Orson Welles: Hello Americans

by Simon Callow

  The rest of the roles were cast very much from Mercury ranks, the most prominent of them being that radio stalwart, Ray Collins, the powerful Boss Jim Gettys in Citizen Kane, here set down to play George’s Uncle Jack (renamed, presumably to avoid confusion, from the Uncle George of the novel). Once again, the casting is slightly off. The novel’s Uncle George is a failed congressman, a failed businessman, a failed lover – useless, in fact, for anything at all except the distant colonial embassy to which he is despatched at the end of the book. He is a Turgenevian superfluous man, unfitted for the modern world. Welles’s Uncle Jack is inevitably a sturdier type, because Collins was. There is nothing of the exquisite or the aristocratic about him, nor could there be.

  Having cast the film, Welles went away, in July of 1941, with Amalia Kent, his trusty amanuensis and erstwhile tutor in screen-writing, and wrote the screenplay on King Vidor’s yacht; perhaps some of the vision of the great experimentalist of the silent cinema rubbed off on him. Working from the novel, two earlier screenplays and the script of his own radio broadcast, he selected with immense flair from the vast array of incident and character, adding little of his own, but emphasising the epic backdrop to the characters’ lives. His fidelity to the book is extraordinary. He changes Uncle George into Uncle Jack, as we have seen; he gives George’s line after he’s been run over (‘Riff-raff’) to the policeman, which is a little odd since it is George’s catchphrase. But in almost every other way his approach has been to realise the book as faithfully and literally as possible – instead of asking, as with the other projects on which he was working at the time, how can this material be used for cinematic purposes? He places the film at the disposal of the novel, rather than vice versa; in the narrations – a direct transposition of his familiar radio techniques – Welles allows the author’s characteristic cadences to be heard, unmediated. Tarkington is nobly served. Only in the last reel, no doubt embarrassed by the spiritualist contrivances of the book – Eugene’s highly uncharacteristic visit to a clairvoyant – does Welles offer a radical rewrite; but even then, in translating the final scene in the hospital into a reported one, in which Eugene visits Fanny in the boarding house, Welles tells precisely the same story, omitting only the mediumistic element. He also gives a proper (if perhaps slightly unTarkingtonian) end to Fanny’s story. The original screenplay, with its collage of distant comedy records, squeaking rocking chair, heavy shadows passing across faces and extreme close-ups, gives a striking sense of unease, of things unresolved, of deepening bitterness and perhaps incipient insanity, where the novel speaks only of healing. This is clearly a vast improvement over Tarkington.

  Fine and intelligent though it is, the screenplay suggests a less radical form of film-making than Citizen Kane – or indeed than Journey into Fear, to say nothing of the planned Way to Santiago/Mexican Melodrama, which is a complete reinvention of the book for cinematic purposes. It is, however, a profound, very grown-up, and somewhat sombre subject for a mainstream Hollywood film to address head-on, and in the screenplay, for all the charm and affection of Welles’s version, he does not for a moment shy away from his theme. No faithful treatment of The Magnificent Ambersons could be anything other than a sobering experience; it describes the dégringolade of a class, and the growth of what Michael Denning in The Cultural Front calls ‘Fordism’: the triumph of the automobile, with all that that implies. Welles the missionary for the reform of Hollywood insisted that ‘audiences are more intelligent than the people who create their entertainment’. While he was shooting The Magnificent Ambersons, he told students at the University of California Los Angeles: ‘I can think of nothing that an audience won’t understand.5 The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested they understand anything in the world. That must be the feeling of the movie maker.’ In his preparations for the film, he was governed by his conviction that ‘the movies are the nearest thing to reality … if the production is intelligent you could find out more about life from a movie screen than you can from theatre or radio’.

