Guilty pleasures à la Welles - Confess/indulge your less lofty delights

[R Kadin]

Inspired by mteal in another thread, I welcome one and all to that time-honoured and familair realm justly dubbed, "the guilty pleasure" - a land with which OW himself would be the first to admit a robust acquaintance.

Here's an open invitation to all Wellesnetters to throw off the mantle of reverance (was not Welles, himself, nothing if not often irreverant?) and contribute your personal "Guilty pleasures à la Welles". You know them: those Welles-related moments, performances, images, quotes, comments, anecdotes, jokes, etc., in which we secretly delight - never to be found in a doctoral thesis.

C'mon, now. Don't be shy. Welles' beloved magician's turns, for example, were pure schlock. He knew that and delighted in them; thrived on them, even.

Maybe you loved his voice work in Transformers or his Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. As I have elsewhere already revealed a partiality to the divine Janet Leigh in TOE (scene: the Mirador Motel; Susan Vargas abed and satin-swathed...), another confession for me is Welles as Lew Lord taking a mute, dead-on first gander at Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie. One of the best "takes" in comedy, IMHO.

Over to you, folks...

[blunted by community]

touch of evil, first scene in tanner's shabby little bordello. quinlan all greasy and slobbering, looking at the skinny tramp with lust in his eyes, "any way, you sure are looking good."

and:

on the bridge, "vargas, vargas, vargas, all you want to talk about is varga!"

Citizen Kane:
I'm the one that's gotta do the singin', i'm the one that gets the raspberries!"

[Glenn Anders]

For me, R Kadin, the guilty pleasures from Orson Welles were, strangely enough, when he was at his most relaxed, when the man behind the performance appeared. At times, those were probably the most scripted, but they were playful and intimate, in a non-theatrical way. Because we have been listening to his beginnings in Radio, I particularly delight in his introductions for those shows, and remarks he made at the end of them.

He told us of his love for Dumas in "The Count of Monte Cristo," or the connections he made between Sherlock Holmes or Dracula with classic director/manager/stars, or admiration for various leading ladies, many of whom he had known from the Broadway Stage or contemporaneously, during his first days in Hollywood.

Somewhere here, I've written about a favorite remark, one not intended to be heard, when at the end of the rehearsal of "his favorite story," Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" (a story which begins to have renewed meaning), John Houseman asks Welles if he has any remarks to make, and he replies in a register higher than his familiar professional voice that he has "absolutely nothing at all to add." Such a refreshing confession from such a figure as Welles!

I hope you will get a fine response to your lead, R Kadin.

Glenn

[R Kadin]

Thank you both, blunted and Glenn. That's the spirit!

What? Did no one enjoy him sawing Joey Heatherington in half? Was I the only watching that day? Or his frank and jocular admission (to Dean Martin, was it?) after having delivered a deadly earnest and dramatic reading of one of "Shylock's speeches" from The Merchant of Venice to a hushed audience followed by his host's enthusiastic approval and marvelling about what it must be like to have such a memory for lines, that, in fact, "you all heard a lot of new Shakespeare, tonight", i.e., he had completely forgotten the original and had made something up on the spot, instead.

How true or how contrived? Who cares? Too late, anyway: the joke was already on him and on us!

Gotta love it...

[blunted by community]

chimes at midnight, flastaff BSing: 2 misbegotten knaves in candle green came at me. i love that scene

[Glenn Anders]

R Kadin and Blunted, your memories reminded me of an apocryphal story that, one night on stage, a Shakespearean sound effect (thunder, I think) failed just as an actor had to refer to it. The actor bravely declaimed his line, and Welles slipped up to him and whispered: "Who do you think you're kidding?" Everyone nearby, including the actor, broke up, the story goes.

I was trying to check the source and the details. I could not find it, but I did find a reference to Orson Welles in a Robert Fulford column about Canadian Radio. Most of the article concerns a satire based on the Joe McCarthy Period, entitled "The Investigator," which became an underground classic.

[I have a copy of it on reel-to-reel, somewhere.]

The second part of the article deals with less renowned Canadian Radio, in particular a wartime propaganda series, Nazi Eyes on Canada, which utilized Hollywood actors, including Welles, to sell warbonds.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

<<[The radio plays] were inspired by the National War Finance Committee and designed to sell Victory Bonds. J. Frank Willis, who produced them, brought Helen Hayes, Vincent Price and some other Hollywood actors to Toronto to play Canadians. Remarkably, the narrator on one show is Orson Welles.

Four years earlier, Welles had created panic in the streets with his realistic depiction of an interplanetary invasion, The War of the Worlds.
Now he was involved in another futuristic drama, this one about the conquest of Canada. The plays depict the Germans and the Japanese winning the war around 1946 and imposing a murderous tyranny on Canada. In successive one-hour dramas, we hear the enemy destroying Canadian families in five different regions, from New Brunswick to British Columbia (predictable anti-Japanese racism here). Each script has several commercials shamelessly embedded in the dialogue, calculated to produce intense guilt in those who haven't bought enough Victory Bonds.

One poor Toronto woman, now living under the Germans, accepts personal responsibility: "I failed ... I could have worked harder. I could have given up pleasures, given up luxuries, given to the last ounce of my strength."

Welles, narrating the story of a courageous Saskatchewan newspaper editor, tells Canadians to invest as much as possible: "Have you planned on personal self-denial to the point where your conscience is clear?" And Lorne Greene, nicknamed the Voice of Doom for his ability to make even good war news sound bad, says: "What about it, Canada?"

The tapes produced by Scenario deliver the direct and unmediated sound of history, and for that I'm grateful. On the other hand, some golden ages are better to read about than revisit.>>

Sounds like a guilty pleasure to me. For the full article, which is interesting on other scores, go to:

http://www.robertfulford.com/Investigator.html

[R Kadin]

For sure, blunted, a marevllous little scene that is. And delightful, Glenn - but, then again, no fair, as you know me to be a sucker for Canadian content...

Ah, yes, Nazi Eyes Over Canada: that oh-so over-earnest polar opposite to the brisk and biting satirical wit of CBC radio's later classic lampoon of McCarthyism, The Investigator.

Your mention of the former reminds me of another WWII production, The 49th Parallel, starring (among others, such as Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier) my country's own Raymond Massey. My vague memory of his campy performance as a rough and ready Canadian who confronts a squad of marooned German submariners fleeing the country on a train is another little guilty pleasure of mine - especially the scene with him leering menacingly at one sailor he's cornered inside a boxcar and rolling up his sleeves as he "aims to take those pants off ya, Nazi, and I ain't askin'". Dee-licious!

[Okay, here's the rather circular Welles connection: Wells, Herbert George, The War of the Worlds (book)->Welles, George Orson, The War of the Worlds (broadcast)->Welles, George Orson, Nazi Eyes Over Canada (broadcast)->Canada, Nazis->Massey, Raymond The 49th Parallel (movie)-> Massey, Raymond, The Shape of Things to Come (movie) based on Wells, Herbert George, The Shape of Things to Come (book), which, of course, brings us pretty well back to where we came in.]

And, speaking of The Shape of Things to Come produced by the Korda brothers, were our man with us today, I wonder whether he might have offered up the following Korda anecdote as evidence of a guilty pleasure all his own...?

Orson Welles, fleeing from contract obligations, was once chased across Europe by film director Vincent Korda and his son Michael. Having landed in Capri, Venice, Naples, and Nice, they finally caught him in Cagnes-sur-Mer and hauled him back to a private plane.

As they flew off, Michael and Orson shared the back seat with a large basket of fruit, carefully chosen by Vincent in Nice. Michael, having fallen asleep, later awoke to find that Orson, sleeping soundly beside him, had systematically taken a single bite from every piece of fruit in the basket.

Source: Michael Korda, Charmed Lives

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, R Kadin, I've read that Michael Korda anecdote. Was that when the Kordas were trying to get Welles to come to Vienna and crawl around in actual sewers? He would much rather have been working on OTHELLO.

Michael Powell, who was one of the few movie geniuses to be mentioned in the same breath with Welles, tells a similar story in the second volume of his marvelous autobiography, Million Dollar Movie. In 1952, he wanted Welles to star in a Powell-Pressburger production of Die Fleidermaus. The idea, proposed by Powell's partner Emeric Pressburger, was to make it as the wedding of European Operetta with the American Musical, the plot brought up to date, and starring Bing Crosby, Maurice Chevalier and Orson Welles. Welles played with the idea but eventually disappeared, leaving Powell a sketched self-portrait of himself holding a champagne glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, singing a Strauss' song from the score: "Chacun a Son Gout" -- roughly "Everyone to His Taste."

[Powell made the film a few years after as O ROSALINDA (1955), starring Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quale, and Anton Walbrook, but though I find it delightful, it was neither a critical nor a financial success.]

It was not the first time Powell tried to entice Welles. Earlier, he had Poet Dylan Thomas prepare a screenplay of The Odyssey and offered it to Welles over breakfast (eight shirred eggs with butter, sea salt and pepper for Welles, after a night out in Paris). Welles liked the idea, but finally, he wanted to do the whole epic, not the cutting Thomas was preparing.

In fact, Welles' name appears in an affectionate, wistful way, at odd times throughout the autobiography. Powell, so different in temperament, obviously craved an opportunity to work with "the great rebel," as he termed him, for they were under the skin brothers, one large and expansive, the other lean and contained; both dedicated to shaking things up.

Powell conveys the tremendous demand there was for Welles in the early 1950's, but the large, expansive rebel wanted to work on his own projects or, at least, only on his own terms.

Earlier, Powell also deals with 49TH PARALLEL of 1941 (known in the U.S. as THE INVADERS), which Powell-Pressburger made for the British Ministry of Information. It would appear to have been a project similar to "Nazi Eyes on Canada" because it was made at the behest of British Spymaster James Stephenson, who was committed to bringing America into the War on the side of Great Britain before it was too late. The film suggested that the Nazi saboteurs were the vanguard of an invasion to come, if Canada became a German possession. The film had a marvelous cast, some of whom like Glynis Johns and Eric Portman (as leader of the German supermen) were introduced to American audiences for the first time, and it provided chewy roles for Massey (as you note), Leslie Howard, and Laurence Olivier -- as a French-Canadian trapper!!

[Though he does not say so, having seen CITIZEN KANE that year, one can imagine how much Powell would have liked Welles in any of the above roles.]

Propaganda to one side, 49TH PARALLEL was a pretty good thriller, and one of the early British films to penetrate the American market. Strangely enough, a year or so later, a group of Nazi saboteurs actually did land off a U-boat on the U.S. East Coast. Their capture and trial have become a justification for Attorney General John Ashcroft's handling of alleged terrorists in America.

Well done, R Kadin.

Glenn

[marcoshark]

R Kadin,
As I posted on another thread, Welles on "Laugh In" or when he hosted or guest stared on the old "Merv Griffin Show" (Oooooooo...Rick Moranis SCTV impersonation of Merv. Maybe John Candy's Orson?!?) as well as any radio voice over work he was doing in the 70's/early, early 80's (Sunrise Concert ..The Concert of your dreams..anyone?? anyone??) Even though I knew then that Welles was just doing it for paying the bills and to self finance, I still enjoyed that aspect. You might have gotten a laugh at those wine commercials, But HE had the last laugh.

The other guilty pleasure I have is actually learning from his film making and acting. I have more than once, swiped (and openly) the way he can tell a story or his use of cadence. His work is just not entertainment for me, but a lesson learned!

[Glenn Anders]

Prepatory for a comment on the First Person Singular "A Tale of Two Cities," I have just re-listened to an audio casette called "The Theater of the Imagination," made in 1988 for Voyager. Various co-workers remember Welles' work in Radio.

[BTW, where are the rest of you guys, over in the Radio Section?]

Richard Wilson recalled how he was once was arrested and thrown into jail for public drunkeness, shortly after he came out to LA with the Mercury, in 1939. Welles bailed him out, and at a Campbell Playhouse rehearsal, a few days later, three policemen appeared in the studio, demanding the person of Wilson. They had a bench body warrant, they said, for his arrest. As Wilson cowered behind some chairs, the whole cast howled with laughter. Welles had hired some extras to dress up like LA Cops and make the pinch. The other cast members were in on the practical joke.

There are also some clips of a rehearsal for "Macbeth" on the Campbell Playhouse, in which Welles, playing opposite Fay Bainter, fluffs his lines repeatedly, and displays a talent for what used to be called "blue language."

Another clip has him kidding the cast about their progress but becoming unfocussed himself when someone hands him a Louella Parsons gossip report that he has met secretly in San Francisco with Laurence Olivier to plan a marvelous new stage production. When he tries to get the cast back in line, everyone breaks up in wonderful infectious laughter, to which he joins.

All I can remember.

Glenn.

[mteal]

I like those radio outtakes too, as well as his commercials, cheesy TV appearances, hammy performances in 2nd-rate films. The world of Welles is chock-full of guilty pleasures. When he did all these things just for the money, he still did them with great aplomb, and was often the life of the party. Sometimes he was about the only life in the party, but it's fun to watch Welles perform, under any circumstances. As Pauline Kael put it, Welles shared with Brando the ability to do trash knowing it was trash, and still do it better then anyone else around.

I recently did an abridgement of the 1960 DAVID AND GOLIATH film, keeping only those scenes that seemed as if Welles might have had something to do with them behind the camera. I expected to keep only about 15-20 minutes, but to my surprise I wound up keeping almost 60 of the film's 95 minutes. Sure it's trash, but it's good trash, and the color photography seems to anticipate Welles' late color films like MERCHANT OF VENICE and THE IMMORTAL STORY. So now I've got a pithy little 60-minute Welles film that works quite well for me as a guilty pleasure. I think I'll rename it KING SAUL.

[Gordon]

Le Chiffre in Casino Royale

[maxrael]

One guilty pleasure of mine would have to be the wonderful "Get to Know Your Rabbit"...

OW looks like he's having so much fun as the tap-dancing magician tutor!!

Sincere apologies i can't remember the exact quote, (it was a few years ago i last saw it) but a particular favourite is the scene where OW is teaching Donald how to turn a bowling ball into a jug of water and says something along the lines of, "Never show delight at the appearance of the jug... always mourn the loss of the bowling ball!"

[atcolomb]

On November 6th MGM will release CASINO ROYALE 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION $20. i do not know the extras but as in the pervious dvd documentary they did talk about the problems between Welles and Peter Sellers. Some do not like this film but to me its a lot of fun!!

[mido505]

Some time back in the early 80's, Welles used to shill for a now defunct cable company or channel, I don't quite remember which, called Preview. In all the years since, the memory of Welles actually saying, in his inimitable fashion, "if variety is the spice of life, then Preview is surely the paprika..", has stuck delightfully in my memory, although I've forgotten the rest of the pitch. I do remember the final tagline tho: "Call Preview, it's the best show in town", spoken in a basso conspiratorial whisper, as Welles looks mischievously upward at the camera.