The War of the Worlds Murder d-6

by Max Allan Collins

  Voice booming, he said, “How many times have I told the two of you that the Mercury’s responsibility is to bring experimental techniques to this untapped medium…. Not to just treat our material like a ‘play’-the less a radio drama resembles a play, the better it’s going to be!”

  Welles thrust a finger at Gibson, who jumped in his chair a bit. “This man, who does not work in our medium on a daily basis…though I might point out his instincts about that medium only gave me the part that put us all on the map…immediately honed in on what will separate this show from all the rest.”

  Houseman, sitting back, hands folded on his belly, said in a voice that tried too hard to be nonchalant, “And what would that be, Orson?”

  For the first time, Gibson realized that behind Houseman’s mask was something else-insecurity, even fear….

  With a weight-of-the-world sigh, Orson Welles picked up the chair he’d tossed aside, righted it and sat, shaking his head slowly, a man devastated by disappointment.

  “I suggested that we use news bulletins,” Welles said quietly…too quietly, “and eyewitness accounts.”

  “We did,” Koch said, pain in his voice.

  “You did…at the start-exactly twice.”

  Koch nodded. “Right. To get us into the piece.”

  Again Welles exploded, exasperated. “Howard-it is the piece! We need newscast simulations, absolutely believable…. We need that dance-band remote broadcast not to be interrupted once, like our recent ‘Sherlock Holmes’ broadcast was, but again and again…. We need real names, details, we need the illusion of up-to-the-second reality. Why do you think I had you change it from London to New Jersey? Why did I insist you do it modern-day, not in turn-of-the-century London?”

  “Actually,” Koch said, raising a timid forefinger, “that was my idea…”

  “Does it matter whose idea it is? Good God man, this is a collaboration! And the goal of this collaboration is to execute my vision!..Flash news bulletins, eyewitness accounts, as the Mars invasion is happening. Keep that going throughout the entire hour!”

  Stewart said, “That’s impossible-the story covers months. It has to be resolved.”

  “Fine, but keep it immediate as long as possible-for the first half of the thing, at the very least.”

  Houseman sat forward. “Orson-don’t you realize that if we present…fake newscasts, for a half hour or more…”

  “Up until the station break midway, precisely.”

  Houseman swallowed and tried again. “Don’t you realize, Orson, that listeners are apt to misunderstand.”

  Stewart snorted a laugh. “What, and think Martians are really invading?”

  Welles was sitting with his arms folded now, his expression that of a pixie-a damn big pixie, but a pixie.

  “And why not?” he asked.

  Everyone sat forward, except Welles.

  Houseman said, “Surely, you don’t mean to fool our listeners into…”

  “If that’s all the more intelligent they are, why in hell not? Let me tell you where I got this idea. Back in 1926, a BBC broadcast out of Edinburgh, Scotland, presented a false news report about an unemployed mob in London sacking the National Gallery, blowing up Big Ben, hanging the Minister of Traffic to a tramway post, and blowing up the Houses of Parliament.”

  Everyone but Welles sat open-mouthed.

  Welles, eyes twinkling, continued, “The ‘newscast’ concluded with the destruction of the BBC’s flagship station…. After the broadcast, the BBC-and the police and the newspapers-were besieged with frantic citizens calling to see what was happening, and to find out what they could do in this terrible crisis.”

  Then he laughed and laughed, patting his knees like a department-store Santa Claus.

  “You see it was a period of unusual labor strife-days before a general strike-and…what’s wrong? You all look as if your best friend died.”

  Houseman held out a hand in the fashion of a traffic cop. “Orson, you surely can’t be suggesting-”

  “Oh, Housey, if a few loonies buy what we’re doing, what’s the harm? It’ll make a wonderful Hallowe’en prank, and we’ll have terrific publicity.”

  Koch, thinking aloud, said, “Well, we certainly can’t go on the air cold….”

  “No, of course not!” Welles blurted. “We’ll have a standard opening. And is it our fault…” Welles smiled with infinite innocence. “…if after Charlie McCarthy’s opening monologue, listeners just happen to check around their dial for something more lively than Chase and Sanborn’s weekly guest singer, and happen upon our little charade?”

