Me and Orson Welles

by Robert Kaplow

  He smiled. “All right.”

  “And you’ll call my principal and explain to him that all my absences are excused.”

  “All right.”

  “And the cast party tonight at Tony’s? I want an invitation.”

  “Christ, you’re underage!”

  “Cover for me.”

  “Jesus, what an operator. All right, you can come to the cast party. Is there anything else you want? You want a position in the Roosevelt cabinet? Will you tell me we have a deal already?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  We shook hands.

  “And you better be brilliant,” said Welles. “Because if you stink the whole deal is off!”

  Nineteen

  “Noel Coward, I believe, once said a hit smells like oysters,” Coulouris announced loftily. “Well, it certainly smells like fish in here,” said Muriel. “My effing clothes stink from it. How do these look?” She flashed him her earrings.

  A small notecard had been left for me backstage, and I opened it, imagining it might be a love letter from some stage-struck young woman whose heart had melted (Oh, God!) at my ukulele playing.

  It was a white card with two hearts drawn on it. The hearts were joined by an arrow. Beneath the hearts was simply the signature: Orson.

  Swell, I thought.

  If it was meant as an apology, I accepted it.

  The curtain went up at nine that night, but by eight you could feel the energy humming in the walls of the theatre: in the beams and the floorboards. The pure noise of it was thrilling. A sign outside the box office read: OPENS TONIGHT-SOLD OUT, but still people were standing on line, and the phones were ringing in the ticket office, and the phones were ringing in the projection room, and the phone backstage was flashing its “ring” light.

  Welles had decided late that afternoon that he wanted still more music in the play, and as the wellwishers hurried out the stage door, he and Epstein continued to work out music cues.

  “Now X means a fanfare.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Orson, don’t tell me X means a fanfare; if you want a fanfare then write the goddamn word ‘fanfare’ in the script. Why are we doing this forty minutes before curtain?”

  An imposing-looking man pushed past me: tweed coat, Tartan scarf, curly black hair, rimless round eyeglasses.

  “Clifford Odets!” said Welles. “Was this the face that launched a thousand hits!”

  “Me? I’m just a tramp from Newark!” said Odets. “I think you know Luise.” He gestured to a soulful-looking dark-haired starlet.

  Luise pulled Odets’s hand into Welles’s. “Golden Boy, meet Wonder Boy.”

  Odets then gestured to a rumpled-looking man standing behind him, a man whose long graying hair stood out in massive disarray. “Orson, I’d like you to meet Dr. Albert Einstein.”

  “Honored,” said Welles.

  “I’m working with him to help the Jewish refugees in Europe.”

  Einstein curled his nostrils, “Is it my imagination or does it smell from fish in here?” he said.

  There was a shouting from upstage left, and somebody was yelling You can’t come in here! and then an enormous Negro man in full African witch-doctor regalia, clutching a staff topped with a skull, came swooping across the stage.

  “Meesta Whales! Meesta Whales!”

  “Abdul!” shouted Orson. “You made it! Wonderful!” Welles hugged him. He turned to Einstein. “Abdul, this is Dr. Albert Einstein. You two probably have a lot in common; you’re both doctors.”

  Houseman had come up from behind me. “Orson, Joe Holland says he can’t go on, says he’s having a heart attack. I think it’s nerves, but I sent for an ambulance just in case. He’s in your dressing room.”

  “This is just what I need.”

  A boy now edged himself onstage; he wore a white kitchen suit stenciled Longchamps. He held a covered silver tray. “Two steaks!” he called out. “One pineapple and a bottle of Scotch for Mr. Welles!”

  “Junior, take that for me.”

  “Richard,” I said.

  “I don’t have time for this now. Did you tune the uke?”

  I ran behind Welles carrying the tray as we headed through the remaining press people and the girlfriends. Welles turned to me. “Now let’s see what the Christ this is about.”

