FRAMING THE MERCURY WONDER SHOW Given the uncertainties created by his often-changing military draft status, Orson couldn't make long-range plans and commitments. Rita had worked the Hollywood Stage Door Canteen and done USO tours. Orson now decided he would do his bit for the troops. But do it his own way. The very title of this project would carry his trademark: The Mercury Wonder Show.
Orson planned to produce, direct, and perform a spectacle—a complete vaudeville-cum-circus magic show. Again he would have a captive audience for the magic his Hollywood movie circles weren't interested in watching. Moreover, this would be his chance to become the star of the two most exciting magic shows he'd watched as a boy. He would frame his own full-evening show to the size that Houdini had and even use three of Houdini's illusions. The title of his show mimicked Thurston's The Wonder Show of the Universe125 and he would use at least five of Thurston's effects. He also copied Thurston's innovation of using showgirl extras to decorate the stage. Orson's Mercury Wonder Show would be a boy's fantasy come true. And the entire event would be a scaled-up version of the Los Magicos minicircus he'd seen two years earlier.
122 [Houdini specialists consulted were Stephen Forrester, John C. Hinson, Frank Koval, Arthur Moses, Sid Radner, Ken Silverman, and Manny Weltman. Historically oriented magicians credited with strong memories and fine paper brains were Jeff Busby and Byron Walker.
123AP story in The Miami Herald, 25 Dec 1993, 12A.
124I thank the late Manny Weltman (telephone interview of 31 Aug 92) for this version of the story.
With more bucks in the bank than ever before, Orson paid out $40,000 as start-up money. Of this, $26,000 alone would go for the scenery and magic props, including several thousand for just the latter.126 He promptly began filling his rented house in the Hollywood Hills at 7975 Woodrow Wilson Drive with small props and large apparatus, including trunks, ropes, swords, top hats,127 and the miraculous Orange Tree. What he couldn't borrow he bought from Bill Larsen's Thayer Studio of Magic or directly from Carl Owen's Owen Magic. It was mainly an Owen-built128 and Thayer/Larsen-bought show.
In late April he began teaching the secrets of his art to roommate Rita who was delighted to be able to collaborate in an aspect of his professional life she could feel comfortable with. The vaudeville stage was something she knew and understood, the stage of Shakespeare and Marlowe wasn't.129
Needing a practice stage for himself and Rita, Orson borrowed one. His hosts were Bill and Gerrie Larsen. Bill was a wealthy criminal lawyer and prominent semi-pro magician and mentalist whom Orson had most likely met at a Los Magicos meeting. Bill volunteered his private theater. The Larsen's Spanish-styled mansion, “Brookledge", at 929 South Longwood Avenue in LA's exclusive Wilshire district included a fully-equipped 12-by-20 foot stage in a small theater with 100 seats on the ground floor and 25 in the balcony. There Orson and Rita practiced the Houdini Substitution Trunk for hours and on several occasions.130
The Sub Trunk was and still is one of the most popular of all stage illusions. The audience sees a man step into an empty trunk where he is tied securely in a sack. The trunk top is closed and moments later opened to reveal that the man has vanished, a woman stands in his place, and the man reappears elsewhere.
One night Orson suddenly decided he needed certain small props. So he went over to the Thayer Studio of Magic, which was located at the back of the Larsen mansion. Finding no one in, he broke a window pane, entered, and took what he wanted. He left a signed note listing the items, adding “P.S.: I also owe you for the window."131
* * * At this time the New York publishing firm of Reynal & Hitchcock sent Orson the galleys of their forthcoming book, The Little Prince, an adult fairytale about a space-travelling youth who teaches a jaded adult Earthling to recover his sense of wonder. Its French author-illustrator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was the world-famous aviation pioneer and best-selling writer of Night Flight (1932) and Wind, Sand and Stars (1939). He was also an amateur conjuror who, as Buñuel recalled, “always amazed us with his repertory of magic tricks.”132
125 Coincidentally, Orson had also acted for several weeks in the Mutual Broadcasting System's The Wonder Show series of old-fashioned melodramas.
