Orson Welles: Hello Americans

by Simon Callow

  This was Jeanette Nolan’s theatrical debut: despite nearly twenty years in front of the microphone, she had never ventured onto a stage, or indeed in front of a camera. She seems to have taken to it like a duck to water. ‘Jeanette Nolan “of the radio”,’8 said the New York Times, was an ‘excellent’ Lady Macbeth. ‘Her lines are delivered with intensity and intelligence,’ said Variety, ‘and her good looks enhance her interpretation.’ The rest of the cast was admired: Donal O’Herlihy was ‘swashbuckling’, ‘ex-screen moppet’ Roddy McDowall ‘sensitive’, the Mercurians, Sanford and Barrier, ‘strong’; ‘the local fillins’, however, were found ‘not to rate more than adequate’. Welles himself was held by the New York Times to have given ‘an unexpectedly conservative reading, indulging neither in melodrama or exaggerated moralising … his was an outstanding job of restrained and sustained acting’ – phrases not often used to describe Welles’s performances. By contrast Variety spoke, approvingly, of his ‘flamboyant touch’, and had special praise for his audibility – no mean feat in that vast auditorium. Gladys Goodall, equally approving, was a little more sensuously responsive: ‘Mr Welles appeared not only to have been without sleep for months, he looked as though he needed a bath. He was unkempt, bedraggled in a gross manner, and thoroughly haunted.’ The whole event was evidently a triumph of organisation, energy, goodwill and theatrical audacity, carried along on a thrilling wave of adrenalin. The fact that it was all preliminary to a ‘Republic picturization’, in Variety’s words, simply added to the excitement. ‘While Welles’s Macbeth production will never have the beauty of Mr Olivier’s Henry V,’ hat sharp observer Gladys Goodall commented, ‘it promises to be a parallel in effectiveness when it is made into a movie. The ghoulish effects,’ she added with sweet innocence, ‘will be intensified in motion pictures.’ The name of Laurence Olivier was to loom ever larger in the months and years to come in consideration of Welles’s film of Macbeth.

  That was to come. The production in Salt Lake City was a triumph for ANTA, exactly what their brief indicated. This noble organisation, whose board boasted such sovereign names as Brooks Atkinson, Rosamond Gilder, Raymond Massey, Guthrie McClintic, Gilbert Miller, Oscar Serlin, Robert E. Sherwood, Lee Simonson and Margaret Webster, had been convened, by Act of Congress, in 1935, as a tax-exempt, self-supporting People’s Theatre, yet another outcrop of the New Deal, with the explicit remit of spreading theatre of quality across the classes and through the land. Due to various political machinations, ANTA had been dormant until 1945, and the new president of the organisation, the Broadway producer Vinton Freedley, was vigorously seeking to reactivate it. None of the board members, it must be said, were particular enthusiasts of Welles or his approach, but all of them were aware that he was as big a figure as the American theatre had ever thrown up. The Utah press acclaimed the Welles Macbeth in this light, roundly asserting that ‘ANTA has completed a project that typifies the type of work it is set to do for other university and community theatres.’9 Helen Hayes, a prominent ANTA board member and current First Lady of the American theatre, sent Welles a first-night telegram underlining the production’s significance for the organisation: OUR APPRECIATION FOR ACCEPTING THE CHALLENGE AND PAVING THE WAY WITH MACBETH FOR A NEW AND IMPORTANT PHASE OF THEATRE.10 She continued in terms that were exactly calculated to gratify Welles: IF WE ARE SUCCESSFUL IN ENLISTING MORE ADVENTURERS SUCH AS YOU FOR THIS SORT OF ACTIVITY ANTA’S PROGRAM OF ELEVATING THE THEATRE TO THE STATUS OF A NATIONAL FORCE IN THE LIVES OF ALL OUR PEOPLE WILL BE UNDER WAY BLESSINGS.

  Welles saw the venture in much the same light; a programme note stated that Utah Centennial’s invitation to stage Macbeth in Salt Lake City’ offered an opportunity to test the effectiveness of the professional and the highly skilled amateur theatre working as a unit’.11 The dividing line between professional and amateur was one that Welles was always willing to smudge, as seen in the casting of all his films after Citizen Kane; more significantly, it expressed his genuine – though somewhat fickle – commitment to direct contact, on an educational basis, between the theatre and the community. He was also delighted to find a new framework with which to assert the radical nature of his work; with the single unhappy exception of Around the World, he had only ever, after all, worked in what would later be called the alternative theatre. ‘While tonight’s production of Macbeth is not truly or entirely a Mercury production,’ the programme note continued, Welles revelled in the strict limitation of time imposed on the production, and the necessity of conducting rehearsals both in Hollywood and Salt Lake City for an extremely short period and then fusing the two companies. ‘So pleased are Mr Welles and Richard Wilson his co-producer and partner in the Mercury,’ the note ends, ‘that they hope to make this a yearly venture.’ It might, indeed, have offered Welles a perfect opportunity for the continuation of his theatrical project; so confident was he that he even announced the next production, ‘another great classic, seldom seen in the American theatre, King Lear’. The day after the first night of Macbeth, Bob Breen, ANTA’s executive secretary, eager to cement the relationship, wired Welles to suggest that he might like to take an ANTA-promoted show to the second Edinburgh International Festival the following year. Breen pursued Welles with ever-increasing desperation for four more years, but the dream of Orson Welles at the head of an American National Theatre – an idea extant at least since his work with the Federal Theatre Project in 1936 – was doomed to remain just that.

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  The production ran for four days, with two matinées for schools thrown in. At the end of the week the company returned to Hollywood, and Welles and Dick Wilson began the task of preparing for the film version. They had three weeks in which to make themselves ready for shooting. Whether the theatre run had bought them any real gains, apart from a certain familiarity for the leading actors with their roles, is to be doubted. Certainly the physical production was very different. The film’s epic sets, some of them monumentally high, were already under construction at Republic during the short Utah run. Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that his own designs were scrapped at the last moment before shooting began; on screen they are credited to Republic’s regular art director, Fred Ritter, but there is little doubt of Welles’s influence on them. They share with the stage production the sweeping staircase that had been so effective in Salt Lake City; inevitably the interiors and the heath had no counterpart in the open-stage theatre design. A few surviving sketches in Welles’s hand show elements that were to become very prominent in the design: the leafless tree on the crag where the Weird Sisters are to be found, and which so evocatively hangs over the exterior sequences; and a costume sketch of the strongly characteristic Viking/Tartar helmets (‘soldiers behind Macbeth/Misty silhouettes in thick FOG,’ the sketch says). Most of the stage costumes had been hired from the Hollywood costume house, Western Costumes, and they were planning to retain many of them for the film. Welles paid a great deal of attention to revisions to the Utah costumes, and his typically witty and lucid memorandum to Dick Wilson on the subject is usefully revealing of his general intentions, as well as being indicative of his close attention to detail and his practicality.

  What is altogether unexpected is his concern for authenticity. Far from attempting to create, as he is generally held to have done, a kind of imaginary world, Welles attends scrupulously to specifics of period and location, relying heavily on a capitalised entity that he calls ‘Research’. Writing of Duncan’s outfit – King Duncan, as he refers to him – he says, ‘Again I urge that we examine the old pictures of the fully-draped tartans that almost cover the body. It is a very noble effect.’12 Lamenting the fact that in Salt Lake City, Roddy McDowall’s Malcolm looked like ‘the third page boy from the left’, Welles suggests that he should wear tartan of the House of Duncan. ‘Research should check on this and we should be sure that the tartan we select will photograph near enough so as not to disturb the 422,000,000 Tartan-wearing Scotsmen.’ McDowall’s wig as it appeared in Salt Lake City is a disgr
ace, says Welles, ‘one of the most comical ever presented by any wig-maker to any actor … the bushiest hair since the House of Solomon or the House of David played baseball in the ’20s. Mr McDowall is to be given a Prince Valiant Wig (for Prince Valiant see the Hearst Sunday papers).’ The costume for ‘Lord Banquo’ passes muster, though he too should be wearing tartan, but Macduff’s – all of them – have to be redesigned. ‘Mr O’Herlihy’s figure is an extraordinary one in that the man has a “pot belly” – no muscles whatever. Therefore his legs must not under any account be bared. He must be heavily corseted, and his upper chest must be padded along with his shoulders.’ Welles knew whereof he spoke, since this was very much the procedure applied to his own body in Citizen Kane. He continues with brutal frankness:

  He is to be made as attractive as the art of Hollywood can do it, and since he looks very well in a modern suit there is no reason why he should look so god-awful in costume. Nothing at the front must be opened. There is something about the way Mr O’Herlihy stands and comports himself that makes it essential that his entire front, from the chin down to the knees, present a flat aspect so that he can’t bulge or sag. There is a way of coining apart which we’ve got to guard against. After one step he starts to crack at the seams.

  This tone of affectionate exasperation, of despairing encouragement, is entirely characteristic of Welles’s tone with his actors; there is more than a little of the actor-managerial style about it. Brainerd Duffield as First Murderer wore lifts in Utah: ‘he is to be denied this privilege’. Welles becomes positively Wildean in his comments on Duffield’s wig: ‘his being the cheapest wig that was given out is by far the best since it was a true theatrical wig made of inferior hair, and inferior hair is the only hair which makes up into a good wig … neither his [nor Bill Alland’s] wigs are to be tampered with or dressed by any man between now and the last day of the picture. They are to be kept in an old box and no attention is to be paid to them in the line of dressing. Otherwise they will be ruined.’ The Friar’s costume ‘is not wild and woolly enough’ – he should resemble ‘an early Evangelical Christian preacher rather than like a member of the brotherhood of hopovers, which this resembles’. There are doubts about his wig, too. In Utah the Friar had worn a bright-red helmet ‘suitable for a high school operetta version of “The Mikado”’. It may be, Welles says, that ‘Research will show us some interesting early bishops’, though on the whole he prefers the idea of a bare-footed itinerant preacher. He was not dissatisfied with Ross’s costume. ‘I do, however, have this notion. If it is true that there were reindeer in Scotland as there are now, then I would like to see Ross with antlers attached to a helmet. It might be very stylish. Ross is one of those who should have, in my view, braids. And if he is played by a very large man, very long heavy braids. One of our characters ought to have one of those long knee-reaching Brunnhilde jobs.’ Welles has a conception of a division of the characters into what he calls ‘Tartan or Scots’ and ‘Viking’, though the guiding principle by which they would be one or the other is unclear. In Salt Lake City, he says, ‘we were at our best when we were naked or fur-bearing, so I suggest Ross should be the big Viking-looking guy, with antler trusses and furs, with naked knees’. Neither this role nor those of Lennox, the Doctor, the Porter, Seyton or Fleance were cast at this point; no doubt the tightness of the budget made it hard to get actors of high quality.

  In contrast to the Research-determined costumes for the men, Welles feels that Lady Macbeth’s first dress should have ‘a rather modern evening dress look to it’. This aspect of the costume was much commented on in the reviews: it is hard to grasp his rationale for it. Later in the same memorandum he tells Wilson that they should try to ‘work against a sort of young lady dressed to give a recital of songs’, an obviously commendable aim, but to do so by introducing a distinctly anachronistic note – while all those around are wearing costumes of almost slavish period accuracy – seems odd. It is clear, however, that this is exactly what Welles intended. He was unhappy about Nolan’s Salt Lake City coiffure, and sought ‘a new method of doing her hair’; there is no reference to Research in this matter, either. He was concerned that the Gentlewomen’s dresses looked like Grand Opera, too dressy, ‘a little more civilised than we want’. His comments on the Siwards, junior and senior, again betray his obsession with historical accuracy. ‘They were fine up in Salt Lake City, except that the period was too late, I’m afraid … I would be happy if Research would justify our keeping the costume the way it is.’ He is very concerned about the correct distribution of the Celtic crosses; and positively pedantic about heraldry. ‘It is my hope that Research will justify our taking the license and giving to Duncan the Celtic Cross. So it is first introduced with Duncan and Malcolm and later re-introduced with a vengeance at the end of the play’ He is equally precise about social detail. Seyton, though ‘a virtual slave’, must not be wildly dressed: ‘we need to sense that he is a Castle servant, an indoor servant … a steward’ and is ‘in charge of others, poorer than himself.’ He will be surrounded by ‘a little pack of people who will be carefully chosen. They will be messengers and hangers-on around Seyton, who will have a special personality and character.’ This singling out of an otherwise unremarkable character to create a centre of interest around which to form a structure of subordinate relationships was always a hallmark of Welles’s theatre productions, a technique he shared with the great Irish director Tyrone Guthrie, a director with whom he had much in common – an avoidance of psychology, a gift for engendering dynamic stage action, an eye for startling detail. All of these elements are, of course, strongly present in his films.

  As is clear from the costume memorandum, a considerable number of parts had to be recast in a very short space of time; it is curious to find this important task being left so late. Lady Macduff was the largest of them, and for a while, too, Welles seriously considered replacing Jeanette Nolan, presumably for box-office reasons, since he otherwise expressed complete satisfaction with her performance. They offered the part to ‘everyone’, Welles said, among them Tallulah Bankhead and Vivien Leigh. (He only stopped short, he said, at Dame Judith Anderson, the Australian actress who had committed the unpardonable sin of playing the part not only opposite Olivier in London, but more pertinently in New York with Welles’s bête noire, the mild-mannered Maurice Evans. Evans’s performance in the title role, like all of his Shakespearean performances, had, to Welles’s rage, been acclaimed as definitive and a histrionic triumph. Welles’s barbaric conception of the part owes something to his violent antipathy towards the Evans school of acting.)

  As for the rest of the parts, he followed his usual eclectic policy of casting. Some actors came from within his personal circle: the not insignificant role of Seyton he gave at a late stage to his chauffeur and general dogsbody, George ‘Shorty’ Chirello, a dwarf, whom he had already used on stage in The Mercury Wonder Show; as Macduff’s son, again a substantial speaking role, he cast his daughter from his first marriage, Christopher, while – to keep it all nicely incestuous – the Third Witch was to be the screenwriter Charles Lederer, Welles’s first wife’s second husband (who, as previously noted, also happened to be Marion Davies’s nephew and thus a regular guest at William Randolph Hearst’s table). There were Mercury veterans: Gus Schilling (Five Kings, Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai) was the Porter, his role sadly truncated; Lady Macbeth’s doctor was Morgan Farley (from Heartbreak House and Danton’s Death nearly ten years earlier). John McIntire withdrew from the role of the Friar, and the English leading man Alan Napier, distinguished of voice and demeanour – and with whom Welles had worked in the broadcast Master of Ballantrae – took over the part, now renamed the Holy Father. The pretty but inexperienced Peggy Webber was to play Lady Macduff and double as a witch, alongside a couple of Goldwyn Girls, Brainerd Duffield and, as we have seen, Charlie Lederer. The extras were mostly supplied by Republic, a refreshing change for them, no doubt, from playing cowboys; Welles took great care over
selecting the most gnarled and wild-looking faces.

  Apart from these preparations, the principal activity of the three-week gap between stage run and shooting was pre-recording the dialogue. Welles justified this obsession of his, already attempted on The Magnificent Ambersons and then to universal relief abandoned, in various ways at various times: it was designed, he sometimes said, to eliminate the tiresome recording boom, which can have a cramping effect on camera movement (especially since he proposed using three cameras simultaneously, the cameramen to be disguised with costumed dummies on their backs, thus swelling the ranks of extras); he would also be able to do long takes without worrying about sound. At other times he said that the technique liberated the actors: they could concentrate on acting without worrying about diction. On yet another occasion he suggested that it meant that he and the cameramen could shout out instructions over the action, since the soundtrack already existed. During the preparatory period, he coached the actors untiringly, making take after take. ‘Orson explained to me,’ Jeanette Nolan told François Thomas, ‘that partly because I was a novice in film … it would help if we recorded the whole film beforehand. Like that, when we came to act in front of the camera, we wouldn’t get muddled up in the dialogue. And he didn’t want the public to be put off by the facial expressions we’d pull if we felt too much emotion.’ It suited her very well: