Orson Welles - The Man Who Was Magic: Part 1

by Barton Whaley

  330Bamberg (1988), 248-249.

  Three decades later when Orson mentioned this event to his friend Merv Griffin, he added that he'd exposed other psychics:331 In fact, every psychic I've attempted to expose has been a fake. The real psychics, the ones who impressed me the most, are simple people who live in native villages and are called “witches", “wise women", or “wizards". That's the closest I've come to seeing the real thing.

  * * * The Man Who Never Sleeps always worked furiously, pushing his physical and emotional limits—and, on more than one occasion, beyond. He had one untimely breakdown in Hollywood. It resembled the one he'd had in New York in 1938 amidst the shambles of Too Much Johnson's opening night. It took this second collapse to finally teach Orson to anticipate his mind's and body's occasional urgent need for rest—then he'd just suddenly vanish from his office for two or three days to a steam room or, particularly on weekends, Mexico. These abrupt rehabilitation stops, however necessary for his physical and mental health, added to a growing reputation for willful irresponsibility.

  Whenever Orson and Rita slipped off to visit Mexico City, they enjoyed dining out late at various night spots, usually with David Bamberg. On one of these occasions Orson told David that, as soon as the war was over, Hollywood would quickly regain its former strength. In this event, he predicted, the brand new wartime-spawned Mexican film industry would take a bad beating despite its recent success in having captured three quarters of the movie market in Latin America. As David was then working fulltime on films, Orson advised him to write a new stage magic show in the event that the local film business be hit by a sudden downturn. “What he said made sense", David felt, “as I knew there were so many independent producers working on a shoestring that any strong opposition would burst the bubble." He took Orson's advice and “began to make notes and rough outlines for a new magical production."332

  David spent several months developing this full-evening show, which would be called The Fire Dragon. During rehearsals at the big Arbeu Theatre their mutual friend, Norman Foster, who had recently moved to Mexico, directed several of the many new sketches that went to make up the show. With a large cast, it opened in December 1944. A huge success from opening night, it ran for five months in Mexico City before closing the following May, soon after VE-Day.

  Orson's prophecy of imminent doom for Mexican cinema materialized.333 But only briefly. In fact, with heavy government subsidies, it was about to enjoy its own “Golden Age". The number of made-in-Mexico movies increased from 82 in 1945 to 122 in 1958. Only then did it slip into a long decline in both quantity and quality.334 But David's decision to diversify worked out well. Between film, radio, and stage—particularly the latter—he would enjoy a personally and financially rewarding career until official retirement and beyond.

  * * * The year 1944 closed with a typical assessment of Orson's fiscal health: a large annual income overbalanced by larger bills. Of his total earnings of nearly $210,000, an astonishing $180,000 was from radio (including $10,000 for a U.S. government-sponsored show), only $20,000 from movie work (his acting role in Tomorrow is Forever), and a nifty $7,710 in residual royalties from his and Skipper's fiveyear-old Harper's reprint of Everybody's Shakespeare. But so much of this large sum went for current expenses and paying off some past debts that lawyer Weissberger voluntarily deferred his fees that year.335 Unlike so many entertainment celebrities, Orson was blessed throughout his career with more than his fair share of lawyers, business managers, and theatrical agents who were not only competent but honest. Good luck? Maybe, but I believe it more likely further proof that Orson was a better than average judge of people.

  331 OW interview in Griffin (1982), 37, from transcript of the 1 Apr 77 telecast.

  332Bamberg (1988), 249.

  333Bamberg (1988), 266.

  334Mora (1982), 75, 104-105, and Appendix.

  And L. Arnold Weissberger was the best choice of the lot. Eight years Orson’s senior, Orson had hired this kind and courteous man initially to handle his inheritance affairs. Orson had found him through Gussie Weissberger, his secretary and Arnold’s sister. Thus in 1936 did Arnold become Orson’s first lawyer, just as Orson became hs first private client.336 And their client-lawyer relationship and personal friendship would continue until Arnold’s death four years before Orson’s. A notable punster, art collector, and international bon vivant, he'd gone on to lawyer for such entertainment luminaries as Stravinsky, Olivier, Gielgud, Rex Harrison, Gloria Swanson, Burton, and Liz Taylor, and adopt photography as a hobby. Orson knew from the first that he’d found a rare treasure:337

  Like the Rolls-Royce, this lawyer is valued not only for the pleasing elegance of his appearance, but for performance, which can be formidable. Yet the loudest thing on Arnold is his Patek Philippe watch.

