by Simon Callow
17. ‘Not only should the cameraman know all about …’ and ff. From ‘The Motion Picture Cameraman’ by Gregg Toland, Theatre Arts Monthly September 1941.
18. ‘A great deal has been written and said about the new …’ and ff. Gregg Toland in ‘How I Broke the Rules in Citizen Kane’. Popular Photography June 1941.
19. ‘I was constantly encouraged by Toland …’ Quoted by Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
20. ‘We tried to plan the action …’ and ff. From ‘How I Broke the Rules …’ op. cit.
21. ‘… that illusion of roundness …’ Quoted in The Classical Hollywood Cinema by David Bordwell.
22. ‘We called it pan-focus …’ Quoted by Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
23. ‘Norman Mailer wrote that when I was young …’ Quoted by Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
CHAPTER TWENTY:
Shooting Kane
1. ‘During this scene, nobody’s face is really seen …’ From the screenplay to Citizen Kane.
2. ‘He’s the waiter in every movie ever made!’ From This is Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich.
3. ‘He was willing, and this is very rare in Hollywood …’ Gregg Toland in ‘How I Broke the Rules in Citizen Kane’, Popular Photography June 1941.
4. ‘I said, well, God, there’s a lot of stuff …’ and ff. From Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
5. ‘He had a huge set of Xanadu …’ Quoted in 50th Anniversary souvenir booklet.
6. ‘He shot more film than anyone in the history of the cinema …’and ff. Quoted in Positif October 1988.
7. ‘Alland was treated almost as a personal slave …’ From Richard Barr’s unpublished memoirs.
8. ‘Ford’s greeting to him was the first hint …’ From Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
9. ‘It was clearly going to be an extraordinary …’ and ff. From Run-Through by John Houseman.
10. ‘RE FURTHER TELEPHONE CONVERSATION …’ Memo in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
11. ‘As of Sep 30 …’ Memo in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
12. ‘Mr M. is in the biggest fever …’ Memo in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
13. ‘It would seem to me …’ Letter in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
14. ‘… he wrote the entire script …’ ibid.
15. No production executive … Quoted in The Making of Citizen Kane by Robert L. Carringer.
16. ‘… his ability to push a dramatic situation …’ From John Houseman, op. cit.
17. ‘I tried to persuade Houseman …’ Quoted in Monk by Richard Meryman.
18. ‘I informed him that if anyone …’ From John Houseman, op. cit.
19. ‘… which will give us all a little bit of rest …’ Letter to Arnold Weissberger in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
20. ‘… that’s the nicest thing a man from England …’ and ff. Transcribed from KTSA broadcast, 28 October 1940.
21. ‘Many of Citizen Kane’s deep-focus effects had been created …’ From ‘Film Style and Technology’ by David Bordwell in The Classical Hollywood Cinema.
22. ‘Telling Orson about the optical printer …’ Quoted in Robert Carringer’s laser-disc documentary about Citizen Kane.
23. ‘I was months and months and months …’ From Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
24. ‘Backward ran sentences …’ Quoted in Raising Kane by Pauline Kael.
25. ‘He overwhelmed me with his radio background …’ Quoted in 50th Anniversary souvenir booklet.
26. ‘I’d work all day. He’d make an appointment …’ Quoted by Richard Meryman, op. cit.
27. ‘I was given twelve weeks to do my job …’ ‘Score for a Film.’ New York Times 25 May 1941.
28. ‘in second scene, we cut to kane …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
29. ‘… cues of a few seconds were often overlooked …’ and ff. ‘Score for a Film,’ op. cit.
30. ‘I want to make it absolutely clear …’ Quoted by Richard Meryman. op. cit.
31. ‘Don’t think me a saint …’ and ff. From Orson Welles’ screenplay Santa.
32. ‘please give orson all my love …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
33. ‘my beamish jack …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
34. ‘give your friends a night …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
35. ‘Dearest Hedda, I owe you …’ Letter in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
36. ‘As the story was reported to me …’ Quoted in Marion Davies by Fred Guiles.
