Mr. Arkadin on DVD soon

[chrissie]

I think OW was taking a very awkward approach to saying JW sounds like someone a little lacking in intellectual prowess.

[Store Hadji]

Then welles would have come out and said it - he didn't mince words. not what wayne said - how he said it.

i'm still trying to figure out what the damnation a "bulbous kind of monument" is. welles commented on the appearance of charlie chaplin's penis - i guess this referred to wayne's!

[jaime marzol]

the reds were also taking wayne serious, they saw him as a threat. the 6 foot 2 in american facist was becoming a danger to them. there were 2 assasination attempt missions dispatched on wayne that didn't happen. kruschev sent an assasination squad here to kill wayne. when they arrived they asked for asylum. and during a speech in vietnam, sharp shooters were supposed to kill him but i forgot why they didn't.

in a playboy interview wayne said blacks should not have the vote, they were shaken out of trees a little over 100 years ago and the black brain had not evolved enough to vote. wayne had a lot of opinions like that. why would it be any of wayne's business what chaplin did? it's stuff like that that made people label wayne a facist.

don't get me wrong, i love all this stuff. i think it's hillarous, and makes me appreciate him that much more. wayne was superior and he knew it. that red head that was in THE QUIET MAN told an interesting story that reveals the wayne character. they were at ford's house, wayne was too drunk, ford told her to drive him home, get him out of there. on the drive home wayne said, "stop the car." she stopped the car. it's the middle of the night. wayne goes up to a house and knocks on the door. lights come on inside, some one finally opens the door. wayne asked them if they could make him a cocktail. they made him a cocktail. he said thank you, he got back in the car with her, and off they went.

how can you not love a guy that knocks on a stranger's door for a cocktail and gets it, a guy that shows up at a political rally in a tank, the guy that chased that commie chaplin out of our nation, haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[mteal]

Jaime,
Funny that you should mention Kruschev's rumored plot to assassinate John Wayne. If I remember correctly, the source of that information was none other then Orson Welles himself.

[jaime marzol]

i read it on the web, it was in a newspaper after some fbi documents were declassified. a friend sent me the link. i think i posted the link here somewere. so welles knew about it also? where did welles say this? i wonder if the plot was news in it's day but not the details?

i think the whole concept of an assasination team training to kill wayne, then arriving here and asking for asylum, is fabulous.

[jaime marzol]

mteal, you are right on the money. check out this link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1010266,00.html

whaaaaa, here is a quote from the article,

"John told the FBI to let the men show up and he would deal with them."

Wayne then apparently hatched a plot with his scriptwriter at the time, Jimmy Grant, to abduct the assassins, drive to a beach and stage a mock execution to frighten them."

incredible. all this john wayne talk is making me feel like watching my super cool 2 hr john wayne documentary.

[mteal]

Thanks for the link, Jaime. Looks like there still isn't much hard evidence to support the rumor, and maybe there never will be. It's an interesting story, though. I especially like this part:

"Wayne then relied upon a group of loyal stuntmen who infiltrated communist cells in America and learned of plots to kill him. He then gathered all the stuntmen, went to the communist meetings, and had a huge fight"

Probably would've made a great John Wayne movie!

Welles's comment about Wayne's 'bulbous monument' may have referred to his bulging gut by the late 60's. If so, it would have been a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Just to take a wild stab at swinging this back to Arkadin territory, Welles said Arkadin was based on Stalin, and the film was a parable of the Cold War. Others have said Van Stratton was based on Nixon who, as Ike's vice-president/bulldog, had more dealings with Kruschev then Stalin, sometimes pretty contentious, as shown in this picture.
But then, the older man/younger man conflict would fit more neatly with a Nixon vs. Stalin scenario, even if Stalin was already dead by that time. It sure would be nice to have a more definite idea of what (or who) Welles had in mind for the characters. I'd settle for Louis Dolivet's thoughts, if he ever made them public. Maybe in those court transcripts of his lawsuit against Welles. I wonder if it would be possible to get a copy of them.

[chrissie]

No, I'm guessing he meant JW had a kind of huge greatness about him. Visually, presumably.

[Store Hadji]

Why are words like d*a*m*n and h*e*l*l censored by the board, which allows words like sh*t and f*ck?

This board is encouraging me to swear.

Jaime - which one was the super cool Wayne docu? I'm sure my dad should have had it in his complete Duke library - unless it was from the last three years.

[jaime marzol]

wayne docu:
i taped it off the history channel. it's not the one they show on a&e that begins with that zoom on wayne from stagecoach. this one is 2 hours long, and it's great. i don't know what the title is, but i'll look.

mteal:
i read that van straten looked like an ugly nixon, but i don't think they were comparing him with nixon. stalin was a hair raising guy. my god he was as bad as hitler if not worse. in fact, stalin killed more russians than hitler did. stalin was a piece of shit just like trotsky, and lenin. all of them should have had their heads pinched off at birth and spared the world the suffering and agony they caused. the last romanoff was a bit of a twit too. russia would have been better off if groucho marx would have been running the country. groucho would have made rasputin get a hair cut and carry a big horn like harpo did. once rasputin had to carry a big horn, that's it, no more prophet, just another guy with a horn.

[mteal]

it's stereotypical for liberals to call conservatives fascists and conservatives to call liberals socialists and communists.

Yeah, that seems true, Store Hadji. That reminds me of Rosenbaum accusing Welles of being 'hyberbolic' when Welles accused conservative members of Cahiers-du-Cinema of being Fascists in the 50's. Political discourse often has a tendency to offer more heat then light.

Chrissie,
You may be right about Welles referring to Wayne as a 'visual monument'. Like George Washington, Wayne is almost more monument then man in the American psyche. The term 'bulbous' though, could refer either to Wayne's gut or his bloated icon status. A good Shakespearean like Welles would probably always be on the lookout for the opportunity to use the 'double sense'.

Jaime,
I'm just speculating; there's not much evidence to suggest Van Stratton was based on Nixon. But if you look at Gregory Arkadin as a metaphor for California's mysterious 'Committee of One Hundred' that Donald Freed (who co-wrote a screenplay with Weles) claimed shaped the political careers of both Nixon and Ronald Reagan after WWII, the idea could make some sense. Welles probably would have had some inside political knowledge at the time, and Nixon might have seemed like a Van Stratton that was being groomed to be an Arkadin. He was also one of the leaders of HUAC, so Welles would've had a bone to pick with him there too.

[jaime marzol]

to me a facist is some one who feels that people are not intellegent enough to take part in choosing leaders, and voting, and making choices in life. wayne felt that a small group of people should make those choices for the masses. people like that i see as facists, no matter how right they are; people are not intellegent enough to do most of those things.

mteal:
i see your point in van stratten. i always liked the boob. he fits in perfectly in a welles film; the romantic lead no one wants to be. welles never gives you any one to identify with and root for. that would be too easy. no one wants to be kane, or the sappy leland, or georgie, or eugene morgan, or mr. wilson, or ohara, or macbeth. no one wants to be his othello, or van stratten, or vargas, or k. prince hal is the closest to a character that an audience might root for and want to live through his experiences, but not really. not like in a hawks, or ford film.



ys

[mteal]

welles never gives you any one to identify with and root for. that would be too easy.

I agree, and I suppose one could argue that that's a flaw in Welles's movies. The viewer is merely an observer at a party of very strange people.

[jaime marzol]

i never saw it as a flaw, but it is. it is something that the average viewer needs, and in some small way it could be part of the reason his films were never popular. what viewer didn't want to be alan ladd, or bogart beating up bad guys and romancing starlets? not giving you a character to live through was one of his idiosyncrasies that he was probably not aware of. and yes, you are like an obsever at a party of strange people. that is exactly what a welles film is like.

[R Kadin]

once rasputin had to carry a big horn, that's it, no more prophet, just another guy with a horn.

Jaime, I couldn't let that marevellous little zinger go by unheralded. A pithy bit of brilliance, that. Would-be despots and messiahs of the world be warned! Great stuff. On a par with Harry Lime's "cuckoo clock" speech. Just great!