Orson Welles - The Man Who Was Magic: Part 1

by Barton Whaley

  Orson bowed and as he walked slowly toward the microphone at center stage, he dropped his script, which fluttered away in dozens of pieces. Everyone was nervously on his hands and knees picking it up and trying feverishly to collate the pages. (The scripts were read, not memorized.) Orson continued toward the microphone and with the entire production staff in a state of hysteria he produced another copy from the inside pocket of his jacket!

  Orson’s original Oh!-My-Script-is-Scattering practical joke would become a regular part of his repertoire.252 Engel believed that “He was, always has been, and still is, a boy: a Peter Pan too heavy for flying."253

  248 George Sands telephone interview, 25 Oct 92.

  249George Sands telephone interview, 25 Oct 92. I presume the secretary was Augusta Weissberger.

  250Louis A. Rachow (Librarian of The Players 1962-88) telephone interview, 9 Nov 92. At that time the current officers of The Players refused to discuss the matter, which they deemed sealed, and expressed horror that Rachow had revealed what he remembered to me.

  252Maltin (1997), 285; Julian (1975), 217-218.

  PART III: EARLY HOLLYWOOD (1939-1941)

  WESTWARD HO! HO! HO! The closing of Danton's Death on Broadway after only 21 performances had emptied the Mercury Theatre's cash drawer. The subsequent box-office failures of Five Kings and Green Goddess hadn’t seriously damaged Orson’s reputation because both shows had died far from Broadway and hence passed largely unnoticed. But they'd battered his finances so badly that even his fat-cat radio work wasn't enough to keep the Mercury afloat. Desperately seeking funds for new stage projects, he turned to the only available option, one with small appeal to his artistic thrust at that time. Hollywood had been trying for the previous two years to lure this exciting new celebrity. Now, at this dreary juncture, Mercury stage manager Richard Wilson would recall, “There seemed to be no other course than to take one of the many film offers Orson had received. RKO offered the best one.”1

  Orson figured he could earn big bucks fast by doing a feature film in three to six months. Besides, it meant a whole new world to conquer. Leaving Virginia behind to arrange their agreed divorce, on 20 July 1939 he moved to Los Angeles.

  He arrived at LA Airport via American Airlines' flagship “California”. Although a big (for its day) sturdy twin-engined luxury Douglas DC-3, it bounced and shook a lot, making it too risky to wield a razor to the beard he'd grown for his two previous stage productions. Promptly dubbed “The Beard” by resentful local journalists and studio flunkies in that then generally clean-shaven town, Orson flaunted his along with his pipe—a pipe that he now ostentatiously stoked with Royal Yacht tobacco rather than the cheaper Barking Dog he'd favored on Broadway.

  Immediately after landing he was driven to Hollywood to check into a suite in the small but elegant and pricy Chateau Marmont above Sunset Boulevard. A desk clerk at this faux-French landmark commented on the registration form that their guest was a “hypochondriac” and food-fusser.2 Welcome to Hollywood.

  Next day, July 21st, Orson formally signed with RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. This “juiciest contract ever signed” became the grandest of all the many Wellesian myths – no doubt perpetrated by RKO and acquiesced in by Orson as a scam for the enormous volume of free publicity such superlatives generated. This fiction was universally accepted as fact at the time and for the rest of Orson’s life and beyond with reported terms like: “carte blanche”, “authority ... virtually unlimited”, “total freedom”, “unlimited powers", “complete control”, “artistic control virtually unheard of in Hollywood", “concessions unprecedented in movie history”, and “creative carte blanche" and “complete artistic control”.