37. ‘It has been assumed that Citizen Kane …’ Letter in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
38. ‘Citizen Kane is the story …’ Article in Friday magazine reprinted in Focus on Citizen Kane ed. Ronald Gottesman.
39. ‘Mr Hearst casually gave them a hundred …’ Quoted by Richard Meryman, op. cit.
40. ‘I am going slowly mad because my hands are tied …’ Letter to Arnold Weissberger in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
41. ‘Until quite recently, a lot of people …’ New Masses 4 February 1941.
42. ‘This article will probably make me no friends …’ and ff. ‘Orson Welles Writing About Orson Welles’, Stage February 1941, reprinted in Hollywood Directors ed. Richard Koszarski.
43. ‘Will Hollywood stand up …’ New Republic 24 February 1941.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
Waiting/Native Son
1. ‘A blow at the white man …’ Irving Howe. Quoted in Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius by Margaret Walker.
2. ‘Bigger Thomas is not presented in Native Son …’ and ff. Letter in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
3. ‘Please believe that both Welles and I …’ and ff. Letter in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
4. ‘Knowing what you and Welles have done in the past …’ Letter in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
5. ‘please inform our crippled …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
6. ‘This play is indecent …’ Quoted by Richard Wright in The God That Failed.
7. ‘… till the day of the play’s opening …’ and ff. From Run-Through by John Houseman.
8. ‘… the fabulous city in which Bigger lived …’ From Native Son by Richard Wright.
9. ‘I want this show to be surrounded by brick …’ Quoted in ‘Native Son Backstage’ by Jean Rosenthal, Theatre Arts Monthly June 1941.
10. ‘From the tiny, poverty-stricken …’ ibid.
11. ‘I want the play to end …’ Letter quoted by Margaret Walker, op.cit.
12. ‘Houseman doesn’t reveal quite how shat on he was …’ William Alland in an interview with S.C.
13. ‘He is beyond doubt the most courageous, gallant and talented …’ Richard Wright in an interview; copy in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
14. ‘he had a constant privilege to interrupt …’ From Margaret Walker, op. cit.
15. ‘Orson began to howl at him …’ From John Houseman, op. cit.
16. ‘Think about the impossible strain you have put …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
17. ‘A free speech, a free press …’ Variety 11 March 1941.
18. ‘As in some grotesque fable …’ Time 17 March 1941.
19. ‘It is with exceeding regret …’ Newsweek 17 March 1941.
20. ‘How can you copyright an enterprise, a profession …’ Quoted in Citizen Welles by Frank Brady.
21. ‘Welles will show the picture …’ ibid.
22. ‘saw your show tonight …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
23. ‘let me thank you both …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
24. ‘thanks for my big chance, orson …’ Telegram in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
25. ‘STARK DRAMA STAMPED WITH GENIUS …’ New York World Telegram 25 March 1941.
26. ‘… it may at times be quite ham …’ New Republic 25 March
1941.
27. ‘It is as if the theatre had been shaken …’ Brooks Atkinson: New York Times 25 March 1941.
28. ‘Canada Lee has added a figure of heroic dimensions …’ Theatre Arts Monthly October 1942.
29. ‘1. Get support of Negro press …’ Mercury Productions memo in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
30. ‘… it was a little shameful …’ Quoted by John Houseman, op. cit.
31. ‘… to illustrate by a series of plays …’ From James Boyd’s introduction to The Free Company Presents.
32. ‘Don’t start forbiddin’ anybody …’ and ff. From His Honor the Mayor by Orson Welles.
33. ‘… the Hearst papers have repeatedly described me …’ Quoted by Frank Brady, op. cit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
Release
1. ‘Attacks of knife-like pain …’ Medical report in the Lilly Library Welles Collection.
2. ‘Orson Welles?! He’s an exhibitionist …’ Quoted in Citizen Kane by Frank Brady.
3. ‘You might say I’m a relative …’ Quoted in This is Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich.
4. ‘Happy Birthday to you …’ Quoted in Orson Welles by Barbara Leaming.
5. ‘Mr Genius comes through …’ Hollywood Reporter 12 March 1941.
