Me and Orson Welles

by Robert Kaplow

  “ ‘Of course I gave it to him,’ ” said Tremayne. “ ‘I’m just waiting for Van Doren to come walking out of that office, throw that story on my desk, and say, Runyon, my boy, this is the greatest story in the history of journalism!’ ”

  One sound-effects man opened a miniature door; another walked a pair of shoes with his hands.

  “ ‘Runyon!’ ” yelled Welles. “ ‘Runyon!’ ”

  The voice on the monitor broke in. “You’re pinning, Orson. Step back if you’re going to—”

  “ ‘Runyon! This is the worst story in the history of journalism! If you weren’t working here for free, I’d fire you.’ ”

  I felt as if I didn’t breathe for the next fifteen minutes.

  Act Two. Phones ringing, typewriters clattering.

  “ ‘Your story! Your story! I’m so sick to death of hearing about your story!’ ” Barbara Luddy cried in that little-girl voice of hers. “ ‘Runyon, it’s that story or me!’ ”

  Five-second musical link. Then just the sound of a clock ticking.

  “ ‘I need more time,’ ” said Tremayne.

  “ ‘Story of a lifetime breaking right in front of your nose, and you need more time,’ ” said Welles. He was puffing on his cigar now in the manner of some old newspaper editor. He wasn’t looking at the script at all; he was studying Tremayne.

  “ ‘It’s Marjorie. I’m spending so much time at the Eagle. I’m afraid she’s going to leave me.’ ”

  “ ‘And what if she did?’ ” said Welles. “ ‘You think you’ll never forget her?’ ” And here Welles—astoundingly—put his script behind him, and, staring right into Tremayne’s eyes, pulled his words out of nowhere. Or so it appeared. “ ‘Look at us, Runyon. Me without my story and you without your girl. We can’t ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood in Grand Central Station to say goodbye to a pretty girl. I was wild about her. In fact, we decided we couldn’t live without each other, and we were to be married.’ ”

  You could see everybody in the control room going crazy—searching their scripts for the nonexistent speech. But the director, wearing his headphones, was listening. He was looking through the glass at Welles; he had his hand raised for his assistants to stop talking.

  The words tumbled out from Welles as if they were pure invention. “ ‘When we came to say goodbye we knew we wouldn’t see each other for almost a year. I thought I couldn’t live through it—and she stood there crying. Well, I don’t even know where she lives now, or if she is living. If she ever thinks of me at all, she probably imagines I’m still dancing in some ballroom somewhere . . . .’ ” Welles’s voice had become quiet. “ ‘Life and money both behave like quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And when they’re gone we can’t tell where—or what the devil we did with ’em . . . ’ ” He lifted his script back in front of him. “ ‘Well, Runyon, you’ve got a tough decision to make. And I guess it all comes down to how much a guy’ll do for love. And how much will you do, Runyon?’ ”

  “ ‘Anything I have to,’ ” said Tremayne, somehow finding the line in the script.

  “ ‘Then call that girl up,’ ” said Welles. “ ‘And tell her what your decision just meant to your promising career here.’ ”

  “ ‘You mean I’m—’ ”

  “ ‘Yes, I’m promoting you, Runyon, and giving you two weeks’ paid vacation, and a one-hundred-dollar bonus to enjoy yourself—now get out of this office before I change my mind. I hope you’ll excuse me, but some of us have a newspaper to put out!’ ”

  There was the sound effect of a phone ringing and being answered.

  “ ‘Hello! Van Doren here. Yes, I know we’re late,’ ” said Welles. “ ‘Just tell the boys in the copyroom it’s a late edition for love!’ ”

  The director threw a hand cue to the orchestra; they played the closing theme, the extras were applauding, augmenting a recording of thunderous applause, and the announcer leaned into the mike. “The audience is giving a standing ovation here at the Little Theatre off Times Square—and I’ve never seen anything like it. Taking his curtain call now is our special guest star, Mr. Orson Welles!”

