Why would Orson have wanted to own The Orange Tree? It's one of those mechanical tricks disdained as “corny" by finger-flinging sleight-of-hand artists. Such mechanisms depend entirely on the performer's presentational ability. Orson, however, had no objection to self-working tricks as long as they had audience appeal and gave full reign to his showmanship. Although the Orange Tree was an antique effect, the Great Leon/Orson Welles version added the charming feature that the tree itself grows in height. Operated by compressed air, when the performer opens a valve the air causes the tree to sprout and then slowly grow its fruit (small orange-colored balloons).17 Orson surely would have remembered Houdini's revival of the effect and it would have pleased him to own a rare and odd effect that no audience had seen for 15 years. Also he possibly already had in mind the means to revive it once again before the public but presented much more magically than Houdini had done. The time was approaching for him to return to his roots in stage magic and do so on a grand scale.
Maury Kains was a studio camera technician, amateur conjuror, and member of Los Magicos. He recalled of Orson:18 My contact with him came through magic. I built some tricks for him and he came to my home several times over a period of many weeks. I think that he has the most retentive memory of any man that I know. I have described a magical effect, in detail, to him while I was certain he was not listening to me, for he was pacing the floor nervously, his mind apparently in far-away places. Yet a year later Orson described to me this same trick, exactly as I had done it for him, showing that his powers of concentration and memory are fabulous.
Orson was big enough to introduce me to his audience one night, as the inventor of the effect he was then performing. He is very democratic with everyone. He invited my wife and I to a very fine party at his home, where many film notables were present. I'll never forget this gesture. Long after he disappeared from Hollywood, he remembered me with postcards or expensive Christmas gifts. I know that I could approach him anywhere and at any time, and he would not give me “the brush-off" like a lot of Hollywood “phonies" would do.
16 Furst (1968), [3]. In this trick, now called the Radio Girl Illusion, Houdini's assistant was Dorothy Young.
17Tommy Hanlon Jr. interview, 12 Dec 91. Jim Steinmeyer points out (3 May 93 interview) that the earlier models were also operated pneumatically with the fruit being appropriately colored air-tight silk bags.
18Kains letter to Noble (1956), 188-189.
JOURNEY INTO FEAR AND LOATHING The previous April, (1941) with Citizen Kane about to be released and with The Magnificent Ambersons in pre-production, Orson had sought a third film for RKO. The studio had recently optioned Eric Ambler's topical and critically acclaimed fourth spy-thriller novel, Journey into Fear (1940). Orson agreed to produce, write, and act in the film version. While working on Ambersons during the day, he worked on Journey at night. Now, in early August, with buddy Jo Cotten as co-writer they had a final script.19
December 7th. Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II. Orson was glad that his country had finally and officially joined the fight against fascism. And, while he would manage to avoid the front lines, he’d continue to volunteer voice and pen on behalf of his country’s war effort.
His first opportunity came eight days after Pearl when on the 15th he appeared as the interior narrator for Norman Corwin’s enormously well-received patriotic radio broadcast, We Hold These Truths. This one-hour special was the world’s first four-network radio broadcast and linked studios in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. From the large new playhouse-theater stage of Studio A at station KNX, CBS’s Hollywood affiliate on Sunset at Gower, Orson delivered Corwin’s stirring propaganda. It was, by all accounts, an inspired performance. The contemporary Crossley poll estimated it was heard by over 60 million Americans.20
In January of the new year (1942) Orson gave a patriotic benefit performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in January 1942. He shared the variety bill with magicians Frank Herman, Gerrie Larsen, Leo Irby, and Bill McCaffery. Frank vaguely recalls Orson doing a mental effect.21
Knowing he'd be too busy on other RKO and RKO-approved projects to direct all of Journey into Fear, Orson brought in Norman Foster. He was a forgotten leading man from the early 1930's. He'd even co-starred as Miss Del Río's fiancé in the 1932 hit film The Girl of the Rio. Then, since 1937, he'd been a B-feature director, particularly of the better Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan mysteries. Foster's able handling of these popular but trivial flics had won Orson's admiration. Filming began the first week of 1942 with Orson and Foster alternating in the director's chair and Karl Struss, veteran American still and movie photographer, behind the cameras.
