After the Wonder Show, Orson was stuck with a big pile of costly magic props and illusion apparatus. Chester Morris bought several items254 and the rest were warehoused by Mercury Productions. Unfortunately the storage wasn't entirely secure—at least one of the better props, a Pigeon Catching Net that hadn't been used in the show, was stolen, let's hope by a magician.255
* * * Friday, the day after the tent show closed, Orson took his bride to Chicago to meet Skipper and Horty Hill and begin a round of patriotic speaking engagements. He invited his old friend Lehman Engel to Sunday lunch. Ensign Engel was then serving his country as conductor of the 100-man symphonic concert band at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. Arriving at Orson's hotel suite he was shown a sleeping Rita before settling into a strictly liquid lunch alone with his hungover host. After several drinks Orson asked his friend to escort him to a private dining room where he was scheduled to speak. To disguise his drunken stagger Orson “affected the use of a walking stick on which he leaned heavily, making his unsteadiness appear to be the result of some ankle accident."256
FOLLOW THE BOYS Universal Pictures had planned to hype what a grand patriotic job the Hollywood film community was doing to entertain GIs. The studio executives chose a star-studded review. The working title was Three Cheers for the Boys, but it would be released as Follow the Boys. The thin plot had George Raft playing a 4-F Hollywood hoofer who produces USO Camp Shows that tour Southern California and the Pacific War Theater, getting himself torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and—sob, please—drowned for his effort. The rest of the large cast, most playing themselves, featured such Universal stars as Vera Zorina, Jeannette MacDonald, Donald O'Connor, The Andrews Sisters, Dinah Shore, Sophie Tucker, Arthur Rubinstein, and W.C. Fields,. And, for good measure, Orson Welles with Marlene Dietrich, both of whom had signed up while their The Mercury Wonder Show was still running.257
251 Brady (1989), 367, errs in stating that their marriage took place "after" the show's closing, an error copied by Charvet (1993), 42.
252Thomson (1966), 355.
253LOOK, 16 Nov 43, 56-59, 68.
254Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91.
255Jackson Leighter telegram to OW, 12 Jan 44.
256Engel (1974), 94.
In an early scene Orson is introduced in a large auditorium where hundreds of assembled stars of Hollywood are being recruited by George Raft. Orson volunteers his services, saying, “I'm an amateur magician—how about a magic show?" He doesn't appear again until 60 minutes into the movie when he presents his act at “Camp Howard” (a studio set on the Universal lot).
In late September he arrived at the lot with his own gang of assistants, aides, and extras—all hold-overs from the Wonder Show: Marlene Dietrich, Tommy Hanlon, Shorty, Professor Bill and his Circus Symphony, Death Valley Mack who took care of the rabbit and birds, a couple of female assistants, and eight chorus girls. He also brought some of the show's magic props and posters from his warehouse.258
Orson then patched together a seven-minute scene that featured a few effects from the Wonder Show. Aside from the sharply cut running time and limited number of tricks, the most obvious difference between the two shows was that Orson had shed his fez and robe and other costumes for white tie and tails.
His magic segment opens with a white rabbit hopping center-stage to a top hat whence by shoddy camera trickery Orson appears from a puff of smoke chuckling, “That's the first time you ever saw a rabbit take a magician out of a hat." He levitates his cigar and then, by a commanding snap of his fingers, makes it return to his lips. With Shorty as “Jailbird" and Tommy as “Achmed" and several females assisting, he does the instantaneous production from an empty box of a flurry of birds and a rabbit.
