HJ: Poor Marlon.
OW: Anybody who was trapped in that movie would have been at a loss. Yet, he got an Academy Award for it. That shows you where we were then. The picture was, on every level, an abomination. It looked like a musical that didn’t have any numbers in it. The Orient is the graveyard of American directors. The only really bad [Frank] Capra picture I’ve ever seen is this Shangri-La. It’s terrible—terrible. Absurd! I screamed with laughter! Shangri-La, where they were kept, was this sort of Oriental country club. Still, I was a great Capra fan.
HJ: It’s a Wonderful Life. You want to hate it, but—
OW: Well, yes—hokey. It is sheer Norman Rockwell, from the beginning to the end. But you cannot resist it! There’s no way of hating that movie.
7. “The Blue Angel is a big piece of shlock.”
In which Orson mocks the excesses of auteurism, and Peter Bogdanovich in particular for falling at the feet of studio directors such as Howard Hawks. He recounts his adventures with the kings and queens of the Bs, who churned out bottom-of-the bill fillers.
* * *
ORSON WELLES: I’m going on ABC-TV this afternoon. Just before the Oscars. That’s why I’m made up. Myself and Peter Bogdanovich. And Hal Roach. I suggested Hal Roach. Because I saw him on TV the other night. He’s eighty-six, but he still makes great sense! He’s cute as hell. They wanted Capra, and I said, “Capra may be the best living director, but he’s the worst living guest. He’ll talk about how beautiful America is, and so on. Forget him—get Hal Roach!” They’d already gotten Bogdanovich, and they were angling for Francis Ford [Coppola]. I said, “You have too many people—I don’t really want to go. You won’t have any time for any of us to say anything. All you’ll get is Bogdanovich.”
HENRY JAGLOM: So Bogdanovich is gonna be on this show today.
OW: He’s good on TV.
HJ: Yeah, but he antagonizes a lot of people. Cynical.
OW: That makes me look better. Always nice to have a heavy man.
HJ: When I first met Bogdanovich—
OW: You thought he was nuts.
HJ: He was always finding great virtues in all of those studio directors.
OW: Unwatchable.
HJ: What’s the name of that stupid director?
OW: Sam Fuller. Peter gets furious with me for not expressing enthusiasm for Fuller. Fritz Lang, you know? He thinks is great. Lang, whose mother was Jewish, told me that Goebbels, who was trying to get him to head up the Nazi movie industry, offered to make him an honorary Aryan, of which there were only a handful. Lang said, “But I’m Jewish,” and Goebbels replied, “I decide who is Jewish!” That was when Lang knew it was time to leave Germany.
What were we talking about? Peter also thinks von Sternberg is great. Von Sternberg never made a good picture.
HJ: What about The Blue Angel?
OW: It’s a big piece of shlock. Painted on velvet. Like you buy in Honolulu. Peter stopped talking to me for several days when I said von Sternberg was no good. Then Hawks, Howard Hawks. The so-called greatest ever. Hawks is number one, and all the rest ate the scraps from his table.
HJ: Yeah. Yeah, Bringing Up Baby.
OW: Yes, the greatest picture ever made. I recently saw what I’ve always been told was Jack [Ford’s] greatest movie, and it’s terrible. The Searchers. He made many very bad pictures.
HJ: You’re talking about The Horse Soldiers and stupid Sergeant Rutledge.
OW: I was in Peter’s house one night, and he ran some John Ford picture. During the first reel I said, “Isn’t it funny how incapable even Ford—and all American directors are—of making women look in period? You can always tell which decade a costume picture was made in—the twenties, the thirties, the forties, or the fifties—even if it’s supposed to be in the seventeenth century.” I said, “Look at those two girls who are supposed to be out in the covered wagon.” Their hairdos and their costumes are really what the actresses in the fifties thought was good taste. Otherwise, they’re gonna say, “I can’t come out in this.” Peter flew into a rage, turned off the projector, and wouldn’t let us see the rest of the movie because I didn’t have enough respect for Ford. But Jack made some of the best ever.
