Orson Welles - The Man Who Was Magic: Part 1

by Barton Whaley

  At this time he composed a cheery little song whose lyrics ran: Everyone loves the fellow who is smiling

  He brightens the day and lightens the way for you— He's always making other people happy

  Looking rosy when you're feeling awful blue.

  52 Anthony "Coach" Roskie telephone interview, 16 Sep 93.

  53Tarbox 1983 interviews in Leaming (1985), 24.

  54Anthony "Coach" Roskie telephone interview, 16 Sep 93. Also Roskie interview in Brady (1989), 11, where his name is misspelled "Roskey".

  55Higham (1985), 49.

  56Brady (1989), 11, as confirmed by Roskie telephone interview with BW, 16 Sep 93. In 1945 Welles, in his movie The Stranger, would fondly remember Coach Roskie by placing his surname on a bulletin board of the gymnasium of a fictitious boys' school patterned after Todd. Indeed, except for a studio veto on the grounds of cost, he would have shot the school scenes on location at Todd.

  57Roger Hill interview in Brady (1989), 15. A slightly different version is given in Johnston & Smith (1940), II-51, probably based on Johnston's 1939 interview with Hill.

  For years to come he'd often sing it to celebrate particularly joyous moments such as the arrival of a dear friend or when a rattled actor finally got his lines right.58 Orson expanded his geographical horizons in the summer of 1929 by a walking tour of Europe. With two companions (including a Todd teacher) he saw Europe for the first time, visiting England and touring Germany, France, and Italy. Having abandoned his travel mates along the way, he finished the trip alone.59 “Travel", Skipper later remarked, “has ever been Orson's addiction. Also Orson's education. Man and boy, he's had a fantastic capacity for absorption. From books; from people; from experiences."60

  That fall Dr. Bernstein visited Todd, using its charming setting to marry Edith Mason, worldfamous prima donna and reigning diva of the Chicago Opera. As a condition of her divorce from her Italian operatic conductor, Dadda had agreed to three terms: 1) wean Miss Mason away from her addiction to eating pies; 2) force her to stop smoking cigarettes; and 3) pay the ex-husband $100,000 for loss of his wife's sexual favors. Dadda cunningly evaded this last obligation by inviting the ex to move in and share the bride. Orson sometimes stayed with this cosy threesome during the next two years until Miss Mason divorced Dadda and remarried her Italian.61

  Throughout his five years at Todd, Orson specialized in drama classes and school plays and tinkered with the school's radio station (for which he wrote an unbroadcast Sherlock Holmes script). Skipper, as drama teacher-director, ran an unusually ambitious program. In addition to the regular weekly shows in the school's theater for uncritical students, friends, and parents, Skipper would take his Todd Troupers on the road to make money, playing a rented theater in Chicago and movie houses in the suburbs.

  Orson was, as Skipper put it, “a star with the [touring] company from the time he was thirteen" and “by the time he was a senior was virtually directing them."62 He worked hard and happily with this junior repertory company. And he began his habit of freely experimenting with classic roles and texts (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Molière, etc.).

  * * * While still at Todd, Orson had come to the attention of James C. “Jim" Sherman, wealthy owner of the Palmer Gift Shop with its large magic section, located within Chicago's famous and elegant Palmer House hotel. Sherman would recall that Orson “was terrifically magic conscious then, and did his hobby no harm on every possible occasion."63

  YOUNG MACHIAVELLI “I discovered at the age of six", Orson would recall two decades later, “that almost everything in this world was phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I've always wanted to be a magician."64 Although some might question that a six-year old could be so worldly, there's every reason to believe this was indeed his view by at least age 11. And there's ample evidence that even as a child he understood that all the important adults in his world were practicing deception as a way of life and the rest were their dupes. By the time he left Todd School, he'd learned to be positively Machiavellian.

  58 Mac Liammóir (1952), 25, 31, 139.

  59Hill (1977), 118; Higham (1985), 52.

  60Hill (1977), 118.

  61Higham (1985), 51.

  62Hill interview in France (1977), 23-24.

