by Simon Callow
As far as the acting in Horse Eats Hat goes, it was, for the most part, indistinguishable from the general mayhem. The one actor to emerge from it with real credit was Joseph Cotten ‘who will no doubt be sought after by commercial producers’, as The New York Times correctly predicted. Welles had conceived an enormous affection for Cotten, something very like love. He was everything that Welles would have liked to have been: soigné, good-looking, graceful, balanced – normal. Though he was not deluded about Cotten’s range or power, there was a truth at the centre of his temperament and his work that Welles deeply admired. In their personal relationship, from that first radio encounter with the barrels and barrels of pith, laughter had been the bond. But when the laughter stopped, Cotten could find himself being lectured by the younger man, suddenly magisterial, on what was wrong with his life: ‘I’m afraid you’ll never make it as an actor. But as a star, I think you might well hit the jackpot.’20 There was laughter in this, too, of course, but a shrewdness and determination that left the older man feeling naive. In Horse Eats Hat, Welles gave him his first break; he continued to nurture his career until Cotten no longer needed him. It is one of the few relationships of Welles’s life in which he was the servant and not the master; and in Horse Eats Hat, he served Cotten very well.
As for his own performance: ‘Mr Welles plays the bride’s angry father with false nose, false stomach, false voice and false hair, until very little of Mr Welles seems left,’ the Times said, with some bewilderment. It was generally considered to be something of an aberration. It is worth a little consideration, however, this minor performance in his output as an actor, since it is in a recognisable line of characters created by him; and when an actor finds a type of character with which he feels comfortable, it is always revealing. Richard France (whose study of Welles’s theatre is indispensable, detailed and shrewd) suggests that Welles based his performance of Mortimer J. Mugglethorpe, ‘a fiercely independent businessman’, on his father. This hardly describes the real Dick Welles who retired at forty-three after an increasingly desultory career in order to concentrate on whoring and boozing, but it well enough describes the romanticised Richard Welles that Welles had posthumously invented. ‘A prototypical American businessman of a kind that is going out of existence,’21 Welles said to Martin Gabel of Mugglethorpe. Just as well, perhaps; as written by Denby and Welles, he is a sentimental hick. A photograph of Orson in character suggests someone of baroque and decrepit appearance – a forerunner of his Ben Franklin make-up from Si Versailles M’Etait Conté, fifteen years later. As the piece in The New York Times had said, the old gaffer was a favourite character of his, one with which he felt very much at home; it is interesting that this recurring character should be identified with his father. In reality, Dick Welles was slim and dashing; even at the end (when he was, after all, only fifty-eight) he remained debonair through his dissipation. The problem was his ungraspability, his ultimate elusiveness. No, this other father, substantial, rather ponderous, but definitely there, was a projection of something else, a desire for solidity and groundedness that eluded Welles quite as much as it eluded his father. It is interesting to note that frequently actors most successfully project the thing they least are but would most like to be – to the confusion both of their loved ones and themselves.
As far as Welles personally was concerned, he was far more prominently featured in the reviews for Horse Eats Hat than in those for Macbeth. Mostly this attention was in order to disparage the present effort: ‘His versatility and enthusiasm make him a person worthy of consideration and respect. It comes as a sort of anticlimax, therefore …’22 and he could have written the rest himself. ‘It is a government-subsidised release of all Mr Welles’s inhibitions23 … Mr Welles, the triple threat of the evening24 … Mr Welles (wonder-product No. 1 of Project 891)25 … Mr Welles, an unusually gifted young man of the theatre of several nations.’26 He was news now, whatever he did. They hadn’t quite decided whether he was a good thing or a bad thing, but he was definitely a thing to be reckoned with. He had arrived, but as a phenomenon, not as an artist. No one doubted his intelligence, his talent, his personality: the question was: what would he do with all these things?