126Jackson Leighter interview in The Los Angeles Times, 8 Aug 43; Brady (1989), 363. Larsen (1943), 6, reported at the time: "It is rumored on good authority [probably Orson himself] that more than fifty thousand dollars has gone into the opus. I can well believe it. The money hasn't been spent on tricks and illusions, understand (although Mr. Welles has spent many thousands on this part of the show, too), but into rentals for rehearsal halls, salaries and general production costs, including sets, costumes, music, and advertising."
127Leaming (1989), 86.
128Buffum (1977), 214-215.
129Leaming (1989), 86.
130Gerrie Larsen Jaffee telephone interview, 31 Sep 91; Buffum (1977), 214-215, based on his interview with Geraldine Larsen.
131Milt Larsen interview, 4 Oct 91. Red Baker (interview, 14 Mar 92) recalls hearing this incident being discussed by Thayer staff at the time. The late Bill Larsen Junior reportedly had no recollection of this event.
Orson read the new work late one night that May and immediately sent Shorty to fetch Jackson Leighter, awakening him and bringing him back. When Leighter arrived in his bathrobe at 4:00 AM, Orson read the slim book through aloud. He then explained he wanted the book for his next movie and wanted it now, before any other producer optioned the movie rights from the publisher. By day’s end Leighter had secured a two-month option for the film rights. To preserve the story’s fantasy element, Orson intended to combine live action (real actors) with animation (the Prince and some scenery). Accordingly, Leighter set up a lunchtime meeting at the Disney studios with Walt Disney and his senior animators whose Fantasia (1940) and Saludos Amigos (1943) had recently popularized this type of cartoon-live mix. Seated at one end of the dining table with Disney at the other, Orson began pitching his concept, his seductive words drawing all attention to him. Disney was called out to take a telephone call. Moments later Jackson Leighter was similarly called out. He realized that both phone calls had been a ruse when Disney exploded, “Jack, there is not room on this lot for two geniuses!” After learning of this snub, Orson always referred to Disney as a “fascist”—a fair although irrelevant judgment.133
* * * Toward the end of the first week of May, after over a year and a half of trying energetically but quietly to avoid military service, Orson finally managed to convince his draft board to certify his asthmatic and flat-footed body “4-F" (unfit for military service). Although patriotic, he'd no desire to serve in uniform and anyway, as his secretary at the studio said, “He would have disrupted the entire Army." After a happy champagne celebration in his offices at Twentieth Century-Fox with his Mercury players and personal staff, Orson, now free to chart his future, went full bore ahead on expanding the magic show.134
During early rehearsals that May he worked with a skeleton cast of only four: Rita, Jo Cotten, Linda Brent, and John Tucker Battle, who was later moved to a staff post. For a place to rehearse, Orson rented the Play Time Theatre, a medium-size (350-seat) legit theater on North Las Palmas Avenue a half block below Hollywood Boulevard.135
At this point he was still planning only a moderate-sized show, one strictly for service men and women. Magic would be the theme, he said, referring to the results of a poll, because “magic is the most popular type of show among service men at camp. We want to give them plenty of magic and plenty, I dare say, that is completely new." It would play six weeks starting at the Play Time and then tour military camps. But now, thinking big, he began to plug his show as “the biggest magic show on earth" and as a “Hellzapoppin' of Magic", referring to the current Olsen & Johnson Broadway comedy hit that co-starred the magic of Hardeen, Houdini's younger brother.136
132 Juis Buñuel, My Last Sigh (New York: Knopf, 1983), 181. Jean Renoir, My Life and My Films (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 190, notes S-E’s c
ard tricks..
133Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry (New York: Knopf, 1995), 400; Leighter 1983 & OW 1984 interviews in Leaming (1985), 270-272.
134Dr. Bernstein had submitted the necessary medical documentation and Paula Millard had typed up the applications. Paula Millard Petchon interview, 23 Jan 92.
135Undated [May 1943] 20th Century-Fox draft 2-page publicity release by Bloecher. Next year the Play Time became the Las Palmas, the name it still bears.