  63Ted Annemann in The Jinx, No.147 [undated, but late August 1941], 822, paraphrasing Sherman's recent conversation.

  64Look, 16 Nov 1943. Also partially stated in Denton & Crichton (1943), 14.

  * * * At the end of 1930 when Orson was 15 his father unexpectedly died. The normal shock was magnified by the fact that, since the beginning of fall when the boy had returned to school, he'd been avoiding his much-admired but increasingly booze-pickled father. This was on the advice of both Dadda and Skipper — the first probably self-serving, the second well-intended but inappropriate. Whatever their motives, they put the youth in a position where he'd cruelly withdrawn a child's loving attention at the worst possible time. If Orson hadn't already suspected, these circumstances taught him that, however well-meaning, even his idolized protectors had their share of dirt on clay feet.

  Orson's mother had prepared him for her death. His father couldn't. Richard, at age 58, had died suddenly three days after Christmas, alone in his room at the Bismarck Hotel in downtown Chicago. The official cause was given as “cardiac failure" (a heart attack) as a consequence of a history of “chronic myocarditis" (a heart disease) and “chronic nephritis" (kidney disease). However Orson always believed that Richard hadn't slowly drunk himself to death but had committed suicide with a single overdose.65 Paranoia? The fictionalized guilt of a child for the abandonment by death of a parent? Not necessarily and probably not. It was common practice back then for physicians to conceal both the “shame" of alcoholism and the “sin" of suicide. Moreover, the death certificate, which was mysteriously riddled with weird discrepancies, had been signed by the least disinterested physician in Chicago—Dr. Bernstein himself.66 Had he falsified this document? Probably. And that's reportedly what Orson later said.67

  He accepted responsibility for his father's “lonely death" and never forgave himself. He argued that:68 I've always thought I killed him. ... I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis. I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it — how can you get rid of real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it.

  Real guilt? Orson's statement may be unfair to shrinks. Freudian (and Jewish and Catholic and Protestant) guilt is a burden, however well meant, laid upon us by others—religious teachers, moralistic law makers, parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues. We feel this type of guilt whenever we fall short of the standards they've imposed, imposed as an obligation—the very opposite of a responsibility, which we're free to accept or reject along with the authority that goes with it. Orson, like many of us, seemingly confused these two quite different meanings and causes of “guilt", his own resulting from having allowed himself to be diverted by Dadda and Skipper from his freely assumed feelings of responsibility toward his father.

  He did say later that he believed his mother and father had certain unspecified “expectations" so that “I always felt I was letting them down."69 Now this fits the Freudian definition of neurotic guilt. Although Orson's belief, justified or not, may have diluted some of the joys he would feel, it never crippled him.

  65 According to unpublished papers of John Houseman at UCLA cited in Higham (1985), 135n; and partly confirmed by Houseman (1972), 414.

  66Higham (1985), 53.

  67At least according to unpublished papers of John Houseman at UCLA cited in Higham (1985), 135n.

  68OW interview of 19 Jun 83 in Leaming (1985), 32-33.

  69OW interview of 8 Jun 84 in Leaming (1985), 408.

  * * * His lifetime work overflows with ageing characters facing their mortality. Some have interpreted this as a morbid preoccupation with death. Rather than leaping to the pop-psych conclusion that Orson had a morbid preoccupation with death, Skipper Hill, who kne
w Orson as well as anyone, was content to simply observe his behavior and conclude that: “The critics tell us Orson is obsessed with death. I tell you that he has always been obsessed with life, with its sensitivities, with its promises."70

  Orson's parents had taught well. As a child he'd already accepted a truth that most of us learn only in middle age if ever:71 I began thinking about death the minute they told me about it and I was indeed very little then. ... I don't think you are truly alive unless you constantly remember you're going to die. In fact, I think what give dignity and tragedy, meaning and beauty, to life is the fact that we will die. ... And if we don't know we are going to die, nothing in life is sufficiently precious to us.

