vincent price on OW - interview with VP, Westport, Conn, 1979

[maxrael]

following taken from:
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/virginia/345/intevw.html

"ORSON WELLES AND THE MERCURY THEATER

LAWRENCE FRENCH: How did you like working with Orson Welles?

VINCENT PRICE: Welles was a marvelous director. I did two plays with him, THE SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAY and HEARTBREAK HOUSE. He was a really brilliant director, although I never thought he was a very good actor. I mean he's too Orson Welles. There's absolutely no characterization at all. More he did when he was young, then he does now, because he really is a caricature of himself now. I mean, that fat!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Was Welles as undisciplined as some people have claimed?

VINCENT PRICE: He was completely undisciplined. You see, he had the theater like that! (holds up his hand in a fist). I would have loved to have worked with him again, but everybody in the Mercury Theater had a bit of a falling out with Orson. There were two plays we were supposed to do, Oscar Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST, and John Webster's THE DUCHESS OF MALFI (intriguingly described by a Mercury press release as, "one of the great horror plays of all time"). My then wife, Edith Barrett was going to be in THE DUCHESS OF MALFI as well. Orson was going to direct both of them, and the actors had contracts to do them. Then, when we went to rehearse them, Orson never showed up. He didn't show up for either show. He just decided he didn't want to do them, but he didn't bother to tell the actors.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: One book on Welles claims he had a fear of completion.

VINCENT PRICE: I think so. Like Michelangelo. I think he could have been the greatest director of the American theater and of the cinema, but there was something missing there.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: It's sad, because when Welles directs, his films are so brilliant. I think his CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (FALSTAFF) is one of the greatest films ever made.

VINCENT PRICE: And CITIZEN KANE. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS I saw the other day, and it falls apart completely at the end.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: But the ending of AMBERSONS was re-edited by the studio.

VINCENT PRICE: Yes, I know it.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Was there ever any talk of you acting at RKO when you first went out to Hollywood, perhaps working with Orson Welles, or with Val Lewton's horror unit?

VINCENT PRICE: No. I first went to Hollywood under contract to Universal, and then was with 20th-Century Fox for seven years. However, at that time, my first wife (Edith Barrett), made two films with Val Lewton: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE GHOST SHIP, although I never worked with Val Lewton. Later on, I did THE COMEDY OF TERRORS with Jacques Tourneur, who had worked a great deal with Val Lewton. "

[jaime marzol]

................

wow! vincent price was married?

and lawrence french was at it that long ago?

[ToddBaesen]

-

I think that Vincent Price's opinion about Welles' may have been slightly colored by the fact that he didn't get to appear in those two plays he was supposed to do for the Mercury theater. As I recall, in John Houseman's book, RUN THROUGH, he notes that the early readings for THE DUCHESS OF MALFI were a fiasco, mainly because the actors couldn't master the archaic dialogue.

Vincent Price also got married to Edith Barrett onstage of the Mercury Theater, right after a performance of HEARTBREAK HOUSE (or maybe it was THE SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAY).

I also remember a great moment when Orson Welles guest-hosted Johnny Carson back in 1978 and Vincent Price was a guest. After doing an elaborate card trick with members of the audience, something went wrong, and Welles' couldn't guess the right card or numbers. But the interesting thing was that Welles stagecraft was so absorbing, the whole process of setting up the trick was far more interesting than a correct ending would have been. And if Welles had finished the trick with the right answers, I doubt if anyone in the audience would have remembered it. But, by "screwing it up" it actually became a far more realistic and memorable performance.

Anyway, Vincent Price came out afterwards and laughed with Welles, saying Orson had layed one of the biggest eggs he'd ever seen!

