Welles and John Ford

[mteal]

In answer to your question, Tony, I don't have the transcripts of Welles's Ambersons conversations, just the audio on CD. But basically, Welles says that Cortez was 'a terrible shit' and that 'everybody hated him'. Also that he fired him everyday and was forced to rehire him when he would start crying. He blamed Cortez for the fact that the film fell behind schedule (which may have caused it to go overbudget as well). As for Costello, Welles describes her as 'an old-bag showgirl', who he had terrible difficulty getting a performance out of.

I do have a transcription of Welles's comments about John Ford though, which shows how much was changed for the final book draft:
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ON JOHN FORD (FROM THE PUBLISHED BOOK)

OW: Oh, I love most of his pictures - THE INFORMER and THE QUIET MAN least of all. Oh, and that thing with Duke Wayne in the South Pacific-

PB: DONOVAN'S REEF.

OW: And GRAPES OF WRATH - He made that into a story about mother love. Sentiment is Jack's vice. When he escapes it, you get a perfect kind of innocence.

*****************************************************

ON JOHN FORD (FROM THE ORIGINAL RECORDING)

OW: I hated (THE GRAPES OF WRATH).

PB: Well, it's better then the book.

OW: Oh no, the book is much better.

PB: Really?

OW: At the time I saw THE GRAPES OF WRATH, if you told me I'd ever have a good word to say for Ford again...I hated him so. I would have hit him if I'd seen him afterwards. He made a movie about mother love. You know, a sentimental, stupid, sloppy movie. Beautifully photographed, and all the beautiful photography was done by a 2nd unit cameraman without Ford or Toland, as I found out. I complimented Toland on those great shots of those things, and he said, 'I didn't make it. I didn't do it, and Jack Ford wasn't there either'.

PB: I didn't know that.

OW: And all that stuff they did with that awful actress that everybody loves, Jane Darwell, that awful Jane Darwell, and all those terrible creeps walking around being cute. God, I hated that picture! That and the Welsh mining picture are the two...

PB: HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY?

OW: They're the two I cannot stand. And I saw it again last year and I hated it again. I could've hit him again, seeing it, I hated it so. I think it's an abominable picture. False, Hollywood-made, smelling of plaster and sprayguns and Donald Crisp, and every other unpleasant thing you could think of.

PB: I would say it isn't your favorite picture.

OW: No. I think he's awful on the old country, Ford.

PB: Yeah, well I liked THE QUIET MAN.

OW: I hate it.

PB: Do you?

OW: Oh, I hate it. I think anything he does over there, I think he's just lost, totally lost. It doesn't mean anything, this terrible, lace-curtain version of the old country. I think it's so embarrassing and kitsch and awful. It has no reality. Not only no reality, but kitsch- vulgar, awful; it's just awful.

PB: You like his Americana?

OW: Yes, yes, that's what he digs. But when he starts to get back to where it all comes from...he doesn't have the remotest clue of where it comes from.

[Gordon]

Ambersons certainly seems to have been influenced by Ford.

Ireland was of central importance to so much of Ford's life and his work.
Read both "John Ford" by McBride & Wilmington and McBride's "Searching for John Ford."
Even discounting "The Informer" and "The Quiet Man," Ireland and the Irish people are movingly portrayed throughout Ford's large body of work.

[Roger Ryan]

In answer to your question, Tony, I don't have the transcripts of Welles's Ambersons conversations, just the audio on CD. But basically, Welles says that Cortez was 'a terrible shit' and that 'everybody hated him'. Also that he fired him everyday and was forced to rehire him when he would start crying. He blamed Cortez for the fact that the film fell behind schedule (which may have caused it to overbudget as well).

When looking at the daily shooting reports, I was a bit surprised at how little of Cortez' cinematography is in "Ambersons". From Oct. 28th, 1941 (first day of shooting) to about mid-December, Cortez is listed as the primary DP, but is replaced sporadically by both Harry J. Wild and Jack MacKenzie. Towards the end of December all the way through to the end of January, Cortez is permanently replaced by a combo of Wild, MacKenzie and Russell Metty. After principal photography ends, Metty, Russell A. Cully and Nicholas Musuraca are the listed DPs for the various reshoots (Musuraca, who would later do a number of Val Lewton films as well as "Out Of The Past", was the cameraman behind the reshoot of Fanny's breakdown). Ultimately, it appears that less than half of the existing "Ambersons" footage is Cortez' work.