Horse Eats Hat did not hold Welles’s attention as an actor for long, nor did it have to. He intended to play the part for no more than the first week of the run. Not sufficiently stretched by the manic rehearsal schedule of Horse Eats Hat, plus his never-ending round of radio quickies, even before the opening of the Labiche, Welles had started rehearsing in another play: Ten Million Ghosts, by thirty-year-old whizz-kid Sidney Kingsley, prestigious author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Men in White for the Group Theatre, and Dead End, an enormous hit, for which Norman Bel Geddes had created one of Broadway’s most famous designs, a slice of street life whose verisimilitude caused gasps. The new play, based on documentary material, was an attack on the munitions industry; Welles was to play the hero, a radical poet who reveals that the German and French munitions manufacturers were in collusion during the First World War, conspiring together to prevent bombing of their plant, thus prolonging the war. The play ran for no more than two weeks; had it run for longer, presumably Welles would have continued to direct for Project 891 but not to act.
Curiously, the moment he and Houseman had established the Classical Unit, they both looked for work elsewhere: Welles to act, Houseman to direct. In Houseman’s case this may have had something to do with money (he was still on $2.86 per week) but this was hardly the case with Welles, whose earnings were rising astronomically as more and more radio programmes sought his services. In fact, in both cases their sudden absenteeism had deeper motives. For Welles, the part of André Pecquot, poet and aviator in Ten Million Ghosts, was the sort of role a young leading actor should be playing: romantically doomed and passionate. His attitude to acting was always equivocal. He rarely admitted to enjoying it, and, as Virgil Thomson indicated, his mind was not often in it. ‘Welles, as an actor, for all his fine bass speaking voice, never did quite get into a role; his mind was elsewhere. He discovered many an actor’s talent; his own he seemed to throw away.’27 None the less, he felt that he needed to prove himself – especially in the great roles, but also, particularly in the earlier part of his career, as a young star. ‘I was obsessed in my hot youth,’ he told Leslie Megahey on BBC television, ‘with the idea that I would not be a star.’ And elsewhere, he told Peter Bogdanovich – modestly refusing to compare himself with John Barrymore – that ‘what I do have in common with Jack is a lack of vocation. He himself played the part of an actor because that was the role he’d been given by life. He didn’t love acting. Neither do I. We both loved the theatre, though. I know I hold it, as he did, in awe and respect. A vocation has to do with the simple pleasure you have in doing your job.’28
A further reason for accepting the part was that it was a major production on Broadway of an eagerly awaited new play. So far, Welles’s triumphs had been decidedly off-Broadway. Neither of these motives seems to have been sufficient to animate him towards the venture. As often in the future, he was present in the flesh, but absent in spirit. Charles Bowden, the stage manager, observed that ‘the moment rehearsals were over, Orson would disappear. Sidney Kingsley started ranting and raving. “Where the hell is Orson?” We discovered he was running two blocks down to rehearse Horse Eats Hat, shouting as he went “Got to get rid of this Broadway crud, get down to 891.”’29 Once Horse Eats Hat had opened, Orson handed over his role in it to his chum, Egerton Paul, who had up till then been playing Augustus, and operating the nickelodeon. Paul was a tiny, dapper man, which may have resulted in a shift of emphasis in the play. Whether anyone would have noticed as the scenery crashed around the characters’ ears, is, of course, another question. Down at the St James’s Theatre, where rehearsals for Ten Million Ghosts had now transferred, Sidney Kingsley had installed a cot with pillows in the stalls, in order to snatch a nap during the immensely elaborate and much extended technical rehearsals. Not to be o
utdone, Welles brought one along, too. ‘We had to climb over these two cots,’ reports Charles Bowden.
The opening night was shifted several times giving rise to rumours that the government was going to ban it. In fact the delays were due to the complexities of Donald Oenslager’s design: it was enormous, comprising ten realistically detailed sets, requiring two eighteen-foot revolves to operate; a cannon in Act Two; and elaborate effects like having a midget far upstage in one scene to suggest depth. In addition there were, according to Sam Leiter, a panoply of mixed-media techniques: ‘a flashing screen of headlines, bulletins, newspaper clippings, photographs, cemetery crosses, and so on’.30 No wonder Kingsley needed his cot. Welles was not at his most helpful during the technical rehearsals. There was, according to Chuck Bowden, a moment in the play when Welles’s character wanted to show a film. There were, as part of the setting, two large china blackamoors at either side of the screen. Welles refused to act with them; but Kingsley was adamant. Welles gave in surprisingly easily; at the dress rehearsal he simply smashed the figures in the dark during a black-out, sweetly enquiring, ‘How did that happen?’ They were never replaced.
