Orson Welles: Hello Americans

by Simon Callow

  Welles was by no means passive politically: he had become increasingly fascinated by politics – engaged by its ideas, convinced of the possibility of effecting fundamental change, excited by the notion of appealing directly to large numbers of his fellow-citizens. If there was a national politician he really admired, it was Roosevelt’s Vice-President, the visionary agricultural reformer, Henry Wallace, by whose uncompromised radicalism and blazing oratory Welles had been deeply stirred. In Wallace’s utterances he glimpsed the vision for the future of mankind that seemed to him lacking in Roosevelt. He took his responsibilities as a prominent citizen very seriously: even in the midst of filming Ambersons, doing The Lady Esther Show and co-directing Bonito, he had participated in a combined benefit for refugees, the Exiled Writers’ Committee and Spanish Aid; on the very morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had sent telegrams to the President and Secretary of State Cordell Hull in support of three Soviet citizens arrested in Vichy France, urging action to prevent their being handed over to the Italian or German governments.

  The suddenness of the Japanese attack electrified him as it did everyone on the Left. The long-awaited moment demanded commitment of some sort from each individual: in Welles’s case – at twenty-six, apparently an eminently able-bodied male – this would normally have meant the draft. His eligibility for call-up was the subject of constant press interest: in May 1941, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported on his draft status – somewhat humiliatingly, his fallen arches and spinal irregularities were noted, without comment. It was not Welles’s destiny to be a foot soldier. Instead he received a telegram – on 10 December, the same day as his interrupted letter to Norman Foster was finally completed – from John Hay Whitney, head of the Motion Picture Division of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, asking him, as a matter of some urgency, if he would go as soon as possible to Brazil to make a film to promote pan-American unity; the subject would be Rio de Janeiro’s famous Carnival.

  One of the first objectives of a shocked America as it swung into action after Pearl Harbor was to secure its relations with South America; several Latin American leaders were energetically pro-fascist, posing a considerable threat to the United States at its own back door. The co-ordinator and prime mover of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (I-AA) was the energetic Nelson Rockefeller, ‘the eager beaver to end all eager beavers’, in Vice-President Wallace’s phrase, who had convinced the administration to transform the Office’s budget of $3.5m per annum to $140m, a mark not only of his persuasiveness, but of the importance of what came to be known as hemispheric unity.2 It is more than likely that the suggestion that Welles should direct the proposed film came from him. As a major shareholder in RKO and an early and vigorous supporter of Welles’s original contract with the company, Rockefeller had reason to know his work, and would certainly have known of the slated projects, Bonito the Bull, set in Mexico, and the other South American parts of It’s All True, whose outline was still quite vague. Rockefeller may also, as Frank Brady suggests, have been helping RKO out at a difficult moment.3

  It took Welles twenty-four hours to make up his mind about ‘Jock’ Whitney’s offer. His decision was a popular one. On 11 December, Phil Reismann was writing to Joseph Breen:

  They [the Brazilians] feel that the sending of Orson Welles by RKO to cover the Carnival which is so close to them and so near to their hearts, was a most magnificent gesture and it is highly appreciated by the Brazilian people and the Brazilian government … Orson Welles is looked upon by the Brazilian people as one of the great theatre and picture personalities in the United States, and he has in his make-up exactly what these people like … the compliment that we are paying them by sending the best man in Hollywood to cover this, is greatly appreciated.4

  It seemed that the Brazilians did indeed know all about Welles, though his amatory arrangements were of at least equal interest to his cinematic achievements. ‘Here is sensational news which we divulge as a scoop,’ proclaimed the Rio evening paper A Noite.5 ‘Orson Welles, the revolutionary of the movies, the extraordinary actor and creator of Citizen Kane, the most complex and fascinating figure of the American artistic world today, has his trunks packed to come to the city, in company with Dolores del Rio, with whom he will be married within a few weeks.’ The prospect of his presence in Rio was seen as a huge endorsement and a hope for the future; the native film industry perceived it as a step towards its emergence from obscurity. It is worth recalling that these statements made in Brazilian newspapers appeared a bare six months after the release of Kane; it is doubtful whether there has ever been any figure in the history of cinema who has created such an instant and overwhelming impact with a single film.

  It’s All True, having been part of RKO’s programme, now became an official part of the war effort. The world of Mercury Productions was transformed overnight by Welles’s commitment to the new project. Swift decisions were made. Journey into Fear – RKO’s best hope for a commercial success – was given a start date (6 January 1942) and Norman Foster was nominated as its director, transferred from Bonito, which was now summarily closed down. Bonito’s twelve-year-old star Jesús Vasquez – ‘Hamlet’ – was to come to America with the crew for an indefinite period, during which the company would assume responsibility for his safe-keeping and his education; his mother would come too. GIVE ASSURANCES TO ALL CONCERNED, wrote Norman Foster to José Noriega, THAT WHEN WE RETURN TO COMPLETE PRODUCTION WE WILL MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO RETAIN SAME CREW AND PERSONNEL. A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.6 By this time 80 per cent of the movie had been filmed, and, as indicated in Noriega’s letter above, the production team had in any case been keen on a temporary lay-off during the winter months. There was certainly no doubt in anyone’s mind that the film would be completed; the footage had been universally admired.

  The pressure to complete The Magnificent Ambersons, meanwhile, inevitably increased, creating renewed tension between Welles and Cortez, whose leisurely approach now seemed not merely irritating, but actually unpatriotic; Welles would later accuse him of being ‘criminally slow’ and took no trouble to conceal his impatience, which sometimes became ugly as the pace of his life rapidly accelerated. At the same time as he was shooting the last couple of weeks on The Magnificent Ambersons, and preparing Journey into Fear (which would soon be shooting alongside it), the radio shows for CBS continued, though the Lady Esther format had given way to a more straightforward mixture of dramatisations and readings. The vaudevillian element, no doubt to Welles’s intense disappointment, quietly evaporated. One week it was The Hitch-Hiker by Bernard Herrmann’s wife, Louise Fletcher, a huge popular hit; the next A Farewell to Arms. He was also involved in one of the first major wartime broadcasts, Norman Corwin’s The President’s Bill of Rights (We Hold These Truths), with, among others, Edward G. Robinson, Walter Huston, James Stewart and Roosevelt himself; programmes of this nature would henceforward be a significant part of his life, identifying and celebrating the virtues of American democracy, while convincing a nation that had by no means been unanimously eager to go to war of its necessity.

  Welles also continued to pursue his educational ideals. His old mentor Roger Hill, who was never absent from his life for long, ever urging him on in his social mission, had come forward with the notion of Todd Scholarships. Dick Wilson wrote to Hill that Welles was not keen on that particular notion: Orson Welles scholarships, on the other hand, he said, were very possible. ‘That is good publicity for the school, for us, for everybody.’7 He then went on to suggest subsidising a chair, a department, a project. Hill was thrilled with the response: PLEASE SHUT UP FOR A FEW DAYS, he wired, UNTIL I CAN GET THE MISTINESS OUT OF MY EYES AND WRITE COHERENTLY ABOUT THE GENUINE EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE AND NATIONAL IMPORTANCE OF WHAT YOU WILL DO.8 Just as Dadda Bernstein, another surrogate parental voice that was rarely still, had murmured the word ‘Genius’ in Welles’s ear from birth, so Roger Hill, encountering the boy in his adolescence, had from the start urged on him the notion of Greatness,
by which he meant greatness as a leader, as a prophet, as a teacher. There was huge, almost overwhelming personal emotion involved: praising Welles’s initiative, he says: ‘Everybody talks about it but no one does anything about it. Except you, my love. And except Todd. And we’re going to do something about it so significant that it will be recognised in every history of education in the next five hundred years as the Turning Point … yours, this side – but not far – idolatry, R.’9 The key word in Hill’s letter was ‘significant’: he wanted Welles to use his influence for the good of mankind, and he thought that he was uniquely placed to do so. Nor was he alone in encouraging this. In December of 1941, Welles had received a letter typical of many others from a teacher at Long Island University: ‘It is probably difficult for you to realise,’ she said, ‘what weight your word carries with the youth of Brooklyn. They have not heard of Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, nor Cardinal Newman, but they become alive with the mention of Orson Welles.’10 Not many twenty-six-year-old film-makers were spoken of, or to, in such a fashion. Despite the frustrations of working with Cortez, Welles ended the year in a state of some exhilaration: on the last day of December, Citizen Kane won the New York Critics’ Best Picture Award for 1941; the same day he received a telegram from H. G. Wells, whom he had met the year before when they shared a good chortle over The War of the Worlds broadcast, reporting on the film’s British premiere: CITIZEN KANE MAGNIFICENT. PRESS HERE EMBARRASSED. RELUCTANT TO RECOGNISE OUR PRESS BARONS. SALUTATIONS. The footage from both Bonito and The Magnificent Ambersons had been greeted with delight by the studio. The radio show continued successfully in its new Reader’s Digest format, with readings from the Gospel of St Luke, and Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Walt Whitman; while the It’s All True project was being hailed on all sides. George Schaefer had sent Welles a carefully worded letter, which was released to the press: ‘… this goes to you as an expression of our government’s deep appreciation of your patriotic service to the cause of hemisphere solidarity.11 Your service in this work is fully as important to the national cause as would your service in any other phase of national endeavour’ – no doubt pointedly phrased to deflect any criticism of his failure to enlist. And finally, as a harbinger of delights to come, on the last Lady Esther Show of the year (There Are Frenchmen and There Are Frenchmen) he had met the woman who, on the strength of having seen her photograph on the cover of a famous edition of Life magazine five months earlier, he had vowed he would marry: Rita Hayworth. Between Miss Hayworth (née Margaret Cansino) and Miss Del Rio, he was doing his bit for hemispheric solidarity in more arenas than one.

  As well as Hayworth, the broadcast starred Joseph Cotten, who had also adapted the original story. It was Cotten’s adaptation of Journey into Fear – presumably with fraternal input from Welles – that was now about to start shooting alongside The Magnificent Ambersons. The declaration of war had added new levels of interference from the front office. In addition to the usual prissinesses from the Hays Office (‘there should be nothing sex-suggestive in the line: “Maybe he thought the sea air would do him good”’), the production team was inundated with memoranda from various RKO functionaries, offering strictures and advice.12 ‘For your information and guidance, the war department is now exceedingly critical of any mention of itself,’ wrote one, William Gordon, always happy to share the fruits of his polymathy with them.13 ‘It is suggested that Josette refer to Rio rather than to Buenos Aires … I will be glad to give a dozen reasons why, if you want them.’ Another memorandum urged them: ‘Please please have Gogo speak French or even possibly in the Basque dialect which no one on this earth can understand except another Basque. (This is one language which even the Russians cannot learn, unless raised in the Basque district.)’ Another from a different source suggests the diplomatic challenges of wartime filming: ‘if Haki is overplayed as a ladies’ man … he will be most offensive to the sensibilities of the Turkish people … The Turkish Secret Police is considered one of the best in the world … Mme Matthis’ reference to the Reds and their having violated nuns and murdered priests is particularly unfortunate … not only to Spaniards – and some might not think it a better world if the Reds had won – but also the Russians whom we certainly don’t wish to offend today.’ As a parting shot, Gordon picks holes in the archaeologist’s speech, citing Leonard Woolley’s Ur of the Chaldees as his authority. Between wartime censorship, industry censorship, expert pomposities and studio panic, the film was severely challenged to maintain any sort of identity, but that it does manage to achieve, albeit of a somewhat quirky kind.

  The authorship – in the wider sense of the word – of Journey into Fear is something of a mystery. ‘There was a Mercury style of acting,’ Welles told Peter Bogdanovich, ‘and both Jo Cotten and I worked together perfectly in establishing that look and feel.’14 The film evolved in an improvisatory manner out of the relationship between Welles and Cotten, Norman Foster and Karl Struss, the art directors Mark-Lee Kirk and Albert D’Agostino. A large number of the cast were also appearing in The Magnificent Ambersons and, like Welles, shuttled between the two sets. Both films were shot almost in repertory: in addition to Cotten and Welles, Agnes Moorehead and Richard Bennett (as a drunken sea captain) appear, as well as the non-actors Moss, Meltzer and Drake from the Mercury office, and Welles’s long-suffering secretary, Shifra Haran. The Mercury stalwarts – Ruth Warrick, Eustace Wyatt and Everett Sloane – are joined by other chums of Welles’s, like Hans Conried (later to become something of a cult star as Dr Seuss’s Dr Terwilliker) and Frank Readick (Welles’s predecessor as the Shadow); Dolores del Rio plays the role originally intended for Michele Morgan. All in all, it has the feeling of a party about it, a high-spirited jape, in which the cast must have been on the point of breaking up at pretty well any time.

  Cotten, in fact, is very well cast, much in the mould of Ambler’s Winston Graham: ‘He was a quiet, likeable sort of chap, and generous with his whisky. You couldn’t, of course, imagine yourself getting to know him very well … he was always friendly. Nothing effusive, just friendly, a bit like an expensive dentist trying to take your mind off things.’ Cotten is perhaps a little more glamorous than Ambler’s character, whom ‘it is difficult to imagine a woman like Stephanie marrying … for anything except his salary’, but his even temper is well suited to the baffled, somewhat passive central character. Naturally, Graham has become American in the film, and his first name is no longer Winston – which would have seemed, in 1941, the quintessential English name – but Howard. Dolores del Rio, too, is admirably suited to the part of Josette, the Serbian femme fatale, a dancer locked in a joyless marriage with her surly dancing partner, José. ‘She was a slim woman with beautiful arms and shoulders and a mass of gleaming fair hair,’ says Ambler. ‘Her heavily lidded eyes, almost closed as she danced, fixed in a theatrical half-smile, contradicted in a curious way the swift neatness of her performance.’ (By odd chance, the character’s background is oddly similar to that of Rita Hayworth: she has been dancing since childhood, dominated by a bullying father who is also a dancer.) At a certain moment in the book, Josette’s expression is described as changing very quickly: ‘She became an international beauty humouring with a tolerant smile the extravagances of a love-sick boy.’ Del Rio perfectly finds the equivalent moment in the film; she had some practice at it.

  As for Welles in the role of Colonel Haki (a character who had already made an appearance in Ambler’s earlier The Mask of Dimitrios), it was just the sort of part that Welles was drawn to and which he should have resisted at all costs. Given the opportunity to play the charming but wicked raisonneur, he was irresistibly impelled to go for a theatrical stereotype, the exact opposite of what Ambler created. ‘He was a tall man with lean, muscular cheeks, a small mouth and grey hair cropped Prussian fashion,’ according to the author. ‘A narrow frontal bone, a long beak of a nose, and a slight stoop gave him a somewhat vultural air … his eyes were grey and very wide awake.’ Ambler’s ‘somewhat vultural’ figure becomes, i
n Welles’s hands, and with all the lavish resources of his make-up box, a mountain eagle crossed with Count Dracula. One is reminded how inexperienced a film actor he was: this was only his second excursion into the medium, and he is cruelly exposed in a way that he was not, paradoxically, in the much larger role of Kane. That role consisted of shards of character, pieces in a mosaic; for the younger Kane, moreover, he was able to draw extensively on himself. Here, he has only the stock types of the stage to turn to; one is very aware of a young man’s assumption of middle age. In the novel there is a droll moment in one of his exchanges with Graham. ‘A little melodramatic, aren’t you?’ asks Graham. ‘We have no proof that what you say is true. After all, this is real life, not …’ Graham hesitates. ‘Not what, Mr Graham?’ demands Haki. ‘The cinema, I was going to say, only it sounded a little impolite.’ It is not the cinema to which Welles’s Haki belongs, but the theatre – specifically the theatre of Victorian melodrama to which Welles, in his atavistic heart, belonged. The characterisation might well have caused raised eyebrows at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1930, but would have made his career at Henry Irving’s Lyceum fifty years earlier. Seeing the film by chance on television thirty years later, Welles was not proud of the performance. ‘I’m pretty awful in it,’ he told Bogdanovich.15 ‘The character was supposed to be a cynical sort, and that’s the way I played it – but I think I missed.’