  Stewart was starting to smile. “Well, I don’t think it will work-I don’t think anyone will fall for this. But it’s a hell of a good way to bring some extra punch to this yarn.”

  Koch was nodding. “It would be easy enough to rework it that way, too.”

  But Houseman was shaking his head, gloomily. “I don’t approve. I do think people might well be fooled, just as those British listeners were. It’s irresponsible, and it’s cruel, not to mention a risky venture for the Mercury-I can envision lawsuits, and-”

  “Ah, Housey,” Welles said, “don’t be a little girl!”

  Houseman looked daggers across the desk. “Orson, you need to take more care. Or one day your comeuppance will come, and it will not be a pleasant thing to behold.”

  Welles waved that off. “It’s the medium of radio that needs the comeuppance, that needs to get the starch taken out of it. It’s the voice of authority, nowadays-too much so. And maybe we’ll just give a little kick to the seat of the voice of authority’s pants. Anyway, what’s your alternative-any of you? To go on the air with this boring hour of hokum?”

  Leaning forward, as if taking everyone into his confidence, which he was, Welles said, “My little hoax notion will save this show…but in case you’re right, Housey, and things do get a little out of hand, like in England that time-let’s just keep this to ourselves. After all, it’s like a magic trick-a prank only works if the pranksters don’t let anybody else in on the joke….”

  SATURDAY

  OCTOBER 29, 1938

  B roadway began as a cowpath, only to be transformed by neon-chiefly red with dabs of yellow-into the blazing nighttime main stem of the world’s largest frontier town. But as garish as it was by night, Broadway by day was drab and even dreary. Around Times Square, a score of dance halls thrived (ten cents per “beautiful hostess”), and all along the Great White Way, sidewalk spielers offered health soap, hand-painted ties, reducing belts, hot buttery ears of corn, and Get Rich Quick real-estate booklets. Good-looking gals shilled bus rides to Chinatown, and a haberdashery shouted “Going Out of Business Sale” (in its tenth year). Bus terminals, with their foul-smelling, lumbering coaches, offered cheaper fare than the train, and adventurous tourists and locals alike were invited to partake of an array of theaters, movie palaces, hotels and cafes-also flea circuses, chop-suey parlors, burlesque houses, sideshows and clip joints. Millionaires mingled with panhandlers, youthful new stage stars brushed shoulders with aging burlesque comics, and current heavyweight champs bumped into derelicts who’d once been contenders or even champs themselves.

  The current shabby state of Broadway could be traced to Prohibition-later aided and abetted by the Depression-when “nightclubs” first came into vogue. From the turn of the century, upper- and middle-class Americans had sought European-style amusement in the form of exhibitions and expositions, rooftop gardens and crystal palaces, while the working class sought out the sawdust-under-foot fun provided by beer halls and carnivals. But Prohibition had sent American nightlife down its own quirky, particular path….

  A “nightclub” sought to circumvent the liquor laws by presenting itself as private, with members who dropped by for fine food, top entertainment, good conversation and, of course, their favorite soft drinks. That anyone who knocked three times might enter, and that the drinks were invariably hard, was the reality behind a fantasy kept alive by a casually law-b
reaking populace and their on-the-take law enforcement agencies.

  By the time Prohibition was winding down, with the Depression kicking in, nightclub life was an American social tradition like baseball, circuses and the picture show. But the glittery clubs of the speakeasy era were an endangered species, saved from extinction by, as Fortune magazine put it, the “recent success of what is commonly known as the big Broadway joint, the gaudy bargain offer of fifty hot babies and a five-course dinner for $1.50 and no cover charge.”

  Take the French Casino, a swooping, curving art-moderne exercise in scarlet and silver, their terraced rows of tables comfortably seating fifteen hundred. The same number of patrons could be welcomed by the International Casino (not a casino at all), in the heart of Times Square, a red and gold wonder with “curtains” that were mirrors riding on electric tracks, and a flooded, frozen stage accommodating the Ice Frolics. Billy Rose’s Casino de Paree-the remodeled New Yorker Theater on Broadway-offered a five-buck meal, gorgeous chorus girls, headliner Gypsy Rose Lee (America’s most famous striptease artiste) and the Benny Goodman orchestra.