Even the first night was dogged with disaster: the curtain stuck halfway up for the whole of the first scene; there were problems, as there always are, with the revolve. The reviews, though respectful, were poor. ‘Ten Million Ghosts is not the sort of play a man can politely ignore, nor rise up from in a composed state of mind,’31 said Brooks Atkinson in the Times. ‘Nor can he honestly ignore the fact that the characters are placard stencils and that the drama is a cumbersome snarl of story. On his biggest subject Mr Kingsley has written his least spontaneous play.’ Richard Watts in the Tribune, echoing Atkinson’s reservations, pointed an accusing finger in one direction: ‘Nor can I say that the acting of Orson Welles in the role of the disillusioned young lover is of help to the drama.’32 He does, at any rate, look unexpectedly handsome in the moustache that he affected for the role; it is unlikely that this afforded him much consolation.
One scene which struck reviewers as effective is commented on by Welles, quoted in Peter Noble’s book The Fabulous Orson Welles: ‘At the end of the second act, the munitions makers are in a private theatre, watching newsreels from the battlefields showing wholesale slaughter. As the newsreels show innocent young men being needlessly butchered, I, as the idealistic youngster, rose to my feet and protested against the whole bloody affair. The munitions makers also rose to their feet and, silhouetted against the scene of butchery, they retorted, “But this is our business!” Second act curtain.’ The suggestion is that this scene may have had some influence on the celebrated scene at the beginning of Citizen Kane when the reporters watch newsreels of Kane. ‘That is one of the biggest pieces of schweinerei I’ve ever heard in my life,’33 roared Welles when Peter Bogdanovich put the suggestion to him directly. ‘In Ten Million Ghosts there is a scene in which a home movie of war atrocities is run off in an apartment somewhere in Europe. I never saw the scene because I was in my dressing room during the six days that the play ran.’ Another Wellesian mystery. He adds, ‘I fell asleep onstage on the opening night, but that’s another story.’ Perhaps it was during the home movie scene – in which his character certainly does appear – that he fell asleep.
After the eleven performances of Ten Million Ghosts, Welles came back to the Maxine Elliott, unable to resist from time to time the temptation of taking back his old part of Mugglethorpe. Houseman had not yet returned from his leave of absence. While they had both been otherwise engaged, the Project had undergone a small, interestingly significant crisis: the wife of a certain Congressman Dirkett had come to a performance of Horse Eats Hat and been scandalised by its bawdiness; Congressman Dirkett immediately denounced it as ‘salacious tripe’, and put in a complaint to the WPA, which had duly sent a representative to investigate. This was one of the perils of working for a government agency. In the American theatre at large – the private sector – there was no censorship and there never had been. An attempt only a few months later to introduce it was repulsed by all sides of show business. Yet here were the investigators (admittedly somewhat apologetically) picking over the minutiae of Horse Eats Hat in a way that will bring nostalgic smiles to victims of the British Lord Chamberlain’s office, or indeed of the Hayes Office in America. MEMO: LESTER SCHARFF TO PHILLIP BARBER (Head of the New York division): OCT 26 1936: ‘1) Joseph (the servant) places his hand on Daisy’s (the maid) knee and lightly strokes her leg … this is somewhat unfortunate in occurring so soon after the rise of the curtain as it has a tendency to key the audience for this sort of thing. 2) ‘It’s nice to see a pretty little pussy’ … should be immediately deleted. 3) ‘It is alright; they’re cousins.’ This is obviously one of the lines which fall into the inoffensive category, but the audience undoubtedly read into it a double meaning. 5) Mugglethorpe … makes use of the expression ‘Creeping Jesus.’ This is unquestionably funny, but I am afraid we can anticipate difficulties and possibly hear from the more religious members of our audience. 13) ‘I don’t care what shape it’s in; it’s bound to fit.’ In this dialogue we have one of the most definite examples of double meaning and the audience again, of course, chooses to place a soiled construction on it … it is a pity,’ the commissioners conclude, clearly embarrassed by their task, ‘that plays of this kind should be subject to emasculation because the minority choose to consider them “dirty.” But since I know of no way of purifying the mass of auditors before they enter the auditorium, I am afraid it will have to be considered for deletion.’