  Typical of those times, Arnold was a closeted homosexual when Orson first met him but soon “came out” and with refreshing openness. That was around 1945 when he left mother Anna’s roof at 86th Street to share one with his life-long-to-be lover Milton Goldman. As Anna had been clamoring for a grandchild, actress Elizabeth Bergner, who referred to herself as “the bridesmaid”, was sent to gently explain to Anna why she shouldn’t expect any descendants from that branch of her genealogical tree.338

  The new year (1945) had Orson back in New York lodged at the St. Regis Hotel. He was in town to be interviewed; resume his tour of political speeches (beginning at the NY City Center on the 22nd and repeated in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.); and launch his daily political commentary column, “Orson Welles’ Almanac”, in the New York Post on the 22nd (until retitled “Orson Welles Today” on April 23rd, continuing until June 6th).

  It was probably during this visit to New York that the following amusing incident occurred. As recalled by director Edward Dmytryk:339 I was in New York with the president of RKO, N. Peter Rathvon. He spotted Welles cross the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel, excused himself, and walked over to speak to him. When he returned a few minutes later, a broad smile lit up his face.

  “He just cost us a few million,” he said, “but he’s such a charming bastard, with a little push I’d sign him again tomorrow.”

  Dmytryk understood that “The ability to use flattery at just the right time was only one of Orson’s many talents.”

  335 Higham (1985), 221.

  336Weissberger interview in Noble (1956), 75, but misdating his hiring to “1935". Also OW in Weissberger (1972), 337.

  337OW in Weissberger (1972), 337.

  338 Gieldgud (2004), 434-435,in letters marking the occasion of Arnold W’s death. His open gayness in later life was confirmed in my conversation with Ellis Amburn, 7 May 2000.

  339Dmytryk (1978), 54.

  Orson and Rita took a few weeks in February through early March to visit Mexico with Skipper and Horty Hill. Bamberg magic again loomed large on Orson's agenda, particularly as David's new Fire Dragon show was still playing the capital. Orson saw it several times and told David it was good enough for Broadway. One night, during the show's 20-minute “Magic Bazaar" sketch, David recalled that “I was surprised when Orson and Rita walked onto the stage and did some magic. The audience loved it as they were very popular in Mexico."340 Because this segment comprised a series of small, unconnected comedy tricks set in a magic shop, Orson had picked the one point in the show where he could intrude without disrupting a fellow-entertainer's act. And David didn't mind being up-staged when it added to everyone's pleasure, including his own.

  David tells an amusing story about Rita on a later occasion during this same visit:341 One evening Rita Hayworth showed up a few minutes before curtain time and wanted a front row seat. As the house was sold out, I prevailed upon the management to put an extra chair in the aisle, well down front. This was against the fire laws, but for Rita—what the hell—there were no rules. She wore a wonderful piled up hairdo that evening and took her seat, to the great joy of the guy sitting alongside her. But we forgot all about the flying skeleton routine and during
the blackout, when the boys came rushing down the aisles twirling the luminous skeletons hanging from the perch, one of the skeleton's feet got tangled in her coiffure with disastrous results. When they finally got untangled and the lights went up, she was a mess. Never in my life did I get such a black look. After the show, in my dressing room, I had my hairdresser fix her up. He did such an artistic job that Rita was very pleased. Later the hairdresser went to Hollywood on Rita's recommendation.

  In addition to teaching each other tricks, the two friends discussed the theory of magic. David described an effect he'd used on stage where a spoon dances inside a sealed bottle. After seeing this, Dr. Lee de Forest, the famous 72-year-old genius radio inventor who was now working as David's movie sound engineer, had proclaimed that this trick could only be done by using two giant

  electromagnets—one concealed under the stage, the other high above it. David, amused, asked how could he afford to pack such massive apparatus around the world for such a small effect. In fact David's method was a plain Black Art cabinet with a black string pulled by an invisible assistant. Generalizing, David concluded that in our scientific age most spectators grasp at the latest scientific gadgetry to explain tricks actually worked by the much simpler methods used by most magi. Orson agreed.342 Perhaps he remembered that afternoon at Thayer's when he'd misattributed young Marvyn Roy's thread-activated Rising Cards to “radio control".

