OW Interviews - DickCavett (1972), Close-Up (CBC) - Link to a source for both

[R Kadin]

A certain Tom Kleinschmidt (tomkle@comcast.net) has posted a huge archive of taped broadcast material, including copies of the above-noted Welles interviews. Wouldn't it be grand, indeed, to trade Mr. K (that can't be a coincidence) for them in return for something on his "want list"?

Certainly knowing Cavett as we do, there's every chance the OW segment with him will be a delight to take in.

As for "Close-up", for those unfamiliar with it, this was a Sunday night public affairs-oriented series produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which happened, one fine evening, to air a lengthy interview with our man. Here's how Allan King, one of Canada's leading documentary filmmakers , describes its coming about:

"I had become established in London with my own company. There were many Canadians there. Sidney Newman was the head of BBC drama... Ted Kotcheff was there, Mordecai Richler, Norman Jewison, Sidney Furie and Elaine Grant and Bernard Braden and his wife Barbara Kelly, who did interviews...for 'Close-up'. We made great efforts doing interviews, at first and we shot all sorts of famous people, like John Paul Getty and Bertrand Russell. In fact we did an extraordinary interview with Orson Welles with Bernie doing the interviewing in the film. We shot an hour-and-a-half, and the CBC used one hour and 23 minutes. It was only supposed to be a half-hour interview, but they got their money's worth."

Anyone in a position to barter with Mr. K can
click here

And, if you are so fortunate, please be sure to count me in as an interested party!

[Jeff Wilson]

It looks as though you don't have to trade, as he has a document listing prices to buy tapes or DVD-Rs off of him. Pricy (starting at $30 a tape), but considering the obscure stuff he wants in a trade, certainly the easier route.

[Jeff Wilson]

And here's just about everything the guy has with Welles. I left out a few things that were fairly common.

THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW(1960's):
3) 3/11/71 Orson Welles and Petula Clark 584 10901
26) 9/14/67 Juliet Prowse, Jimmy Stewart, and Orson Welles 4870

DOM DELUISE AND FRIENDS:
1)Burt Reynolds, Orson Welles, and Gene Kelly 5941

THE DICK CAVETT SHOW(1960's)
5) Orson Welles 1972 (segment only, not complete show) 30 minutes PRE

CLOSE-UP(Canadian):
1)Orson Welles interview 7337 7343

I'VE GOT A SECRET:
219) Panel : Bill Cullen, Jayne Meadows, Henry Morgan, and Faye Emerson Guest: Orson Welles 9226
711) 10/10/56 Guest: Orson Welles panel: Bill Cullen, Jayne Meadows, Henry Morgan, and Faye Emerson DV-461

LAUGH-IN: (1/2 hour syndicated shows)
37)The Boo-In Orson Welles & Rod Serling 10/70 1915

MARTY(British TV)
1)2/15/72 Show with Orson Welles 3488

MYSTERIES & SCANDALS(All w/o/c):
29)Orson Welles 7161

ORSON WELLES' GREAT MYSTERIES:
1)The Inspiration Of Mr. Budd 7621

THE ORSON WELLES SHOW - Fountain Of Youth Unsold Pilot starringJoi Lansing 1958 30 minutes 5937 DV-892

PERSON TO PERSON: 40 minute Compile tape featuring Kirk Douglas, Anne Bancroft, Orson Welles, and Sophia Loren 9116

THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW(all are B & W Prints Unless Noted)
6) 2/5/56 w/Lucy and Desi, The Four Ames Brothers, Orson Welles, and Rodgers and Hammerstein w/o/c 1272

THIS HOUR HAS SEVEN DAYS(CBC Newsmagazine in the style of That Was The Week That Was) Edited Rebroadcasts Of the 1960's Show
6) 1966 Show #29 A Member Of The Klu Klux Klan From Georgia, The Debut Of Penthouse Magazine and the related controversy, Orson Welles interview, The Road Of A Canadian Heavyweight Fighter, and more 47 minutes 9878