  The red light went off. Everybody was laughing. “What the hell was that!” said Tremayne.

  “I made it all up!” said Welles, waving his cigar like a magic wand.

  “God, I thought you were quoting something famous.”

  The director’s voice came over the monitor. “Orson, I don’t know what it was, but it was brilliant. It was the best thing in the script.”

  “You mean it was the best thing not in the script!” roared Welles.

  “It’s exactly what Van Doren needed—heart. Can you remember it for the show?”

  “The show?” said Welles. “That was the show. Joe, we’ll never get that performance again. You know that.”

  “Orson, we got some bad line readings early on.”

  “Not from me you didn’t. You can record the others without me. Then get the engineers to piece it all together. They love doing stuff like that. I’ve got a rehearsal of Caesar I’m late for already.”

  “Orson—”

  Welles waved his cigar in farewell, put his arm on my shoulder, and headed us out the door.

  Eleven

  Orson gave me money to take a cab back to the Mercury. “Tell them I’m going to be a little late,” he said, and he got into another cab with Lorelei Lathrop.

  Back at West 41st Street, Ash, the stage manager, was running the rehearsal. Cotten was standing in for Brutus, and they were blocking the curtain calls.

  Extras first, including me, last one on the end, stage left.

  “Follow Hoysradt, people,” said Ash. “Look at him when you bow. Once.”

  Then the two women.

  Then all the conspirators except Brutus.

  Then Holland by himself.

  Then Coulouris.

  Then Gabel.

  And, finally—the Boy Wonder.

  Cotten came out as Welles. He stood center stage. “I’d like to thank all the members of the Academy for this wonderful award. I honestly feel that so many others deserve it more than I.”

  “Take twenty minutes,” said Ash. “Hopefully Orson’ll be back by then. We’ll run it again. Looking good.”

  “Looking good?” said Coulouris to the other actors. He shook his head gravely as he rubbed lotion into his hands. “My prediction? The Mercury Theatre will be out of business by Friday. Believe me, people in 1937 will not pay two dollars to see tragedy! They can see it for free in the streets. My advice, fellow Mercurians? Polish thy résumé.”

  Out in the lobby Leve was installing a new chandelier. I found Sonja up in the projection room. There the icebox hummed; the radio played Vic and Sade. And then the war news: After a horrific battle of nearly three months, China’s valiant defense of Shanghai seems on the brink of total collapse. All day yesterday Japanese tanks rolled up and down the streets of Shanghai, shelling—

  She turned off the radio. She was looking tired. “I’m sick of the war. Do you sometimes think these are terrible times to be alive? I keep thinking about that, what it means to be born at a certain time. Every day layoffs, plant closings. People scared of losing their jobs. It must do something to you psychologically, don’t you think? To live like this every day?”

  “I think things are better than they were a couple of years ago.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that at all,” she said. “I think that’s just New Deal propaganda. Sometimes it seems to me as if the whole world is falling apart. And it couldn’t possibly get worse.”

  “Well,” I said, “at least we can content ourselves that during these tumultuous times we’re doing something really important—typing up subscription lists.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” she said. “Times as hard as these, and people go right on doing what they’ve always been doing: putting on plays, getting married, changing jobs—it’s kind of heroic, isn’t it? They go right on looking for apartments, making their
big plans for the future.”

  “You’ve got great eyes,” I said.

  “What am I going to do with you?” Then she looked at me in a way that seemed to seriously take my measure. “O.K., so tell me who you are.”

  “Who I am?”

  “Yeah. And don’t tell me about your high-school sweetheart—or your parents. Tell me who you are. What do you want?”

  “That’s a hard question.”

  “What do you love?”

  She was seriously asking me the question. I felt my answer needed to be equally serious.

  “O.K. I was thinking the other morning that the one thing that fundamentally interested me was . . . I don’t know . . . words? The words of plays, films, songs—all sorts of words. It’s the one thing I find consistently compelling.”

