Tensely waiting for Martin’s cue to speak, as the hand of the studio clock approached air time, Welles suddenly dropped his script and the pages scattered over the floor. None of the other actors moved to help him recover them. Martin himself ran from the control room, got down on his hands and knees, desperately scooped up all the pages, hurriedly collated and thrust them up to Welles, just as the red ON THE AIR sign flashed. Welles calmly shoved them aside, pulled the real script from his pocket, and began his narration on time.
Of course this was just a replay of his Oh!-I-Dropped-the-Script stunt that he’d introduced in 1939 on the Texaco Star Theatre broadcast. And that one had included a live audience In mid-January 1943 Orson accompanied Joseph and Lenore Cotten to the Stork Club on 53rd Street just off Fifth Avenue. They’d gone to Manhattan’s most famous nightspot to celebrate the successful New York premier of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, in which Jo played the villain. They were joined at their banquette in the small inner sanctum Cub Room by the club's famous greeter and coowner, Sherman Billingsley, former bootlegger and Orson's host on the latter’s many evenings at the club.100
Having been fired by RKO, Orson was soon snapped up by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation to co-star in a costume drama for $100,000, a third more money than he'd received for Kane. So in January and February he was back in Hollywood acting the romantic lead of Rochester to Joan Fontaine's title role in Jane Eyre for which he was also an uncredited producer.
95 Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 204. The show, titled “Thunder from the Hills”, aired 28 Sep 42. See Wood (1990), 120-121; Rosenbaum in Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 372.
96Brady (1989), 351-352.
97Higham (1985), 48, citing The Madison Journal (Wisconsin), 19 February 1926. However Orson was the direct 7th generation descendant of an 18th century Englishman named Gideon Wells and may have simply confused the two Gideons or repeated another of his father’s tall tales.
98Higham (1985), 3.
99Julian (1975), 217-218.
100Ralph Blumenthal, Stork Club: America’s Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Café Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000).
Because Orson was also contracted as a producer (officially but uncredited) on the movie Twentieth Century-Fox assigned him his own office building (formerly Shirley Temple's large bungalow). Conveniently located on the studio's main 250-acre lot on Pico Boulevard in the Beverly Hills-Westwood area, it contained a reception room, offices, a bedroom, and a full bath. Orson practically lived there during the filming. The bungalow also served as headquarters for all his many Mercury activities.
After a nearly sleepless week of furious activity at the end of his first month Orson went AWOL for 48 hours to recuperate in the studio's steam-room. His office suite was in an uproar. Mr. Essential was overdue and his increasingly agitated staffers had gathered in the reception room at the point of panic, needing his personal approval of past deeds and marching orders on new. In addition to his usual demanding secretaries and a manager or so, two radio orchestra leaders needed music cues, the wardrobe mistress had to fit the star for a movie shoot, and producer Walter Wanger's chauffeur was waiting to wisk Orson off to speak at a local Parents & Teachers Association convention. Cy Endfield arrived in the midst of this “pandemonium" to get his rewrite of a radio script approved in time for rehearsal and broadcast that evening. At this desperate moment Orson appeared, shining bright and ready to work; and everyone followed into his office clamoring for attention. Spotting Cy with a deck of cards in hand, he greeted him saying, “Ah, you brought the cards! Great, I want you to show me a few things!" and turned to the crowd to announce: “OK, everybody out, everybody out! Sorry, this is for magicians only—and we can't expose our secrets, can we?" And with outstretched arms he herded them out the door and closeted himself for a card session saying, “Cy, go ahead. Let me see what you've got, show me something new."101
Cy was startled by such signs of Orson's devotion to the art of magic and reported at the time that “He will drop rehearsals, productions and conferences and run over to [Wheeler's] magic shop to view a demonstration of the latest levitation or penetration of solid through solid."102
Orson also impressed Cy by being more satisfied by the “awed surprise" that would greet a Wellesian proclamation like “You are thinking of the seven of clubs" than all the public acclaim he received from the press or from theatrical audiences. “This", Cy told the readers of Esquire, “is a selfapotheosis on its highest level, for who but a god or a magician can make the natural laws seem like a fiction invented by Newton for the uninitiated."103
* * *
Orson dominated the filming of Jane Eyre. His 25-year-old co-star, Joan Fontaine, vividly remembered that strange first day on the set:104 We were called to rehearsal and Orson didn’t show up until 5:00 that afternoon; and had all his minions about him, and called for a Bible stand, and put his script down, said to the director [Robert Stevenson], “Now, you sit down there and I’m going to tell you all what we’re going to do.”
She soon realized that: He doesn’t really like to act, and he always was late and would do anything other than act, and one day we’re going through a door — he was to precede me — and I said, “Orson, stand up, your coat bags if you don’t.” And he said, “Cut! Cut! Miss Fontaine says my suit isn’t made properly. Take it off! Send it to the tailors!” And it was two days later that we started the scene again, so I learned never to say anything.
101 Endfield audiotape (Fall 1992).
102Endfield (1943).
103Endfield (1943), 81.
104Fontaine interview in John Kobal, People Will Talk (New York: Knopf, 1985), 437.
One day while filming Jane Eyre, the staff realized that Orson had vanished Houdini-like from the set. An intensive search of the sound stage discovered a blanketed couch with a suspicious lump. Underneath was a sleeping Orson, catching a few minutes nap during his exhausting schedule.105 But most of these daily naps were taken more secretively, either in the large bed in his office suite or in the back seat of his automobile.
Bored with a film he wasn't officially directing, he took his pleasure on the set by contriving practical jokes. One target with whom he soon developed a close relationship both on and off the set was veteran assistant director Arthur Jacobson, 14 years his senior, who’d recall:106
I got home at about seven o’clock one night, after shooting until about six. When I walked in my wife said, “Where have you been all afternoon?”
I said, “I’ve been working. We just finished.”
She said, “That’s strange. Orson Welles called and wanted to talk to you, and he said you had finished shooting a three o’clock this afternoon.”
I never did convince her that [I’d] been working.
Another target of Orson’s practical jokes was his co-star, 25-year-old Joan Fontaine. She was married to one of Dietrich’s ex-lovers, older English actor Brian Aherne, whom Orson, having acted with him in the Cornell troupe days, suspected (and Miss Fontaine's recent autobiography confirms) was an uninspiring hop-on-hop-off sex-mate. So Orson would tease his co-star during their several prolonged on-camera embraces with whispered tales of the oriental orgies awaiting him that evening. These particular fancies were soon revealed as fiction when his chauffeur, Shorty, told her that his boss was far too busy at that time for any hanky-panky.107 Shorty, for once, was discreet. Although the oriental orgy bit was made up, Orson was busily playing around most nights with showgirls picked up at Earl Carroll's spectacular eponymous nightclub-theater.108
He was simultaneously pursuing blues-and-ballad singer Lena Horne whose recent phenomenal successes in top New York and Sunset Strip nightclubs had led to an M-G-M contract, Hollywood's best ever for a black performer (seven years at $900 per week). Miss Horne was 25 (although the studio publicity made her two years younger). She was light-skinned enough to have easily passed as a latina, but that was an option she always refused. Indee
d she was so fair and freckled that M-G-M had Max Factor slather her with black makeup for Cabin in the Sky. Orson protested, telling her that the studio was crazy to hide her freckles. Raised in Brooklyn in a solidly middle-class family, Lena had entered show biz at age 16 through the chorus line at Harlem's swank Cotton Club. She was intelligent, cheerful, sophisticated, shared Orson's left-liberal political views, and actively worked against segregation of black Americans.
105 Paula Millard Petchon interview, 15 Nov 92.
106Jacobson (1991), 143-144.
107Leaming (1985), 260, based on her 22 Jun 84 interview with OW; Fontaine (1978), 154.
108Paula Millard Petchon interviews, 23 Jan & 15 Nov 92.