WHAT'S MY LINE: 1247) 4/6/58 Greer Garson - First contestant requires blindfolds for the panel, the owner of New York's El Morocco nightclub. Greer Garson's spot turns into one of funny
confusion where thanks to a goof by Welles, the panel has the gender wrong for a very long while. panel: Arlene Francis, Orson Welles, Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf 9724

AROUND THE WORLD WITH MIKE TODD - 1963 Special Featuring Orson Welles, Elizabeth Taylor, and cameos by many stars 60 minutes 5891

DAVID COPPERFIELD: 4)The Magic Of David Copperfield - 10/27/78 Guest stars Orson Welles, Sherman Hemsley, Carl Ballantine, and Valerie Bertinelli 60 minutes (Show is from a trader who had an early reel to reel Video Recorder, show is in Black & White, and has some glitches due to the age of the master tape.) PRE

INVASION FROM MARS:How Orson Welles Panicked A Nation 22 minutes 1188

DEAN MARTIN:
1)The Best Of Dean NBC 1981 hosted by Orson Welles 100 minutes 958

DEAN MARTIN'S CELEBRITY ROASTS:
1)Frank Sinatra Celebrity Roast 2/7/78 w/Gene Kelly, Orson Welles, (OW in a bunch of these)

ORSON WELLES:
1)With Orson Welles - Stories From A Life In Film TNT Special from a BBC documentary 135 minutes 2069
2)What Went Wrong? Cinemax Crazy About The Movies 12/92 58min. M 285

So my question is this: is anyone interested in splitting these up among us, each person getting a tape or DVD-R and then trading among ourselves to spread the cost out between us? Seems like a good way to acquire some fairly rare stuff. If anyone is interested, post to this thread and we can arrange something.

[R Kadin]

Jeff - what a trove, indeed! Count me in, to the extent I can assist, technologically. Copying from VHS to DVD-R is not something I can accomplish at present, e.g.

That said, if I can acquire the capability within reasonable cost constraints and without enrolling in a technical college course, I'm all for it. Any guidance in this regard is more than welcome.

[mteal]

Some very interesting items on that list. I'm assuming that for $30, you would get 2 hours worth of material. If so, I'd be happy to chip in $15 to buy, among other things, the Laugh-In with Welles and Rod Serling and the "Marty" show from 1972, which I'm almost certain is Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine, a short-lived but amusing Monty Python-like show that I used to watch when I was a kid.

[blunted by community]

i'm in. i can copy dvd-r to dvd-r but not vhs to dvd-r

[R Kadin]

Okay, I've given Mr. K my orders for the following:

CLOSE-UP(Canadian): 1)Orson Welles interview
ORSON WELLES' GREAT MYSTERIES: 1)The Inspiration Of Mr. Budd
ORSON WELLES:
1)With Orson Welles - Stories From A Life In Film TNT Special from a BBC documentary
2)What Went Wrong? Cinemax Crazy About The Movies 12/92
PERSON TO PERSON: 40 minute Compile tape featuring Kirk Douglas, Anne Bancroft, Orson Welles, and Sophia Loren
THE DICK CAVETT SHOW(1960's): 5) Orson Welles 1972 (segment only)
THE ORSON WELLES SHOW - Fountain Of Youth Unsold Pilot starring Joi Lansing 1958
THIS HOUR HAS SEVEN DAYS(CBC Newsmagazine), Orson Welles interview

Should be a few weeks to fulfillment on it, so I am told.

Might I also suggest that Jeff consider adding some kind of member resource materials library section, wherein each of us can list the materials we have available for lending to other Wellesnet members - with some simple means of keeping track what is out on loan to whom? I realize it's probably easier to describe than it might be to implement; however, I have every confidence in the experience and ingenuity of my colleagues here to help fashion this rudimentary idea into something that might actually work.