  Orson carried his praises for David back to Hollywood. Their mutual acquaintance in magic, the gregarious Harry Mendoza (real name: Harry B. Solomon), wrote David to report that “Orson Welles returned from Mexico and told everyone you had the greatest magic show he had ever seen. With your charming personality and the new comedy angle, you sold them one hundred percent. This is a swell compliment coming from him."343 Orson thought of David as “one of my closest friends and I think the last great illusionist. Since the death of Thurston [in 1936] there's been no one like him."344

  340 Bamberg (1988), 256-257.

  341Bamberg (1988), 257.

  342Dr. Robert Bamberg telephone interview, 30 Oct 91.

  Orson once baffled a group of magicians in Mexico. Demonstrating his version of the wellknown Burnt-and-Restored-Banknote, he challenged them to detect the moment when he switched the large denomination bill for stage money. They failed, not realizing that he'd swindled them by actually burning the real bill before their eyes and then “restoring" it by showing a second real bill.345 This would be one of the last occasions in his life when he'd have literally, as the expression goes, money to burn.

  SPECIAL SERVICES We've seen that Orson had been exempted from the draft, but the Army wanted him enough to offer a direct commission as an officer in Special Services to entertain the troops. He turned the Army down, explaining to Skipper Hill (who thought him foolish), that “I'll clean latrines if that will help win the war but I won't wear [officers'] braid to do magic tricks for soldiers." He went to Washington to volunteer as a civilian but wrote Skipper that “I get nowhere. The incompetents are afraid I'll show them up; the good men are afraid I'm irresponsible."346 But he volunteered his bit as a civilian from time to time.

  He presented hypnotism as a stage act for servicemen at least once during the war. This was at a USO show for the Navy Seabees's rest, rehabilitation, and retraining center at Camp Parks in the Livermore Valley in central California. Decades later when Orson first saw a photo of the occasion, he said it dated from 1941.347 As he rightly admitted, he wasn't good on remembering dates and this is an example. He was off by two years—sometime in 1943, probably between late September after the Wonder Show and early October when he went to the East Coast for the rest of the year.348

  Orson also gave at least two free magic shows around 1943-44 in the theater at The Masquers. This famous old private theatrical club with its fine clubhouse on Sycamore Avenue a half block above Hollywood Boulevard put on free dinners plus stage shows for the two hundred or so soldiers and sailors who were bussed in from suburban camps every Saturday night during the war. For better air circulation two north-side doors were left open. This gave good sight-lines into the stage from the neighboring yard on that side. Bayard Brattstrom, a teenage beginning amateur magician, took weekly advantage of this free view to watch acts by such stars as Jack Benny, Red Skelton, John Calvert, and Orson Welles. Bayard recalls Orson performing mainly small apparatus tricks, doing so in his usual style but lighter and with brash jokes more suited to this specialized audience.349

  During the first half of 1944 Orson continued giving occasional free magic shows for servicemen at military camps, USOs, and the Hollywood Canteen. And one of his CBS radio shows was broadcast live from a near-by Navy base. On these occasions Red Baker, disguised as a soldier or sailor, would sit in a second-row aisle seat, waiting for Orson to descend into the audience, come up to Red, and to the amazement of spectators proceed to pluck a live rabbit from under Red's army blouse—where the secret stooge had been patiently holding it.350

  343Quoted in Bamberg (1988), 256.

  344Ward (1983), 34. OW also expressed his high regard for Bamberg to Geoffrey Hansen in the late 1970s. Hansen telephone interview, 19 Dec 91.

  345David Goodsell in M-U-M, Vol.82, No.5 (Oct 1992), 20. [David recalls finding this item in an early 1940s Sphinx or, possibly, Linking Ring.

  Craig M. Snader Jr. in telephone interview, 29 Nov 92, vaguely recalls hearing this same story from Edmund Spreer. 346OW in Hill (1977), 127.

  347Paul Butler interview, 6 Oct 91.

  348The Seabees weren't established until January 1942, Camp Parks didn't open until January 1943, and USO Camp Shows didn't begin there until

  May. But it was no later than 1943 when he'd dropped his hyp act. Carol A. Marsh (Seebee staff historian) letter with accompanying

  documentation (but no reference to any appearance by OW) to BW, 22 Nov 94.