  She adjusted her hairband braid. “You know, I pegged you right from the jump as a writer. I kept asking myself what’s he doing mincing around the stage?”

  “Mincing?”

  “You know what I mean—all that ego up there.”

  “It’s exciting,” I said. “I mean, we might have a show that closes on Thursday night, or we might have a show that people will remember for fifty years. Probably neither one of those, but you never know. That’s what’s so exciting.”

  “You romanticize everything,” said Sonja. “It’s odd being around you. It feels as if you belonged to some earlier, nicer time.”

  “And what time do you belong to?”

  “The thoroughly corrupt right-this-second.”

  “Well, opposites attract—as they say in the divorce court.”

  “You’re cute,” she said. “My cavalier.”

  “Cavaliere,” I said, pronouncing the word with the five syllables of an elaborate Italian accent.

  She sneezed.

  We walked together down 41st Street toward the Mercury offices in the Empire. There were newspaper trucks in the streets carrying the late editions. (A Late Edition for Love!)

  “Houseman must be around, what? Thirty?” I asked.

  She nodded, her hands in the pockets of her cardigan.

  “And you’re twenty?”

  She nodded.

  “What do you want to hang around with such an old guy for?”

  She smiled. “And how old are you?”

  “Eighteen in December,” I said. “Pushing nineteen. Wouldn’t you rather hang around with a vibrant, young cavaliere than some old, English, overweight—”

  Pounce, Lucius!

  “He’s running an entire theatre company single-handedly and offering me a managerial position in it. What are you offering?” she asked.

  “Wealth! Travel! Fame! I can take you to movies that have all of those things. Provided you pay for the movies, of course. What are you doing tonight?” I asked. I couldn’t believe I’d finally found the confidence to speak the way I’d always wished I might speak around a beautiful girl. “After the show? You see, I’m learning to fight for what I want.”

  “Good,” she said, and she turned down a corner of her mouth. “I’m seeing John.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

  She stared at the sidewalk for a moment. She smiled, then spoke: “Orson’s spending tomorrow night out at Sneden’s with Virginia . . . . He lets me stay at his place on 14th when I stay late here. I’ve got a key. So if you want, tomorrow maybe we could go out? Dancing? Maybe stop by Orson’s apartment for a drink?” She looked at me playfully. “That too terrifying for you, my young cavaliere?”

  “Are you kidding?” I said, completely terrified.

  “Of course, we’ve got two previews of Caesar the next day, so Orson’s probably going to rehearse you ’til three in the morning tomorrow. You might just want to go right to sleep.”

  I held open the door of the Empire Building for her. “Oh,” I said, “I think you’ll find that we cavalieri have considerably more energy than you might imagine.”

  She laughed, and I thought: This is the greatest performance of my life.

  Tuesday, November 9 Twelve

  The alarm went off at 6:55. I showered and got dressed with my eyes closed to see what it felt like to be blind.

  As I descended the stairs blindly, I could hear my mother from the hall landing. You could tell she’d rehearsed this speech pretty well.

  “We’ve talked about this before. Your father agrees with me. Ten o’clock on a school night is as late as we will allow. Is that understood?”

  I opened my eyes.

  Rule #3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

  “Mom,” I said, “I completely agree with you. It’s ridiculous. It’s unfair to you and to Dad. I’ve been working on my research paper on Julius Caesar—I’ve had to interview these actors—but you’re right, the hours I’m keeping are ludicrous and disruptive, and certainly not conducive to my schoolwork, which has got to be my most important priority in my life at this point. We’re in complete agreement on this. There’s just one thing.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “There’s one actor I’ve got to interview this morning at nine o’clock,” I said. “I begged him for this interview, and this is the only time he can do it. It’s Orson Welles. I’m sure you’ve heard of him; he plays the Shadow on the radio. Anyway, this is very important; my whole grade depends on this; college depends on this; probably my entire life depends on this, and there is no other time that Mr. Welles can schedule it. Honestly, Ma, this is going to be the last time in my life I’m going to ask you to do anything like this. I promise.” She looked up. “So what you have to do is to phone the school this morning, and I promise I am never going to ask you to do anything like this again; from now on I’m going to be the perfect son—but I need you to make this one call for me, and tell them that I can’t come to school today because of some family emergency or something. You know, a death in the family—God forbid. Something like that. And this is the only time that I’m ever going to ask you to do anything like this. I swear to God.”