Although Struss was an experienced and creative cameraman, he was baffled by two of Orson’s methods. He thought the frequent multiple takes unnecessary: “No one could really say whether Take Forty-nine was any better than Take One. It was all so extravagant and crazy!” He also found his codirectors’ demands for dim lighting frustrating: “Once they wanted me to have a [ship’s] cabin with no lights at all. Mad! How could you develop it?” But, rising to their challenge, Struss solved this problem by suggesting enough light to filter under the door to show the cabin’s occupants in silhouette.22 Despite Struss's problems with Orson and Foster and their's with him, his camera work proved among the better parts of the film.
19 Higham (1970), 72-83; Brady (1989), 327-333, 346; Leaming (1985), 229-230.
20Bannerman (1986), 80-81.
21Herman letters to BW, 14 Jul & 3 Aug 92.
22Struss interview in Higham (1970b), 131, and Higham (1970), 72-73.
The basic plot has a Nazi assassin stalking a naive American naval weapons expert (played by Cotten) from Turkey across the Black Sea by ship to Soviet Russia. One of the early scenes has the only magic sequence in the film. As it wasn't in the book, I assume it was Orson who'd written it in.23 It may even have been one of the scenes he directed:
In Istanbul our blundering hero has been lured to the sleazy Le Jockey Cabaret (actually an RKO studio set). A gong signals the on-stage appearance in a puff of smoke of a second-rate magician garbed Mandrake-style in turban, evening clothes, and long cape, with a thin black moustache and small goatee beard. He is Oo Lang Sang24 (played tongue-in-cheek by zany comedian Hans Conried).25 With a flourish he produces a large bouquet of flowers and then, from his outstretched cape, a midget Chinese assistant.26 Stepping down to Cotten's table, he puts a flash of flame into one customer's hand and plucks a flapping white duck from under Cotten's jacket.
Returning to the stage, the magician bangs the gong to summon his three assistants bearing a coffin and a large X-shaped cross. He announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, I will now present to you an unbelievable miracle that I learned in the mountain fastnesses of India. And for this illusion I will require the assistance of a kind and gracious gentleman from the audience."27 He proceeds to drag the reluctant Cotten onto the stage. Cotten's arms are manacled to the cross. As the magician climbs into the coffin, the assassin is seen watching from the stairway. The coffin is nailed shut and the midget assistant raises his arm to fire a pistol into the air. Blackout. A shot!
Two seconds later, as the lights go up, the man on the cross slumps forward, his white shirt oozing blood. At this point a confused Cotten fumbles his way out of the coffin, exclaiming, “That was a good trick! What happened?" We realize that he and the magician have switched places and it is the latter who hangs dead upon the cross.
Obviously the bungling killer wasn't an aficionado of the conjuring art. An irony is that the actor playing the assassin would have anticipated the switch. He was Jack Moss, Orson's magic mentor. Although he'd created a memorably sinister character, it was his first and last movie appearance.
Orson took great pride of invention in one element in Journey into Fear that is now a cliché in film and TV language. Namely, by beginning it with a long dramatic scene before the credits. But his pride collapsed years later when
he learned that this device had already been used three years before Journey by director Lewis Milestone in Of Mice and Men.28
23 The same presumption was made by Bruce Elliott in The Phoenix, No.33 (16 Apr 1943), 138.
24The magician's name is reported only by Taylor (1986), 154. Presumably he got it from the script, as it doesn't appear in either the official credits or the dialog. An obvious play on the Scottish phrase auld lang syne (the good old times), it surely is an inside jest written into the screenplay by co-writer Welles. The name of the cabaret, Le Jockey, appears in Ambler's book and evidently in the filmscript but not in the released film as either dialog or in writing.
25Consistently misspelled "Conreid" by Taylor (1986), Brady (1989), Wood (1990), and Howard (1991).
26This last effect had been premiered in 1900 at the London Hippodrome by The Great Lafayette using the Chinese Waterbowl production method. See Price (1985), 162; and Christopher (1973), 242. Oo Lang Sang got this effect by the simpler method of taking advantage of the camera angle.
