931. As far as we know, it was not named Rosebud.

I
N THE
immediate hiatus following graduation from Todd, Orson enrolled in Boris Anisfeldt’s class at the Chicago Art Institute. He had a very lively talent for sketching; his line drawings are sharp, witty and evocative, especially effective in capturing the essential character in a face. He told Hascy: ‘I was never any good, but I could always make it go
where I wanted it to.’
¹
His gift was for illustration. It is unlikely that he ever expected to cultivate it professionally, though it was politic of him to suggest, as he did now, that painting was his real passion – as opposed to the less respectable, the feared and dreaded, theatre. It can hardly have been by accident that the teacher in whose class he enrolled had been a brilliant theatre designer
in his time. At any rate, his attendance at the classes was fitful, as he engaged in the pursuit for which they were, in reality, nothing but a cover.

Billboard
for May 1931 carried, under its

column, the following announcement:

ORSON WELLES
– Stock, Characters, Heavies, Juveniles or as cast. Also specialties, chalk talk or can handle stage. Young,
excellent appearance, quick sure study. Lots of pep, experience and ability. Close in Chicago early in June and want place in good stock company for remainder of season. Salary according to late date of opening and business conditions. Photos on request. Address
ORSON WELLES
c/o H.L. Powers, Illinois Theatre, 65 E Jackson Bvd, Chicago, Ill.

Orson was rarely out of the Powers Agency that summer,
to no avail – pipped at the post, perhaps, by the young gentleman who, in the same edition, advertised himself as having ‘some singing-talking specialties’ and being able to ‘build, repair anything; paint plain scenery, banners’. Chalk talk was no match for singing-talking specialties, and certainly not for a skilled carpenter. Accordingly, the following month a second, more desperate, ad was
placed:

Orson Welles is willing to invest moderate amount of cash and own services as Heavy, Character and Juvenile in good summer stock or repertory proposition. Reply to Orson Welles, Dramatic Coach, Todd Academy, Woodstock, Illinois.

We may assume that Maurice Bernstein was unaware of Orson’s plans for himself. Like many a parent or guardian before him, Dadda’s suggestion was that Orson
should first become qualified academically, and then, with a safety net underneath him (that is the standard phrase), should he still feel the need to act, he could go ahead and give it a try. Clearly this was not going to wash with Orson, his appetite for the theatre raging, and all his juices at full flood after an unbroken sequence of triumphant productions at Todd. Had there been any takers
for his adverts, he would have been off like a greyhound out of a trap. But for the time being, in the absence of any openings, he continued to pose as a would-be painter. The question of his future was the sole topic in his guardian’s home, which had undergone radical rearrangement. Bernstein’s marriage to Edith Mason broke up amid ugly recriminations (including the familiar one that he was a
fortune-hunter; also that he was ‘and is’ a notorious womaniser). ‘I told her before she married Dr Bernstein, who though a capable surgeon is a Russian Jew, and therefore a hybrid as I see it,’ wrote Mason’s brother, Baron Barnes, in a comprehensively politically incorrect letter written during an earlier breakdown of the marriage only a year after it had been entered into, ‘that she’ll do just as
she pleases – get the divorce amid worlds of mud as publicity, probably marry that damn dago again and cut her throat in the end with her decent-minded American public and be fini’. He was right in everything except the last prediction; Edith Mason became one of the most admired and respected singers America has produced. But there was mud, and she did remarry the damn dago, Polacco. Losing no time
at all, Bernstein resumed his relationship with Mrs Edward Moore; when Moore died, she became the third (and last) Mrs Bernstein. An altogether calmer figure than La Mason, she rather went to the other extreme, being something of a hygiene faddist. Orson preferred to spend most of his time back at Todd, where Skipper let him have a room of his own. From time to time, however, he would visit Maurice
and Hazel at their spotless residence in Highland Park and address the equally vexed questions of his legacy and his future: intertwined problems, in fact.