  Holland was sitting in a chair in the center of Welles’s dressing room. He was dressed in his Caesar uniform: green double-breasted military coat, brass buttons, black leather boots and gloves. He was breathing shallowly. The tiny hairs of his closely shaved face stood out against the unnatural paleness in his cheeks. “Can’t do it, Orson; can’t do it,” he whispered between breaths. His eyes were open, and he was shaking his head no.

  Roosevelt’s voice came from the radio on the makeup table: And so I place this wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier—

  “Shut that crap off,” said Welles.

  Evelyn Allen, now in her stage gown, sat holding Holland’s gloved hand, rubbing his wrist. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. George Duthie stood behind him massaging his shoulders. “Going to be fine, Joe. Perfectly fine. Just the old opening-night willies.”

  “Can’t do it,” said Holland. His voice cracked, and he turned his head away.

  “Give him a shot of Scotch. Everybody outside,” ordered Welles. “Look at me, Joe. Look at me. I want you to hear every word I say. Do you understand me?”

  I lingered for a moment in the doorway. Welles had taken Holland’s face in his hands, and he was forcing that face to meet his eyes. He spoke in his most commanding tones. “Listen, Joe. There are some actors who will study and practice and work their whole lives, and they’ll be decent actors, and they’ll get decent reviews. But there are other actors, Joe—listen to me—other actors whom I call God-created.”

  “Not me, Orson,” whispered Holland. “Never me.”

  “Look at me,” said Welles. “When I look in your eyes do you know what I see? I see images of magnificence.”

  I had heard enough. There was a boy about fourteen with blond hair standing outside the dressing room. “Mr. Welles told me to see him before the show. He said it was important.”

  The kid had child actor written all over his face. “He’s busy, Junior,” I said.

  Madness seemed to be breaking loose everywhere I turned. In less than ten minutes the audience would be seated, and right now Lloyd stood center stage, and Jeannie Rosenthal was on a ladder focusing lights on him. Sam Leve was running around with a can of gray paint retouching his platforms.

  “For God’s sake, can one of our productions open on time,” said Houseman, walking through the chaos. Then he was arguing with a man dressed in rubber boots and a fire hat.

  “Let me see if I understand this,” said the fire marshal. “The exit lights are going to be extinguished twice—”

  “Positively not.”

  “I was told by that guy over there that—”

  “He doesn’t even work here,” said Houseman. “He’s a union agitator. A Communist! Do you honestly think the Mercury Theatre would endanger the life of even one member of our audience for a light cue? Can you imagine the liabilities we’d—”

  “I was told that—”

  “And I’m telling you there is no such thing. Have you even seen the show?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then what are we talking about?” said Houseman. He reached into his vest pocket. “Look, I want you to take two complimentary tickets for the show—in a purely professional capacity, of course.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Ash, the stage manager, ran out of the wings holding a telephone. “Is Sonja here? It’s David O. Selznick!”

  “Tell him I’m ready for my audition!” said Lloyd. Then he was parading along the stage doing a limpwristed Southern belle. “Ah’ll think of it all tomorrow at Tara. Tomorrow ah’ll think of some way to get him back . . . .”

  “Will somebody find Sonja—and, people, clear the stage!” called Ash. “We’re letti
ng the audience in.”

  I ran up the stairs past the second floor: actors standing around dressed in military uniforms or dark overcoats. A radio playing. Somebody laughing.

  This is it, I thought.

  Evelyn passed me on the stairs. “I was looking for you,” she said. She lowered her eyes. “I had no right to inscribe that book the way I did. I apologize.”

  “There’s no need to—”

  “But I felt from the beginning there was a connection between us. Have you ever read The Great Chain of Being by Arthur O. Lovejoy?”

  Cotten was coming up the steps. “Get dressed, Richard. You going to Tony’s later?”

  “Welles said he might be able to sneak me in.”

  “Good.” His predatory eye roved over Evelyn. “You’re going, aren’t you, Evey?”

  “I don’t like crowds very much.”

  “You have to go—and afterwards, there’s this exquisite little place I want to show you in the Village. Marta. No crowds, just writers, artists. Exactly the kind of place you’d love.”

  “Isn’t that the place where they’ve got that special on the menu?” I asked. “What’s it called again? ‘Quadruple Something’?”