  But all this was “received knowledge” at its worst. After the above litany of amazement Professor Frank Brady did something charmingly naive. He actually bothered to track down and read the original 63-page contract. And summarize it for us. The blazing truth is that that document gave the studio total control of the budget, the right to refuse story outlines (up to six, after which the studio would suggest topics), the power to delete any words or scenes objected to by RKO's libel lawyers or the industry's Production Code censors, the right of prior approval of all cast hirings or firings (including Orson's own Mercurians), and the authority to change the movie titles at will. The final blow to the sturdy myth was that Orson had even agreed to show the daily rushes to studio executives and consult with them on final editing and cutting. So, excepting some minor clauses, this contract gave Orson no more than any other producer-director expected in that period, points such as full authority when actually working on the set. It was a sweetheart contract only because it combined the usual small rights of a director and writer and actor with those somewhat larger ones of a producer. And it was unusual only because the number of movie producer-directors, that is, directors who had the additional powers of a producer, was then relatively small. (How small? Before 1939 there had been only four but the power of directors had suddenly increased so that Orson became only one of at least 15 producer-directors.3) And his place in this select group was unique only in that he was a newcomer to the film industry. Also contrary to myth, the contract called for only two (not “three") movies, for which Orson would receive not “$150,000 and a percentage [25%] of the gross" per picture, not even “$100,000", but only a mere $65,000 plus 20% of any net profit for the first picture and $60,000 plus 25% of net for the second.4 Nothing remarkable here, as just the year before 45 directors had earned over $75,000 and 34 of them $100,000 or more.5 And given the magical math used by studio jugglers of the books, net profits tended to manage a geometrical vanish into the fourth dimension.

  1 I don’t buy Thomson’s clever argument that Orson had secretly contrived matters so he could dump Broadway for Hollywood. See Thomson (1996), 90, 112-119.

  2OW’s registration form is reproduced in Andre Balazs (editor), Chateau Marmont Hollywood Handbook (New York: Universe, 1996). An item purporting to be his signature card at the Marmont of that date went on eBay auction on 19 Mar 2001.

  Even the cash wasn't impressive by Hollywood standards. The salaries of the top nine stars that year ran over $300,000 each. And that was just for acting. Top directors got less, but not by much—John Ford’s salary was $200,000, not counting any percentages. The bottom line is that RKO had bought its new celebrity actor-director-producer with pocket change.

  Orson never contradicted RKO's faked story about the original contract. In fact he made sure his own publicity profited from it. And, having heard it so often, he seemingly came to believe it, for two decades later he wrote for a Spanish film magazine that it gave him “the greatest freedom ever written into a Hollywood contract."6 And another two decades further along he would tell his friend Merv Griffin over a private lunch that the contract gave him “final cut and absolute word."7 But had he originally been aware of the crippling constraints in the pages of fine print? Yes, fully, as his ace entertainment lawyer, Arnold Weissberger, witnessed:8

  Most actors, when confronted with a 63-page contract, would say, “If you say it's all right, I'll sign it." Not Orson. He not only read the contract through very carefully, but he had intelligent questions and comments to make on many different clauses, and he showed clearly that he understood just exactly what it was all about.

  But Wellesian myths are so potent that even John Houseman would repeat this one. As the Mercury's experienced business manager at that time, he’d surely read the contract he co-signed. Yet within six months after signing, he was already writing a mutual friend that it was “the most magnificent contract ever granted an artist in Hollywood."9

  3 Rosten (1941), 283. The original four were DeMille, Lloyd, Lubitsch, and Capra. The post-1939 ad ons included McCarey, Wellman, Stevens, LeRoy, and Ford.

  4Brady (1989), 199-201.

  5Rosten (1941), 89, 292.

  6Quoted in Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 21.

  7OW in Griffin (1982), 131.

  8Arnold Weissberger lette
r in Noble (1956), 120.

  The myth got further confused when supplementary contracts were signed after Orson failed to meet the original January 1st deadline for completion of his first film. These only further limited his control. Yet the myth persists.

  This contract myth blended in smoothly with the beard and pipe and Orson’s youth and ebullience to generate much resentment. After meeting him, writer Dorothy Parker, reportedly remarked, “It’s like meeting God without dying.” She hadn’t meant this as a compliment. One apocryphal story has Orson on Hollywood Boulevard in 1933 (six years before he first went to Southern California) in a villa at the Garden of Allah (where he never stayed until 1942) with two writers scribbling an update of the Lord’s Prayer, which he planned (he hadn’t) to orate in a film when one of the writers declared, “You can’t do that. It’s God’s word.” To which this fictitious Orson shouted, “Don’t tell me about God’s word. I am God!”10 Such bad jokes, snide remarks, even sophomoric poems proliferated, all at Orson’s expense. But, by George, George Orson Welles that is, they got his name right!