  Her face was getting harder.

  “Ma, you can say anything you want to, except ‘absolutely not.’ ”

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “You’ve missed too much school already. And I’m tired of you lying to me. I got a call yesterday from the school verifying your proctologist’s appointment? I told them it didn’t exist. They told me they were giving you three days’ detentions. I said fine, I agree with them.”

  “Mom—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “All right, I’m going to have Orson Welles call you himself. Orson Welles, the voice of the Shadow, is going to get on this telephone and tell you himself that everything I’ve said to you has been the God’s honest truth.”

  “You’re going to school—and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Mom—”

  “And Mr. Goldberg called up from the Rialto. To make a condolence call. What are you trying to do to me, Richard?”

  I sat in Mewling’s class thinking of nothing for the entire hour except how I could slip out of school. He read page after page of his faded yellow notes. I didn’t hear a word.

  I was called down to Mr. P.’s office and given three detentions. There was no discussion.

  I stood outside his office staring at the pink detention slip, wondering if anything else could possibly go wrong. Welles had called rehearsal at noon—and it was already 9:30. I had to get out.

  I was feeling more and more like an outlaw.

  The bells rang for a fire drill, and the whole school shuffled outside to the sidewalk. I met up with Kate Rouilliard and her sunburned ankles.

  “Richard, I’m sorry. I put you on the list. I forged the note about the proctologist. I thought that would be safe.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know why they checked.”

  “So much for my credit. I’ve got three detentions, and I can’t possibly serve them. Kate, I have to get out of here today.”

  �
�I can’t forge another note.”

  The bell ran to return to class.

  “Kate,” I said, “remember you once told me that you wished there was something you could do for me?”

  She frowned.

  “I want you to call from that pay phone.” I pointed to the phone booth outside the school. “I want you to call right now and tell them you’re my mother, and that I have to come home instantly. There’s been a death in the family. My Aunt Minnie had a stroke. You’re picking me up immediately.”

  “Oh, Richard, I can’t—”

  “You said you wanted to do something for me.”

  “I can’t sound like your mother.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “Richard, this is stupid.”

  We borrowed one of those cheerleader megaphones from a girl who was passing by. (I thought it might disguise her voice a little.)

  “Now you’ve just got to practice saying this,” I said. “It’s no use.”

  I rolled along toward the city feeling like some old-salt commuter. (Kate’s performance had worked perfectly. “Water off a duck’s back,” she’d shrugged as she’d replaced the phone. “But don’t ever ask me to do this again. We’re even.”) I knew all the stops on the train; I knew how to sit on the aisle with my ukulele next to me so I could keep a double seat until the last possible moment; I knew the right staircase to descend at Newark and exactly how much time I needed to make the connection.

  Rehearsal had been called for noon, and I used the hour I had to spare to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I somehow felt connected to the armor and the mummy cases and the old Greek vases.

  I sat in a quiet corner eating a bag of peanuts and staring at those fragments of ceramic that once had mattered. I liked the soft sounds of the museum, too: the whispering, the footsteps on the stone stairs, the class trip of seven-year-olds giggling and shrieking somewhere just out of sight.

  As I listened, I became aware of a girl wearing wire-rim glasses and a floral print vest, her hair pulled back in a George Washington, standing before one of the painted Greek vases. She held a mailing envelope in her hands and was reciting something under her breath. I suddenly remembered who she was.