  “That’s the place!” said Cotten—and he was already heading upstairs with his arm on Evelyn’s shoulder.

  From a radio somewhere I could hear Rudy Vallee singing “Have You Met Miss Jones?” I thought: This is the song that’s going to pin this day inside me forever.

  Up in the third-floor dressing room I did stretching exercises. That dressing room—its stink of cigarettes, its signatures on the wall, its water stains—it was somehow all exactly right.

  Hoysradt was checking the cleanliness of his teeth in the mirror.

  I put on my military shirt and pants.

  “Five minutes!” somebody shouted up from the stairs.

  I brushed my hair. “How do I look?” I asked.

  “Horrible,” said Hoysradt.

  Cotten and Lloyd were standing in the wings. Coulouris was rubbing lotion into his hands, and the noise of the audience was still rising—the sound of two balconies and an orchestra.

  I went back upstairs to check my hair and my fly for the ten-thousandth time, and I stopped on the landing to open a window. A police siren rolled through a nearby street, indifferent to the affairs of the Mercury Theatre. I headed down the stairs for the last time, holding tight to the bannister. All right, I said to myself, if I don’t fall down these stairs, then I’m opening in Caesar . . . .

  There was, of course, no curtain, but if you stood behind the thunderdrum you could still remain unseen and just see the edge of the audience. They murmured and stood in the aisles and checked their ticket stubs and planned where they’d go for drinks after the show. Ninety minutes out of their lives—half of them would probably forget it by the time they hit the street. But there were also the critics. Their names sounded on your tongue like a roll call of Princeton professors: Brooks Atkinson, Granville Vernon, Heywood Broun, Stark Young, Joseph Wood Krutch.

  Welles stood by the fire extinguisher giving Holland a last-minute pep-talk. Then he took the phone off the lightboard and dialed two numbers. “Augusta? Welles. Anybody shows up late hold them ’til the blackout before the conspirators’ scene. Is that understood? Those back doors do not open for Jesus Christ himself.” He replaced the phone, and whispered to the stage manager. “That’s all I need, some putz from Brooklyn coming in late with his six consumptive aunts. How many ‘friends’ in the balcony?”

  “About forty.”

  He said. “All right, let’s rip their throats out. Jeannie, pull the lights.” He rubbed his hands nervously. “This is the night,” he recited, “that either makes me or fordoes me quite.”

  Jeannie nodded to the union guy working the lightboard, and one by one the old iron dimmers were pulled. You heard waves of shhhh as the rows of houselights were extinguished.

  Then near-silence out there. Silence on stage. Welles whispered to the musicians behind him. “Loud, fellas. Wake up the sons-of-bitches.” He turned to Jeannie. “All right, are we ready? Black it out. Showtime!”

  There was the clunk of the master dimmer, and in one second every light in the entire theatre—including the exit signs—fell into complete darkness. Only one tiny bulb with the power of a flashlight burned atop the lightboard. Welles continued to whisper—urgent now. “Hold the music ’til I cue you. Four beats.” He took a slow count. “—three—two—one . . . make ’em sweat . . . and . . . .” He raised his right arm like a conductor—then gently caressed in the downbeat: “. . . music.”

  The horns and the organ and the drum blared their military-sounding march. Then Welles, without looking behind him, raised his right arm again—held it until he heard an exact moment he knew in the score, and then gracefully let it fall. “. . . and lights.”

  I smiled, thinking of what the audience must be feeling: seeing this dark spectacle for the first time—this Caesar without a toga in sight.

  Total blackness. Then the music, crescendoing now—suddenly cut.

  From a mile out there, way at the back of the house came Duthie’s cry: Caesar!

  Backlit onstage, Holland and his soldiers stood in silhouettes of menace—gunbelts, epaulets—and Holland was shouting over the heads of the audience, his gaze somewhere toward the back: “ ‘Peace! Bid every noise be still!’ ”

  That cry again. Caesar! Duthie in his overcoat now climbing the steps to the stage.