  349Prof. Bayard H. Brattstrom letter to BW, 8 Jan 92; and Brattstrom telephone interview, 9 Jan 92.

  Having Red Baker on Orson's payroll thanks to his CBS contract for Orson Welles' Almanac had been a big help. Consequently in July when CBS failed to renew the show for a second season, Orson parted with Red's services as well.351

  Orson never forgot one show at the Hollywood Canteen, that popular wartime cabaret-restaurant for servicemen and women. It occupied a large wooden barn at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard, just off Sunset. Founded in 1942 by Bette Davis and John Garfield, it operated from late 1942 until the war’s end, entertaining three thousand GI’s and Allied sailors nightly. Except for a full-time paid staff of nine, it was staffed entirely by local volunteer show-people taking turns as cooks, servers, janitors, musicians, and dance hostesses. In this last case Bette insisted on black-white integration, including on the dance floor -– with only two racial incidents serious enough to require interruption by the playing of the national anthem. Orson once worked there the same night as Joseph Francis “Buster" Keaton, star comedian-director of many silent classics. “I did magic," Orson recalled, “and he washed dishes, for God's sake. Keaton, one of the giants!"352 (Incidentally and despite Keaton’s claim, it wasn’t Houdini who’d nicknamed him “Buster”.353)

  * * * In September, leaving Rita behind, Orson went East to campaign for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s forth-term election against Republican Tom Dewey. In New York Orson linked up with Frank Sinatra who was also actively and enthusiastically campaigning for FDR. It was the beginning of a long friendship. At that time the 29-year-old Sinatra, Orson’s junior by a half year, was already a hot young star singer (“The Voice”) at nightclubs, in movies, and on radio with his own weekly half-hour CBS show where Orson had guested with him earlier that year.

  Orson particularly admired Sinatra’s public efforts to challenge racial bigotry. After all, as a first generation Italian-American growing up in Hoboken, he was used to being baited as “a dirty wop.” And Sinatra’s political activism, like Orson’s, earned him the “Communist” label in the right-wing Hearst press and with J. Edgar
Hoover’s FBI. Too bad that FBI-think didn’t permit deducting “Red” points for suspects’ memberships in non and even anti-Communist organizations. Otherwise Orson and Sinatra might have benefitted from their then current (late 1940s) membership in the official Ronald Reagan Fan Club, which included such other stalwart right-wingers as Errol Flynn and Lt. Col. Jimmy Stewart.354

  Years later Orson would tell Frank’s daughter, Nancy:355 We drove to his uncle’s house for calamari and on the way back we stopped for coffee. Our driver ... was a black man and the guy in the diner wouldn’t serve him. Your dad reached across the counter and grabbed this nine-foot giant by the front of his shirt and said, “You’re serving coffee for three.” After a beat, the man said, “Yes.” No sporting event here. It was a mosquito vs. a gorilla. Frank made the score with sheer force of character.

  350 Baker interview, 14 Mar 92. The Navy base show was one of the two Almanac shows (Mar 8th & May 3rd) in which Lucille Ball appeared.

  351Baker interview, 14 Mar 92.

  352OW in Welles & Bogdanovich (1992), 39, where however OW mistakenly calls it the “Stage Door Canteen”, as its New York counterpart was known. A good description of the Canteen at that time is McBride (2001), 267-268; but the best is Bette Davis, This ‘n That (New Yok: Putnam’s, 1987), 117-129.

  353This is accepted by Houdini's biographers and many others, although doubted by Keaton's early main biographer, Tom Dardis (1979). The story was finally been buried by Marion Meade, Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 18-19.

  354I find them listed as “Honorary Members” by as early as Xmas 1945 to as late as Spring 1947 in the fan club’s official magazine, the Reagan Record for those dates.

  355OW as quoted in Sinatra (1995), 68.

  Monday, November 6th, was election eve. The Democratic National Committee had arranged a major nation-wide campaign spectacle that linked all four networks. Broadcast live, it originated in New York and was directed by Norman Corwin. Orson gave a speech and brief endorsements of FDR were read by nearly twenty celebrity entertainers including Rita Hayworth, Claudette Colbert, Danny Kaye, Keenan Wynn, and Walter Huston.