  * * * As Hollywood’s newest celebrity, Orson was quickly added to the A-List for social invitations. His world rapidly expanded to include the local movie colony elite. For example, ten days after landing in town, he attended a surprise birthday party for English writer Aldous Huxley at the latter’s home in Pacific Palisades. There he met, probably for the first time, such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Charles MacArthur, Gerald Heard, and Lillian Gish. A few years later Orson would make indirect contact with Huxley when he read Huxley’s lines co-written with Robert Stevenson and John Houseman for Jane Eyre (1943).11

  And as Hollywood’s newest celebrity Orson was an immediate target of gossip. And, given his separation from wife Virginia, he was considered fresh meat for the dating game. One rising young actress then recently established as RKO’s “Queen of the B-movies” who got mentioned as being more than just one of Orson’s dates was Lucille Ball.12 But, as so often, the gossips were wrong. As Miss Ball’s recently discovered autobio makes clear, they met while double-dating—she with some pre-Desi guy and he with her close friend, Ginger Rogers. But, despite the facts that Miss Rogers was a dancer and older than he (by three years), they evidently had only the one night on the town. It was Lucille Ball with whom he’d form a long-term friendship.13

  In early August (1939) during his first fortnight in Hollywood Orson met the woman who would become his first magic assistant since childhood. She was exotic film star Dolores del Río. Called by many including Orson “the most beautiful woman in the world", she was also sophisticated and, having just celebrated her 35th birthday, eleven years his senior. She was his private Lolita Complex—but one limited to two facts: one of her nicknames was Lolita and she was one of his fantasy women.14

  9 Houseman letter to Virgil Thompson, January 1940, as quoted in Thomson (1966), 303. And see Houseman (1972), 442, where he edits his own letter to read a qualified “one of the most magnificent contracts ever granted an artist in Hollywood.."

  10Quoted in Leslie Frewin, The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 191.

  11Nicholas Murray, Aldous Huxley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

  12Joe Morella & Eward Z. Epstein, Forever Lucy (Secaucas, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1986) , 49.

  13Lucille Ball, Love, Lucy (New York: Putnam’s, 1996), 91.

  Orson had been fantasizing about her for seven years after seeing her bare her mature breasts (except for a strategically draped lei) for the cover of a 1932 Evening Graphic15 and watching her swim almost nude in a movie.16 Later he'd followed her out of a New York nightclub just to stare.17 Now, with his knack for turning so many of his dreams into reality, he began an affair that would last three years.18

  Orson, we may presume, was amused to discover the Mexican woman under the phony Spanish cloak fabricated by her Hollywood publicity illusionists. Mexican-American film historian Carl José Mora explains: “In keeping with a long-established American tradition by which any Latin American, and especially Mexican, with positive personal attributes was perceived as being ‘Spanish,' so too did Dolores's billing tout her as a ‘Spanish actress.'"19

  Nor was Orson deterred by Dolores's tastes in sex. Although twice-married, both were marriagesof-convenience to gay men. The first was a Mexican writer who untied the marital knot by suicide. Her present husband of nine years was Cedric Gibbons, then Hollywood's top set designer and already immortal for having created the Oscar statuette, which has been handed out yearly since the first awards in 1929. Gibbons personally collected 11 Academy Awards, next to Walt Disney with 26 the 2nd largest number in the Academy’s generous history. By mutual agreement and for privacy with their lovers, the married couple’s separate bedrooms were even on separate floors of their magnificent art deco home.

  Dolores carried her extraordinary beauty with what her close friend, actress Fay Wray ( King Kong), called a “narcissism [that] seemed natural." She didn't booze (weak kidneys), didn't want children (any more than did her husbands or Orson), and took kinky pleasure in trying to match-make between her current husband's gay male friends and women of her acquaintance.20