6. ‘Now that the wrappers are off …’ New York Times 2 May 1941.
7. ‘Perhaps when the uproar has died down …’ Nation 26 April 1941.
8. ‘Now that the returns are in …’ New York Times 4 May 1941.
9. ‘it is … when all has been told …’ Theatre Arts 2 June 1941.
10. ‘Miss Powell talked of Charles Foster Kane …’ London Sunday Times 5 November 1941.
11. ‘Not one glimpse …’ New Masses 13 May 1941.
12. ‘Citizen Kane was made in the most wildly …’ and ff. Quoted in Mank by Richard Meryman.
13. ‘There are more conscious shots …’ From Peter Bogdanovich, op. cit.
14. ‘Orson Welles never once makes concessions …’ Commonweal 9 May 1941.
15. ‘I am so bored with the aesthetics …’ BBC interview on Monitor.
16. ‘Welles … has an almost total empathy with the audience …’ From Raising Kane by Pauline Kael.
17. ‘Citizen Kane was inspired by …’ Quoted in The Magic World of Orson Welles by James Naremore.
18. ‘Citizen Kane is a tragedy on Marlovian lines …’ Film Comment Summer 1971, reprinted in Movies and Methods ed. Bill Nichols.
19. ‘It is not his best film …’ From The Cinema of Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich.
20. ‘Orson Welles is 26 …’ Horizon November 1941.
21. ‘There has never been a more exciting press show …’ The Clipper May 1941.
22. ‘Finally he went on to produce …’ and ff. From the souvenir booklet for Citizen Kane’s first release.
23. ‘Stay away from this …’ Quoted in Orson Welles by Charles Higham.
24. ‘here’s what i wanted to wire you …’ Quoted by Richard Meryman, op. cit
25. ‘i am very happy to accept …’ ibid.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
More than most, biographers depend on the kindness of strangers. In the six years of researching and writing, I have been grateful for the openness and willingness to give up their time of the many people whom I have interviewed for the book; I have been touched by the thoughtfulness of the smaller but still considerable number who have written to me, sometimes out of the blue, with their memories and mementoes; and I have been frankly astonished by the generosity of fellow workers in the field, Welles scholars – some published and some not – all gleefully sharing with me their research and their insights. These latter I must thank first, since the book has benefited immensely from their selfless generosity; there could be no motive for their willingness to show me the hard-won fruits of their work but devotion to the truth about Welles (and an extraordinary trust in my ability to make good use of the material). Among these scholars were Richard France, author of The Theatre of Orson Welles and Welles’ Shakespeare, both pioneering texts, which make brilliant use of materials available nowhere else; Andrea Nouryeh, whose uniquely comprehensive Mercury Theatre (an unpublished thesis still obtainable from UMI) deserves much wider circulation; Peter Noble, author of the first full-length biography, The Fabulous Orson Welles; Professor James Naremore, whose The Magic World of Orson Welles remains without question the best sustained piece of critical writing about Welles; M. François Thomas, the leading authority on the radio work (his Positif special edition on the subject is the most comprehensive account of those years); and Peter Bogdanovich, in various early writings a perceptive and elegant champion of Welles, who, in the more recent This is Orson Welles, provides a direct and entirely lifelike impression of one of the essential Welleses: the conversationalist. Each of these writers, making themselves freely accessible to my unending enquiries, has introduced me to materials and also thoughts that have influenced the book; the work of each remains, despite the extensive use I have made of it, indispensable in its own right, crammed with fascinating information and analysis. Though not strictly a Welles scholar, Sam Leiter, author of the several volumes of the compendious Encyclopaedia of the New York Stage, has been unstintingly forthcoming in his detailed information of the theatre of the years covered by the present volumes, helping to reveal the context in which Welles functioned.