Orson was enamored; Lena less so. According to her daughter's unusually frank biography, Lena’s attraction was limited to his mind and voice.109 But this doesn't deter one Orson biographer from assuring us that “there must have been moments" when, as he coyly puts his Raging Hormones Theory, she "wearied of the life of the mind". His half-clever hunch about Mr. Rochester's dusky makeup in Jane Eyre is that Orson had chosen to “turn a little dark" to win fair lady's favors.110 I prefer author Charlotte Brontë's own explanation: her Mr. Rochester simply had a “dark face".111
Orson's next merry prank on the Jane Eyre set was at the expense of a new production assistant who was told on his arrival that under Mr. Welles' contract he was to waltz with the eccentric star in his dressing room whenever Orson ordered. Without ever actually dancing, Orson sustained the charade by playing waltz music and asking the nervous chap who his favorite composers were whenever he saw him.112
Occasionally acting “camp" was a commonly accepted game of sexual ambiguity within the entertainment crowd during the 30's and 40's, as exemplified by Jack Benny's limp wrist, Alfred Lunt's long takes and thoughtful poses, and some of Bob Hope's jests. By playing that game Orson played into the hands of his detractors who spread the false rumor that he was homosexual, which in turn provoked much ardent fan mail from openly fey males.113 And the gossip circuit built upon this. As Katherine Hepburn observed, “Everyone is called a homosexual in Hollywood.”114
And what are the motive forces driving these rumors of same-sex behavior? Playwright Robert Ardrey believed “It was something that lesser actors said about other actors who were becoming successful." Admitted bi-sexual actor Sal Mineo added that “Everyone’s got those rumors following him around, whether it’s true or not.... I think Hollywood secretly wants to think it’s true.” Straight writer Garson Kanin gave a deeper explanation: “Facts don’t interest people. Everyone likes to be in on the inside story. Whether it’s true or not is a secondary consideration. If it’s spicy, then it’s interesting.”115
Of course, all the main-line media columnists, reporters, and editors knew that homosexuality was a love they dare not name. The studios made sure of that. However some of the more Machiavellian studio bosses tolerated, even encouraged underground gossip of this sort: It couldn't hurt the naive aboveground box office and the mere threat of public scandal, whether true or false, was thought to lower the bargaining power come contract-renewal time for roommate stars like Cary Grant & Randolph Scott or James Stewart & Henry Fonda.
I find no solid evidence that Grant and Scott were anything more than long-time dear friends—only circumstantial evidence and the many rumors avidly collected and repeated by homophobes and homophiles. But what of Stewart and Fonda? Even Orson, who knew them only casually, wondered: “I thought these two guys were either having the hottest affair in Hollywood or were the two straightest human beings I ever met in my life. I came to the conclusion that they were the two straightest human beings I'd ever met in my life."116 He was almost certainly right.
109 Buckley (1986), 184; Fontaine (1978), 154. Brady (1989), 380, has Horne in early 1945 as Orson's "constant visitor on-and-off the set" of The Stranger.
110Thomson (1996), 249.
111And "dark, strong and stern" with "broad and jetty eyebrows", "black eyes", and "black hair".
112Leaming (1985), 260, based on her 26 Jul 83 interview with OW.
113Paula Maillard Petchon interview, 23 Jan 1992.
114Hepburn quoted in McCann (1996), 129.
115Ardrey in Robert LaGuardia, Monty: A Biography of Montgomery Clift (New York: Arbor House, 1977), 38; Mineo in Boze Hadleigh, Conversations with My Elders (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 9, 22 ; Kanin in Nancy Nelson, Evenings with Cary Grant (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 315.
Jo and Lenore Cotten were serving a sumptuous luncheon for six on the terrace overlooking their swimming pool. The guest couples were director Alfred Hitchcock and wife and composer Bernard Herrmann and wife, writer Lucille Fletcher. All were surprised when Orson barged in, saying, “Don't let me interrupt your lunch. Rita and I just want to use your pool." Not having brought bathing suits, Orson simply stripped down to his boxer shorts and jumped in while Rita went to Jo's bedroom and emerged pool-side wearing two of Jo's Countess Mara neckties, one tied as a halter bra, the other as a thong bikini—years before such skimpy swim wear was acceptable. “It was very distracting," Lucille Fletcher recalled, “to eat lunch with the others and watch Orson and Rita swim."117
That March, Herrmann composed a concert suite he titled Welles Raises Kane and dedicated to Orson whom he called “the last of the Victorian gay blades." Based on his own Citizen Kane score, the composer wrote this lively and affectionate piece “as a relaxation before starting on the serious task of composing an opera." When Leopold Stokowski heard Herrmann conduct it three years later on the radio with the CBS Symphony, the maestro gave high praise. The suite was recorded in 1967 by the London Philharmonic and issued in an album.118
* * * Back when he’d lived in New York City Orson had become friendly with Leonard Lyons, popular columnist for the liberal New York Post, and impressed him with both his card tricks and his politics.119 Now, in early 1943, Lyons invited Orson to write the first of what would become three guest columns for The Lyons' Den. Orson used these opportunities to expound his views on politics, journalism, and—in two pieces—magic.120
In his second guest article he told his favorite Houdini story, a tale that he even once claimed (most dubiously) had been told to him in person:121 During Houdini's tour of Imperial Russia (1903), he'd attended a Court reception in the Kremlin palace. Asking what “impossible" thing he could do to convince the guests of his powers, the Czar told him to cause the great bells of the Kremlin to ring. Houdini stepped to the window and raised his arms in the direction of the belfry. After a hushed silence, one after another, came the sound of each bell until they pealed in unison.