  At first Orson's and Dolores's liaison was clandestine, as both were still married — Orson still separated and Dolores continuing to live under one roof with Gibbons until March of next year. To disguise their intimacy from the press Orson recruited her good friend (since 1934) and rumored former lover, magnificent 38-year-old Marlene Dietrich, film star and ex-lover of one of his own recent inamoratas, dancer Tilly Losch. The young master of deception cast Miss Dietrich in the role of Miss Direction. “I would", he recalled, “take out Dolores by taking out Marlene too. Who would guess with those two girls what I was up to?"21 Perhaps only mid-century Americans would have been baffled. More blasé Europeans could manage an outrageously delicious but wrong guess. No matter because his stratagem worked –- the Hollywood Reporter and other local gossip rags began linking him romantically to Marlene, not Dolores.22

  14 Born María Dolores Asúnsolo López-Negrete on 3 August 1904 to a wealthy family (father was a bank director) in Durango, Mexico. In 1921 on her first marriage (to Jaime Martínez del Río y Viñent) she was renamed Dolores Asúnsolo y López-Negrete de Martínez del Río. Her faked Hollywood biography postdates her birth by one year to "1905" and misstates her name as "Lolita DoloresMartinez Asunsolo Lopez Negrette". Her best biography is Ramón (1997), I, 10. See also Aurelio de los Reyes & Garcia Rojas, Dolores Del Río (Chimalistac: Grupo Condumex, 1996).

  15 Brady (1989), 227. The cover advertised her daring role as a Polynesian beauty in Bird of Paradise (1932). See also Rámon (1997), I, 46-47, 57.

  16Leaming (1985), 207. The movie was probably Bird of Paradise (1932) but possibly Flying Down to Rio (1933) where she introduced the twopiece swimming suit to the screen.

  17Higham (1985), 141.

  18Rámon (1997), I, 56-61; II, 12-13

  19Mora (1982), 26. Also Joanne Hershfield, The Invention of Dolores del Río (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2000) for a belabored study of the image and not the woman who becomes intentionally dehumanized.

  20Wray (1989), 135-136.

  21Leaming (1985), 208.

  * * * After a few weeks stay at the Chateau Marmont Orson moved into a mansion rented for him by CBS for his work on their Campbell Playhouse show. It occupied six acres in the Brentwood Heights area on Rockingham Avenue with such amenities as Greta Garbo next door and Shirley Temple across the road. The next day the 11-year-old actress, whose publicity pretended she was a year younger, invited him over, providing a dandy photo session for the press while the two stars played croquet on her lawn. Little Miss Temple's initially favorable impression of her new neighbor soured when he obviously threw the game, thereby earning her “contempt" for denying her “the pleasure of an honest loss".23 This act of misplaced chivalry is the only recorded case of Orson condescending to a younger person, particularly one who had a “gen
ius" advantage over him of nine IQ points.

  The press hyenas pursued their colorful new prey, eagerly snapping up droppings of gossip. His Rockingham estate having temporarily become an all-male menage of immigrant Mercurians made Orson the target for the first time of accusations of homosexuality. Decades later, on looking over old photographs of himself, even Orson was amused to remark that they showed “an uppish (vaguely poufish!) smart-ass.”24

  The most famous Orsonian legend at this time had macho cowboy actor Guinn “Big Boy” Williams taunting him at the Brown Derby as “queer” and wielding a knife to castrate his necktie. 25 Alternate versions move the locale from the Brown Derby to Chasen’s and shift the bully from Williams to Ward Bond. There are three problems with this account. First but most easily dismissed is the question of what kind of necktie — Orson favored bow ties in that period. Second and damning is the fact (well-appreciated by any magician who ever did the old Cut-and-Restored Necktie trick) that it is almost impossible to cut one off a living person with any knife — scissors are required. Third, why does the story omit what must have been some visible if not vocal response on the victim’s part. Cowardly cringing or pleased? Shocked surprise that left Orson speechless for once in his life? Or what? All this smacks of some original true event distorted rumor-fashion in the chain of retellings so that Chasen’s and the Brown Derby as well as Williams and the better-known Bond become interchangeable and some key details vanish.

  Peter Bogdanovich asked Orson about this in 1969 in Rome:26 PB: Didn’t Guinn “Big Boy” Williams cut off your tie in a restaurant because of that beard?

  OW: That was in Chasen’s; we went outside and started a fight, but good friends pulled us apart. The whole thing was a formal affair, really, without much conviction on anybody’s part. Errol Flynn sicked him [Williams] onto me.

  PB: I though you were good friends with Flynn.