Orson Welles on Dick Cavett - July 27, 1970

[ToddBaesen]

Orson Welles appeared on the Dick Cavett show in New York, about a month before he began production on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Welles appearance on the new DVD collection of Hollywood greats easily makes it worth the 4 DVD sets cost, since it has long in-depth interviews with many others Hollywood legends, which total nearly 14 hours. So this is obviously a must have for any lover of classic film.

So far, I’ve only seen the Welles, Hitchcock, Huston and Brando interviews, but the Welles interview seems to be the real standout, since he is at the top of his bent, expounding on a variety of topics and hilariously turning the tables on Cavett at one point by becoming the interviewer, and asking Cavett about his life. But for the most part, Cavett wisely sits back and simply let’s Welles go in whatever direction he wants, which leads the conversation into the areas that Welles is most interested in. The result is Welles talking about subjects that most people will find fresh and delightful.

Welles does repeat some of his familiar stories, including the canard about how he came to make THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI for Harry Cohn while he was in Boston preparing to go on stage in AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but for the most part, we get mostly new insights. Welles also repeats his story about meeting Churchill in Venice, and does a great impression of Churchill, straight out of his CHURCHILL segment from SWINGING LONDON, but both of these stories are enchanced greatly by seeing Welles tell them on camera, with different embellishments.

The fact that so much of the Welles interview seems fresh and new, stands in direct contrast to Cavett’s interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston. Both of these directors mostly repeat the same old stories they have told many times before or since. Hitchcock tells stories that are already quite familiar from the Truffaut book, and Huston appears very reticent, mostly answering Cavett with one or two sentences, rarely going into any depth, until the very end, when he goes into the then current political situation in Northern Ireland. Significantly, regarding the current political climate in America, Huston notes that no country in the world, (including the US) holds prisoners without a writ of Habeas Corpus, as the English were doing to the North Ireland terrorists at the time.

Now, of course, the US has joined that kind of backward thinking, and under the leadership of the current President, appears to be headed far beyond it. In fact, there's little doubt that Mr. Bush's recent statements would cause both Huston and Welles to turn over in their graves.

The show ends with Cavett asking Welles to name his favorite films, and Orson is taken a bit by surprise… he says Renoir’s GRAND ILLUSION and Something Else…

But after the commercial break Welles explains to Cavett that when he said SOMETHING ELSE, he meant a film with that title, directed by the silent film director James Cruze, starring Rod La Rocque and Corinne Griffith. Welles tells Cavett to look it up, but apparently it may have been another Wellesian trick, since there appears to be no film with that title directed by Cruze starring La Rocque and Corinne Griffith.

[Store Hadji]

I bet Welles wouldn't recognize the Dems today either. Good thing he left politics behind when he did.

TCM is showing some Cavett interviews. Are they doing the Welles?

[Randy Cook]

The Welles interview is indeed a delight.

At the end, over the credit music, one can hear Welles say (re: "Something Else"): "They'll look it up now"

And after a brief (and to me, indecipherable) exchange, Cavett says:
"You've pulled a hoax on the public!", which Welles delightedly confirms.

The next time Welles appeared, Cavett revealed the deception. I recall the following exchange (not verbatim, it WAS thirty some years ago)---

Cavett: "The film buffs have been rummaging through the archives..."
Welles (with mirthful malice): "...and they couldn't be better occupied".

Anyway, I urge you to buy, not rent, this set. Cavett has several more hours' worth of Welles shows and healthy sales could result in a "Volume Two".

[Tony]

Nice post, Todd: :;):

I've ordered it, and am looking forward to the whole package. I have had the Welles interview, or part of it, on a burned disc for a while, and I think he's in fabulous form. I think he had just grown the beard again (after having had one for Chimes) and he looks a lot better (and slimmer) than he did in Orson's Bag London or Vienna, where he looked kind of creepy. but when he comes on Cavett, there's a great audience response and what I think is the warmest smile I ever saw him give.