Finally, to the strains of hootchi-kootchi music, he conjures a woman's shadow moving behind a translucent back-lit screen. Taking a match he lights the shadow's cigarette and Marlene Dietrich, in Hollywood-harem garb, bursts through the paper screen. Orson now prepares her for the Sawing, although done in a never-before-seen upright version. She stands, her midriff girdled by a thin box he calls “wooden rompers", while two GI volunteers armed with a long two-handled saw prepare to work away horizontally on the box. “Orson," she complains, “we haven't rehearsed this." He answers, “I'm sorry Marlene—this can't be rehearsed. This is one trick you can't repeat." With a hardly reassuring aside to the GI audience, he announces, “Gentlemen, I think you ought to know—we lose a girl at every performance. The turnover is tremendous." Miss Dietrich persists, “Orson, how does the trick work?", to which he replies “Just wait, Marlene, this'll kill you." Humming with malicious delight while supervising her imminent destruction, the Great Ham flips his cigar over his shoulder, plucks another from one GI's ear, and ignites it with a lightbulb that he then blows out and tosses away—a trick he'd seen Bob Haskell do at a Los Magicos meeting. The sawing complete, Miss Dietrich's lower half runs off stage. Soon restored she takes revenge by hypnotizing her tormentor. His body stiffens and he falls straight back as the scene ends with a camera-iris blackout. This comedy version of the Sawing was done, as Orson had planned, strictly by trick photography.259
257Los Angeles Times, 9 Sep 43, Pt.I, p.17. Higham (1985), 208, errs in stating that Follow the Boys preceded the Wonder Show. 258Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91; Brady (1989), 367. Fourteen years later Orson's original comedy sawing effect was used by German illusionist Kalanag in his famous stage show. After the assistant is bisected the upper half is placed on a table and the lower half walks off stage. But no trick photography here— Kalanag had figured a way to do it live.260
By using this absurd ending Orson, like Kalanag, was virtually exposing one of the real illusion's methods. The movie-house audience would suddenly realize that two women had been connected by the box, Marlene supplying the head and torso, a showgirl the legs. Indeed that had been the secret of one of the trick's early versions; but the more usual methods seen today leave no room in the box or table for more than one assistant.
* * * {SIDEBAR} Exposing the methods of their trade to the public is deplored by most magicians, particularly those professionals whose livelihoods depend on these secrets. Exposure is the main basis for expulsion from most magic societies. Orson faced a dilemma. On the one hand he was ethically bound not to expose the specifics. On the other hand, rather like Penn & Teller today, he delighted in teaching audiences the general principles of the art. His fine-line solution was to reveal only those methods that had already been widely exposed in the public press, as was then true of the two-person method for the Sawing, or those that had been dropped from the professional repertoire. (Two rules to which this biography adheres.) And he preferred to avoid doing tricks that were in the current repertoire of professional conjurors.
Orson's view on exposing was conservative. He declared himself “one of that dwindling and gloomy body of cranks who wish magic could have been kept a mystery." He explained that “magic's worst enemies are that spreading section in any audience who know how the trick is done. It should be granted that a puzzle solved before it's shown is just about as attractive as an unmade bed. ... The profession—and with it the art of magic—is most surely done for unless secrets ... are more carefully kept from the attention of the merely curious."261
{END SIDEBAR}
* * * One day on the Follow the Boys' set Orson got involved in an argument with the studio staff over how to handle part of his scene. Tommy Hanlon interrupted to say, “Look, Welles, you're probably one of the greatest directors of all time. You're one of the greatest producers of all time. You're one of the greatest actors of all time. You're one of the greatest writers of all time. BUT YOU CAN'T DO IT ALL AT ONCE! Make up your mind what you're going to be, a writer or whatever." Everyone froze in awe at Tommy's audacity, fearfully awaiting the thunder. But Orson, looking thoughtful, only said, “That might be true. That MIGHT be true."262
The movie's brief magic scene was originally scheduled to be filmed in four or five days but Orson—domi
nating the nominal director, genial old Eddie Sutherland—connived to stretch it to 16 days to provide extra pay for his loyal assistants.263 And he collected the much needed and well deserved $30,000 guarantee for his own time.264 (This cheap black-&-white movie was released next year. Orson's prima ballerina ex-inamorata Zorina, disgusted by having “to dance with an aging and overweight George Raft", never bothered to see it.265 Just as well. Except perhaps for W.C. Fields' pool table antics, for critics and audiences alike Orson's was the only memorable act. The film isn't even available on commercial video, colorized or not, although occasionally shown on TV.)
259 Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91.
260Sid Lorraine in New Phoenix, No.347 (23 Nov 1957), 211.
261Welles (1948), vi-viii.
262Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91.
263Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91.
* * *
One day in late 1943 while Orson was in his office chatting with Tommy Hanlon, Jo Cotten walked in: JC: Selznick wants me to make a picture or two with him.
OW: So?
JC: He wants to sign me up, though. And you've got my contract.
OW: Big problem?
JC: Well, you know, you and I have always been good together; but Selznick has two or three motion pictures.
OW: Shifra! Could you find Joseph's contract!