  An impressive new arrival-perched on the top floor of a building at Broadway and 48thStreet-was actually an old standby, a relocated Cotton Club, the famed Harlem landmark that had (in 1936) found its white clientele increasingly reluctant to travel to a Depression-ravaged ghetto for their entertainment.

  The Cotton Club began in the fall of 1923 in an old theater on 142ndStreet and Lenox Avenue, its primary owner one Owney Madden, who’d come from Liverpool as a child to New York’s fabled Hell’s Kitchen, where he developed from a banty rooster nicknamed “the Killer” into a dapper, sophisticated elder statesman of racketeers.

  Despite the Harlem location, Madden ran the Cotton Club strictly for white patrons-Negroes were allowed solely on stage and/or in service capacities-in the manner of a posh downtown club, only showcasing exotic uptown talent. Cover charge was three dollars, beer a buck a bottle, the food prices (including neighborhood favorites like Southern fried chicken and Kansas City-style barbecue ribs) in line with the better Broadway clubs.

  That the Cotton Club’s late show began after-hours-when the late shows of other clubs were over-attracted entertainers, making it an “in” spot for the likes of Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle. On a big stage-invoking the antebellum South via white plantation-style columns and a stove-cabin backdrop-cavorted a chorus line of gorgeous “high-yallar” gals (light-skinned black beauties, “Tall, Tan and Terrific!”); all under twenty-one, these girls were among the best singers and dancers in New York, and the show they gave was as wild as it was scantily clad. Both Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington had reigned over Cotton Club house bands through the years, and Ethel Waters and Lena Horne made their mark there.

  The new club on Broadway opened in the fall of ’36, and Calloway, Ellington and such other “colored” stars as Louis Armstrong, Steppin’ Fetchit and Dorothy Dandridge (with her sisters) made it the hottest nightspot in Manhattan, pulling in thirty thousand dollars a week (despite the Depression), a new dance called the Boogie Woogie creating a sensation. The stage shows featured choreography, music, costumes and sets challenging Broadway’s best.

  Was it any wonder young Orson Welles was a frequent patron?

  CHAPTER THREE

  COTTON CLUBBED

  That human whirling dervish, Cab Calloway-wide eyes and wider smile turned skyward-was blazing through “Minnie the Moocher,” in tailored tails, forelock flopping, working that conductor’s baton as if nonchalantly yet energetically battling an invisible swordsman. Not merely his orchestra but the entire crowd-Walter Gibson and Orson Welles included-echoed the charismatic bandleader’s “Hi-de-ho” chant.

  Gibson had been to the original Cotton Club a few times, once with first-wife Charlotte and then again with Jewel, and he rather preferred the thatched-roof jungle look of the lavish reinvented club over the former one’s Old South, moss-draped oak tree atmosphere. He full well realized the cannibal stereotype was even more offensive than that of the happy cotton-pickin’ slave, but a tongue-in-cheek humor took the edge off. And, unlike the former club, this one welcomed Negro patrons-though relegated them to the rear.

  Gibson felt underdressed in his brown suit with a striped red-and-yellow tie, and he’d worn his vest, to seem at least a little respectable. He’d never guessed, leaving on this work trip, that he’d be going nightclubbing with Orson Welles, who in a black suit with black bow tie, black cape and black fedora didn’t seem to have thrown off his Shadow persona, even if he had stepped down from the role on the radio.

  Hell, Gibson hadn’t even imagined he’d be sitting, clapping and yelling, “Hi de ho!” a mere few hours ago, back at the hotel….

  After the early-morning meeting at the Mercury Theatre yesterday, Gibson had returned to the St. Regis and caught a few more hours of sleep. Though his family had been fairly well off, particularly before the Depression, Gibson found the St. Regis almost off-puttingly posh. The eighteen-story Fifth Avenue hotel, facing Central Park, had been built in 1904 by John Jacob Astor for himself and his rich pals; Astor hadn’t had much time to enjoy it, before going down with the Titanic, leaving behind this lavish relic of the Gilded Age.

  But in hard times like these, you could feel guilty lounging around in a world of fine furnishings, marble floors and mahogany panelling with its gold-leaf-garnished molding. Bellboys didn’t attend you-butlers did!