What possessed him to not further his Hollywood comeback that same year by not accepting the special academy award in person I'll never know; but the Cavett is superb, and Welles seems flushed with the possibilities of the 70s, and the promise they held out.

[Glenn Anders]

Hadji: Callow makes the interesting observation that Welles' hero in the Democratic Party by the beginning of World War II was no longer so much FDR, though he continued to work for him, but the populist, progressive Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace. It was Wallace who championed the brilliant farm program, the United Nations as a permanent institution, and an alliance between farmers and workers, the Century of the Common Man. Roosevelt recognized the potency of these causes, and made Wallace his Vice President for the Campaign of 1940. Welles became dedicated to the same causes because they reflected an emotional idealism formed in his childhood.

According to Callow, he had ambitions of being, if not President, perhaps a public servant of Cabinet Rank.

When, for whatever reasons, FDR dumped Wallace in 1944 and had Harry Truman nominated his Vice President, it was a beginning of a retreat by the Democratic Party from the agenda which had brought them their greatest success. The people now in power, the admirers of autocracy, have been chipping away at that agenda ever since: "Any American can be a millionaire," they say, "and we can rule the World, if only we follow a Strong Man, and kick the fellow next to us down hill."

Meanwhile, in Post-War, Cold War America, Welles found the rug pulled from under himself, too.

By the 1970's, Welles was much too heavy to float entirely on a smile and a shoestring, no matter how charming he was on Cavett. In spirit, he may have continued to believe, but he must have known, deep down, that Hollywood would not give him real command again. Except in creating his Art, he was just not a team player, certainly not a corporate team player.

Welles -- like Charles Foster Kane -- had lost any chance, if there ever was one, to be President, the Secretary of Education, the Senator from Wisconsin, or the Governor of California.

And they say, didactism is the enemy of good art.

Glenn

[Christopher]

Does anyone know how many times Welles appeared on the Dick Cavett show after the first time -- July, 1970 -- and the dates of his subsequent appearances?

[ToddBaesen]

Thanks for exposing that interesting little bit of Welles fakery about a phony movie called SOMETHING ELSE, Randy. It's interesting to note that Welles was doing this kind of thing a few year before he made F FOR FAKE.

But it just goes to show you, how insane it is to believe whatever you see or hear, whether it's coming from Orson Welles or George Bush... both of whom are know to tell some tall tales.

But for the record, here are Orson Welles own choices for his ten best films, taken from the first Sight and Sound Poll in 1952, which was the only one which didn't end up with CITIZEN KANE being in the number one spot.

TEN BEST FILMS by Orson Welles (1952)

CITY LIGHTS by Charlie Chaplin
INTOLERANCE by D. W. Griffith
SHOESHINE by Vittoria De Sica
THE BAKER'S WIFE by Marcel Pagnol
STAGECOACH by John Ford
GREED by Erich Von Stroheim
NANOOK OF THE NORTH by Robert Flaherty
POTEMKIM by Sergei Eisenstein
GRAND ILLUSION by Jean Renoir
OUR DAILY BREAD by King Vidor

[Tony]

Christopher: I've heard it was four; I wish that was the box set!

[Tony]

What really surprises me is how Welles goes after Jerry Lewis- I mean really goes after him, like it was a personal grudge. Cavett is actually taken aback by the outburst, but Welles does not let go for a couple of minutes. Actually, he looks really petty; even if Lewis was a hack director, why publicly attack another "poor slob who's just trying to make movies" (as Welles called himself)? What's the possible advantage for Welles in doing this? Unless he was upset that the French held (and hold) Lewis in the same esteem as as they did/do him. It's a pretty ugly moment, at least to me.

I hate to see my heros have flaws...like regular humans.

[Ste]

What really surprises me is how Welles goes after Jerry Lewis- I mean really goes after him, like it was a personal grudge ... It's a pretty ugly moment, at least to me.

Much worse (or better, depending on one's take) is Bogdanovich's attack on the critic John Simon. You just don't see that kind of on-screen bile anymore and I for one miss it. We live in a stifling world, these days, where everybody is scared of offending everybody else. Petty Hollywood rivalry is still reported, but it is just that -- secondhand news.

I, for one, found Welles's honesty -- at least on the subject of Jerry Lewis -- hilarious and refreshing.

[Randy Cook]

The context in which Welles made his Jerry Lewis remarks might be worth remembering.

I recall Lewis was sitting-in as host for a week on, I believe, the Tonight Show. I remember he caused a bit of a stir at the time, for he used Johnny's (or whosever) chair as a pulpit to inveigh against a great evil threatening our society: the movie adaptation of "Myra Breckinridge".

He really worked himself into a froth. "MB" was not Mr L's kind of movie and it seemed to represent, to him, a descent into cinematic savagery. I believe the world "filth" was used, at least once. This was one of those "end of civilization as we know it" diatribes, delivered with the sort of grave solemnity in which Lewis trades from time to time.

I think he urged the film be boycotted by audiences on moral grounds, though this may be my memory's embellishment.

Anyway, it was a pretty strident and morally lofty crusade against an admittedly crummy film.

Featuring Welles' pal John Huston.

Adapted from a book by Welles' pal Gore Vidal.

Welles' public spanking of Jerry Lewis seemed (to me, anyway) well- deserved at the time.

Was it Welles' antipathy to censorship which impelled him to speak out? His friendship to some of the key players? I don't know, but it seemed justified in the context of Lewis' impassioned remarks... and pretty funny, too.

I have not been able to find any written record of the Lewis comments (and I certainly didn't audio-record Lewis' TV appearances, as I did---fanatically---those of Welles), so I hope I am not misrepresenting the tone or content of what Lewis said. In any case, that's how I remember it.

Randy

[Glenn Anders]

Pretty good memory, Randy.

Let's have more of them.

Glenn

[Kevin Loy]

He really worked himself into a froth. "MB" was not Mr L's kind of movie and it seemed to represent, to him, a descent into cinematic savagery. I believe the world "filth" was used, at least once. This was one of those "end of civilization as we know it" diatribes, delivered with the sort of grave solemnity in which Lewis trades from time to time.

I suppose that none of these things can be levelled at Lewis' script for "The Day The Clown Cried"...(note the sarcasm)


And regarding ToddBaesen's post (featuring Welles' top 10 list)...After watching Intolerance a few times, I do find it odd that Welles thought so highly of the film, especially when considering how "terribly old-fashioned" (to use his words) a lot of the film is. Though, in retrospect, he did have a point when he said (paraphrasing here) that "there's nothing in the entire vocabulary of film-making that you won't find in this movie"...I've never believed that technical aspects of a film should take precedence over what is actually being presented (though, in all fairness, I do like Intolerance, at least to some extent, despite the over-acting of Mae Marsh at some points [particularly in the beginning, where she comes off as spastic more than 'child-like']).

I also thought City Lights was an interesting choice (I love Chaplin, as well as that film, but I wouldn't say it is his greatest...that would probably be The Gold Rush), especially since I seem to remember him making a comment in "This Is Orson Welles" about Chaplin being (paraphrasing again, since I haven't read the book in over a year and my copy isn't nearby) a director he could appreciate, but not enjoy.

(as a side note, I thought that filmed "introduction" segment that he did for Intolerance was quite interesting. Does anybody know just how he ended up doing this, and if any of the other filmed introductions still exist?)

[Jeff Wilson]

Welles did those silent intros for a PBS series, IIRC, and Kino has used others for some of their releases like Thief of Baghdad. Don't recall what other ones are out there, though.



Edited By Jeff Wilson on 1160152306

[Roger Ryan]

Welles' intro to Buster Keaton's "The General" is available on the "Keaton Plus" disc from Kino. I love how he refers to the film as "100 times better than 'Gone With The Wind'"! Maybe I'm imposing my own viewpoint, but I always thought that Keaton's style would appeal to Welles more than Chaplin's.