The cast list soon grew to 16, coincidentally the same number Houdini had used in his own fullevening show. They were Orson's “assistant prestidigitators" or, as he also fondly but bluntly called them, “stooges". And he referred to himself genially as “The Great Ham".137 By the time the show opened his cast and staff had swelled to a total of 31.138
Because of his prior daytime commitment, it had to be an evening show. This was, of course, convenient not only for audiences but because many personal friends (including some of his old Mercury players) were available for outside work after their daytime studio hours. Rita was already cast as his featured assistant. Genial Mercury veteran Jo Cotten would be the great escapologist and chauffeur Shorty would make his stage debut as Orson's comedy assistant. Agnes Moorehead, another of his sturdy Mercury actors, was put in charge of the backstage props. His number two Mercury secretary, Peggy Vaughan, would coordinate the costumes. His partner, Jackson Leighter, served as general manager.
Paula Millard, a long-time secretary at Twentieth Century-Fox where she'd been Orson's assistant during the filming of Jane Eyre, was lent by the studio to help out in Orson's office and run the box office. Paula, 37 and divorced, was a “sassy" gal who'd helped unionize the studio typists and secretaries. Orson appreciated her politics and her sassiness. Knowing she was secure in her job at the studio she stood up to Orson's ragging and found he admired her for doing so. Once, when he asked her if a particular magic trick was too obvious for a general audience, he acted displeased with her answer so she said, “If you don't want the right answer then don't ask me!" One evening during the wartime blackout she arrived at the office nine minutes late and found him already there. This produced the following poignant exchange:139
ORSON (booming): Paula, it's 10:09!
PAULA (in disgust): The whole world is in blood and tears and you fuss about that. ORSON (subdued): Let's wait and see what Peggy [his other overdue typist] says when she comes in.
Dadda Bernstein was carried on the staff roles as house physician. And Orson's devoted personal secretary, Shifra Haran, typed and retyped the script, helped with the props, and kept watch over the world's most important rooster.140
This creature was one of Orson's more valued recruits. Hypnotizing a Duck had been a Thurston specialty,141 but Orson evidently thought a rooster would be funnier, as he had with the rooster shadowgraph in Kane. Having trained it to seem to succumb to his hypnotic glare, the bird developed a tumor on one leg. Miss Haran took it to a fashionable Beverly Hills vet. Told that his patient would be performing for charity, the good doctor agreed to operate free. On Orson's orders, a straw-filled box was set up in his private office bungalow where the bird soon recovered.142
136 Undated [May 1943] 20th Century-Fox draft 2-page publicity release by Bloecher.
137Denton & Crichton (1943), 14-15.
138Jackson Leighter, the show's general manager, interview in the Los Angeles Times, 8 Aug 1943, on the eve of the official premiere.
139Paula Millard Petchon interviews, 23 Jan & 15 Nov 92.
140Paula Millard Petchon interview, 23 Jan 92; Brady (1989), 363.
141Christopher (1973), 235.
142Leaming (1985), 267.
While recuperating, the pampered fowl shared the office suite with a team of tame white mice that a young woman fan had brought in as a gift for his magic act, to the annoyance of harried secretaries Paula and Peggy. Orson, unable to figure out any suitable mouse magic, had handed the box of rodents to Miss Haran to dispose of. She released them on the assumption they would escape—instead they made their home in one of her desk drawers.143
Not content to merely “hypnotize" a bird à la Thurston, Orson read up on the subject of hypnotism and discussed it with expert practitioners to the point that he learned how to do it.144 John Calvert, Orson's magician friend and Hollywood movie hopeful, helped plan the Mercury Wonder Show. For many hours the two men would meet over coffee or lunch at the Brown Derby. Orson struck John as “unsure of himself about just what he wanted to do and what he should do in the show. He seemed to be short of tricks and illusions and long on ideas and really short on knowledge of magic at that time." A major problem was that while many impressive illusions can be performed under canvas, the types of scene changes and tricks that can work are limited by the lack of such usual theatrical amenities (all favorable for fancy hocus-pocus) as a flyloft above the stage, a basement substage, and a deep backstage. So John, the aspiring actor, gave freely to the aspiring magician, advising him about those tricks that could work well in the show and those that wouldn't.145