I would also have no problem with recognizing Jeff as a chief librarian to whom we could donate any materials/copies we'd like to become community property, as it were. Naturally enough, there'd have to be provision for the library to be reimbursed for delivery and other perfunctory handling costs in fulfilling any loan requests (for which PayPal would do a serviceable job, I am sure).

Anyone else have ideas on this??

[marcoshark]

I know that the Trio satellite/cable network was showing "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In". I remember one of Welles appearances went something like this

Welles: (dressed to the nines, the cape, hat, etc.) in a very dramatic tone: "Who Knows what Evil Lurks in the Heart's of Men..."

(about halfway through this, in walks comedian Johnny Brown, who is looking at Orson)

Johnny Brown: "The Shadow do?"

Black out!!

Funny stuff, right up there with John Wayne doing his poetry reading!!

Yeah, I am also interested in trading stuff. Jeff? a resource area is a great idea!!!

[Jeff Wilson]

Meant to respond much sooner, but I've been a bit busy of late. I will order the Ed Sullivan appearance and something else to make two hours; I don't know what the lengths of some of those other shows are yet.

A member resource list or what have you is a good idea, for whomever wants to contribute; I don't think lending materials to others is such a hot idea unless the person doing the lending wants to take the chance something could get lost or what have you. I think a better idea might be a thread that I could keep pinned to the top of this forum, where board members can post what they have for trade, and what they want. Posts can be edited any number of times, so people can keep them updated or delete them, if they wish. Members wishing to contact someone for a trade can do so via the messenger system or by emailing. What do you all think?

[R Kadin]

I'm not surprised that the prospect of administering a centralized cache of materials is more most will have bargained for. Could turn out to be something of a slippery slope; but the alternative of an ongoing virtual peer-to-peer lending library has lots of merit, IMHO.

[tim1]

R Kadin did you receive those title's you ordered? If so what were they like (in particular the close up interview) and what was the service like from the website?

[R Kadin]

Yes, Tim, I received the materials. By way of clarification, the fellow who has the website does it much as a hobby; nevertheless he was quite accommodating, responsive to emails, and he tried to work as much onto each disc as he could to keep the costs down. Despite being busy with his "real life", he also turned my request around quite quickly.

As for the products themselves, being DVD-Rs, they wouldn't play too readily on my equipment. I was able to view about half of the total on my PC. Can't say if that's the fault of my equipment, or what, though. Another Wellesnetter has borrowed them and reports no probs, so far.

As for what I did get to see, the quality was uneven, given that it was taken from a wide variety of sources - much of it from TV's earlier days; so one has to be realistic about what to expect. That said, just "The Orson Welles Show" and its pilot episode, "The Fountain of Youth", was sure worth the price of admission. I've posted about it here before. Simply a cheeky little gem.

The CBC "Close-Up" interviews, alas, were a let down. I would have hoped for more from my countrymen, back then, as the network had earned a legitimate reputation for quality Arts programming. Regrettably in this case, the interviewer was in over his head but fancied himself too much the sophisticate to realize it. Welles was polite and indulgent, much to his credit. I raise these points because I found it an unrevealing exercise, most of which was spent by Welles attempting to make some kind of sense of the interviewer's oblique and ofttimes self-referential questions. While I'm glad to have it among my Wellesiana, to call it an acquired taste would be generous of me by half.

There was one now-humourous grace note, however, when the series' producer recounted for his audience his aggravating encounter with Welles at CBC Radio's wartime propaganda broadcast of "Nazi Eyes Over Canada". (Welles kept the entire cast in suspense, as he didn't breeze into the studio until the broadcast was well underway and that same producer was about to be forced to start reading Welles's lines for his missing star - the first line being, "This is Orson Welles...").

"Orson Welles - What Happened" is a well-traveled documentary: it's well-nigh impossible not to have bumped into it somewhere by now. Full of the sort of content you'd expect, given its title. And there's another comparable documentary in the mix, as well, making use of much of the same interview footage as the other.