THE METHOD (according to Orson): This specific challenge was not unexpected by the wonderworker. He'd learned that, as the bell mechanism had remained broken for several decades, it was an old stock challenge-joke among Moskovites to make the huge bells ring. Thus their seemingly free choice of some “impossible" task was what Orson (and other magi) call a “psychological force". His raised arms were observed by Bess from their hotel room at the opposite end of the square overlooking the Kremlin and near the bell tower. Upon this signal she raised an air rifle and fired at each bell in turn.
116 OW as quoted in Donald Dewey, James Stewart (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1996), 181.
117Fletcher 1988 interview in Smith (1991), 109.
118Smith (1991), 110, 154, 284-5, 371. The score was published by Novello and Co., Ltd., London. There is also an LP(Premier Records #PR1202) of the live radio performance of 3 Jul 1949 that Herrmann conducted.
119A Lyons' column in a May issue of the New York Post, as reprinted by Bruce Elliott in The Phoenix, No.256 (30 May 1952), 1025.
120I have copies from the Lilly Library of the drafts of his three guest columns. These appeared in the New York Post on 10 Feb & 25 Jul 1943 and on 1 Dec 1944.
121Column of 15 Jul 1943. In retelling this story 12 years later for BBC-TV he added the details that Bess had used an "air gun" (instead of the "rifle" of th
e column) from their room at the opposite end of the Kremlin "square" and cut the time of silence to "over a century". In the retelling he does not mention Houdini as his source. Orson Welles' Sketch Book, Episode No.3 (14 May 1955). By that time H. Allen Smith, The Compleat Practical Joker (1953/1980 edition), 66, had published the account of a Harvard student around 1950 who mystified the authorities by firing a rifle every noon to cause one of the bell towers to strike thirteen.
What a grand tale! One that any magician—or charlatan for that matter—could be proud of. However this is one exploit that the experts I consulted could not recall. These were seven Houdini specialists and two historically oriented magicians credited with strong memories backed up by fine paper brains. Most agreed that the story is so good that, even if it were only the fictitious invention of the master showman or his press agents, it would have left some documentary evidence.122 Moreover, a check of Russian reference books revealed that Orson's version of this legend of the broken bells is an anachronism: The clock chimes in the Spasky Tower on Red Square didn't begin to malfunction until the Bolshevik Revolution, 14 years after Houdini's visit, when the imperial mechanism refused to be reset to play the Internationale, the anthem of world socialism. Despite efforts they've played no music since then—only sounding the quarter hours.123
Therefore seemingly Orson just conjured up this grand story, as he had by adding Rasputin to the reception's guest-list when, in fact, that notorious charlatan-monk wouldn't join the Imperial Court for another four years. But perhaps Orson hadn't plucked it out of entirely thin air. According to Houdini expert Manny Weltman, the Great Escapologist had worked this bell-ringing miracle back in America, although by a different method: Around Christmas it was his custom to visit towns where he would invite the leading citizens to a late night affair. He'd ask each clergyman present to write the name of his own church on a slip of paper. These were collected by one of Houdini's assistants in one of those then common velvet donation bags. At midnight precisely, one slip would be drawn from the bag by a distinguished local citizen and read aloud. Moments later bells would sound from the direction and with the characteristic tone associated with the chosen church. THE METHOD: The apparently innocent bag was a diabolical device, invented by fraudulent spiritualists, that switched the real slips for a batch of prewritten ones, each bearing the name of a preselected church. Meanwhile another assistant, having picked the door-lock to that vacant church, would ring its bells one minute after twelve.124 Evidently Orson had known about this and creatively edited the story, moving it to an exotic locale and preserving the secrecy of Houdini's method by substituting one (Sharpshooter Bess) that a lay audience would find plausible.
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