HJ: When I first met Bogdanovich, I was very snide about John Ford movies. I made fun of them. When I grew up, I realized that they were perfectly good. Say hello to Peter if you see him. Is that book on Dorothy Stratten ever gonna come out?
OW: I have a terrible fear that it’ll be a runaway best seller. Really, I have a dread! He’ll behave so badly. He’ll become such a pompous ass again. Right after The Last Picture Show he came out to Arizona to play his part in The Other Side of the Wind—and sat for five hours at the table talking to me, with his back turned to [my cinematographer] Gary Graver, whom he knew very well. He never said hello or goodbye to him. You want to know about your friend Peter?”
HJ: He was your friend, too.
OW: You know when vaudeville died, and all the great vaudeville performers—the comics, the singers—were thrown out of work. They couldn’t make the move to radio or film. They used to huddle around these barrels in Times Square, where they made fires, and ate roasted potatoes off sticks. Then television arrived, and the TV producers came looking for these guys to use them in their variety shows. One of them was the biggest star of vaudeville. While he was on top, he treated everybody like shit. So when the bad times came, they wouldn’t share their fires with him, or their food. But gradually they started to feel sorry for him. Years passed. They all forgave him. Now, the Ed Sullivan Show is going to do the best of vaudeville, at the Palace Theater. This guy gets a plum part. He tells all his friends, who didn’t get chosen, “Guys, I just got lucky. I’ll never forget you. You can’t imagine what you mean to me; you’ve saved my life; here are some tickets, front row; come backstage afterwards; we’ll go out for drinks, celebrate. I’ve learned my lesson.” The show goes on, this guy is sensational, he’s going to be a big TV star now. All his friends come backstage, knock on the door. He comes out in a velvet robe, says, “Fellas, I’ve got that old shitty feeling coming over me again.” And he slams the door in their faces. That’s Peter.
HJ: Nonetheless, say hello for me.
OW: Yeah—if I get a chance to say anything.
HJ: You’ll have a few moments before, in the dressing room.
OW: Oh, but by then he’ll be telling me about himself, you know. He knows that I’ll listen to it all.
HJ: By the way, before I forget, I got your contract for Two of a Kind. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are set, along with your favorite, Oliver Reed, playing the devil. They want you for the voice of God, for two consecutive days. I love playing your agent. They said to me originally, “What kind of price do you think would be right?” I said, “If he does it at all, it’s because he’s interested in the work. The money is not what he would do it for. But, of course, you can’t make it an insulting offer.” And they said, “Well, we were thinking ten, fifteen…” I said, “Really. For the voice of God? Maybe you should get somebody else. I don’t even want to submit that to him. I don’t think it’s fair. Why don’t you round it out at $25,000.” And they did. Now I have this agent’s fantasy, which is: Could I have gone to thirty-five?
OW: Well, I once had a radio director get mad at me. Sent me a wire saying, “When I want God, I’ll call heaven!”
HJ: What is it with Oliver Reed, that you like him so much? Weren’t you stuck in Greece with him on some B movies?
OW: A movie, for which the money never arrived. It was a Harry Alan Towers production. 1974. Harry Alan Towers is a famous crook.
HJ: He’s the guy who was charged with running a vice ring out of a New York hotel in the sixties, and also of being a Soviet agent!
OW: I worked for him for years. He always took the money and ran. He once fled Tehran, leaving a mountain of unpaid bills. When we made Ten Little Indians, Towers stuck Oliver Reed with the hotel bill. Oliver went down to the nightclub at the Hilton, which
was in the basement, and broke it up. All the mirrors, chandeliers; wrecked the whole place. Destroyed the whole nightclub. Everyone was in such awe of the violence that they all just stood back in horror, including the police. And he just walked out—and went to the airport. Nobody ever laid a hand on him! I admire him greatly!
Then there were the Salkinds, who produced The Trial, that I directed. I ended up paying the actors out of my own pocket to stop them from walking off the set all the time. About seventy thousand bucks.
HJ: The Salkinds? I assume this was way before they made Superman?