[Shifra brings in contract and hands it to Orson.]
OW: [tearing up contract] He can do more for you than I can. Good luck!
Tommy thought this gesture typical of Orson's generosity.266 Under Orson's tutelage Cotten had become in Tommy's opinion “one of the good amateur magicians." Toward the year's end Jo was co-starring in Since You Went Away, his first contract movie for David O. Selznick, and decided he wanted the dinner table scene to include a bit of his sleight-of-hand magic. When Selznick agreed it was a good idea, Jo recommended Tommy Hanlon as technical adviser. Meeting with Tommy, Selznick asked, “How much?" Tommy answered, “A hundred dollars a day and I'll supply the props." When Selznick asked “How many days do you think it will take?", Tommy said “Oh, maybe two, three at the most." Pleased with such a cheap deal, the mogul hired the magician. When Jo asked what trick he should do, Tommy said “You're at the dinner table. You produce a wine glass from a handkerchief. I think probably you would extinguish the cigarette into the handkerchief. Agnes Moorehead comes in and you wiggle your thumb through the handkerchief." Jo, pleased with this bit of business that would last little more than a minute on the screen, asked “What's the move on the wine glass?" and Tommy demonstrated this marvelous little effect that had been invented and marketed by Orson's friend Joe Berg. Tommy spent the first two days on the set doing nothing. The third day the director announced he was ready for the wine glass bit. However Jo, borrowing a leaf from Orson's book of spells, said slowly with feigned puzzlement, “There's one move I can't quite get. Can we have another day?" The director agreed. By supplementing such subterfuges with routine delays, Jo managed to stretch Tommy's paychecks out to some 18 days. Meanwhile Tommy would hide in the scenery whenever an increasingly upset Selznick came snooping around the set looking for his $100-a-day magician.267
* * * During this period Orson began cultivating yet another talent, what today we'd call political activism. We saw him engaged six years earlier in a battle with Washington bureaucrats over their politically motivated suppression of his Leftist play, The Cradle Will Rock. But that was personal as well as principle. Now, for the first time, he joined the cause of others. The triggering event was what the Los Angeles press had begun calling The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Case. In August 1942 two groups of Chicano (Mexican American) boys fought in a suburban gravel pit. One died. Twenty-four Chicano were arrested and nine were convicted of second-degree murder. With the local press complaining about "Pachuco Gangsters" and "Zoot Suit Hoodlums" the LA city police chief and LA county sheriff responded with an all-out two-day sweep of the barrio. The sheriff's Bureau of Foreign [sic] Relations justified this action by claiming that Latino males had some "inborn characteristic" for fighting and killing.268
264 In Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 180, OW recalls his fee as $50,000. Zorina, the film's co-star, got only $25,000. Zorina (1986), 284.
265Zorina (1986), 284.
266Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91.
267Hanlon interview, 12 Dec 91. Also Card Mondor letter to BW, 23 Jul 91.
Orson became involved in this case at the invitation of The Citizen's Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, when it asked him to act as its spokesperson. This Committee soon renamed itself the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee. Its supporters ranged from Orson and such Mercurians as Rita Hayworth, Jo Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, and Canada Lee to staunch Communists like John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo. Two years later the Chicano Nine were freed by the Court of Appeals due to "lack of evidence".269
Soon after Orson’s joining the Sleepy Lagoon affair, probably in September, Orson acquired a new mentor, a man who would nurture and guide his growing political ambitions for the duration of the war. Louis Dolivet was prominent in the French community in America since his arrival as a refugee three years earlier. He’d come to prominence in Paris as a journalist, initially with the staff of Willi Münzenberg's World Committee Against War and Fascism and then since 1934 as editor-in-chief of Henri Barbusse’s leftist revue, Monde. In 1936 he’d been promoted director of the recently formed Rassemblement Universelle pour la Paix (RUP), an international anti-fascist organization headquartered in Paris until 1939 when, following France’s entry into the war, it moved to neutral Geneva, Switzerland. Dolivet's boss was Pierre Cot, a leftist co-chair of the RUP. The RUP was the most elegant and respectable of the many fund-raising and propaganda organizations that appealed to intellectuals and celebrities who opposed the growing menace of the Right-wing “fascist” dictatorships in Italy, Germany, and Spain. This was the honeymoon period of the Popular Front that united the most politically left parties and individuals with the Communists in common cause from 1935 until Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939. The suave and energetic Dolivet greatly impressed many with his oratorical charisma. Other associates found him merely “oily”.