27Higham's tin ear misheard this prologue as: "Ladies and gentlemen, I will present to you an unbelievable miracle that I heard in the mountain passes of India." Consequently he loses two verbal clues to Welles' likely authorship of that line. Higham (1970), 77.
28Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 166.
{SIDEBAR:} Delayed Opening Credits :
James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) was actually the first movie to delay the credits, although it did so as a tacked-on moralistic prologue rather than as the actual opening scene. Then came Lewis Milestone's Of Mice and Men (1940).
Later used in Maxwell Shane's City Across the River (1949); and in Orson’s own Othello (1952) and Chimes at Midnight (1966). Orson had planned that The Stranger (1946) open with a long flashback scene before the credits but the studio cut it from the release version. Orson had also intended that the famous long (3-minute, 20-second) opening scene in Touch of Evil (1958) precede the credits but the studio interspersed them. (Only the 1998 October Films’ restoration follows Orson intention). Used in many of today's movies and TV dramas.
{END SIDEBAR}
Orson stuck around only long enough to finish about a third of the filming before going to Brazil.29 Did he write and was he present for the cabaret-cum-magic scene? One historian reported that Orson, in his role as Turkish secret police chief Colonel Haki (played by Orson), arrives at the cabaret immediately after the murder.30 This would have answered my question except Orson first appears in the next scene, which was shot in Haki's office. Studio records might settle the matter of which scenes were shot when, but a quarter-century later Orson gave us a clue in a scene from Casino Royale. There his patter introduction to his levitation illusion is: “I present you with the Levitation of the Princess Ayesha, an illusion taught to me by an ancient vegetarian in the mountain fastnesses of Tibet." This comedic paraphrase of the magician's line in Journey suggests that Orson had written the magic scene into that script and was probably present for the filming. Perhaps the best circumstantial evidence of his authorship of Oo Lang Sang's scene is that the magish used Thurston's old pet production of the duckfrom-under-a-spectator's jacket.31
In preparation for his trip to Brazil Orson moved for a few weeks in January into The Garden of Allah. This was the fabled Hollywood hotel with its offices, dining room, and pool at 8080 Sunset Boulevard on the southwest corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights. Surrounded by gardens with 24 guest bungalows, it had been opened by silent film star Alla Nazimova in 1927. Orson rented the ground floor apartment of Villa 24. This was directly below Nazimova’s own permanent apartment. The two apartments shared an air vent and Nazimova would sometimes kneel on the floor and put her ear to it to listen to Orson rehearse. This was for his role as the narrator of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Hypocrite, which he’d broadcast on January 26th as part of his regular weekly half-hour CBS Lady Ester show. A friend who once observed Nazimova’s shy interloping, recalled that “She thought Welles had such a gorgeous voice, but she wouldn’t introduce herself, although I’m sure he would have been thrilled.”32
Orson was about to have a profound effect on the career of one amateur magician who was already widely known among the brethren for his inventive card tricks. Cy Endfield, a 27-year-old East Coast drama director, had moved to Los Angeles hoping to break into filmmaking. Unsuccessful in finding a permanent job, he spent many days in the magic shops. One afternoon in late January 1942 he was at the back of Bert Wheeler's when Orson wandered into the front with Jack Moss and two or three others of his Mercury entourage. After watching some of the regulars do tricks, Orson announced, “Isn't there somebody good around here? I want to see something that'll fool me!" Somebody said “Get Cy Endfield, let Welles see him." When Cy was brought forward and introduced, Orson said gallantly, “Oh, yes, Cy Endfield—I know that name. Every time I try to show somebody a card trick I hear it again." Cy countered nicely: “I have heard your name too. And every time I try to direct a play I hear it again."33
29 OW wrote Richard France over two decades later that he "was on the set for about the first third of the shooting." France (1977), 209. In Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 166, OW says "I was only there for three weeks." According to Everett Sloane, "We did all Orson's scenes first and he directed them, then Norman did the rest of it." Cowie (1973), 208, quoting Sloane interview in Film, No.37 (London: 1963). Filming began January 6th (1942) and Orson did his last acting role shots on February 1st.
30 Higham (1970), 77.
31Although the logical possibility exists that OW's viewing of the completed Journey into Fear inspired him to write his line for Casino Royale, that strikes me as most unlikely given such otherwise unmemorable patter.