  This attitude explains better than anything else why Orson always strikes others as driven, as if by some demon, to accomplish so many things. People entranced by life and living comfortably with their mortality often strike those who aren't as “arrogant" when they are just self-assured, as “aggressive" when merely asserting themselves, “tactless" whenever simply trying to avoid time-consuming hypocritical games by being frank, self-destructively “cynical” when only rationally skeptical, “insensitive" or “selfish" when deeply absorbed in the thrill of creative work, “perfectionist" when setting high standards, and “compulsive" or “workaholic" when strongly motivated to reach desired goals. But we must be confident, assertive, direct, skeptical, task-oriented, committed, and keep to high standards, if we are ever to achieve our most important priorities in a single lifetime. In this process Orson wasn't “driven"—he was having fun driving. Because few chose to keep up with his fierce pace, he would make and keep few close friends; but those few were precious indeed.

  * * * His father's death left Orson with two “parents", Dadda Bernstein and Skipper Hill; but by choice he was already beginning to move out on his own. His four parents had given him much and he'd selected the parts that suited him: Recognition of his own worth and talent; the ability to give and accept affection; a sophisticated education that, combined with his considerable social skills, enabled him to deal effectively with adults; a strong sense of ethics, if not morals, that he called “chivalry"; a passion to test the limits of his abilities, coupled with a somewhat naive optimism. And a protective wisdom, skeptical but never cynical, about the often devious ways of a world he now faced alone.

  His father's unusual will gave Orson the power to appoint his own legal guardian. Loving but not trusting Dadda Bernstein, he offered the guardianship to his best friend and unofficial foster father, Skipper Hill. But Skipper declined, giving the true but evasive and insufficient reason that it would hurt Dadda. Out of misguided tactfulness Skipper also advised Orson to conceal this arrangement from Dadda. So Orson appointed Bernstein who immediately began to embezzle Richard's comfortable estate of $43,500 (more than a half million in today's money). Of this, $37,000 was for Orson and $6,500 for his black-sheep older brother. Bernstein carefully manipulated these funds so that the brother never got a penny of his share and the bank's records were altered to show only $20,000 due Orson.72 Dadda's embezzlements were made easier by lying to Orson that there wasn't any money in the estate —his thin and quite insulting excuse being that otherwise Orson would have spent it all in advances before the balance was to pass to him at age 25.

  70Hill (1977), 118.

  71OW interview of 1 Apr 77 with Merv Griffin (1982), 48-49. This double betrayal of trust by the two most important people left in Orson's life made him neither bitter nor resentful, much less cynical, but helped him realize that the only person he could rely on was himself. In future he politely listened to but seldom took the advice of either man. This is just as well—otherwise he would have avoided the stage (Dadda wanted him to go to college and then make a career in classical music), cancelled his War of the Worlds broadcast (Skipper's advice), fired his devoted staff in 1942 (Dadda), become an Army officer in WW II (Skipper), and in his late 60s would have dropped filmmaking for either a second go at politics or some puny academic post teaching cinema (Skipper).

  Henceforward Orson never blamed others for bad advice that he accepted and acted on. Like any mature adult, he took upon himself full responsibility for his own decisions and actions.

  * * * Next year (1931), at the end of spring semester, he graduated from Todd with honors, later attributing this academic achievement to his bright fellow-student and friend, Paul “Guggie" Guggenheim, whom he'd inducted into ghosting many of his assignments in Latin and Geometry.73 Meanwhile he'd concentrated on improving his skills as an actor, director, dramatist, set designer, painter, sketch artist, cartoonist, radio buff, puppeteer, con artist, and magician.

  Orson attended the famous Chicago Art Institute that summer for a drawing course that he dropped after two weeks. During that time he actively began seeking a stage career. He signed with the Powers Agency in Chicago and placed a 73-word ad in both of the country's leading stage magazines, Variety and The Billboard.74

  This seemingly straight-forward advertisement isn't. By claiming he would “close in Chicago in early June" he simultaneously lies that he already has a professional stage career, implies he has been on tour, and hides the fact that he'd just graduated from high school. The reference to “chalk talk" as a Wellesian specialty is revealing. During the early 1900's chalk talk acts were one of the odd “allied arts" of conjuring, popular with vaudeville and club stage performers, particularly such well-known magi as Doc Tarbell and Buddy O'Day.75 Because it is a light entertainment combining rapid cartooning on blackboard or easel with amusing patter, it was a natural for Orson, as he would prove two decades hence on a popular BBC-TV series titled Orson Welles' Sketch Book. But the reference to chalk talk in his ad shows he was willing to work vaude in addition to (or even instead of) the legitimate theater.

  72 Leaming (1985), 34, 35; Higham (1985), 53-54.

  73OW 1969 interview in Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 67-68.

  74Hill (1977), 117.

  75For the history of chalk talk see Whaley (1989), 139.

  THE DUBLIN GATE With college openings looming for fall, Dadda pressed Orson to attend Cornell University and train for a career in music. Skipper wanted him in Harvard where he could study drama, but Dadda vetoed that idea. Orson was tempted by a stage career but didn't fancy college. After three days of rancorous discussions at home with Dadda (backed by Mrs. Ned Moore, his latest live-in menage à trois lover), the executor held firm. So Orson engineered a "compromise" — one that would turn the course of his life toward a direction he'd already half chosen. As he explained to Skipper, “my nose, thanks to the thoughtful blooming of some neighboring clover (which I assured the enemy was ragweed!) began to sniffle hay-feverishly, and the household was illusioned into the realization that something had to be done." The doctor, concerned for his ward's exaggerated state of health, prescribed a few months walking tour of Ireland and Scotland and even grudgingly parted with $500 of Orson's inheritance to fund this therapeutic expedition. (Although Orson wouldn't learn until decades later, the not-so-good doctor conned the estate bankers into believing he'd advanced substantially more money to his ward so he could pocket the difference.)76

  Thus, that August, the 16-year-old boy sailed off alone second-class on a British steamer from New York to Galway, on Ireland's west coast. Free at last, he confessed in a letter to Skipper his secret agenda in agreeing to Dadda's terms: “A few months of walking and painting in Ireland and Scotland ... and then on to England where there are schools—and theatres!!!!!!."77 The reference to “schools" was likely only a sop to please Skipper.

  In Galway Bay he fell in love with the Aran Islands, so poor that their few hundred residents couldn't even afford a resident priest much less electricity or telephones. Passing through Inisheer (smallest of the three islands) he witnessed an impressive form of supernatural magic presented as theater—a Roman Catholic exorcism. An old house was being moved stone-by-stone from one side of the road to the other, leaving behind one room. An evil spirit haunting th
e building had been trapped and sealed in that room. However, when the house was being moved, the spirit had escaped, causing a stone to fall and injure the elderly owner. He decided to leave one room behind and had summoned a priest from the mainland to drive the spirit back into it. Orson reported:78

  I was fascinated and remained to witness the result. A young, well-educated and intelligent priest arrived deeply embarrassed to see me there, knowing he had to go through with the ceremony for the old man's piece of mind. I learned from him that a priest is not obligated to believe the evil spirit was going back into the room, but it obviously gave comfort to the victim. So, in fact, I saw the “bell, book and candle" ceremony and the resealing of the room.

  During his leisurely journey across Ireland by donkey cart, a bicycle named Ulysses (for side trips), Shannon River barges (two weeks), and a bus, Orson supplemented his dwindling cash by selling the oil paintings he'd been doing or bartering them for food and lodging. (Dadda had ignored his ward's urgent requests for money.) Arriving in Dublin broke, Orson tried to con his way into a job on the stage. Although he had smoked an occasional cigar in the company of adults since age 10 or 11, this day he began his life-long cigar habit to enhance his image of being older than he looked.79 Presenting himself at the Dublin Gate Theatre he lied in claiming he'd been a professional actor in America. The theater's English co-director, Hilton Edwards, wasn't deceived: “Tall, young, fat: says he's been with the Guild Theatre in New York. Don't believe a word of it, but he's interesting. I want him to give me an audition."80 Orson passed muster and was hired despite his transparent fibs.