Uncredited Welles

[Harvey Chartrand]

And yet THE THING looks (and certainly sounds) like a Welles-directed picture. It may even have been filmed at the same Los Angeles ice storage plant where the winter scenes in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS were shot.
In the 1965 interview with Juan Cobos, Welles said Charles Lederer asked him to write additional dialogue for Howard Hawks' I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE, released in 1949, shortly before THE THING went into production. So it's possible that Welles directed a few scenes in THE THING to help out his friend Hawks, who wore his producer's hat on this film, leaving the directing chores to the inexperienced Christian Nyby (whose later career wasn't so great). Lederer also wrote most of the screenplay for THE THING.
It's a pity that Welles didn't direct all of THE THING or a genuine horror picture (although elements of the gothic and the macabre pervade his work).

[blunted by community]

THROATSPOCKETS:
I would like to ask where the idea about Welles being involved with THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD came from.

BLUNTED:
glenn made it up

THROATSPROCKETS:
According to interviews I've read with that film's star, Kenneth Tobey, the whole movie was directed by Howard Hawks except for one scene that was directed by credited director Christian Nyby (which Tobey says was the worst scene in the movie).

BLUNTED:
i've heard that. hawks directed. problably did the right think by not taking credit.

ANOTHER URBAN LEGEND:
franco directed the battle scene in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, hahahahahaha

[Flint]

Anyone-
Why exactly DID Hawks not take credit for directing "The Thing"? Anyone know?

Mteal-
Could you share more about what you know concerning "Jane Eyre"? The only book I have is Brady's which just touches on the film. Was Welles involved in pre-production at all? Or did he get involved once he was cast?



-Flint

[Glenn Anders]

Blunted . . . Blunted . . . Blunted, I shall happily take responsibility for reporting the legend, in a two line item near the start of this thread, that Welles contributed to the final version of Charles Lederer's screenplay for THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (along with Ben Hecht), as well as spending some days behind the camera with first time director, Chris Niby.

I did not make up that legend.

Had you made a cursory research, you would have found numerous references to Welles' participation, "rumored by some."

The question, of course, is who exactly are "some."

All the circumstantial evidence is there. The key connection to Radio, Welles' touchstone, is made through the original story, "Who Goes There," by John W. Campbell, Jr., (aka Don A. Stuart), who founded Astounding Stories in 1938, increasing anew "the little green men [man] from Outer Space" craze. The story, like the Mercury Theater and Suspense radio shows, "The War of the Worlds" or "Donovan's Brain," is up Welles' alley.

Writer Charles Lederer, second husband of Virginia Welles, was Welles' advisor, collaborator, uncredited actor, and pal. Lederer, Marion Davies' nephew, had gone over drafts of CITIZEN KANE. Welles had contributed to Lederer's script for GILDA. Lederer had played one of "The Three Witches" in Welles' MACBETH, etc.

Welles' Hollywood friend and advisor Howard Hawks (and Charles Feldman) made the smash SERGEANT YORK (script by John Huston) as an independent production, in 1941, the year that Welles came to Hollywood and helped found the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP). Hawks' own independent company, Monterey Productions, was disbanded and thrown off the MGM Lot, in 1947, just as another huge success, RED RIVER, was being edited (by Chris Nyby). THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD was an attempt by Hawks to refloat an independent production company (renamed Winchester Pictures Corporation).

The picture was shot in 1951 on the RKO lot, "some" say on the very sound stages where CITIZEN KANE was filmed by Welles in 1941. Welles was back in Hollywood to participate in filming episodes of I Love Lucy, newly top-rated TV series, at the fledgling Desilu Productions nearby. Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnez would soon take over the entire RKO facilities for their company.

[Blunted, you will remember, I'm sure, that Welles had championed Ball when she was an RKO contract player, starring her in his 1939 Campbell Playhouse radio production of "Dinner at Eight"; that he wanted her to star in his proposed 1940 movie, Smiler with a Knife.]

The Movie has a lot of Welles touches and interests. For instance, the idea that the Thing from Outer Space was a carrot-like creature, a notion Welles would play with in several media.

But you are right, Blunted, depite this circumstantial evidence, there is no smoking gun. I do not know who the "some" are who definitely could connect Welles with the production. And the rule about "proving a negative" must be considered, above all. The legend, at this point, is a fiction.

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD becomes one more example of Category 4. Chris Niby is the director, and the credit is his. That's it.

Glad to clear away the legend in this discussion, but I repeat, I did not make it up.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

Flint:
this is only a guess, but it's has ground to stand on. Successful writers have been known to change their names when writing in a new genre for fear of alienating their fans.

Hawks was a guy that had Faulkner paid handsomely, just to look over the screenplay writing, because hawks liked the clout of having faulkner’s name on the movie poster.

Sci-fi in the 50s was for young movie audiences. Like welles was berated by snobby critics for wasting his talents on TOUCH OF EVIL, hawk would have been berated too. Hawks was an A-List director. This might have lowered his price with the studios. Remember, jack Nicholson didn’t act for welles because jack had just got his price up to 4-million a picture, and if he acted for welles the studios would know he was working for less.

Glenn:
you wrote too much, i was only able to skim it. and, my friend that is a die-hard hawks, and sturges fan told me the above. If you don’t agree with any of it you will have to email him. I’m just the hawks correspondent between menello, and the wellesnet board.

The only time I’ve known for sure that the legend is real is that in the welles collection at the lily, there are portions of I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE.

Also, there was a long relationship between lederer and welles. I read in the bessy book that when welles was directing Othello, lederer was present, in some hotel or something.

Legends are fun, but they mean nothing. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort and all directors sign their name to what a crew does.

Welles’ influence on CATCH 22: he suggested a platform be built on the jeep so when 2 officers run along side the jeep talking to him, they just have to run in place. Do you know that I’ve read people posting about welles’ influence on CATCH 22, and how much it looks like his film!

[blunted by community]

Jane Eyre, from what i've read, everything was done before welles came on the picture. houseman's name is on it but by the time welles came on the project houseman was long gone.

the film does have some nice scenes in it, but either the version i saw had parts missing, or it's just the way the film is; everything is moving along fine, then suddenly it rushed to an ending. any one else feel this?

[blunted by community]

hey glenn, i'm looking for information on SIMPP. have anything on paper? there is one book out by cobblestone publishers, but it retails for $147...!

actually, i'm looking for information on huston, welles, spiegle, veiler, horizon pictures, from feb 1945, to nov of the same year. any suggestions in any literature that is not about welles, or huston, but has info on this period, and group of people?

[Oscar Christie]

Blunto, Re: Lederer,

Supposedly, Lederer gave Welles $250,000 that he inherited from his Aunt, that Welles used for a film.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Blunted: Franklly, I couldn't make much sense out of what you were trying to convey to Flint about our subject, but the bit in my slice about I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE makes sense. Since it was the film Hawks directed for 20th Century after Monterey Productions folded, but before Winchester Productions and THE THING . . ., it may be a missing bit of the puzzle. Thank you, Citizen Blunted.

If you are interested in Horizon Pictures and John Huston, you might look up the Cobblestone/SIMPP website. Huston and Spiegel were members of SIMPP. As is sometimes the case with your questions, you have some illogical elements to this one. Huston was still in the Army in 1945. What you may be after is Sam Spiegel's partnership with William LeBaron's Federal Pictures in 1945. Spiegel went to another independent, Internatioal Pictures, to make . . . THE STRANGER. John Huston, fresh from the Army, was to direct the picture, but Welles became the director/star, and to fill the void Spiegel persuaded Huston to form Horizon Pictures, but their first picture wasn't until 1949, WE WERE STRANGERS.

Here's the source you want:

http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/sam_spiegel.htm

The Cobblestone/SIMPP site has a lot of information that we may already have been have discussed elsewhere here. For instance, according to J.A. Aberdeen, author of Hollywood Renegades (Cobblestone Press), Welles, listed as a founder of SIMPP, along with Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Sam Goldwyn, Alexander Korda, Mary Pickford, David Selznick, Walter Wanger, lost his independence when he agreed to give up the Final Cut right after CITIZEN KANE in return for better terms from RKO.

Ironically, SIMPP's greatest legal victory before the Supreme Court, United States vs. Paramount Pictures (1948), divested the Studios from their theaters, and depended on an agreement that RKO had already made in its bankruptcy, which was the situation that had brought Welles to Hollywood in the first place. The decision, as much as anything else, marked the end of Welles' leverage in the United States entertainment industry.

Walt Disney, in the end, was the recipient of SIMPP's victory, but Welles' died the last surviving founder of the organization.

http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/orson-welles_post-SIMPP.htm

Blunted, I don't think that anyone will disagree a motion picture is a collaborative effort. Is that not the basis of Flint's question?

Hope this helps.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

yes glenn, i know about cobblestone, i meant if you knew of anywhere else.

and glenn, let me boil down what i was saying to flint. hawks is an a-list director. the thing is a cheap, sci-fi b-movie. no a-list guy would want his name on such a film.

somewhere in some new book that just came out it said spiegle had a hooker budget on all his productions. his parties were full of hookers. did you read that? no wonder huston and welles were hanging out with him.

[Glenn Anders]

Blunted: If you knew all about Cobblestone, then you know the website has a number of articles and essays from other sources, and links to other sources. Go look.

Try CITY OF NETS by Otto Friedrich for information on Hollywood, Welles and Huston in the 1940's. It's a grand book.

If Hawks didn't want his name on THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, why did he risk taking credit as a producer for it?

So Spiegel had hookers. So what? In your rambling research, Spiegel, Huston, and Horizon Pictures is what you are asking about. In 1948-1949 onward. Not 1945.

Is there any other way you can waste time and effort here?

[Jeff Wilson]

Glenn, Blunted, please keep the comments on topic and refrain from the sniping at each other. Thank you.

[Glenn Anders]

Sorry, Jeff. It takes me time to give serious answers to what I must assume . . . are seriously posed questions.

I have little time.

Again, sorry. I resolve it will not happen again.

Glenn

[throatsprockets]

If Hawks didn't want his name on THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, why did he risk taking credit as a producer for it?

Kenneth Tobey, star of The Thing, told Fangoria in 1993 that Hawks gave The Thing to Christian Nyby to teach Nyby how to direct. Tobey said that the one scene Hawks let Nyby direct didn't turn out so well (he called it the worst scene in the movie), so Hawks taught by showing him what to do rather then letting him screw it up more.

Tobey said that Hawks directed the whole movie except for that one scene, so if Welles directed some of it he either did it on the sly while the leading man was hidden away somewhere else, or else Tobey was telling fibs.

What I've seen here is a lot of conjecture, but Tobey is the only person who was definitely involved with the movie (he's right there on screen) who I've seen speaking out about who really made the bloody thing. Which, if it was a cheap B-movie, was probably one of the two or three best cheap B-movies ever made, Welles or no Welles.

Flint: by your account of The Nightmare Before Christmas's parentage, wouldn't that mean that if Welles wrote a script and designed some sets and then someone else made it without him it'd be a Welles movie, but if a producer wrote the script and designed the sets but Welles personally supervised every element of the movie through shooting and postproduction then it'd be the producer's movie?

The settings and characters might well have made Nightmare memorable, but so did the incredible animation, the tone and the sense of humour, which were pure Selick. His attention to detail is astounding, and animation is all about the details. Nightmare had a shooting schedule of about a year - remember that it was made frame by frame entirely by hand - and by all accounts Burton spent a total of about five days on the set, mostly doing publicity.

I remember a Rick Veitch comic where an artist blows up comic strip panels with a projector and traces them onto canvas, and actually hires the original cartoonist to do the tracing for him, then claims that he himself is the real artist for having the idea but the cartoonist is just the monkey who executes it.

Poltergeist on the other hand is a different story, as it was by all accounts directed by Spielberg at least as much as it was by Hooper. Spielberg had to take out an ad in (I think) Variety apologising for claiming to have directed it, but cast & crew members have said that those claims were true, and several people have hypothesised that the only reason Hooper was involved at all was because Spielberg was worried about having too many movies out at once. Never mind the Poltergeist and ET were never going to compete for an audience.

What I'm trying to say I guess is that the answer to your "Is it a Welles movie?" is probably even more complicated than Glenn's four-tier system, due as much to the weird collaborative nature of film as anything else.

People say that The Third Man isn't a Welles movie because he didn't contribute to the directing - even he said that he didn't - but imagine if Noel Coward had played Harry Lime, as (I think) Selznick wanted; the whole movie would be completely different. But in Bert I. Gordon's Necromancy, if you replaced Welles with any other actor the movie would still be just as shitty.

As far as I'm concerned clever camera angles and technical skil that Welles may have brought to other director's movies when he took over/helped out/whatever are all very well, but unless it's constructed in a Wellesian way and is about Wellesesque ideas, it just ain't Welles. You can draw a clear connecting line through everything from Kane to Fake, and movies like Black Magic and even The Third Man won't appear anywhere on that line, though movies as vastly different as The Trial and Chimes At Midnight will.

This has been an undisciplined ramble, sorry.

[blunted by community]

ON LEDERER:
lederer gave welles $250,000 for a film? wow. who was his financial adviser?

GLENN:
i was lying. i never saw the SIMMP book site, i never used google a year ago to find it, or the publishing company website. and i also didn't know there was another book about it published in 1995.

and i will absolutely look up CITY OF NETS by Otto Friedrich. had not heard of that book. i also have the new bio of spiegel on my list.

ON 1945:
i want to ramble from 1945 on because huston got in a fist fight with errol flynn 3 or 4 months before the temporary first draft to the stranger was registered, 8/9/1945. i would like somehow to fit in the flynn fight into what i'm doing, and i can justify it if i can find something either spiegel, veiler, huston, or welles were doing at the time that has to do with the stranger. like horizon pictures that huston and speigel were talking about but didn't get going till later.

ON HAWKS:
many directors had production companies and there is no shame in producing a cheap sci-fi movie. that just raises his clout as a business man.

ON POSTING:
glenn, the hawks thing is just comon sense stuff. why must we split every splinter.

OFF THE RECORD:
I really appreciate the book you mentioned, thanks.