by Simon Callow
The one departure from normal practice is to be found at the beginning of the play: OLIVIA’S APARTMENT: ‘This can be simply set on a shallow stage; perhaps a plain row of drapes.’ Then, rather sensationally, Feste is heard off, singing ‘Come away, come away death’ from Act II, scene 4. The curtain rises on him, followed by Orsino and the court. That’s quite a big directional decision, already. There’s no explanation of why he’s there, or where he goes. Perhaps Welles saw a production in which this happened and was impressed. This is almost the only instance of a reordering of the text in Everybody’s Shakespeare. There are, however, interesting and revealing additional comments. In the introduction to The Merchant of Venice, for example, he writes, in explanation of his interpretation of Shylock’s character: ‘personally my guess is that Shakespeare wrote the play for just what it is usually made – a story of craftiness outwitted and true love triumphant … it was an age of intense self-righteousness among the Christian nations. The American Indian could be tortured and enslaved with the blessing of God if he was first “converted” … to the average patron of the Globe it was essentially noble for a Christian to act with diabolical cruelty to a Jew … just a Boy Scout doing his good turn daily. But Shylock must be MERCIFUL. And a million high school students must learn the speech and recite it without laughing.’
There is a flicker here of the beginnings of Welles’s liberal political views. He has not yet politicised Julius Caesar, not specifically, anyway. ‘It was inevitable that Shakespeare would dramatise the assassination of “the foremost man of the world …”’ He adds in some extracts from Plutarch and in doing so becomes uncharacteristically schoolmasterly: ‘compare each incident in the two versions and gain a new appreciation of the Dramatist’s divine power with words.’ ‘WHAT’S IN A NAME?’ he asks. ‘Commentators say the play is misnamed. Brutus should be its title … I disagree … the personality of Caesar is the focal point of every line of the play.’ The stage directions tell us that ‘CAESAR is richly robed; a majestic figure, kingly and dignified. His handsome, almost feminine face is oldish and cut with wrinkles, but the eyes are clear and steady and the mouth is firm. CASSIUS a thin, keen-eyed, active man. MARCUS BRUTUS is a fine patrician type, his face sensitive and intellectual.’ All of this is of interest in view of his subsequent, sensationally successful production of the play. Despite a change of period, his essential view doesn’t seem to have altered.
The illustrations to Caesar are of exceptional quality. The looseness of the togas makes for sketches of great fluidity, especially in group scenes, which are often brilliantly composed. The setting for ‘Friends, Romans and Countrymen’ is an especially striking composition, with a huge shadow of Antony on the wall behind him – a configuration that seems to look forward, not to his famous stage Caesar but rather, if anything, to Citizen Kane. Surprisingly, Welles suggests ending the play with Antony’s ‘Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt’, to avoid all those awkward battle scenes, an extraordinarily radical proposal which gives a glimpse of the editorial ruthlessness he was later to employ to such effect. Somewhat whimsically at the end of the edition proper, he quotes a favourite poem: Eugene Field’s ‘With Brutus in St Jo’:
Oh happy times when sounded in the public’s rapturous ears
The clink of pasteboard armour and the clash of wooden spears!
O happy times for Jack and me and that one other supe
That then and there did constitute the noblest Roman’s troop!
– an instance of his fondness for old theatrical lore, in which he was steeped. His informed affection for it never left him, a nostalgia for what he’d never known, an entirely mythical golden age of actor-laddies: outrageous hamming, occasional flights of glorious inspiration, camaraderie, competition, upstaging and all-round outlandishness. They were actors then! is a theme which recurs throughout his life, the theatrical equivalent of the Merrie Englands with which he associated Grand Detour and other haunts of his youth.
Everybody’s Shakespeare was well reviewed. Chicago’s Krock and Brentano store filled its Wabash Avenue window with a special display, including originals of Welles’s drawings. This brought publishers with offers; Hill and Welles chose Harpers ‘for its prestige and also its willingness to let our school shop continue the manufacture. It was a foolish choice.’ Fortunately Harpers sold their school business to McGraw-Hill, who kept selling the texts, in various guises, till the mid-seventies. ‘No other school texts have ever approached that record of longevity,’ wrote Hill with justifiable pride. The credit for their excellence belongs equally to him and to Welles, a lasting monument to their extraordinary relationship. It was Roger’s inspiration, and its spirit is that of the Todd school’s revolutionary attitude to learning. But Welles’s sense of theatre, the wit and point of his drawings and the articulate enthusiasm of his approach make Everybody’s Shakespeare one of the outstanding achievements of his entire output.