Specifically, John taught Orson how to decapitate a bird and then, by replacing the severed head, restore life—all in a manner that need not concern animal rights activists. This fine old effect had been first performed for Egyptian Pharoah Cheops and had been revived since around 1800 in the West. John took it as a mark of extravagance that Orson ordered a dozen prop heads when one was enough. And John took it as proof of Orson's beginner's status in stage magic that by having the prop handles (“necks") made longer for easier handling the fakery would be obvious to any sharp-eyed spectator.146
And, when he could, Orson was always willing to help out fellow magi. When John Calvert needed some props for a benefit performance at the Las Palmas Theatre, the former Play Time where Orson had previewed The Mercury Wonder Show the previous year. Charlie Chaplin and Chester Morris lent John some of their small props. Orson gave him a key to his magic warehouse from which John borrowed the Houdini Substitution Trunk. His performance was such a success that it was extended for 19 weeks, a record for that theater.147 Orson saw the show a few times and had a high opinion of Calvert's performance, particularly his personality and fast pace and told him, “John, you're doing exactly what I want to do. I'm an actor and I think I'm a good actor, but I would rather be known as the world's greatest magician."148
Calvert's public exposure at the Las Palmas got him a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures, one that enabled him to mix movie acting with a coast-to-coast tour of his magic show. Orson had assumed that John intended to use the Sub Trunk only in the Las Palmas show but it went crosscountry. When the Trunk was eventually returned it was badly scuffed; and, when Orson would later retell this story, he'd half-seriously say of his good friend John, “I'd like to kill him!"149 John vigorously denies having returned it in worse condition that he'd gotten it.150 And he's almost certainly right—photos of the Sub Trunk in the Wonder Show prove it was already rather battered.
143 Paula Millard Petchon interview, 15 Nov 92; Haran 1982 interview with Leaming (1985), 261.
144Welles (1949).
145Calvert tape-letter to BW, May 1992. See also Rauscher (1987), 144.
146Calvert tape-letter to BW, May 1992.
147Rauscher (1987), 65-66.
148Calvert taped letter to BW, May 92. Also Geoffrey Hansen telephone interview, 27 Jan 92, reporting info from OW.
149Geoffrey Hansen telephone interviews, 19 Dec 91 & 27 Jan 92, based on what both Welles and Calvert told him years later.
When Orson saw teenage local amateur magician Melvin Eichar do the Needle Trick, he wanted it in the show and hired Mel to coach him and work in the show. The Needle Trick was one that Houdini had made his own and had been popular ever since, including a version using razor blades. Orson, at age 10, would have seen Houdini perform the Needles in Chicago. The effect is that the magician swallows a packet of sharp sewing needles and a long piece of thread and then regurgitates them strung. Given the tiny size of
the props, it requires strong showmanship and careful spot-lighting to be convincing in a large theater. But in Houdini's hands it became “The biggest little trick in the world."151
Mel Eichar had developed his own simplified method for the Needles, one that eliminated both the various elaborate props then being marketed and Houdini's own “mouth load" method that Orson would have found inconvenient under the performing circumstances he'd chosen. In Mel's version the audience sees a bunch of loose needles counted out one-by-one onto a flat “Bank Night" type tray, the thread dropped on the pile of needles and then watches Orson pour the tray's contents into his empty hand and place it directly into his mouth and swallow. Moments later, the thread is slowly pulled from between his lips, the needles neatly threaded.152
Chinese-American film actor Keye Luke, 38, had started with M-G-M as a commercial artist before turning film actor, often playing Charlie Chan's “Number One Son". Orson now hired him to design the Wonder Show's scenery, much of which involved Oriental motifs.153 This effort on Orson's part to assure cultural authenticity was unusual among Western magicians who, by-and-large, were then content to present pseudo-Oriental props that indiscriminately jumbled Chinese with Japanese designs and fake writing, wore inappropriate costumes, and garbled their patter pronunciation. Orson knew the differences and would have remembered Long Tack Sam's catch phrase, “Damn clever these Chinese", which he'd deliver in perfect British accent at the end of his otherwise silent magic act.
Orson Welles - The Man Who Was Magic: Part 1 Page 27