OW: Yeah. Oh, they were broke, they had nothing. To this day, I can never go to the Meurice, in Paris. I can’t go to Zagreb because the Salkinds never paid my hotel bill for The Trial. I was in Belgrade, making a terrible version of Marco the Magnificent with Tony Webb—a whole lot of tatterdemalion actors of that sort. There was a big snowstorm. And word came that the manager of the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb was on his way to Belgrade to get me for my hotel bill on The Trial. But he was stuck in the snow. And I managed to finish the picture and fly out before he arrived!
HJ: You’d think, after Superman, they could retroactively take care of these things.
OW: Not for a minute. Not for a minute. And when they did those all-star Three Musketeers, I was the only star from The Trial not in those. They could’ve given me a job, at least, for all the money I’d put into The Trial.
This kind of thing happened to me all the time. My Spanish producer never paid my hotel bill for the three months that he kept me waiting in Madrid for the money for The Other Side of the Wind. So I’m scared to death to be in Madrid. I know they’re going to come after me with that bill.
HJ: Why do they go after actors? You’d think it would be good for business to have them stay at their hotels.
OW: Actually, actors are rather well thought of in Spain. Particularly in the theater. Although, how theater actors manage to get along in Spain I don’t know, because they do two shows a night. Same thing in a lot of Latin American countries, still—two shows a night. I had a friend who was the last really great illusionist, whose stage name was Fu Manchu. His real name was Bamberg, and he came from seven generations of great magicians. Born in Brooklyn, played a Chinese magician, with a Chinese accent in Spanish, you know? He had to finish a movie he was making. And he said, “I’ve got this show. And if I close it, I’ll never get it open again with any business. Will you do it? What’ll you take?” And I said, “I’ll do it for free.” So for a week I did his show, while he finished his movie, but there were two performances a night. And at the end of that week, I didn’t know how I—or he—lived through it. He died at seventy-five last year. His father, who worked silently, was a famous magician called Okito, and played as a Japanese.
HJ: All these Jews from Brooklyn playing Japanese and Chinese!
OW: Dutchmen—Dutch Jews. The father was born in Holland, and a great variety-hall star. And he had the most ter—
HJ: (Calls out) Excuse me! Waiter! Can I talk to you?
WAITER: Talk to me, monsieur.
HJ: Uh, you gave me cold chicken. And I wanted warm chicken salad, like it’s advertised—and it’s cold chicken. The plate is very good and hot—the plate is excellent. If I were eating the plate, I would have been happy. But the chicken—
OW: Terrible thing happened to him. Whenever I have any trouble professionally, I remember Okito, ’cause I know that I will never be in the trouble he was in. He and his father and his grandfather had all been magicians to the court of Holland. And he was playing a show for the King and Queen of Holland, as well as the visiting King and Queen of Denmark. And his opening trick was producing a large bowl of water from a cloth—no, a large duck from a cloth. To complicate the story, even though he worked under the name of Okito, he wore Chinese clothes.
And he had that Chinese robe that’s open here, and the duck was between his legs, in a sack. And on this occasion, the duck got its head out of the sack and grabbed him by his jewels. A death grip. Just as he made his entrance. Now that is what I call being in trouble. He said, “I did a lot of jumping around. I acted like a sort of crazy Chinaman.”
(To waiter) He’s looking for capers in his chicken salad.
HJ: To make sure that they gave me the right—
OW: He looks like a customs inspector. Is there a caper in it?
HJ: It’s the exact same as when they had the capers in and took them out. After all this discussion, there is the same taste of caper. Here are capers. They lied to me.
OW: Don’t get tiresome about the chicken salad.
HJ: Why am I being tiresome, Orson? I want to get it the way it always is, without the capers. The waiter doesn’t understand.
OW: This is the way this chef makes it now.
HJ: They keep writing in the papers that, ever since Wolfgang left, this place has gone downhill. And his restaurant, in turn, has become the number-one one. He’s begging me to get you to come to it.
OW: I’ll never go.
HJ: Why?
OW: I don’t like Wolfgang. He’s a little shit. I think he’s a terrible little man.
HJ: Why?
OW: I don’t know. God made him that way. What do you mean, “Why”?
HJ: Well, I mean, what makes him terrible?