It was pioneering work, and must have turned on generations of schoolchildren to Shakespeare as he really is, making the plays seem fun without undermining them in any way. This, more than many more celebrated aspects of his output, arriving modestly in the world, stayed the course quietly and unassumingly. The ‘tributes’ quoted in an early reissue, though quite possibly fabricated by McGraw-Hill’s publicity department, are not misleading: ‘That our boys are actually buying copies for themselves is evidence of its appeal … I believe these texts will revolutionise the teaching of Shakespeare … I find my students reading them for fun and that is indeed an achievement.’ If they have finally been superseded, in presentation and in theatrical reference, their spirit remains infectiously attractive.
It was not, however, going to pay the rent. Although he wasn’t out of pocket as a result of the Woodstock Season, he had no capital of his own. Dadda was no doubt as reluctant as ever to hand over Welles’s patrimony to him, and he now had a girlfriend to entertain. So when Guthrie McClintic approached him to rejoin the company for a New York run of Romeo and Juliet, he must have been privately grateful. Gratitude may quickly have turned to rage when he realised that he was not being asked to repeat his Mercutio, but to move sideways – downwards, in fact – to the role of Tybalt. McClintic later offered differing reasons for this demotion, and they are both quite credible: that he wanted Brian Aherne to play Robert Browning (as he had done some years before) in the planned revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Aherne’s terms for doing so were to be allowed to play Mercutio; and that ‘Orson’s extreme and obvious youth in such an important part might make certain other members of the company appear older than they should’,38 which is perfectly feasible (the representations may have come from Rathbone – who had just returned from Hollywood where he played Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield, as uncommon a double with Romeo as can be imagined). It must have been humiliating for Welles, a blow to his self-esteem, particularly after the summer’s triumphs, but he had little choice. He needed the money, and he wanted a New York opening; so – despite his lack of enthusiasm for McClintic’s approach to Shakespeare – he accepted the part.
In fact, in the interim, McClintic’s approach had completely changed to something much closer to that of Everybody’s Shakespeare. In his book Me and Kit, he describes in compelling detail and with great frankness the evolution that he and the production underwent. Disappointed with what he had done the first time round, but unable really to put his finger on what was wrong, he overheard one old lady say to another, on seeing the Capulets’ tomb: ‘I knew it! When the curtain went up on this show I knew it would have a bad end.’ This crystallised for him what was wrong with his approach: he was presenting the play as a solemn drama whose outcome was never in any doubt, instead of telling the story the way Shakespeare had written it, in all its breathless variety. His first move, having already scrapped Woodman Thompson’s lumbering design, was to commission Jo Mielziner, with whom he had just worked on Yellow Jack, to provide new ones: ‘I told him of my n
ewly conceived decor: light, gay; hot sun, hot passions; young, swift.’39 Mielziner, taking his inspiration from Giotto’s paintings ‘with their high colour and total lack of sophistication in their story-telling … beautifully organised within the master’s great sense of design – design not for decoration but in order to give expression to the story he was imparting’40 produced a decor that was absolutely fluid and at the same time shockingly real – ‘ending with a marvellous dark Capulet tomb … Paris actually needed a torch – one couldn’t tell which tomb was Juliet’s …’41 The new costumes, in which they rehearsed to learn how to move in this new world, were equally dazzling to behold and full of individual character – except, it appears, for Katharine Cornell’s. ‘She seemed a person apart – more a star than one of the girls.’ Exactly the effect that most leading ladies of the period – or perhaps any period – would have actively sought. Dyspeptic with frustration, as was his way, McClintic approached one of the girls in the ensemble, told her to ‘go into Kit’s dressing room and divest herself of her charming frock and then told Kit to put it on. It was perfect.’ Cornell’s two rejected dresses had cost between them $1,000; the one she wore, $85.