An interview with Edward R. Murrow was included - and it is a bittersweet thing to watch, as our man - apparently conversing with Murrow's studio from a spacious New York apartment - seems nervously over-anxious to project the image of the irrepressible wunderkind still up to his eyeballs with important theatre projects (a classically Wellesian bit of bravado that runs somewhat counter to his actual situation at the time). Just the same, he offers some worthwhile insights on the Europe of his day, among other nuggets worth taking in.

By the way, that same website fellow has lots more material to offer; so don't limit your impressions or interest to the little I am able to relate.

[tim1]

R Kadin, do you have the capibilities to make dvd-r copies? As i'd like a copy of 'close up' but i thought it might easier trading with a Wellesnet member then some website i've never used before.
either way you can email me@....netgainsuk@hotmail.com

[mteal]

Liberated a few more Welles items from Mr. Kleinschmidt's archive, including

The 2 "Boo-in" episodes from LAUGH-IN
MARTY (Which was, as I suspected, the MARTY FELDMAN COMEDY MACHINE)
THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW
The 1971 episode of THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW

The Laugh-In episodes apparently were broadcast on successive Halloweens (1969 and 1970, probably), but Welles and the Laugh-In cast look exactly the same on both shows, suggesting that Welles actually made only one appearance on the show, and that the second Boo-In consisted mainly of outtakes or rejects from the first one. The first show is definitely funnier, although the second one has a good skit of Welles doing a radio show about a monster while a real monster attacks his sound man. Picture quality is pretty good for both shows.

The Marty Feldman show, also from the early 70's, was in a similar vein to MONTY PYTHON, and even has Terry Gilliam doing his trademark cut-out animation for the credits. Too bad there's not more Gilliam, but the show was probably done on a pretty low budget. Anyway, Welles appears in a skit with Feldman where British aristocrats are treated as if they were rare animals in the wild. Pretty cheeky stuff, and funny too, although the picture quality of the recording is only fair. The Munich Museum recently did a very nice assemblage of Welles skits filmed in Britain, which they called SWINGING LONDON. The skit in the Feldman show would have fit quite nicely into that, and if the Feldman show had survived longer, I wonder if some of the Swinging London footage might possibly have found it's way into it.

The Ed Sullivan Show dates from around 1956, when Welles was just wrapping up his disastrous New York production of KING LEAR. Welles does a scene from LEAR in full make-up (which can be seen on Jeff's homepage for Wellesnet). Incidentally, Welles' make-up here looks almost Asian and reminds me of Kurosawa's RAN, one of the greatest Shakespeare movies, which was also based on King Lear. Coincidence? After the skit, Welles hobbles out on a crutch to shake hands with Sullivan, having broken his ankle after the opening night of Lear. The Sullivan show also has Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, who Welles was soon to do FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH for. Another interesting thing about the Sullivan show, aside from it's being done live, is the fact that there was only one sponsor for the show, Mercury Automobiles, and the commercials were done live by Sullivan himself. Considering how polished today's television is, it's interesting to see how it was done in the early days, when performers were still groping to get a feel for the new medium.

The Dean Martin Show is from 1971, and also has Petulia Clarke on it. Welles does a couple of skits with Martin and Joey Bishop, and even attempts to imitate Johnny Cash singing A Boy Named Sue! Later in the show, he does a stirring tribute to the lady who wrote the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. One gets the sense that the Martin show was designed to be hip enough to please liberals without going so far as to offend conservatives. An attempt to find some kind of common cultural ground in the polarizing era of the Viet Nam war. Amazing how many big stars of the time would pop up for brief cameos.

All in all, the shows together offered a very interesting time warp.

[blunted by community]

i emailed Tom K. about getting the cavet show, and the canadian close-up interview. any one interested in copies to offset the cost?