Hell, Gibson hadn’t even imagined he’d be sitting, clapping and yelling, “Hi de ho!” a mere few hours ago, back at the hotel....
After the early-morning meeting at the Mercury Theatre yesterday, Gibson had returned to the St. Regis and caught a few more hours of sleep. Though his family had been fairly well off, particularly before the Depression, Gibson found the St. Regis almost off-puttingly posh. The eighteen-story Fifth Avenue hotel, facing Central Park, had been built in 1904 by John Jacob Astor for himself and his rich pals; Astor hadn’t had much time to enjoy it, before going down with the Titanic, leaving behind this lavish relic of the Gilded Age.
But in hard times like these, you could feel guilty lounging around in a world of fine furnishings, marble floors and mahogany panelling with its gold-leaf-garnished molding. Bellboys didn’t attend you—butlers did!
And Gibson didn’t imagine any other pulp writer had ever before sat pounding away at a portable Corona at the antique writing desk in this high-ceilinged room with its silk wallpaper, Waterford chandelier and marble floor. He doubted the $75 he’d be receiving from Street and Smith for this short story (“Old Crime Week”) would pay for even a night in this mink-lined flophouse.
By two P.M., having worked through what would have been lunch if it had occurred to him, he’d about hit the halfway point with the story. It featured his character Norgil—a composite of Harry Blackstone, Joseph Dunniger and several other real-life magicians—who appeared in short stories (as opposed to his novel-length Shadow yarns) in the pulp magazine Crime Busters.
Pausing to take a drag on his umpteenth Camel of the day, he was just thinking how—with Welles’s interest in magic—Norgil might make an even better character than the Shadow for the boy genius when the phone on the mahogany nightstand trilled.
The voice in his ear was that familiar resonant baritone: “Walter, I didn’t bring you here to loaf!”
Gibson, his fingertips red from typing, said, “I’m sure you didn’t, Orson. Any suggestions?”
“I suggest you come up to my suite—toot sweet! I have a rehearsal at the theater at seven...so time is, as they say, a’wastin’!”
Soon Gibson, portable Corona in hand, stepped from the elevator onto the eighteenth floor, where—after calling ahead to check on Gibson’s pedigree—the butler stationed there walked him to Mr. Welles’s suite.
The door, which was unlocked, was opened for Gibson by said butler, and when Gibson entered, he was greeted by Welles, or rather Welles’s voice, which boomed from the bedroom.
“Have you had lunch, Walter? Or for that matter, breakfast?”
“No!” Gibson called out.
The suite made Gibson’s own St. Regis room seem like a bungalow at the Bide-a-Wee Motel in Peoria, Illinois. In addition to the requisite fifteen-foot ceiling with chandelier, the living room was ornately appointed in the Beaux Arts manner, with a decorative fireplace, an Oriental carpet and Louis XV furniture.
“I’m just calling down for room service!” Welles’s voice informed his guest. Like the Shadow in full hypnotic mode, Welles thus far remained invisible.
Pausing to set down the typewriter to get out his Camels, Gibson suddenly put the pack of smokes away, deciding not to light up—not in here.
The expensive chairs and the two swooping sofas were stacked with spools of film, laying in careless coils, and on an end table pulled out into the middle of the room had been deposited what looked like a movie projector—sort of. The thing had two big spools (heavy with film) and an oversize viewfinder. Bits and pieces and fragments of film were scattered to either side of the machine, whose presence amid these antiques seemed vaguely futuristic, even alien.
Welles called: “Walter! What would you like?”
“Something light! Fish, maybe?”
“Fine!...Come in, come in....”
Through French doors, Gibson found Welles in a bedroom dominated by a four-poster bed, on the unmade edge of which the wunderkind sat, using a white-and-gold nightstand phone that was as magnificent as the bed itself. With the command and detail of a battlefield general, Welles was giving an elaborate order for food—were further guests expected?—as he sat in a white terrycloth robe with a ST. R crest, his feet slippered in black.
Gibson stood with his portable typewriter fig-leafed before him.
After hanging up, Welles got to his feet and beamed at Gibson, shaking his hand heartily, warmly, his eyes locked on the writer’s.
“Finally, we’re going to get some work done, ay?” he said, as if the world had been conspiring against the pair.
A table near a bay window looking out on Fifth Avenue through sheer drapes was littered with scripts in black binders, which Welles cleared with an arm, sending them clattering to the floor, or anyway Oriental carpet. Welles gestured for Gibson to sit, which he did, and Welles sat opposite, leaning on his elbows, steepling his fingers.
“You’ve been very patient with me, Walter.”
Gibson shrugged. “Entering your world is something of an adventure for me. I live a fairly sedentary life, you know.”
“I do know, Walter—despite the whirlwind you’ve witnessed, much of my time is spent hunkered either over a typewriter myself—or a script with a rewrite pen. The first place a production has to be mounted, after all, is in the mind.”
Nodding, Gibson asked, “If I might...and I don’t mean to be rude or anything...but why would you invite me to the city to work on a project, when you have a Broadway production about to open, and a radio show to put on?”
Welles folded his arms, leaning back; the small but full-lipped mouth took on a scampish little smile. “Walter, my dear friend...I put on a radio show every week. And the Mercury is a full-time repertory company—we go from one play right into another, often presenting several plays simultaneously.”
“So if you waited for a lull...”
The big man gave a tiny shrug. “No such animal in my life of late—and I believe that breed known as the Hollywood producer has the capacity to maintain his interest, his enthusiasm, about as long as a baby does a butterfly.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
Welles leaned forward conspiratorially, eyebrows lifted. “I have designed Danton’s Death—this new play, you saw some of it?”
“Yes.”
“I have designed it dramatically—no, melodramatically, in a fashion that I think will demonstrate to the brothers Warner, and the minions they’ve dispatched to scout me, that I have the visual sense required to make films.”
Gibson nodded. “The striking sets, the movement, the sort of...‘cutting’ between scenes, it’s all meant to show you off as a potential filmmaker?”
The kiss of a mouth twitched approval. “Precisely. I expect several key Warner Bros. executives to attend early performances of Danton’s Death—and I want to be ready with a film project for them, to strike while the iron is hot, as they say.”
“Is that the reason for all of the celluloid scattered about?” Gibson asked, gesturing with a thumb toward the French doors. “And that gizmo?”
“What?...Oh, the Moviola! That’s an editing machine. I’m still playing with the film we shot for Too Much Johnson, the farce we’re planning to mount. We had a bad experience trying it out in summer stock, but I’m still hopeful.”
“Ah. You mentioned that on the phone.”
“Yes, I wanted to combine theater with film—present two lengthy portions of the show as a movie. It’s delightful stuff—Joe Cotten’s a natural on screen, funny as hell. But I ran into a wall.”
“How so?”
“Well, I didn’t realize that what I was up to required any special...dispensation. But it turns out MGM had film rights to the play, and they insist on charging us an arm and a leg for me to use my stuff.” Welles shrugged again, a larger more fatalistic one.
Gibson wondered how this skilled if young producer could have used the bad judgment to just do what he wanted, without checking into permissions. But Gibso
n immediately answered his own question: Welles was a child, a fun, bright, enthusiastic one...also spoiled. Like all spoiled children, he wasn’t much on asking permission....
“I can tell you, though, Walter, playing with this film, seeing how you can tell a story through pictures, little jigsaw-puzzle pieces, well, I get a real charge out of it.”
“So this Warners interest means a lot to you.”
“It does. It does indeed. I have so many ideas about making films—Walter, I can barely contain myself.”
“Such as?”
“You’ve seen the German films? Caligari, for instance? Fritz Lang’s Metropolis?”
“Sure. Judging by their crime pictures, I think the guys at Warner Bros. have, too.”
“Precisely! But they haven’t taken it far enough.” Welles sat forward, his eyes alive and twinkling, his palms open and outstretched, like Jolson on his knees. “I want to make radio...for the screen.”
Gibson winced in thought. “You mean, do more heightened, sophisticated sound work?”
Welles waved a dismissive hand. “Well, that, too, but...Walter, do the images you produce in your own mind, when you listen to a radio show—do the motion pictures you see in your local movie house match up to that?”
“To my own imagination? Hell no!”
“Ha! Precisely. It was better back in the silent days, when the cameras weren’t so bulky—think of the images von Stroheim achieved, and Griffith, and even DeMille. It was as if you were witnessing your own dreams coming to life...and that’s what I intend to make happen again, but even more so. Low angles, high angles, lighting effects, backgrounds as carefully art-directed as one of my Mercury stage productions.”
“And you think the Shadow would lend itself to this?”
A small smile twitched. “Well...if I may be frank...”
Gibson grinned. “You’re buying lunch, aren’t you?”
“Well, Housey’s checkbook is.... My goal would be to do on screen the kinds of things I’m attempting on stage. Nobody’s seriously tried to do Shakespeare, for example, since Mickey Rooney was Puck in that MGM fiasco.”
“I liked that movie.”
“You have to strip these classics down, reimagine them, for the masses. I did Hamlet in an hour on the radio!”
And left out the ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ speech, Gibson thought, but said nothing.
“I intend to do Conrad’s Heart of Darkness...Lear...The Life of Christ!”
“If you have these...” The writer almost said “pretensions,” but substituted: “...goals—why the Shadow?”
Welles’s expression seem to melt into a mask of chagrin. “I’ve insulted you...”
“No. No!”
“... Please don’t think I undervalue your contribution to either my career or the medium of radio.”
“I didn’t think—”
“I am no snob.” Then, in a tone so arch it undercut everything he said, Welles continued: “In fact, I am so resolutely middlebrow as to want to bring the highbrow down to my meager level.”
“Some would call the Shadow lowbrow.”
“Not Orson Welles. I kept myself alive, in Spain, back in ’33, plying your trade—writing pulp detective yarns! And you know of my love for magic—for the carnival-like thrill of prestidigitation, for velvet cloaks, for rabbits in hats, for aces of spades that appear in pockets! No, I love melodrama, and your hawk-nosed avenger...I’m working on my own false nose already, wait until you see me with a snoot worthy of this face!...Your creation is ideal for the cinema of dreams-come-to-life, my radio for not just the ears, but the eyes!”
Breakfast arrived, a small army of butlers bringing such a banquet that Gibson had first wondered who Welles might have invited to join them.
But it was all for them, a finnan haddie with baby red shrimps in a cream sauce for Gibson, an enormous serving of lobster Newburg for his host, plus appetizers including frog legs, scallops and oysters, with fresh-baked dinner rolls and a side salad with garlic dressing. No dessert had been ordered (“I can have them bring you something, Walter, just say the word!...But I’m dieting...”) and Gibson requested none.
Talk during the meal departed from work, and was intermittent—Welles approaching the feast fairly single-mindedly—with the chief subject “War of the Worlds.” He seemed both annoyed and amused that his friend Houseman, whom he loved, was such a “stick in the mud” and “stuffed shirt” where his prank was concerned. What did Walter think?
“Well,” Gibson said, stuffed to the gills, “if the news bulletins are convincing, and frequent, and maintain a believable time line...you may fool some of the people...”
“But not for all of the time! As the piece becomes more ridiculous, which it inherently is, they’ll know we’ve just sneaked up behind them and said, ‘Boo’!”
Welles called for the butlers to come clear the table, and soon—as they sat across from each other, the remains of the meal between them like the aftermath of a battlefield—a knock came to the door.
Frowning, Welles—who was sipping his coffee—said, “What’s wrong with this hotel? They know I don’t want to be bothered with answering the door! They know to come and take this garbage away without asking permission!”
Gibson was already on his feet, putting his napkin on the table. “I’ll get it....”
“Would you mind?”
But when Gibson opened the door, the butlers were not there: instead, a slender, very lovely—and unhappy-looking—young woman faced him. Blonde, blue-eyed and rather patrician in manner, in a sable jacket with matching cap and a dark green dress with matching heels, she eyed Gibson with undisguised suspicion.