  In his quest for reality, he became obsessed by historical accuracy to a degree scarcely rivalled until Michael Cimino’s 1980 Western, Heaven’s Gate. He demanded 125 turn-of-the-century vehicles to be commandeered and put into working order, and was overjoyed to find a 1905 model exactly as shown in the Sears catalogue of that year. Like David Selznick before him in Since You Went Away, he built an entire house in the studio. He also set aside a period for systematic rehearsals, not to stage the film, but to work intensively on character, background and relationships. This is fairly uncommon now, and was almost unheard of in 1941, to the extent that Welles’s colleague Richard Wilson, running the office, received a letter from Robert Gessner of New York University congratulating Welles on the plan: ‘It can be chalked up as another innovation that Mr Welles has brought to the screen in an attempt to raise its quality.’6 Welles had done a little of this sort of work on Citizen Kane, but clearly thought that The Magnificent Ambersons, as an essentially realistic piece, required detailed psychological consideration. In this sense, despite a pattern of discernibly Wellesian themes in his work over the years, and an immediately recognisable manner or style, he responded individually to the material in hand, just as he had done in the theatre: The Shoemaker’s Holiday, after all, was not staged like Julius Caesar. And the material of The Magnificent Ambersons dictated its form.

  During this period of rehearsal, he recorded the actors’ performances. His plan was to play the recordings on the set, while they mimed to them; he favoured this technique, he told Barbara Leaming, ‘so the actors would listen to the way they played it in rehearsal. Because the tendency of all actors in front of the camera is to slow up. I wanted them to hear how quickly and brilliantly they played it in rehearsal.’ This explanation is bewildering. Almost all American actors of the period speak at lightning speed – Cary Grant, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney; American actors, indeed, were known and admired in England above all for the rapidity of their delivery. Speed and brilliance could hardly have been the issue. No doubt Welles believed that the recordings would speed up the process of filming: he wouldn’t have to worry about sound. Needless to say, the effect was the opposite; the procedure proved absolutely unworkable, a nightmare for the actors, robbing them of the freedom to respond naturally in the situation or to vary their rhythms by as much as a millimetre. The simplest explanation is that it gave him greater control over the performances, not necessarily in a tyrannical sense, but simply in assembling the elements he required.

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  Shooting of Ambersons began in October of 1941, somewhat later than planned; juggling the three films – Journey into Fear as well as It’s All True – had demanded adjustments to the schedule. Before the rehearsal period for Ambersons, Welles had gone with Norman Foster and the cameraman Al Gilks to Mexico for a few days to set up the production of Bonito the Bull, which he then intended to supervise at long distance; his girlfriend, Dolores del Rio, had travelled with him. They had both been involved in the edition of The Lady Esther Show transmitted only the day before their flight (Jiminy Cricket was a fellow-guest); Welles had to be back in time for the next episode a week later. It is an entirely typical week from this period of Welles’s life. Lady Esther, for CBS, of which he had produced weekly broadcasts since September, was no great strain on him. It consisted of a pot-pourri of literary adaptations, musical interludes, poetry readings and vaudevillian turns, presided over by a high-spirited Welles, who did a little of everything, appearing now boyish, now suddenly serious; he never entirely abandons his self-imposed mission to inform and affirm the values in which he believes, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in. Sometimes the effort shows in a false note of gaiety; his vaudevillian skills are limited, and his serious tone inclines to piety. The attempt to be all things to all men is inevitably doomed. But part of his nature demanded this sort of exposure, and would continue to demand it almost to the day he died. In his sixties, he gave an interview to Kathleen Tynan in w
hich he confided that the desire to please was paramount in him; in The Lady Esther Show, and in later radio programmes of a similar kind, this need to be popular is rather touching. He makes a bit of a fool of himself, and his vulnerability is like that of a teenager trying hard to impress and amuse. He continued to present the programme every Monday night throughout the filming of The Magnificent Ambersons and Journey into Fear, he only gave it up when he went to Brazil. Of course he had a team of writers and technicians, but he had nonetheless to take decisions unceasingly, and it was his responsibility on the night to pull everything together. This is how he liked it: no time for reflection. He had secretaries, assistants, managers, associates. Every idea, every inspiration would be written down and acted upon. In George Amberson Minafer’s terms, he was doing, doing, doing; being would have to look after itself.

  Bonito the Bull meanwhile was approaching the commencement of principal photography. The cast was in place – Jesús Solorzáno as the bull-fighter and Jesús Vasquez (dubbed Hamlet by Welles) as Chico, Bonito’s young friend; so were the locations. Foster wrote regularly to Welles from Mexico describing the problems and sending screen tests. The two men had formed the sort of relationship that Welles was always able to inspire in his fellow-workers – one of extraordinary familiarity and affection, playful, rather saucy, but with an unmistakable undertow of real emotion. Foster was fully fifteen years older than Welles – he had been acting since the early twenties and had more experience than Welles in every department of film-making – but he, instantly accepted the younger man’s leadership. In response to Foster’s anxious first telegram, Welles wired back simply: I LOVE YOU.7 But the crisis was real – difficulties with the weather, the bulls, the locals, the actors, the cameras. ‘Personally,’ Foster writes back, ‘I shall never feel sorry for a bull in the corrida de toros.8 I hate the bastards now – we love you so much that it’s killing us that we aren’t having better luck. But we’re doing everything we can and by God and by Jesus we’ll get it yet.’ Welles replies by telegram: WE ALL MISS YOU TERRIBLY, and adds: BELIEVE ME OUR TROUBLES HERE ARE AS NUMEROUS AND AS BITTER AS YOURS WITHOUT THE DIALECT.9 Money seems to be the main problem. MOSS PROMISES TO SEND MONEY STOP HE IS PRINTING IT THIS AFTERNOON STOP LOVED LAST BATCH OF FILM … MUCH LOVE ORSON. Even in a telegram one catches his electrical effect – the sense of fun and urgency and everything being possible that he generates; as soon as things cease to be possible, it is, naturally, a different story.

  The situation at RKO was increasingly tense. Richard Wilson, as head of the Mercury office, had received an anxious phone call from Reg Armour, who was in charge of overseas sales and a nervously cautious man: he reported that the board was worried about Welles going to Mexico on account of ‘the tremendous investment the company had in Orson and his present projects’ and was deeply disturbed that the cost of The Magnificent Ambersons had risen so sharply – now $853,000, much higher than the agreed ceiling of $600,000, though less than the $1m originally projected.10 The start date, moreover, had been deferred. Armour reluctantly approved a requisition for Welles to leave the country for another short visit to Mexico. His anxiety, and that of his colleagues, is forgivable: their investment in Welles was indeed enormous; as the overall financial position worsened, he seemed only to expand, functioning like a one-man studio, setting more and more plates spinning like one of his admired vaudevillians, always adding yet one more when it seemed that the whole thing was about to collapse. It was dazzling; and deeply unnerving.

  Meanwhile, the situation of Bonito, starved of funds, was equally troubled: in desperation José Noriega, the executive producer, wired Jack Moss for more money. In addition, the cameraman, Al Gilks, was summoned to Washington to work for the Federal government, and Floyd Crosby took over. This at least was positive: Crosby had been Robert Flaherty’s cameraman, receiving an Academy Award for Tabu, the curious drama documentary that Flaherty and F. W. Murnau had co-directed; he was a free spirit, not associated with any major studio, and had worked extensively with the outstanding documentary film-makers of the day, Pare Lorentz and Joris Ivens. Welles briefly visited the set in mid-October, again with del Rio; he brought back footage with him, and when he showed it to the RKO executives, they were thrilled. YOU ASKED ME TO BE BRUTALLY FRANK, Welles telegrammed Foster. OKAY STOP THE FILM IS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL STOP I WILL REPEAT THAT THE FILM IS COMPLETELY MARVELLOUS, VERY VERY EXCITING AND AS BEAUTIFUL AS ANYTHING YOU EVER SAW IN YOUR LIFE STOP FROM NOW ON YOU ARE OFFICIAL CREDITED CO-DIRECTOR OF BONITO & GOD BLESS YOU ORSON.11 Foster wired back, clearly touched: YOU ARE REALLY A SWEET GUY THANKS FROM ALL OF US.12 Excitement over rushes is common; but for someone as demanding as Welles – and as concerned about his image as an auteur – to have awarded a co-directing credit to a colleague could scarcely be a greater affirmation of the quality of what Foster was shooting.

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  By late October, The Magnificent Ambersons was finally under way. Welles had assembled his production staff – Robert Wise and Mark Robson, the Citizen Kane team, as editors; James Stewart as sound editor; Mark-Lee Kirk as production designer; Bernard Herrmann to write the score. These had all been obvious choices. The decision about who should be the director of photography had been delayed almost until the last moment. Clearly, Toland’s defection to the Naval Photographic Unit was a blow to Welles: Toland had been his closest collaborator on Kane, teacher, friend and co-conspirator. He had given Welles courage, while Welles gave Toland permission. Together they had gone further than anyone in Hollywood in pushing the boundaries of what could be done with film. What could they not do together? Without Toland, Welles was stranded. Charles Higham reports that he had wanted to shoot The Magnificent Ambersons without a director of photography, as such: he would use Toland’s team and together they would evolve the cinematography.13 But even Welles, self-confident and quick to learn as he was, must have realised that he was not yet quite the absolute master of the myriad technical demands of film and light; more importantly, had he followed (or been allowed to follow) such a disastrous policy, he would have been depriving himself of the creative and imaginative input of a fellow-artist, someone who could not merely realise his visions but exceed them, contradict them, be stimulated by them to completely unexpected – but richer – alternatives. He would, in short, have lost a partner who could surprise him.

  The appointment of the director of photography was made suddenly, and at the very last moment, but destiny provided Welles with the ideal cinematographer for his project. Stanley Cortez was a man as unlike the swift, no-nonsense Toland as could be imagined, as The Magnificent Ambersons was unlike Citizen Kane, in fact. Seven years older than Welles, Cortez (whose real name was Kranz) had started his career as assistant to the great portrait photographer Edward Steichen, and had a lifelong preoccupation with formal experiment. Known as ‘the Baron’, he cut an elegant, dandyish figure, seeing himself, unashamedly, as an artist; he enjoyed holding forth about what he was doing, often with reference to the Great Masters of painting and to classical music, of which he was a passionate devotee. As the very young head of photography at Universal Studios, he had carried out his experiments with a remarkable lack of interference; he later worked for various studios in a fairly low-profile way. One day, when he happened to be doing some work at RKO, he sneaked onto Stage Three to watch Welles rehearsing on the massive set he had had built for The Magnificent Ambersons. ‘He had eight sets upstairs and downstairs, and Orson was rehearsing on all these actual sets.14 And I said to myself: “I feel sorry for the guy who has to photograph the damn thing.’” That Sunday he was in New York and had a call from Jack Moss; Welles had seen some of his work – Danger on the Air and Black Cat – and wanted him to shoot the movie for him. David Selznick, to whom Cortez was currently under contract, had to be tracked down to be asked to release him, which he did, at a price. Cortez arrived in Los Angeles at noon on Monday, met Welles that night ‘for the first time in my life’, and started shooting the film the following mornin
g. He had no chance to make a test of anybody.

  This is an extraordinary sequence of events. Preliminary discussions between the director and the cinematographer are indispensable: the whole approach to the shooting of the scenes has to be mutually evolved and agreed. By deciding on a particular shooting style, a cinematographer can, purposely or otherwise, completely undermine the director’s work (or greatly improve it, of course); in appointing Cortez at such short notice, Welles was taking an enormous gamble. (The front office bitterly resented the salary Welles had agreed to pay him: $450 per week, plus compensation to Selznick for taking him off the other project; on his previous film Cortez had been working for basic studio rate. ‘This is the second case of the Welles company giving a cameraman a big leap in salary,’ scolded a front-office memo.)15 As Cortez describes it, the first day of shooting – the dinner-table scene at which George Minafer denounces Eugene – was something of an audition for him. It was also a first trial for the playback dialogue system, one which ended in conspicuous disaster, with the speakers blaring raucously across the studio as the actors attempted to maintain some degree of truth and spontaneity, desperately trying to synchronise their lips with the recording. The playback was abandoned; but the cinematography was a success. After seeing the rushes, Welles embraced Cortez: ‘You’re in,’ he said. ‘Immediately,’ said Cortez, ‘there was a rapport.16 From then on, to work with Orson was a fantastic experience.’ Welles gave him complete freedom, he said, ‘but every one of his suggestions was of enormous significance’. Cortez was keenly sympathetic to Welles’s desire to re-create the look and feel of the late-Victorian and Edwardian Mid-West; he it was who proposed the Currier and Ives look for the snow scene. But it would take time: his approach to his work was meditative and reflective; the detail was everything. ‘People said I was much too arty,’ he observed, happily.17 In later life, he would fondly recollect his earlier career, describing with admiration how he and Busby Berkeley would sit around playing cards for two or three days at a time until the master became inspired. This was not the Welles method. Welles liked to attack a problem with blazing energy and high adrenalin, in Oliver Cromwell’s phrase not simply striking while the iron was hot, but making the iron hot by striking it. Gregg Toland was of the same persuasion, and Welles began to miss his presence, becoming ever less tolerant of what he took to be Cortez’s self-indulgence.