In addition to his propaganda efforts against fascism, Dolivet became active in arranging clandestine arms smuggling from France to the Socialist government of Spain, which from 1936 to 1938 was engaged in a desperate and ultimately losing struggle with the rebel right-wing forces under General Franco who had the close support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and Portugal. This smuggling operation was headed by Pierre Cot in his new capacity as Minister of Air in the then left-wing French government. We now know that Cot, a member of the Radical Party, was also a secret agent of the Soviet-controlled Communist International (Comintern); and his associate at the ministry, André Labarthe, was an agent of Soviet Military Intelligence (the GRU). Thus Dolivet was deeply involved with an odd mix of French Socialists, Radicals, and Communists. Although these groups were normally political enemies, they were temporarily allied in the United Front struggle against fascism. And some of the above individuals also secretly served as Soviet agents.
268Stan Steiner, La Raza: The Mexican Americans (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 232-234. 269See particularly Leaming (1985), 273-275; and Ceplair & Englund (1980), 195-196. A redefining moment for every Communist and pro-Moscow fellow-traveler was that astonishing day in August 1939 when they learned that Stalin had done an unthinkable about-turn and signed a pact with his arch-enemy, Hitler. Their world had instantly flipped upside down and each had to choose whether to "stay on the train" and follow the Leader wherever he commanded or "fall off" and continue to treat Hitler and fascism as mankind's main enemy. Those among Orson's associates who remained firmly and forever loyal to Stalin were Howard Koch, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Donald Ogden Stewart (and wife Ella Winter), and Dorothy Parker. Katz's Hollywood Anti-Nazi League dutifully renamed itself the Hollywood League for Democratic Action. But many found Stalin's about-face a revelation of suc
h monstrous political hypocrisy that they leapt off the rickety red bandwagen and followed Münzenberg, Dos Passos, Gide, and even Hemingway into apostasy. These defectors included Michael Straight, Melvyn Douglas, and William Herrick and later Thomas Mann and Richard Wright. To the small degree that Orson had been paralleling the Communist line he now had no problem keeping to his genuine anti-fascist and social-democratic liberal-Rooseveltian New Deal beliefs.270
Pierre Cot, Dolivet's mentor, had managed to escape to London before Hitler's blitzkrieg crushed France in Summer 1940. He attempted to join General De Gaulle's Free French Movement, promising to accept any assignment including janitor, but was turned down—the Army people around the De Gaulle didn't want an airman. So Cot went from London to New York that September. Two months later he met Earl Browder, the long-time General Secretary of the American Communist Party and the Party's main liaison with Soviet Political Intelligence (the then NKVD). We now know from intercepted and decoded messages from Browder to Moscow that Cot told Browder he wished to reestablish ties to Soviet intelligence. Cot explained that he was willing to undertake any assignment, including even giving open support to the pro-Nazi puppet regime then in France. Browder became Cot's liaison until June 1942 when Moscow established direct control through Vladimr Pravdin, an NKVD officer under cover in the US as a TASS News Agency correspondent. The NKVD then (July 1st) gave Cot the cover-name "DEDAL" (Daedalus) and in June 1943 his control was personally taken over by Vassiliy Zarubin, the NKVD's legal Rezident in the US.271
Meanwhile, Dolivet, an officer in the French Air Force at the time of the German conquest, had also managed to escape. With an American visa from the still neutral U.S. consulate in Marseilles he left France on December 12th by a ferry south across the Mediterranean to Algiers. Thence west by train to Casablanca, boat to Lisbon, and ship to New York where he'd arrived in New York City early in 1941. There he was sponsored by Pierre Cot who arranged for Dolivet to move into the home of Michael Straight, millionaire Whitney heir and publisher of The New Republic, a liberal weekly magazine. In 1942 Dolivet met and married Michael’s wealthy stage-actress older sister, Beatrice Straight. She was 28, although her theatrical bios trimmed off three years. With Beatrice and Michael’s money to fund his political activities and the gift of office space at Michael’s New Republic, Dolivet founded an international association, Free World, Inc., together with its own monthly magazine, Free World. He published this from October 1941 (until Dec 1946 when he changed its name to United Nations World.
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