The phrase ‘emasculation’ in this context may have afforded the acting directors of Project 891 a merry laugh. They replied with perfectly straight faces. TED THOMAS AND EDWIN DENBY MEMO TO PHILLIP BARBER: ‘1) Business considered objectionable has been deleted. 2) “It’s nice to see such a pretty pussy” becomes “lassie.” 7) Business referred to has been deleted. Queeper has definite instructions never to make any gesture below the waist line.’ They appended a note: ‘In the absence of Mr Welles and Mr Houseman, we wish to state that we do not consider the implication of salaciousness in this play justifiable … we believe that much of the fun of the play lies in the madness of many of the lines which are certainly laughed at in all innocence. Several of the reviews, in fact, made reference to Gertrude Stein in this connexion.’ Their lack of practice in outwitting the censor shows in the absence of horse-trading (two damns for a bloody): the whole affair is quite understandably bewildering to them.
Shortly afterwards, Welles was back, and Houseman was not far behind. Both of them had wounds to lick. It is as if they had had affairs which hadn’t worked out and had rather sheepishly come back to the marriage. Houseman had been directing Leslie Howard in Hamlet, and it was a more or less unmitigated disaster, certainly for him. True to the rules of a clandestine affair, he had managed to avoid letting Welles know anything about it until it was inevitable, ‘since the mention of any theatrical activity except his own provoked in Orson an automatic reaction of ridicule or rage’.34 As if there were a curse on it, everything about the production had gone wrong from the beginning. Leslie Howard chose his own cast, including some duds, and he hadn’t learned his lines. Virgil Thomson who was writing the music fought incessantly with Agnes de Mille who was responsible for the dances; Stewart Chaney’s huge eleventh-century settings dwarfed Howard and forced him into a heavy-handedness which betrayed his natural gifts. The production and Howard were both critically slaughtered in the wake of John Gielgud’s triumph in the same role only a month before, which was still running. Houseman retired, hurt. If he had expected sympathy from Orson, none was forthcoming. ‘Orson had chosen to regard my Hamlet activity as I had regarded his appearance in the juvenile lead of Ten Million Ghosts – as a sort of absurd and shameful interlude of which the least said the better. It was more than two years before I undertook any new theatrical work of my own. For now, I was completely committed to my partnership with Welles and happier within the creati
ve collaboration of that partnership than I could be, by myself, on the outside.’ He had, as the saying goes, got it out of his system.
Welles had returned to Project 891 chastened, too: but not reconciled. While Houseman now blissfully proceeded as if their relationship were stronger than ever, Welles was restless. For the time being, however, there was the next play: Doctor Faustus. This had been on Welles’s mind for a long time; it was one of the plays proposed for the Woodstock Festival two and a half years before. It contained two elements that were always close to his heart: magic, and high-flown verse. As far as the verse is concerned, Welles might have been born to play Marlowe. As a Shakespearean actor, he lacked access to the pressure of the verse, and to its breathtaking variety; intelligent and beautifully spoken though his performances of Shakespeare invariably are, he is inclined to fall into a sonorous, monochromatic mode. He lacks rhythmic flexibility. What he has is superb tone and a wonderful command of legato, perfect attributes for the rendition of what has been called Marlowe’s ‘mighty line’: great arcs of verse that soar and swoop, arias independent of character or situation. This essentially rhetorical writing suits him perfectly, and he fulfils it as few other actors of our time have been able to do, a notable exception being the late Richard Burton, another rhetorical actor. Both Burton and Welles when they play Shakespeare attempt to make him rhetorical; it soon becomes dull, as if a singer were to attempt to sing Mozart like Wagner. All the bubbling and varied life becomes subdued in the attempt to make a splendid noise. Marlowe was his man.