  And Gibson didn’t imagine any other pulp writer had ever before sat pounding away at a portable Corona at the antique writing desk in this high-ceilinged room with its silk wallpaper, Waterford chandelier and marble floor. He doubted the $75 he’d be receiving from Street and Smith for this short story (“Old Crime Week”) would pay for even a night in this mink-lined flophouse.

  By two P.M., having worked through what would have been lunch if it had occurred to him, he’d about hit the halfway point with the story. It featured his character Norgil-a composite of Harry Blackstone, Joseph Dunniger and several other real-life magicians-who appeared in short stories (as opposed to his novel-length Shadow yarns) in the pulp magazine Crime Busters.

  Pausing to take a drag on his umpteenth Camel of the day, he was just thinking how-with Welles’s interest in magic-Norgil might make an even better character than the Shadow for the boy genius when the phone on the mahogany nightstand trilled.

  The voice in his ear was that familiar resonant baritone: “Walter, I didn’t bring you here to loaf!”

  Gibson, his fingertips red from typing, said, “I’m sure you didn’t, Orson. Any suggestions?”

  “I suggest you come up to my suite-toot sweet! I have a rehearsal at the theater at seven…so time is, as they say, a’wastin’!”

  Soon Gibson, portable Corona in hand, stepped from the elevator onto the eighteenth floor, where-after calling ahead to check on Gibson’s pedigree-the butler stationed there walked him to Mr. Welles’s suite.

  The door, which was unlocked, was opened for Gibson by said butler, and when Gibson entered, he was greeted by Welles, or rather Welles’s voice, which boomed from the bedroom.

  “Have you had lunch, Walter? Or for that matter, breakfast?”

  “No!” Gibson called out.

  The suite made Gibson’s own St. Regis room seem like a bungalow at the Bide-a-Wee Motel in Peoria, Illinois. In addition to the requisite fifteen-foot ceiling with chandelier, the living room was ornately appointed in the Beaux Arts manner, with a decorative fireplace, an Oriental carpet and Louis XV furniture.

  “I’m just calling down for room service!” Welles’s voice informed his guest. Like the Shadow in full hypnotic mode, Welles thus far remained invisible.

  Pausing to set down the typewriter to get out his Camels, Gibson suddenly put the pack of smokes away, deciding not to light up-not in here.

  The expensive chairs and the two swooping sofas were stacked with spools of film, laying in careless coils, and on an end table pulled out into the middle of the roo
m had been deposited what looked like a movie projector-sort of. The thing had two big spools (heavy with film) and an oversize viewfinder. Bits and pieces and fragments of film were scattered to either side of the machine, whose presence amid these antiques seemed vaguely futuristic, even alien.

  Welles called: “Walter! What would you like?”

  “Something light! Fish, maybe?”

  “Fine!..Come in, come in….”

  Through French doors, Gibson found Welles in a bedroom dominated by a four-poster bed, on the unmade edge of which the wunderkind sat, using a white-and-gold nightstand phone that was as magnificent as the bed itself. With the command and detail of a battlefield general, Welles was giving an elaborate order for food-were further guests expected? — as he sat in a white terrycloth robe with a ST. R crest, his feet slippered in black.

  Gibson stood with his portable typewriter fig-leafed before him.

  After hanging up, Welles got to his feet and beamed at Gibson, shaking his hand heartily, warmly, his eyes locked on the writer’s.

  “Finally, we’re going to get some work done, ay?” he said, as if the world had been conspiring against the pair.

  A table near a bay window looking out on Fifth Avenue through sheer drapes was littered with scripts in black binders, which Welles cleared with an arm, sending them clattering to the floor, or anyway Oriental carpet. Welles gestured for Gibson to sit, which he did, and Welles sat opposite, leaning on his elbows, steepling his fingers.

  “You’ve been very patient with me, Walter.”

  Gibson shrugged. “Entering your world is something of an adventure for me. I live a fairly sedentary life, you know.”

  “I do know, Walter-despite the whirlwind you’ve witnessed, much of my time is spent hunkered either over a typewriter myself-or a script with a rewrite pen. The first place a production has to be mounted, after all, is in the mind.”