In regards to John Ford: Welles must have especially disliked "How Green Was My Valley" since that's the Ford film that beat "Citizen Kane" in most of the Oscar categories for 1941. I found it quite ironic that the Lilly Library (home to the largest collection of Welles material) has Ford's Best Director Oscar for "...Valley" on permanent display!

[tonyw]

:D Thanks, Mteal and Roger. Your comments and extracts were most appreciated. Perhaps, one day we will have the fiull version of THIS IS ORSON WELLES in print. I also have the audio-version and notice some supplements such as Welles mentioning that Tim Holt was an insurance salesman in Colorado at the time of his interview. Thiis is really what an important research site should be all about, sharing information.

[jaime marzol]

i have mixed feelings about seeing these types of quotes we didn't get before. i know why we did not get them in the original audio, or print book. the welles we met in the original book was an edited welles. edited by bogdanovich, as if the tapes were for an interview. this stuff is 2 pals talking when no one is listening.

i remember when i first heard him call costello and old bag show girl. this was a new welles i didn't know from bogdanovich's edit, it was like i saw his underwear. now these quotes show me more of his underwear.

[Store Hadji]

Warts and all? Thanks, Teal, this stuff is hilarious. I'd much rather see the real Orson in his underpants than some sort of altered, glossy, idealized, politically correct, neutered cherub.

Here's the transcript of Peter B. interviewing Jack Ford (as it appears in PB's film "Directed by John Ford" - for which Welles provided narration):

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Welles: Monument Valley. John Ford has shot nine movies here. It's become so identified with him, other directors are convinced that using it as a location would be plagiarism. Surely this would be THE place most conducive to getting Mr. Ford's own thoughts on his craft and art.

Slate-Boy: Eleven - Take One.

Ford: Take One? There won't be more than one take, will there? Shoot!

Peter: Mr. Ford, you made a picture called "Three Bad Men" which is a large scale western. You had a - quite elaborate land-rush in it.

Ford: Mmm hmm.

Peter: How did you shoot that?

Ford: With a camera.

Peter: ...Isn't "The Sun Shines Bright" kind of a little picture that you made for yourself? Wouldn't that-

Ford: Yah!

Peter: - fall in the same -

Ford: Uh huh!

Peter: ...Mr. Ford I've noticed that the, uh, that your view of the West has become increasingly - sad - and melancholy over the years. Uh, I'm comparing for instance "Wagon Master" to "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Have you been aware of that -

Ford: No.

Peter: - change in mood?

Ford: No.

Peter: ...Now that I point it out, is there anything that you'd like to say about it?

Ford: I don't know what you're talking about. I don't...

Peter: ...Can I ask you what - what particular element about the Western appeal to you, from the beginning?

Ford: I wouldn't know.

Peter: ...Would you agree that the point of, uh, "Fort Apache" was that the tradition - the tradition of the Army was more important than one individual?

Ford: Cut!

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I think I prefer warts and underpants!

[Jeff Wilson]

Yeah, I'd much rather have Welles' unexpurgated comments, whether they show him in a good light or bad. Hopefully we'll get to see more of that material someday. I doubt it, but hope so. Maybe the underground will have to provide those glimpses...

If anyone wants, I can try transcribing the stuff from the AMBERSONS French disc at some point, or at least the unique stuff.

[Store Hadji]

Please do - or if you can record it as an MP3 and email it to me, I'll transcribe it.

[catbuglah]

I can see the Ford influence in early Welles - up to Stranger , say - the more straightforward, sort of formal classic, ??? clarity aspects of his early visual style... (Reading between the lines of his sundry and various comments, one gathers the Maestro was quite the style sponge, with an extensive :O knowledge of interantional film directors -I see good bits of Hitchcock, Eisenstein, Murnau in there, as well...)

[Gordon]

How much of Jake Hannaford is from John Ford?

[mteal]

How much of Jake Hannaford is from John Ford?

Quite a bit, would be my guess. After all, it was reportedly Bogdanovich's comment about old out-of-work directors that inspired Welles to change the TOSOTW setting from Bullfighting to Hollywood. John Ford would have been foremost among those out-of-work directors.

From Store Hadji's transcript posting of that classic interview with Ford, it's obvious that he was even more reluctant to talk about his work then Welles was. As Paul Schrader put it, Ford survived in the Hollywood system by keeping his cards very close to his chest. It's hard to imagine Welles being able to do that for long.

[Store Hadji]

I think that was a montage of Ford's worst moments out on Monument Valley. There's some other bits later in the film in which he actually did have something to say. However, Peter B. had no trouble getting Duke Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda to talk about Ford for the same documentary.

Duke's first line is something like "When Mr. Ford needed a GOOse handler..." - and Welles was right - Wayne does talk like an infant. Figures the first Wayne clip I would hear after the Welles relevation would be Duke saying "GOO."

I just watched The Alamo, produced and directed by Wayne. It kicks major ####. Great fekking flick. Ford said it was his own favourite film. The story goes that Ford kept showing up on the set uninvited and that he'd begin directing scenes - Wayne responded by giving him the second unit work to direct - and all those long, wide shots look fantastic.

I plan to watch The Green Berets and The Conquerors next - to see the flipside of Wayne as producer and/or director - but The Alamo's still great. Laurence Harvey is superb in - an icy, intense, controlled and intelligent performance - he might be great as the murderer in The Deep - those of you who've seen it can attest to his performance. And Joseph Calleia is in The Alamo - two years after Touch of Evil - and he plays a Mexican! That Mike Vargas was still having an effect on him.

[jaime marzol]

i had a hard time with the wayne alamo. no matter how long they were in that fort, every day their clothes looked dry cleaned. will have to try it again and just keep telling myself there is a dry cleaner in the fort.

[Store Hadji]

Maybe Ted Turner and ILM can do a remix of the film. The Alamo - now with extra mud!

I watched all of the three and a half hour version of that film last night. I absolutely loved it. I also love the two and three quarter hour theatrical cut. The extra stuff in the long version is a surprise, and great. That film is a masterpiece, and I don't use that word lightly. Who would have thought John Wayne was capable of such a thing.

Similar to my surprise that Kevin Costner could make Dances With Wolves, which is also better in its longer director's version. Costner and Wayne certainly had world views 180 degrees apart. In Wayne's view, everyone is an honourable patriot, who may take a bit too much to drink, but he dies for what he believes in. In Costner's view, white people are evil, slimey, disgusting, murdering sociopaths but all Indians are peaceful, decent lovers of nature. And THEY all look dry-cleaned. I love both films anyway.

I watched the first 90 minutes of The Green Berets too. It's no masterpiece, but it's not the incredibly terrible film it's always been made out to be. I haven't made it to that infamous scene where the sun sets in the east. I've enjoyed most of it so far, though the long nighttime battle scene was rather too dark and confusing to follow. I'm sure it was the film's pro Vietnam-involvement stance which brought it such hatred and rejection by those with differing views. The film caused riots in France (did the French government respond by threatening a curfew?) and was banned in Sweden. Wayne remarked that the liberals were shredding his guts. Well, that's the price an entertainer pays when they want to get political. Half the buying public subsequently hates you, and that seems like a bad business move to me. I don't hate The Green Berets because of its politics, but I don't love it for its cinema craft either. Wayne called his films "Batjac" productions. Having seen Dr. Strangelove too many times, I think "Bat Guano" every time I see it. I'll have to look through the books in my inherited Wayne library to see what Batjac was all about.

[Store Hadji]

Regarding Ted Turner, I'd think that now technology would be up to snuff for colorizing films properly. They'd probably look great these days. I'm not sure it's even a bad idea. I prefer black and white and am sure digital crayons would make some of the directors and cinematographers spin in their graves, but I think it'd be interesting to see if done well.

Blasphemy!