OW: I don’t need to explain that. It’s a free country. Anybody who sits down at my table without being invited is a shit.
HJ: Wolf did that?
OW: Yes.
HJ: You wouldn’t want to call him just “informal,” rather than “a shit”?
OW: What?
HJ: You wouldn’t want to refer to that as informality, rather than being a shit?
OW: No. Shitty, shitty. A self-promoting little shit. And I’m very sorry he has all this success, because I’m very fond of Patrick. And I wouldn’t do that to him.
HJ: What is wrong with your moules?
OW: It’s not what I had yesterday.
HJ: You want to try to explain this to the waiter?
OW: No, no, no. One complaint per table is all, unless you want them to spit in the food. Let me tell you a story about George Jean Nathan, America’s great drama critic. George Jean Nathan was the tightest man who ever lived, even tighter than Charles Chaplin. And he lived for forty years in the Hotel Royalton, which is across from the Algonquin. He fancied himself a great bon vivant—ladies’ man and everything. I heard him say to a girl—as he was dancing by me in the old Cub Room at the Stork Club a thousand years ago—after she laughed at something he said, “I can be just as funny in German and French.” And away he went, you know? He never tipped anybody in the Royalton, not even when they brought the breakfast, and not at Christmastime. After about ten years of never getting tipped, the room-service waiter peed slightly in his tea. Everybody in New York knew it but him. The waiters hurried across the street and told the waiters at Algonquin, who were waiting to see when it would finally dawn on him what he was drinking! And as the years went by, there got to be more and more urine and less and less tea. And it was a great pleasure for us in the theater to look at a leading critic and know that he was full of piss. And I, with my own ears, heard him at the 21 complaining to a waiter, saying, “Why can’t I get tea here as good as it is at The Royalton?” That’s when I fell on the floor, you know.
It’d be a wonderful thing to tell somebody you hated, when it isn’t true. To say, “Don’t you know that the waiters are doing that to your tea?” Then you don’t have to even do it! You could drive a man mad! A real Iago thing to do. Better than the handkerchief, you know. I’ve remembered it, probably, because he was no admirer of mine. He was very anxious for you to know that he’d seen everything ever done in Europe. So whatever I did was done better in Prague in 1929. Those kinds of notices. It probably was better, but he was showing off, too.
8. “Kane is a comedy.”
In which Orson speculates on why Jean-Paul Sartre disliked Kane and snubbed him, remarks on the great number of novelists w
ho wrote film reviews, and recalls that he got his best notice from John O’Hara.
* * *
HENRY JAGLOM: I just saw a Renoir film I had never seen. I don’t understand why there is such unevenness to the work of—
ORSON WELLES: He actually made bad movies.
HJ: It was a sweet little film, but terribly acted, called The River.
OW: Very bad picture. It’s considered one of the great monuments of film. Greatly overpraised. When he isn’t on pitch, Renoir comes off as an amateur. It’s always mystified me. I have nothing to explain it. I don’t talk about it, because it just irritates people.
HJ: What do you feel about Grand Illusion?
OW: Probably one of the three or four best ever. I burst into tears at Grand Illusion every time. When they stand up and sing “The Marseillaise.” And [Pierre] Fresnay is so wonderful—all the performances are divine.
HJ: What about Rules of the Game?
OW: I love it, too—but, to me, it’s a lesser work, by just a tiny bit. I think Rules of the Game is a better picture. It’s like listening to Mozart. Nothing can be better than that. But I don’t like the love story. And Grand Illusion just simply grabs me.
HJ: Did the French know about Kane?
OW: I thought it had been a big success in Paris. When I arrived there, I found that it had not been. They didn’t know who I was. They didn’t know about the Mercury Theatre, my troupe, which I thought they would, because I knew about their theater. And I was snubbed terribly by them. Kane only got to be a famous picture later. And then a lot of people really hated it. Americans got it, but not Europe. The first thing they heard about it was the violent attack by Jean-Paul Sartre. Wrote a long piece, forty thousand words on it or something.
HJ: Well, maybe it politically offended him in some way.
OW: No. I think it was because, basically, Kane is a comedy.
My Lunches with Orson Page 9