Dick Welles had made his will in 1927. It contains a startlingly brutal paragraph about his son Richard (‘the irresponsibility
and ingratitude of said Richard I. Welles’
²
) who was reduced to inheriting one seventh of the estate which should
be administered to him until his thirty-fifth birthday (it was never paid to him); the rest went to Orson, likewise being administered to him until his twenty-fifth birthday. Richard’s one seventh amounted to $6,500; Orson’s portion was $37,500; these sums are worth approximately ten times the amount at current rates. Maurice Bernstein, as trustee, was responsible for the administration of the
estate. Richard, incarcerated in Kanakee, was allowed niggardly sums for clothing and upkeep. Orson hardly found it easier to extract money for his needs. According to a 1940 article in
Saturday Evening Post
, Bernstein never let Orson know how much he had inherited, suggesting that it was little or nothing. ‘He feared his ward might never do anything useful if he learned that an inheritance was
hanging over his head. To let him know of his inheritance would be like letting an Osage Indian know that he had struck oil.’
³
This is conceivable; whatever the case, there invariably hovers over any financial dealing concerning Dr Bernstein a question mark – with both his previous wives, with Richard Junior, with Orson – even with Beatrice, from whom it is suggested that he expected, erroneously,
to inherit. There is no doubt of his love for Orson, but there is a possibility that he tried to cheat him, too. A further complication for the boy.

As for his future: the goal was always Harvard or Cornell. The most Orson could hope to do was to stave off the hour at which he would be obliged to enrol. In August, he managed to buy, as he saw it, a little time.

Three days of particularly
vicious domestic warfare … ended in a roundtable conference which found all the principal powers as determined as ever [he wrote to Roger Hill]. Dadda had thought the matter over and decided he could not permit my having ought to do with the diseased and despicable theatre. The deuteragonist and the tritagonist questioned the educational value and the chorus (everybody about) was uniformly and
maddeningly derisive. Things went from bad to worse. Alternately I defended and offended. My head remained bloody but unbowed and my nose, thanks to the thoughtful blooming of some neighbouring clover (which I assured the enemy was ragweed!) began to sniffle hay-feverishly, and the household was illusioned into the realisation that something had to be done.

It was then that Dadda arrived at
a momentous decision – and in the spirit of true martyrdom chose the lesser of two great
evils. Going abroad alone is not quite as unthinkable as joining the theatre – and so … I was whisked out of the fire into the frying pan. Four days later I was in New York!

A few months of walking and painting in Ireland and Scotland … and then on to England where there are schools – and theatres!!!!!!

It is curious that in later life Welles liked to suggest that really he had just drifted into the theatre. His work at Todd was simply to impress Skipper; he had really wanted to be a painter; it was all a charming accident which took him by surprise. In fact he was fanatically devoted to the idea of the theatre, immersed in its lore and its terminology (even his account of a domestic battle
is analysed in terms of a well-informed knowledge of the Greek theatre), and deeply ambitious. Perhaps he had come to believe his own propaganda, the pretence that he was obliged to maintain for Maurice and Hazel Bernstein. There was no need to conceal his glee from Skipper, who wanted nothing more for him than to follow his heart. It was to Skipper that the above letter was addressed, from on board
the
SS Baltic
the night before disembarking at Galway.

If Welles felt the slightest anxiety at the prospect of being alone in a strange country, he doesn’t betray it. In fact, his despatches and the journal that he kept betray nothing but youthful exuberance, delight in the new world that he was discovering and unqualified joie de vivre. His life at home – whether at Todd or at the Bernsteins’
– was of such continuing complexity that it must have been a liberation simply not to be there. He was also strongly and romantically drawn to Ireland, infected by the twin charms that rendered it such a magnet for romantics in the first couple of decades of the century: on the one hand, its timeless and unvarnished beauty, on the other, its nationalist revival, both political and cultural. The
idea of Ireland – passionate, oppressed, mystic – was in every way the antithesis of the old tired civilised post-war world. ‘Get out your Don Byrne and your Synge and your gallic ballads – you can’t trace my wanderings on the map!’ he wrote to Skipper, that last night on board the
Baltic
.