32Gavin Lambert, Nazimova: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1997), 375, based on his interview with Josephine Hutchinson. The Garden of Allah has given place to a paved-over strip-mall.
Cy showed two or three advanced tricks. Orson, “stunned", pulled out a wallet stuffed with $100 bills and said, “I like a few of those items. Do you have a price on them?" It was Cy's turn to be stunned. Unemployed but “too modest and uncommercialized" to name a price, Cy offered to show the secret moves anyway, which he proceeded to do in a quiet corner of the shop. Cy soon realized that his student, “insightful as he was, wasn't aux fait with advanced [card] manipulation techniques." Moreover, he found Orson's handling of the necessary sleights somewhat clumsy, which he attributed to his student's pudgy fingers.34
Sensing that Orson was becoming bored by the fawning magi who were trying to impress him with their all too familiar tricks, Cy wasn't surprised when Orson invited him to join his Mercury group when they left Wheeler's to dine around the corner at the Brown Derby.35 For the next hours Orson controlled the conversation, which focused on conjuring history and tricks while his captive audience were “listening to his network baritone purr over the intricacies of a method for spirit slate writing" and similar matters.36
By the time the party broke up around 6 AM and Orson had picked up the tab for his 10 or 12 guests, Cy had formed an insight about their genial host: By using magic as an “aggressive weapon" with his audience, he’d “left them helpless, deceived, and subject to any intellectual whim that Orson might want to impose upon them later on. It made him the master."37
Having added a little serious card work to his conjuring repertory, Orson now enlarged on this knowledge by reading the best and most advanced books on the subject. These were the fine works by Jean Hugard and Fred Braue, most particularly their jointly written 448-page masterpiece, Expert Card Technique (1940). Although Orson understood their advanced sleights, he found them difficult to master on his own. Except for Cy Endfield, he hadn't befriended any of the then very few card experts in the Los Angeles area who could have helped him. So it would take another two years before he would find a suitable teacher—in New York City with the legendary Hugard himself.38
Within a week of Cy's first meeting with Orson, Jack Moss approached him
in Wheeler's shop with an extraordinary offer. After telling Cy that he was the first magician he'd ever seen who could fool Orson, Moss proposed that, in return for lessons on a few tricks that he could use to fool his boss, he'd sign up Cy with Mercury Productions. This was an offer Cy couldn't refuse. So he apprenticed with Orson's skilled team for the next five months doing some screenplay writing and other lesser tasks and observing the inner workings of the studio at “a decent wage" of about $40 or $50 per week. Cy admits that his deal with Moss was pretty much one-way: “The poor man was spending his money on me wastefully, because he was not learning very much. He was naturally clumsy and had no skill or aptitude for the card moves I was showing him."39
33 Endfield (1943), 81.
34Endfield audiotape (Fall 1992); Endfield (1943), See also Endfield interview in Rosenbaum (1993), 50.
35Endfield audiotape (Fall 1992).
36Endfield letter to BW, 11 May 92.
37Endfield audiotape (Fall 1992).
38Hugard letter to Braue, 23 Nov 43.
(With this studio experience and contacts Cy went on to direct eight short subjects and seven “B" features in Hollywood until 1951 when he fled to England to escape the McCarthyite anti-Communist purge. His film career thrived in England, peaking with the The Mysterious Island (1961) and the acclaimed semi-classic movie Zulu (1962). He always credited his chance meeting with Orson as leading to his breakthrough into the film world. And, like Orson, he tried to build elements of magic into all his movies.)
Around this time Orson first saw the great Harry Blackstone (senior) perform. He trouped a show almost as big as Thurston's and, in the opinion of many, better. In either case, since Thurston's death, Blackstone was the acknowledged top illusionist across the USA and Canada. Orson visited backstage at a performance and attended one or two of Blackstone's USO Camp Shows.40 He judged the act “a little hokey",41 which was indeed Blackstone's broad comedic style, in contrast to Thurston's, which was more serious. And, as we'll see, hokey comedy would become part of Orson's style for many of his own magical performances.
Orson Welles - The Man Who Was Magic: Part 1 Page 23