ALTHOUGH I NEVER revealed my father’s identity to my co-workers, more often than not they already knew. Such was the case the first time I walked through the door of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s New York office. Everyone from the man in the mailroom to the director in charge of our project knew that my father was Orson Welles. That included Irwin Feder, the attractive senior editor who would be supervising my work. Had it not been so, would Irwin have assigned me the articles in the encyclopedia that pertained to motion pictures? Despite my father and my Hollywood childhood, I was far from being an expert on the movies. Yet I loved editing this section and making sure, when I got to the article on Orson Welles, that his masterwork, Chimes at Midnight, was given its due.
I worked desk to desk with Irwin and four other editors in a large, pleasant room we called “the library.” As we were a congenial group, we usually went out for lunch together. Yet, in spite of being thrown together day after day, Irwin and I managed to ignore each other for several months. Working at such close quarters and with only one telephone in the room, it was impossible not to eavesdrop on everyone’s calls. I gathered from the number of women calling Irwin every day that he was not available. I also learned from chance remarks that he was still married, although separated from his wife, an American artist who was living in Paris with their two children. Whenever I felt myself becoming attracted to Irwin, I had to remind myself, He’s married, forty-four, and too old for me.
Then one day, to my astonishment, Irwin suggested dinner after work and a popular British film, A Man for All Seasons. While I accepted his invitation at once, the fact that he had chosen a movie in which my father played a cameo role put me on my guard. Was Irwin taking me to A Man for All Seasons so that he could boast to his friends he had seen Orson Welles in this movie in the company of Orson’s daughter? This had been happening to me all my life, but I sensed that Irwin was different from most people. He was not impressed by celebrity.
I knew Irwin was a man who spoke his mind. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for his opening remark at dinner. “I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time, Chris, that you’re much too nice and polite to everyone. You’re almost too well bred. Nobody can be that nice and that much of a lady. Why don’t you just relax and be more the person you really are?” Rather than being annoyed by his remarks, I found myself intrigued. No one had ever suggested to me before that I fling off my mask and show my warts and moles.
Orson as the corrupt Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (1966).
We both enjoyed A Man for All Seasons. Afterward, we went for a walk, and Irwin asked me how it felt to see my father on the screen. “Strange,” I told him, not wanting to reveal that, although I no longer dissolved in tears, it still unsettled me. I particularly disliked seeing my father in the villainous roles that had become his stock in trade, including the obese, worldly, and corrupt Cardinal Wolsey.
“What do you mean, ‘strange’?” Irwin persisted.
By way of an answer, I shared with him an anecdote Danny Kaye had told me about the first time his five-year-old daughter saw him perform as a comic on stage. After the show she came backstage, crying as though her heart would break, and when he asked her, “What’s the matter, honey?” she sobbed, “I don’t want people laughing at my daddy.”
Irwin laughed. “When did you meet Danny Kaye?”
“I met him as a child when I was staying with my father in London and then years later we spent an evening together in Chicago. Danny was in town, doing a one-man show, and I was eighteen or nineteen. The strange thing was that when he was offstage and alone with you, he wasn’t a bit funny. If anything, he seemed mildly depressed. He was awfully sweet, though. You would have liked him.”
I was congratulating myself that I had succeeded in moving the conversation away from Orson Welles when Irwin started to tell me about the first time he saw Citizen Kane. He was seventeen or eighteen, he remembered, and he and a friend had wandered into the Nemo movie theater at 110th Street and Broadway in the neighborhood where Irwin had grown up. The second movie of the double feature was Citizen Kane. “I was so blown away by it,” Irwin recalled, “that I decided I had to see it a second time even though it meant sitting through the other movie, which I’ve forgotten now. I’d never realized until I saw Citizen Kane that movies could be an art form.”
We walked on together in silence. I was struck that Irwin’s initial reaction to Kane had so closely resembled mine. It was also curious that we had both discovered this remarkable film at about the same age.
After a few moments, Irwin said, “Of course, I don’t need to tell you about your dad, one of the greatest movie directors of all time. What’s it been like for you to have such a towering figure . . . ?”
“Where are we now?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. We had walked more than a mile downtown to Greenwich Village, where Irwin lived. I had never been to this part of New York before, and strolling along the peaceful, tree-lined streets where well-kept brownstones from another century nestled shoulder to shoulder, I felt I was back in Europe, wandering down a London mews. I caught glimpses through open windows of gracious, high-ceilinged rooms with chandeliers, decorative moldings, built-in bookcases, and fireplaces. “I’d give anything to live in this part of town!” I exclaimed.
Little did I know on that balmy night as we strolled along the lamplit streets of Greenwich Village that with every step my nomadic life was retreating further into the past. I had come home.
11
The Final Years
THREE YEARS AFTER IRWIN had introduced me to Greenwich Village, we were married in a quiet ceremony on September 20, 1970. The only members of my family who came to our wedding were my Aunt Caryl and her son David. Horrified that I was marrying a Jew, my grandmother arranged to be visiting my mother and Jackie, who by then had moved to London. On our wedding day, my mother sent a frosty telegram of congratulations. (In another of her famous predictions, she had claimed Irwin would never divorce his first wife and marry me.)
Chris and her second husband, Irwin Feder, on their wedding day in New York, 1970.
Although my father knew from the Hills that I was getting married, he did not send a telegram or a wedding gift. However, in early November, he wrote me a seven-page letter, remarkable in itself. Postmarked from Beverly Hills, the envelope was addressed to Mrs. Christopher Feder — so he did know my married name — and the letter began with the usual protestations.
Darling Girl,
Very nearly my first frustration, upon landing again on these shores, was to find that the Feders had moved. I should have remembered that New Yorkers always do that, but what good would it have done me? The migration of birds can be charted, New Yorkers are something else again. Forgot the name of your place of business — if indeed I ever knew it — so what to do? The Hills were no use to me. That tribe has a migration of its own: every autumn they leave Florida and commence, as I suppose you know, a protracted matriarchal (and maybe, slightly patriarchal) progress among the scattered fruit of their seed …
Why didn’t I think of Becky? Well, of course I did, but not as a source of information about you. We exchanged letters and a couple of phone conversations before it occurred to me to ask if she’d had any news of you. Oh, yes, was the answer, a letter had been sent to you only three weeks before (I seem to hear the tinkle of a sisterly tin cup).
So now, just before my return to the Old World, I’ve got your address. Next time you send for the moving van, do please slip a postcard either to [my secretary in Los Angeles] or to me [at my address in London] where I live with your youngest sister, who, by the way, ought to write you sometimes, and would be encouraged in her wavering belief that you exist if someday around yuletide she got a card to that effect.
I had read only the first two pages and I could hardly believe what he had written me. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to mention Irwin — perhaps he had “forgotten” the name of my new husband as well as the “place of bu
siness” where I had worked for the last three years — at the very least he might have acknowledged our recent marriage and offered his best wishes. Instead, “the Feders” had had the audacity to move without informing him. As the post office was forwarding mail from my old address and the new one was listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, it should not have taken the deductive powers of a Sherlock Holmes to locate me.
His reference to “the tinkle of a sisterly tin cup” reminded me that I had told him Becky would write to me periodically, asking for small loans, which I would promptly send her. Then, a month or so later, she would return the money in full. “Becky gets plenty of money from me and her mother,” he had responded with a hint of irritation, “and so there’s no need for you to send her any.” But I felt that what Becky needed from me was not the pittance I sent her but the reassurance that I was there for her and that I cared. “Nonsense, Christopher! Your sister’s a born panhandler, just like my brother was. Did you know your Uncle Richard was always dunning me for money? The next time Becky rattles her tin cup, pay no attention.”
Finally, it was more than annoying to be told I should send Beatrice a Christmas card to encourage her “wavering belief” in my existence when I had sent Christmas presents for the whole family and heard nothing in return. Possibly my gifts had never arrived or I had sent them to the wrong address, but in any case, why was it entirely up to me? I hadn’t heard from Paola in years.
If the beginning of my father’s letter had ruffled my feathers, there was worse to come. The letter continued:
How do you feel about booze?
Would you be willing to touch some money earned … from a likker advertisement? I assume that, like all these other young whipper-snappers, you’ve gone to pot. I also assume that you could use a little extra bread. So if your conscience permits (and I’ll just bet it does) before the first crocus has pushed its way up out of the snow you’ll be cashing a nice check from a hootch company. The hootch company is nice, too. A hundred and seventy something years old and still in the same agreeable Kentucky family. Beam is the name, and they really do make the best bourbon you can buy. To get this message to the shrinking ranks of American drinkers they have launched a campaign. “Bridging the Generation Gap” is the theme. Meaning, I suppose, “Get off the Grass.” Or, “Alcohol is non-addictive and delicious” — something like that. The program calls for a series of clearly identifiable fathers to be photographed clutching an offspring and a jar of juice, not necessarily in that order. The trouble is that the offspring of most celebrated American papas are pretty uptight about being seen in the same picture with even the smallest glass of any sort of blue ruin, booze or mountain dew. This, they seem to feel, would be betraying the Revolution. Well, in this case the price for treachery is pretty high. It has to be or there wouldn’t be any quislings at all.
When I was approached about this (as the father of two mature enough to be admitted to any saloon) my choice — in response to some ancient, Anglo-Saxon call of the blood — was for my eldest. But you had vanished. This brought me to Becky who jumped at the chance to set back the march of progress for a good price. She didn’t actually clutch a jar of the creature, but she clutched me, smiled widely and got photographed and paid.
Right here I’d like to mention what may well strike you as a most unlikely subject: my own conscience. For thirty odd years — quite a lot of them lean ones — I’ve stoutly resisted all the loot that’s been offered me to pose with products, alcoholic or otherwise. But now the devils were getting at me through my children. How could I deny them the chance to get their greedy little fingers on all that easy Madison Avenue gelt?
On the other hand, why should one daughter run off with all the boodle just because her father didn’t know her older sister’s address? Who likes money just as much as the rest of us? Beatrice, of course . . . Well, as you know, you have a Solomon for a father, and here’s the wise old man’s solution. For descending into the Los Angeles smog and sweating under the photographers’ lights (and for being available for these risks) Becky is to get the biggest cut — in fact, one half of the pie. The other half will be divided equally between her two sisters for staying at home and maintaining the dignity of the family. …
The implication behind my father’s jocular tone that his “greedy” daughters had driven him to violate his conscience and prostitute his talent deeply offended me. Never in my life had I asked him for money, nor would I dream of doing so. Since the age of seventeen, as he well knew, I had been supporting myself with no help from anyone. When I cooled down, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt: Perhaps this was his way of sending me a wedding present. Yet the promised check from the Jim Beam advertisement never materialized. What I did receive from Becky were copies of the full-page “likker” ad. The strong physical resemblance between Orson Welles and his middle daughter suggested why Becky had been chosen rather than Beatrice or me. For Becky’s sweet sake, knowing how close she lived to the edge, I hoped she walked away from the photographers’ lights carrying bagfuls of “boodle.”
The Jim Beam bourbon ad featuring Orson Welles and Rebecca in Beam’s famous fathers and daughters campaign.
IRWIN AND I would often joke to our friends that two of his siblings had met my father before he ever did. It happened like this. His younger brother Jack, a psychologist then in his early forties, was traveling with his girlfriend in northern Italy and decided to stay in a luxurious resort hotel outside Vicenza, the town in which the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio had lived and worked. On their first evening, they were standing on the terrace overlooking the gardens when they heard the unmistakable voice of Orson Welles. He was speaking at full volume to the lovely young woman they did not know was Oja. “You can keep all your miniskirts. Just give me this view in the moonlight.” Never one to be shy, Jack walked up to my father and introduced himself as “the brother of the man who is going to marry your daughter.”
“Oh really?” My father bathed him in a gracious smile. “And what are you doing in this part of Italy?”
“We’re looking at Palladian mansions,” Jack replied.
My father eyed him with renewed interest. “Buying?”
“No, just looking.”
“Oh. Well. Give my love to Christopher.” He took Oja’s arm and disappeared into the night.
“As soon as he realized I wasn’t a multimillionaire, he lost all interest in me,” Jack told us on his return to New York. At the time, none of us realized how much of my father’s life had to be spent wooing the wealthy. In one of his last interviews, he would divulge the heartbreaking fact that ninety-five percent of his time had been spent trying to raise money to make or complete his films, which had left him precious little time to function as a creative being.
When I told my father in 1978 that Skipper was “at loose ends,” he made him the surprise guest at the American Film Institute’s seminar “Working with Welles.”
The next unlikely encounter between Orson Welles and one of Irwin’s siblings took place in a Hollywood restaurant early in 1975. My father was in town to accept the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, a high honor in Hollywood but one that is usually given at the end of a distinguished director’s career. Not yet sixty, my father had reason to feel that many productive years still lay ahead of him, and that the award was being bestowed prematurely. As Irwin and I watched the ninety-minute award ceremony on network television, I was awash in my own feelings of irony. At one point, “the family” was asked to stand up and take a bow. I stared incredulously at a “family” of two people: Paola and Beatrice.
The very next day, Irwin’s sister Marlene called to tell me she had spotted my father in a restaurant where she was lunching with a friend. Being a Feder, she marched right up to him. “I have to introduce myself to you, Mr. Welles,” she began, “because my brother is married to your daughter.” Pause. “I understand you haven’t been in touch with Chris in quite a while, and I re
ally think you ought to be.” Another long pause during which I can imagine my father’s astonishment and discomfort as he surveyed the attractive blond bearing down on him. Clearly she was not going away until she got a satisfactory answer.
Finally he said, “I don’t think I have the right address for her.” In fact, he went on to explain, he had written me recently, but his letter had been returned.
(Yeah, sure, I thought when I heard this, but it turned out to be true. After my father’s death, the unopened letter was found in his papers and sent on to me. It had been addressed to Ms. Chris Welles, and the name on my mailbox for the past five years had been Chris Feder.)
“Oh,” cried Marlene, eager to help, “I have Chris’s address at home.” Elaborate arrangements were then made so that Marlene could call Orson’s agent and give him my address and telephone number. Now Marlene was calling to let me know what she had accomplished so that hearing from my father wouldn’t come as “a bolt out of the blue.” I promised her I would not hold my breath waiting for him to call.
The phone rang early the next morning. “This is your father speaking.” From the first sonorous syllable, I knew it could not be anyone else. We were polite and cautious, as we would be when talking to a stranger. I told him we had watched the Life Achievement Award ceremony on TV and how pleased I was that Hollywood had given him this honor, long overdue.
A moment of hilarity on the set of The Other Side of the Wind (from left to right: John Huston, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich).
“No, no,” he interrupted me, “the award came much too soon. It was like going to my own funeral while I’m still alive!” I said I understood how he felt, but now that Hollywood had officially recognized his extraordinary talent, I hoped the money would start pouring in so that he’d be able to finish The Other Side of the Wind. This feature, which he had begun soon after his return to the United States, starred John Huston, among others. “And The Deep. And Don Quixote,” he added with a rueful laugh. “You have no idea how many of my children are stillborn for lack of funds.”
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