“Are you a new slave?”
“Excuse me?”
She brushed past Gibson, saying, “Maybe not—he prefers little men, weasels like Vakhtangov, and you appear to be standing on two legs, not four.”
Gibson closed the door, swallowed, and tried to think of something to say.
She wheeled toward the writer, raised an eyebrow. The blue eyes were streaked red. For all her aloof poise, she could not hide that she’d been weeping.
“I am Virginia Welles,” she said. “Mrs. Welles. Is the great man in?”
“His wife?”
“Not his mother—though it is a fine line, I grant you.”
Still in his white terry robe, Welles appeared at the French doors, with a curious frown quickly turning to a displeased one.
“Virginia...dear. You know I’m working....”
“I’m delighted to see you, too, darling. Your daughter sends her best.”
“I doubt that. She can’t speak yet.”
“How would you know?”
Embarrassed, Welles looked past his wife to say, “Dear, this is Walter Gibson—he created the Shadow. We’re developing a film project.”
She again turned her head toward Gibson. Thin, pretty lips managed a thin, pretty smile. “Mr. Gibson,” she said with a tiny nod. “Forgive the melodramatics.”
“Not at all,” Gibson said, and risked a grin. “My stock in trade.”
The smile disappeared. “I need a few words with my...better half. Would you excuse us for a while, Mr. Gibson?”
“Certainly.”
Welles held the door open for her, rolling his eyes at Gibson behind Mrs. Welles’s back, as she slipped inside. The French doors shut, the conversation grew to a confrontation quickly, her voice shrill, his booming—a marital dispute of epic proportions.
Gibson did his best not to eavesdrop, but it was hard not to hear the accusations of the husband’s infidelity; among the most memorable phrases flung by the wife were “that little ballerina bitch,” “you two-timing self-inflated bag of hot air,” “that gold-digging little dancer,” “you self-important, psychopathic philanderer,” and “that simpering receptionist sitting on her brains all day.”
This had been going on for perhaps ten minutes when a phone rang in the bedroom, and Mrs. Welles allowed her husband a brief intermissio
n to answer it. About a minute later, Welles again stuck his head out between French doors.
“Walter? Would you mind going down to the bar, to keep Housey company for a few minutes? He has some revisions for the radio show to share with me, and I’ll be down shortly—Mrs. Welles and I are nearly finished.”
The latter seemed obvious.
In less than five minutes, Walter Gibson was sharing a booth with John Houseman in the St. Regis’s famed King Cole Bar, opposite Maxfield Parrish’s equally famous mural behind the bar, its faces smirking enigmatically their way.
“Cheers,” Houseman said, lifting his Bloody Mary to clink with Gibson’s.
The Mercury producer had insisted that they order this particular drink, because it had been invented here, albeit under the sobriquet “Red Snapper.”
“Orson claims to have coined the new phrase,” Houseman said. “After Mary Tudor, of course.”
“Did he?”
“Very unlikely. But I would be remiss not to warn you, Walter, that Orson’s tendency to take all the credit for himself is not his best trait...though it may well be the defining one.”
Gibson shrugged. “I’m a writer for hire. My publishers even own the Maxwell Grant pen name. If Orson needs to feel he’s ‘created’ our project, I’ll get over it...if the check doesn’t bounce.”
A tiny smile formed. Again Houseman wore his uniform of checked jacket and bow tie, this one a light blue. “Not everyone feels as generously inclined as you, Walter. I know that Howard...Howard Koch, our writer?”
“Yes. We met yesterday.”
“That’s right, that’s right.... At any rate, Howard has been rather bitter about Orson’s refusal to credit him on the air with scripts. They’ve had...words.”
“Seems Orson has ‘words’ with lots of people.”
“He does indeed. Since childhood he’s been assured by all concerned that he is a genius; it’s never occurred to him to doubt that opinion.”
“Well, he is a kind of genius.”
The War of the Worlds Murder Page 8