  “ ‘Who is it in the throng that calls on me?’ ” demanded Holland. “ ‘Marc Antony?’ ”

  Coulouris snapped to attention: “ ‘Caesar, my lord?’ ”

  And we were off and running!

  Welles entered in his pinstriped suit. Modest applause.

  The thunderdrum was struck and thrummed with two padded hammers—and its thunder kept rolling softly as Gabel, in uniform, entered by the upstage ramp into a pool of light. Outlined against the blood-red wall, Gabel looked like some demon of war.

  “ ‘Will you go see the order of the course?’ ” he asked.

  Welles was startled at the voice. “ ‘. . . Into what dangers, Cassius, would you lead me . . . .’ ” Welles sat down on the front step; it was Welles’s first moment to let the audience really see him—without elaborate makeup, up close and looking magnificently like a star. He played it with a deliciously self-indulgent slowness, as if he weren’t reciting the words of some dusty play, but as if he’d just thought of those words this moment—pulled them hesitantly out of the air to give shape to his confused mind. “ ‘But wherefore do you hold me here so long? What is it that you would impart to me?’ ”

  And so the scene went with Gabel getting most of the lines—but Welles was the one you watched. You didn’t listen to Gabel’s speech so much as you watched Welles react to it. “ ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,’ ” said Gabel—and Welles turned to meet his eyes.

  I thought, Oh, you’ve got them where you want them, Wonder Boy.

  More military music, perfectly cued this time, and the soldiers fell silent as Holland and Coulouris and Joe Cotten marched by.

  Holland: “ ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much—such men are dangerous . . . .’ ”

  There was nothing in Holland’s delivery that suggested his breakdown fifteen minutes earlier.

  Then there were stabs of lightning onstage. The thunderdrum boomed in your chest, and Epstein held a bass note on the organ that rumbled the whole theatre.

  The storm was up.

  Linking scenes, faster now—flashlights, men in their overcoats and their working-class shoes—and that drumming of those footsteps in the darkness.

  A few latecomers were seated. Welles had been right about that, too—hold them for the first fifteen minutes until the mood had been set.

  Was he ever wrong?

  Now the worklight filtered through the hanging apparatus of the lights—and the
stage was filled with sinister shadows.

  Muriel Brassler stood next to me in the wings waiting for her one scene. She held a small mirror before her, and she fluffed her hair behind her ears to let her silver earrings show more clearly. Then she placed a tiny diamond ring on her left hand. She checked her nose hair, then asked me to hold her mirror while she stepped back to admire the full effect. She caught her reflection—threw back her shoulders, and it was as if she were melting into another person in front of my eyes. Gone was the abrasiveness, and before me, instantly, stood noble Portia. “ ‘Brutus, my lord,’ ” she called—and she strode center stage.

  If Welles was angry about her jewelry he didn’t show it. He held her hand, and he played the scene with enormous tenderness.

  “You can tell they’ve screwed,” said Lloyd over my shoulder.

  The lightning flashed and her scene was over. She whispered as she exited. “Goddamnit, I begged him not to stand on the same step with me.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “You were great,” I said.

  “Was I?” she asked.

  “You’re what I call a God-created actress,” I said with perfect seriousness.

  “I love you,” she said and kissed me.

  I performed my three lines about Cassius showing up at the door, and I played them so fast I didn’t have time to be nervous. Too fast, I thought as I exited. Play it like Welles, Richard—give the audience the chance to like the character you’re playing.

  Then I was down in the trap with Grover Burgess and his crutch. We were both waiting for our cues.

  “Nervous?” he whispered.

  “Only if people ask me if I’m nervous.”

  “Nervous?”

  I checked my fly yet again. I didn’t actually feel nervous so much as I just wanted to get out there, grab the thing by the throat, and be doing it.

  Then Burgess was giving me a little push. I climbed the ladder and was walking downstage into the light.

  And from out of that dark, silent audience I distinctly heard two voices loudly cough out, “Black Crow!”

  Oh, Christ. I bit my lip. I instantly lost my concentration. Welles was staring at me, waiting for my line. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod.