Orson Welles - The Man Who Was Magic: Part 1

by Barton Whaley

  * * * Beginning in March, during a break from both school and the observations of Dr. Mueller, Orson was taken one afternoon by Dadda to see Harry Houdini perform early during the master's recordbreaking eight-week stay at Chicago's Princess Theatre on South Clark Street.25 With 13 assistants and an executive staff of three, this was the master's first big all-Houdini show, which he'd been trouping through the Eastern and Central states since the previous fall. 21 Noble (1956), 31; Higham (1970), 5, paraphrasing his interview with Miss Moorehead. Higham gives Orson's age as "five", which would place his meeting with a 13-year-old Moorehead around 1920. However, while the events reported are circumstantially true, the ages and their implied dates aren’t. Stravinsky first came to the USA in 1925 and didn't return for ten years.

  22 Johnston & Smith (1940), I, 9-10; Higham (1985), 47.

  23Johnston & Smith (1940), II, 52; Brady (1989), 9. Higham (1985), 49, probably errs in placing this incident at Todd.

  24Johnston & Smith (1940), I, 9-10.

  The two-and-a-half hour performance watched by the blue-eyed boy had three acts. The first, lasting 45 to 60 minutes, featured Houdini's magic. This segment included The Miser's Dream where Houdini produces a small fortune in silver dollars from his bare hands and the Orange Tree that visibly grows real oranges. The second act was devoted to his three most famous effects: The opener was the Substitution Trunk (with wife-assistant Bess), followed by the Needle Swallowing Trick, and closed by the death-defying upside-down Water Torture Cell escape. The final act was his lecture-exposé of the methods used by fraudulent psychics.26 Except for the Miser's Dream and Water Torture Cell, Orson would eventually perform all these famous feats, including at least one private psychic exposé.

  After the show, Dadda took the boy backstage to meet the 51-year-old star. Impressed by the tall, round-faced lad's grasp of magic history, Houdini taught him the Pass, that basic sleight-of-hand move for cutting a deck of cards so that it imperceptibly transposes its upper and lower portions, thereby nullifying the cut. Accompanying the great showman to his dressing room, Orson did this sleight. Houdini, annoyed, commanded, “Never perform any trick until you have practiced it a thousand times." Orson so took to heart this advice from his admired master that he spent the next few weeks practicing the Pass.27

  Next month Orson met Houdini for the second and last time and presumably was anxious to show his teacher the results of long practice. On this occasion he was brought by his father. During their backstage visit after the matinée show, Carl Brema, the famous German-born maker of fine quality conjuring apparatus, arrived from his shop in Philadelphia with an imported Conradi Vanishing Lamp. Young Orson was dumbfounded when Houdini, on accepting the prop, said “Fine, I'll put it in the show tonight."28 Orson didn't know that Houdini had already been doing the Vanishing Lamp for at least four months.29 So Brema's must have been either a repair job or a replacement for the gimmicked prop required for the effect. Despite Orson's misunderstanding, this encounter still served as a useful lesson in “great disillusionment", as he called it, about advice from one's elders.

  25 The dates of Houdini's stay at the Princess are established, thanks to Frank Koval and Ken Silverman, by a notice in The Sphinx (Mar 1926), 6; and letters by Houdini to Frank Ducrot, 3 Apr 1926, and Houdini to Dr. A.M. Wilson, 17 Mar & 10 May 1926. Originally booked for two weeks beginning March 8th, Houdini got a two week extension and then a further four weeks. Orson would later say he'd seen Houdini perform at the Hippodrome [in New York City] and first met him there. OW in Orson Welles' Sketch Book, No.3 (1955). To be true that would have been in 1918 when Houdini featured the Vanishing Elephant and Orson would have been only three. It's Orson's recollection of the Vanishing Lamp that pinpoints the meeting with Houdini to the master's 1925-26 tour. Cy Endfield recalls Orson saying that he'd been taken by his "step-father" [i.e., Dadda] to see Houdini at age "eleven". Endfield audiotape to Rosenbaum (Fall 1992).

  26 For descriptions of this full-evening show, which Houdini varied from time to time, see Furst (1968), [1]-[4]; and Milbourne Christopher, Houdini: The Untold Story (New York: Crowell, 1969), 216-229.

  27Griffin (1982), 35; and Ward (1983), 34, where Orson told them, respectively, that Houdini "taught me the pass." This is not only plausible but likely, as we know that some years earlier Houdini had taught his own version of the Pass to 15-year-old Ralph Read. See Farelli in Hugard's Magic Monthly (Feb 1953), 1046. However, Johnston & Smith (1940), I, 96, probably based on Johnston's interview with Bernstein; and Noble (1956), 31, make it some unspecified trick with a red (a detail added by Noble) handkerchief, probably based on his correspondence with Bernstein. That is a possible but less likely sleight for Houdini to have shown a novice, particularly as Houdini was then again busy practising card magic to revive it for his next tour.

  The anonymous article "Incomparable Orson" (1947), 6, says "a man from Carl Brema's ... came in with a new trick in linking chains." Most unlikely!

  28OW on Orson Welles' Sketch Book, Episode No.3 (1955). Slightly different quotes are given by Noble (1956), 31; and by OW in Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 182-183.

  29Furst (1968), [3].

  Incidentally, Orson must have later read about the Vanishing Lamp or figured out the method from seeing the prop in Brema's hands, because he once characterized it as a rather bad trick.30 Perhaps this was because, like many other magi, he thought the method too obvious.

  Of all magicians Houdini was arguably, as Orson called him, “the greatest showman of our time."31 Orson would emulate that aspect and recalled that “I loved Houdini" because among other reasons “he was dynamic." But “he wasn't an illusionist; he was a challenger. He challenged the audience. He didn't seduce them. He set up a kind of Olympic game and then won it at the end." Orson sensed that Houdini “had a kind of contempt for illusionists."32 Orson loved illusionists and believed in “seducing" his audiences. But, giving Houdini his due, Orson appreciated that “two of the musts for magicians are nerve and showmanship. If you've got those, more than half the battle is won."33

  He was surely introduced to his first magical supply store at the time of these two meetings with Houdini. The Princess Novelty (later Magic) Shop was located next door to the Princess Theatre in a store front that made it one of America's first on-street magic dealerships open to the general public. During Houdini's run at the theater the shop featured a display of handcuffs and leg irons on loan from Houdini and The Great Kolar. And it was the main gathering place for the local wizards.34 It had been opened the previous year by three enterprising young magi: Joe Berg, Sam Berland, and Harry Faber. Years later Berland would become one of Orson's mail-order magic suppliers and Berg would become a regular supplier and a personal friend.

  Orson's third most memorable performer was Long Tack Sam, the most famous authentic Chinese magician in the Western world. That vaudeville headliner's short comedy-magic act included his spectacular somersault that finished when a giant bowl of water materialized from thin air into his outstretched hands.35 Evidently his father took Orson backstage because Mr. Long taught him a small trick or two.36 This was most likely after Orson had passed his fifteenth birthday in 1930 during Long's fifth American tour when he played Chicago's Palace Theatre.

  Orson would never forget these big vaudeville magic shows. Two decades later, he wrote, “In magic's golden age magicians offered laughter as part of the show but never permitted disenchantment. For a marvelous hour or two they elevated their most[ly] adult audiences to the status of delighted children."37

  BOY MAGICIAN One evening in the early summer of 1926 Orson abruptly cut short what was to have been the rest of the year in Madison at public school and in the home of Dr. Mueller. While the psychologist's wife was out, Orson, suddenly facing what he believed was an overt sexual advance by his host, skipped out a back window, went to the railway station, and returned to Chicago.38 Again Orson, having to take care of himself, had done so in an indirect and non-confrontational, but effective way.r />
  30 Ward (1983), 34.

  31OW on videotape of Orson Welles' Sketch Book, Episode No.3 (1955).

  32OW interview in Ward (1983), 33.

  33Quoted in "Incomparable Orson" (1947), 6.

  34The Sphinx (Mar 1926), 6.

  35A description of Long's act at that time is in Price (1985), 530-531.

  36OW on Orson Welles' Sketch Book, Episode No.3 (1955). Also OW as overheard by Tynan (1961/1976), 14. Tynan has "Dadda" taking Orson to see Long Tack Sam, but this is probably a garble.

  37Welles (1948), vi-vii.

  He spent the remainder of that summer in Grand Detour with his father at the sizeable Sheffield House Hotel, which Dick had recently bought and ran as a business for travelers and a hospitality house for occasional visiting vaudeville cronies. One was a magician whom Orson got to teach him some tricks. Another visiting vaudevillian taught him how to apparently swallow goldfish by a combination of sleightof-hand (switching the live fish for carrots) and verbal hocus-pocus, the type of sleight-of-mouth that marks the lines or, as most of them call it, “patter" delivered by all good magi. And it was probably at this time that another of his father's chums, a professional mindreader, taught him some rudimentary tricks of psychic mindreading along with the sage warning that the time to quit that racket is when you begin to believe you really have The Power.39

  Toward the end of his stay at the hotel, Orson was visited by Marjorie Watson, the 9-year-old younger cousin in the pair with whom he'd played doctor-and-nurse. They promptly eloped. He assured her that they could pay their way by performing magic and giving minstrel shows at a penny a turn. He disguised her as a boy by cropping her hair and giving her some of his clothes. The young Romeo and his Juliet slept in the woods and gave street shows for four days until apprehended 18 miles up the road in the small town of Oregon while working a “tip" of local pedestrians. The Illinois State Rural Police returned the two hungry children to their homes.40

  * * * That fall, “dressed as Sherlock Holmes", he was sent off to the Todd Seminary (later renamed School) for Boys and enrolled in the 6th grade. The school was in Woodstock, Illinois, home of the famous Woodstock typewriter and not the more famous Rock-and-Roll venue in upper New York state. Set on a 300-acre tract some 40 miles west of Chicago, the 78-year-old costly private boarding school for a hundred talented lads covered the first ten grades, with qualified graduates receiving full credentials for college entrance.41

  Orson contrived to evade the School's vigorous athletic program by forging Dr. Bernstein's name to an excuse note claiming that the lad was “delicate and could not be expected to take part in any athletics whatsoever."42 This fabrication didn't last long before he was found out and made to participate.

  Recognizing the value of an adult protector and mentor, he set out to capture the attention of the owner and soon-to-be headmaster, Roger “Skipper" Hill. At 31, the genial, literate, puckishly down-toearth Skipper was then the school's English and drama teacher and athletic coach.

  That fall at the school's annual Halloween Eve show, Orson performed a magic act. For his main trick he materialized a small building from underneath a handkerchief. He intended that the building then burst into flames, but it failed to ignite. Skipper was one of the few in the audience who realized the trick had gone awry, but he was impressed by how the boy magician managed to cover partial failure by improvising patter delivered in that already deep and self-confident voice to make it seem that the trick had ended as planned.43 Skipper was won over and he and his wife, “Horty" (Hortense), became Orson's dearest life-long friends, even calling him their “foster son". This was his first close exposure to a monogamous couple and a loving one at that.

  38 OW interview of 22 Jun 1984 in Leaming (1985), 17.

  39Leming (1985), 70.

  40Dudley Crafts Watson (Marjorie's father) and Frederick J. Garner interviews in Noble (1956), 37-38; and OW interview of 9 Feb 83 in Leaming (1985), 18-19.

  41Hortense Hill interview in France (1977), 22.

  42Johnston & Smith (1940), II, 25; Higham (1985), 49.

  Skipper treated Orson as an adult: “In some ways, he was never really a young boy." They discussed mainly Shakespeare, opera, and magic; and Orson persuaded him to expand the school's sophomoric drama repertoire by adding Shakespeare and other classics. Having created his own niche, Orson quickly dominated it.44

  He supplemented his fictitious roles on the Todd stage with two impersonations in life. One afternoon at age 11, alone and without money in downtown Chicago, he'd scammed a hearty meal at a leading private club by passing himself off as the son of member Edward C. “Ned" Moore, prominent music critic and Dadda's friend and cuckoldee.45 And during one Christmas vacation he attempted to gain access to Skipper and Hortense Hill's room at the Palmer House hotel in Chicago during their absence by telling the desk clerk that he was their son. The Great Impersonator was refused entrance when the house detective found the initials “OW" in his hat. Nor did they accept his lame assertion that this stood for his “middle name, Watson". Skipper explains: "He could have amended his claim to that of foster son and proved it by a phone call to my office. But that would have been too easy. And spoiled all the fun."46

  In May 1927 at the beginning of Orson's first summer vacation from Todd, Dick Welles took him for a quick 12th birthday cruise of China and Japan.47 In Hong Kong and Shanghai Orson delighted in seeing Chinese classical theater and magicians.48 Among the leading local conjurors, Ching Ling Foo had recently died and Long Tack Sam was on one of his many world tours during which Orson would catch up to him in Chicago. However, the great Han Ping-chien might have been playing Shanghai at that time. Whatever Chinese actors and magi Orson did see would have dressed their acts in the ornate style that he recaptured 19 years later in a scene in The Lady from Shanghai, which he filmed in the Mandarin Theater in San Francisco's Chinatown. Chief among the treasures Orson brought back from this trip were several magic books.49

  Later that summer Dadda vacationed in Cuba with Orson who drew stares with his sloppy school clothes, unkempt hair, and wearing his look-older theatrical facial makeup in daytime.50 Todd had no swimming pool when Orson first arrived, but a large one was built during his second year. This created a problem that Orson confessed to Skipper who recalled that “it was the most crucifying thing that had ever happened to him. He'd told everyone that the reason he hadn't gone out for football or anything was because he was a great swimmer. Now, he had to build up the story that he was a mountain climber instead."51 Surprisingly, he came to love swimming (as well as fencing), indeed well enough to make the swim team; although, as athletic director (replacing Skipper who'd become headmaster) Anthony “Coach" Roskie remembers, “He was not very good at athletics — quite lefthanded."52

  43 Johnston & Smith (1940), II, 52. Also Leaming (1989), 22-23.

  44Hill 1983 interview in Leaming (1985), 23, 24.

  45Johnston & Smith (1940), II-51; Brady (1989), 15; and Callow (1996), 60-61. These accounts derive from Ashton Stevens' weekly column in a November 1930 Herald American.

  46Hill (1977), 129. Further details, presumably from Skipper, in Johnston & Smith (1940), II-51; and Brady (1989), 15.

  47Hill (1977), 110; Brady (1989), 9. Higham (1985), 52, places this trip in summer 1930 when Orson was 15; but this may refer to the "second" trip to the Far East mentioned by Brady (1989), 15-16.

  48Brady (1989), 15-16.

  49Nostalgic, yes; but gratuitous, no. As Leaming (1985), 336-339, astutely argues, Welles made it an integral part of the visual and psychological setting in accord with his current excitement with Brecht's theory of Chinese stage acting.

  50Higham (1989), 50.

  51Roger Hill, as quoted in France (1977), 27.

  Preferring the company of adults and girls, he made only one friend, Paul Guggenheim, among the boys at Todd. Instead he overawed them by his unconcealed, even deliberately exaggerated sophistication—the exotic places he'd seen, the famous people he'd met, the
grown-up things he knew. Orson's closest rival, Hascy Tarbox, flatly stated, “He was never a boy. Or if he had been, he tried to pass that phase in development so fast that he gave the illusion to we mere mortals that he was indeed ageless." As biographer Leaming concludes, “How odd it must have seemed to those ordinary boys at Todd for one so young to possess anything so distinctly adult as a past!"53

  Later, on many evenings Orson would join Coach Roskie, who did extra duty as a dormitory master, in the common room of the dorm for the younger pupils where he “loved to entertain before the boys". His one-man performances consisted of “lots of magic tricks" and telling made-up stories until bedtime when he cajoled the youngsters off to their beds by promising another performance another night.54 And he made the much-exaggerated claim that he'd been taught his magic by the great Houdini himself.55

  By age 14 he'd already acquired the knack — crucial to any actor, story-teller, con artist, or magician—of adjusting his performance to subtle cues from his audience. Roskie noticed that:56 He watched their eyes and could tell when they wanted more, or when they wanted something else. He'd just make up the story according to what he saw in their faces. ... It was like he'd do something and you'd say, “Hey, that's nice," and then he'd go one step further and turn it into something you never thought of. That's the way he did things, always just one step beyond what you'd expect.

  Skipper noted his favorite student's delight in outrageous but imaginative tall tales and pranks. When still only 14 Orson had even run a remarkably sophisticated confidence game. He'd taken a prose translation of a Sophocles play and rewritten it in iambic pentameter, a verse form he'd learned from Shakespeare. Then, passing himself off as a Greek scholar, he sold it as an original translation for $300 to a theater director. When the director found out it wasn't original, Orson was nearly arrested.57 The experience taught him to become more careful. While this was his last certifiable con game, he would often come close with various scams, elaborate hoaxes, and other pranks.