The changes required an outlay of $43,000. But the new scenery and costumes, though the most expensive elements in McClintic’s new approach, were by no means the most radical. He decided to play a virtually full text, something almost unheard of on either side of the Atlantic. His delight in the play he thus rediscovered is still touching, sixty years later: ‘how fine the play was when left intact and played with speed, energy, humour and honesty! What a good play it turned out to be when it wasn’t amputated … the events of the entire play take place in just 72 hours! Here was a drama of hot blood, high passion and exhilaration! Tragedy springing from recklessness – from youth’s fervour – its refusal to turn back – to pause and reflect; had either one of the lovers stopped to think, there would have been no tragedy. This was no museum piece to be steeped in tradition. Its two-hours’ traffic must be breathless with headlong action, not an actor’s holiday – a play to be played as written.’42 Among the traditional cuts which he restored were ‘Gallop apace you fiery footed steeds’ (not played since Adelaide Neilson in the 1870s); all the vignettes of the preparation for Juliet’s wedding to Paris; the scene in which the Nurse discovers Juliet’s body; the one just before the finale in which Friar Laurence learns that his letter to Romeo was undelivered.
McClintic was not a particularly sophisticated man, nor a particularly clever one, but he knew when a thing was wrong. He had applied himself diligently and dutifully to the task of tackling the great cultural monument, studying the variora, and all the promptbooks of previous productions he could get hold of: ‘all during the rehearsals of Romeo the menacing cloud of Shakespeare’s commentators hung over me – the dictatorship of tradition had imposed on me a boundary which I felt it treason to cross.’43 It didn’t work. Instead of abandoning the whole thing, and endlessly reviving the shows which did work, he determined to get it right. The revelation, when it came, was blindingly, banally, simple: trust the writer. He discovered, as so often, that cutting, whether it be literary, dramatic or cinematic, is often a counter-productive exercise; that a restored work of art, though longer by the clock, often, if the original is sound, feels shorter. And this principle of trusting the writer extended to the actors, as well. McClintic’s work always began and ended with them.
‘The actors must be made to forget that they are playing Shakespeare. That look that comes on the average actor’s face – what happens to his body – when he starts reading Shakespeare is something that has to be seen to be believed.’44 A great deal of what he now believed about Shakespeare was identical to what Welles the editor had recently proclaimed, and what Welles the director would shortly practise: ‘Overlapping scenes – pace – kill applause,’ McClintic wrote, telegraphic with excitement. ‘No stilted pauses to let an audience be depressed by the fact that they are witnessing a Shakespeare production; warmth, gaiety – JULIET IS THE SUN! – and there must be no waits between scenes. I was staging an exciting new play by a man named William Shakespeare.’ Unfortunately their philosophical agreement was not matched by an improvement in their working relationship. All was not well in rehearsals: McClintic may have regretted ever offering the part to him. There was an explosion caused by Welles’s belief that he was trying to teach him how to play Tybalt; McClintic was growingly convinced of his new approach, which clashed with Welles’s deep-seated certainty that he, Welles, knew more about Shakespeare than anyone living. He matched McClintic temperament for temperament: a dangerous thing to do.
McClintic was not the only one to find him difficult. Brian Aherne, the new Mercutio, wrote: ‘Orson seemed friendly and good-natured about losing Mercutio, but secretly, I am sure, the actor in him could never forgive me. In the famous duel scene I often had the impression that he slashed at me with unnecessary venom and twice he broke my property sword off at the hilt.’45 A stage manager who had the temerity to chastise Welles for being late (an ingrained personality defect of his) had a teacup thrown at him. Somehow or another, no doubt by means of extravagant acts of contrition, he managed to remain in the company, and in due course, set out with them on the brief pre-Broadway tour.
The New York Times despatched a reporter to put a foot in the water. The result was positive, despite the curious wording: ‘Audience warm in its commendation of the most pretentious Shakespeare representation here since Belasco’s Merchant of Venice’.46 It was equally successful in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Toronto, before finally opening triumphantly in New York. Every aspect of the production was praised in terms which McClintic must have relished: ‘It was a performance at once resonant and vibrant; neither “modern” nor archaic; but infinitely human; a performance which glorified neither the star, the actors, nor the director, but all three together, and therefore the play.’47 That was his purpose, in a nutshell. ‘Guthrie McClintic has somehow managed to persuade all the members of the cast that the word Shakespeare is one which need not freeze the lips.’48 Edith Evans, who had just played the Nurse successfully in London for the first time, was universally lauded, her performance simply described by Brooks Atkinson as ‘a masterpiece’. (New York only saw her for a week before she returned to England, her husband having suddenly died.) Rathbone was reasonably well reviewed, as was Brian Aherne.
It was, above all, a great triumph for Katharine Cornell, one for which she had worked with unrelenting application. ‘Miss Cornell has kept faith with her audiences by giving Romeo and Juliet a thoroughly gifted performance. She has kept faith with herself by acting Juliet with the humility of an artist who respects her material. Fortunately she is a great actress, and that is why her Juliet is a deeply moving realisation of fate.’49 Moving as is McClintic’s refusal to be beaten by the challenge – not to take any short-cuts to success – Cornell’s painstaking realisation of each moment for the role, her slow development of complete belief in herself as Juliet is a model of artistic dedication. Her biographer, Tad Mosel, reports her standing in the wings for ten minutes before her entrance clenching and unclenching her fists, her arms in the air, to give her hands ‘the smooth, veinless look of a young girl’s’.50 Invisible from anywhere further than the third row of the stalls, a glimpse of veins would have interfered with her belief in herself.
As for Welles: he didn’t do badly at all. Atkinson in The New York Times noted his Tybalt, (along with Moroni Olsen’s Capulet and others) as ‘instances of minor parts played with something more than minor authority’.51 The New York American more enthusiastically described his Tybalt as ‘a performance to watch and applaud: there was never a Tybalt so feline and subtly hateful’.52 There was no avoiding it, however, he was playing a supporting role, not merely in Romeo and Juliet, but in what was the greatest drama of McClintic’s and Cornell’s careers. It was an intersection of two radically different approaches to life and art. There was hardly a point of meeting. For the McC
lintics, this had been a crusade, for Welles simply a stepping-stone, a stage in his career. For the McClintics, this First Night was a mythic moment, for Welles a bit of a humiliation. He can hardly have shared McClintic’s excitement, so vividly conveyed in Me and Kit, though he was physically part of it: ‘Before our beautiful green sage curtains with the crest of the Capulets embroidered on one side and the Montagues on the other, Orson, resplendent, shielding his face with a gold Benda mask, came through and in his magnificent voice began the Prologue: “Two households both alike in dignity …” When he finished, his spot went out and there was the first scene exactly as I had wanted it to be.’53 One senses Welles’s separateness from the rest of the company. McClintic even had to insist that he took the curtain call. There is something sad about this, because it was obviously a great event for the audience and for the actors. He had not really been part of it. It was, none the less, a turning point in his life, though he could scarcely know it, on that December night, in 1934, at the Martin Beck Theatre as he stood scowling in the line of actors while the audience roared its approval and the curtain went up and down, again and again.
Part Two
WHITE HOPE
CHAPTER EIGHT
Houseman/Panic
THE INSTRUMENT of Welles’s destiny that night was a stocky, balding thirty-three-year-old Jewish-Alsatian Anglo-Rumanian, born Jacques Haussmann and renamed John Houseman, which perfectly suited his accent and bearing, those of an English gentleman. His view of what he had just seen on stage was rather different from that of his cheering fellow spectators: ‘that glossy and successful evening,’1 as he referred to it in his memoirs, written some thirty years later, ‘with Brian Aherne’s Mercutio exuberantly slapping his thighs as he strutted through Jo Mielziner’s bright Italianate scenery … Basil Rathbone’s polite, middle-aged Romeo.’ His nodding attention was galvanised when ‘the furious Tybalt appeared suddenly in that sunlit Verona square: death, in scarlet and black, in the form of a monstrous boy – flat-footed and graceless, yet swift and agile; soft as a jelly one moment and uncoiled, the next, in a spring of such furious energy that, once released, it could be checked by no human intervention. What made this figure so obscene and terrible was the pale, shiny child’s face under the unnatural growth of dark beard, from which there issued a voice of such clarity and power that it tore like a high wind through the genteel, modulated voices of the well-trained professionals around him. “Peace! I hate the word as I hate Hell!” cried the sick boy, as he shuffled along, driven by some irresistible interior violence to kill and soon, inevitably, himself to die.’