As for my correspondents, these have most notably included Welles’s school friends John C. Dexter and Paul Guggenheim, both of whom have recounted in vivid detail their experiences of the young Welles, and both of whom gave me rare documents relating to the early theatre work at Todd; and the late Hascy Tarbox, who offered a radically different perspective, and several indispensable documents including his father-in-law Roger Hill’s autobiography and a copy of Marching Song. Interviewees include Coach Tony Roskie from Todd School, Joanne and Hascy Tarbox from the same period, Tom Triffely, who knew Welles at the time of the Romeo and Juliet tour, Peg and Norman (‘total recall’) Lloyd, Arlene Francis, Paula Laurence and Chuck Bowden, Arthur Anderson, Elliot Reid, Sam Leve, Abe Feder, Frank Goodman, Henry Senber, the late Vincent Price, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Stefan Schnabel, and William Alland from the FTP and/or Mercury days, and Ruth Warrick from Citizen Kane. Many of them provided me with materials as well as memories. The late Richard Wilson, custodian of the Mercury Archives and close collaborator of Welles, was exceptionally helpful in providing material, contacts and leads. He was a key figure in the early research; without him my task would have been twice as hard. Henry Senber, the Mercury’s matchless press officer, has been in regular contact with me over the six years. Quite unintentionally, I made Augusta Weissberger, Welles’s and Houseman’s secretary for several years, cry, and for that I am sorry. Finally, I received the warmest support and an extraordinary final interview from the late John Houseman, who was encouraging to the last. I hope I have made his place in Welles’s history, and that of the theatre of the thirties, as clear as possible.
Other help has come from many sources: the academic institutions have furnished fascinating material. Among those I must thank are: William G. Simon, of the department of Film Studies, New York University, who put at my disposal the materials which he assembled from his Welles theatre retrospective of 1988; Ruth Kerns, then head of the Federal Theatre Archive, then at George Mason University, Washington (it has since been removed from easy public access), who made available to me the wonderful Project 891 materials; the Theatre Department at Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois, which marvellously tends the archive of the Dublin Gate Theatre, was especially helpful; the Chicago Historical Society was also exceptionally kind. The Billy Rose Collection at the Lincoln Center is another treasure-trove of theatrical material; the New York Public Library is unrivalled as a newspaper archive, and I made considerable use of it. Finally, and with deep gratitude, I must, like all Welles scholars, offer humble thanks to Sondra Taylor and Rebecca Cape of the Lilly Library, at the University
of Indiana, curators of the largest Welles collection in the world, who discharge their onerous tasks with incomparable efficiency and good humour. No book of the slightest value on Welles could be written without their collaboration; they have made the researching of this one a positive pleasure.
Then there are my own assistants, James Rodgers and Matthew Wooton kicking things off in London, Ted Schillinger in Chicago (taking time off from his day job as an inspired documentary filmmaker) and Dorothy Hanrahan, dedicated and shrewd, in New York, slogging on through personal tragedy and professional upheaval. I have been through an alarming number of secretaries during the six years, but Janet Macklam was there for the first few, keeping the whole enterprise together with humour and resource; she was succeeded by Pamela Brooke and Sue Slater, who took on the mantle with great spirit. To all of these, thanks for their efficiency and patience.
In addition, Rosemary Wilton, with her unrivalled knowledge of RKO in the thirties, gave me a head start in writing about Citizen Kane which I can hardly adequately acknowledge; Leslie Megahey, who conducted the BBC’s revelatory 1982 interviews with Welles, was similarly full of direct insights which have much enriched the text. He was one of the dauntless handful of people who read the vast manuscript of the first draft, and who offered sharp and precise criticisms of it; the others were Simon Gray (who was unerringly right about a dangerous tendency in the writing); Angus Mackay, who read it with a theatre scholar’s eye and an invaluable sense of period; and Jim Naremore, who made me think hard again about a number of important matters. Nick Hern commissioned the book, David Godwin picked it up, Dan Franklin saw it through to publication and Chuck Elliott subjected it to his fine toothcomb, always and rightly urging concision, if not excision. Peter Ward was responsible for making the final book look so attractive, Margaret Clark read the proofs with tact and wit and assembled the play, radio and film lists, and Helen Baz completed the huge task of compiling the index. Maggie Hanbury, my agent, fought the book’s corner with everything at her disposal when all seemed nearly lost.