-

[Tony]

I could be dead wrong, but I recall that show as being a little later than '78; at any rate, I remember Price and Welles talking about how their fathers met, and Price stated: "I remember MY father serving YOUR father's head on a plate!" Welle's reaction to this seemingly bizarre statement was a look of utter befuddlement, one of the few times I've ever seen him at a loss of words. Of course, it was something to do with an old play about John the Baptist, or something similar. Yes, I also remember Welles's magic trick not working, and his extreme embarrassment. And finally, I recall Terry Garr coming on, and bemoaning that she had to start her career in "beach" pictures, and Welles and Price both being very fatherly/ unclely to her; Price said "Don't worry, over your career, you're bound to do some lousy pictures; look at me, I did horror pictures!" Whereupon Welles said: "Yes- you did some horror pictures, and I did some HORRIBLE pictures!" Everybody laughed and relaxed. AHHHHHH... for the days of late night conversation without a commercial every 3 minutes....

It was a memorable show.

[Tony]

P.S.
I just remembered: if I'm not mistaken, it was on that same show that Terry asked Orson how the shot was made in Kane when the camera floats up to the ceiling during Susan's performance, and one of the stagehands holds his nose. I believe Terri said that she and a couple of her friends had disagreed as to whether the shot was one take or a couple of shots edited together. And unless I'm becoming totally senile, I believe OW said something like:

" It was one shot... No, it was a couple of shots.... No, you're both right: It was one shot edited into a couple of shots, as part of it was repeated to give the illusion of a greater height!"

He seemed genuinely proud to be recounting this technical triumph, and he and Terri and Price were a perfect combination that night; I still can't believe Terri is gone: what a sweetheart.

[jaime marzol]

....................

wow, you guys have good memories. i remember a lot of carson shows, i remember some excellent shows with a thin brando, clint eastwood, burt reynolds was always great, but have very little recollections of orson hosting shows. wasn't orson supposed to host a bunch of shows and instead they got that irritiating mouse-faced joan rivers?

i always hated how she used orson for the butt of fat jokes. her karma sure came around and bit her back.

they have available all those great johnny carson shows. they are numbered, dated, with a quick abstrac, and a search engine to look for your favorite show. know how much they want for each show? $100 a pop. their pricing is a bit out of control wouldn't you say? at $6.99 per show i would buy a bunch of them. i think it was maxreal that sent me the site.

terri garr is gone? you mean as in dead?

......................

[Welles Fan]

I remember reading that Terri has MS, but not that she has died.

Jaime: it is unbelievable what some people charge for videos. I found a site that has all The Shakespeare Plays from the late 70's early 80's. I wanted to order Derek Jacobi's Hamlet, among other things. They have them on DVD for $100 each!

[Tony]

Jaime:
I believe Terri died from breast cancer about 5 years ago.

[jaime marzol]

::::::::::::::::::

$100 each for the dvds of the plays? they are even more out of control than carson. aren't the plays public domain?

breast cancer? and she had no breasts to speak of. there goes my theory that only the larger breasts that get knocked around are at risk. poor terry garr. i didn't know that.

[jaime marzol]

::::::::::::::

my theory still stands. terry garr and her small breasts, according to imdb are still alive and well, and most recently appeared in a debra winger documentary in 2002

[Welles Fan]

Click here for a link about Terri's announcement in October that she has MS. She was alive as of October of last year for sure.

Jaime: Those BBS Shakespeare productions are copyrighted. Only the texts are public domain. Apparently, the people who have the rights to them sell them mainly to schools, so the pricing is along the lines of selling videos to rental chains for $89.99 before DVDs became the norm. I still have a lot of those productions on tape, but my tapes are getting ragged. Also, PBS sometimes made cuts in the productions, so I would love to replace the ones I liked. Jacobi's Hamlet and Richard II were great, as were most of the histories. They also did a fine Midsummer Night's dream and Much Ado About Nothing. there is a set of 5 of the plays available for about $149.95, but aside from Hamlet, the other plays in the set (Anthony Hopkins as Othello, Nicol Williamson as Macbeth among others) were not very good efforts.

Getting back to the subject of Vinnie's comments about Welles' father-I guess it was too long ago to suggest that Vinnie was smoking crack that night?