Welles as political commentator - The Lear Radio Show

[mteal]

I've got about 7 or 8 of these 15-minute Lear pgms now - including the five Isaac Woodard broadcasts that got Welles in so much trouble. I think they are quite riveting to listen to and very informative, not only about Welles' personal and political beliefs, but also about the turbulent post-war times in which they were broadcast. I don't know how many of these shows Welles did (I think at least 50), but I believe at least 10-15 of them survive at the Lilly library. Even though these shows probably have no commercial value, I think they are an important part of Welles' legacy, and one of these days the Welles estate should be asked for permission to transfer any of these shows that are still only on reel-to-reel tape over to cassette tape (and that goes for the EVERSHARP series too). I wonder what the odds of the estate granting permission for this are.

[Jeff Wilson]

The Lilly should have the full run of 53 or so shows; I can't recall the exact number at the moment. I doubt that the estate owns any rights to these, though I am sure they'd love to claim them if they could. Whoever owns the rights to ABC Radio product probably owns the rights now, be that Radio Spirits, ABC themselves, or someone else.

The shows are quite fascinating, as Welles is in straight raconteur mode, covering a wide variety of topics. The Woodard stuff is great, with Welles at his best, full of righteous anger. Welles' commitment to the show was evident in that he continued doing it after Lear dropped its sponsorship in the early summer of 1946 due to poor ratings. Welles' salary was dropped to $50 a show (from $1500), and he tried to arrange another timeslot once ABC informed him of cancellation, but to no avail. His timeslot was sold for a Leo Durocher sports show of some kind.

[mteal]

You're not kidding about the Woodard shows. The first one I was especially stunned by - I've never heard Welles so angry. I can just imagine the sponsors with dropped jaws listening to Welles furiously vowing to uncover the identity of "Officer X". It's one those instances among his radio work - like War of the Worlds - that make me wish I could have been in the studio to experience the electricity firsthand.

Maybe the show did have poor ratings. But Welles' compulsive pushing of so many hot political buttons (for example, his outing of a Texas gubernatorial-candidate as a former KKK member) couldn't have helped.

Durocher was a former Cubs manager so I can't bash him too much. Wasn't he the one that said "Nice Guys Finish Last."?

[Jeff Wilson]

Welles' incendiary moments were the main reason the show got cancelled. Why would ABC, who was paying a talent the likes of Orson Welles a mere $50 a show, otherwise get rid of him? Because they were not comfortable with what he was doing. After the Woodard story broke, they insisted that he submit all scripts in advance to their censorship office. It's too bad Welles wasn't still doing the show when Linwood Shull (the guy who blinded Woodard) was acquitted by a racist jury after something like 15 minutes of deliberation. That would have been an interesting show.

[mteal]

Welles vowed during one of the broadcasts to sit in the courthouse during the trial and to follow Shull wherever he went ("You can't get rid of me", he said). I wonder if Welles ever did make an appearance at the trial. At least he did bring some attention to the issue of racism in the U.S.. But then, that issue probably got lost in the next few years when the country became inundated with anti-communist paranoia and McCarthy fever. Do you know if Woodard ever regained his sight?

[Jeff Wilson]

I believe Woodard had to have at least one of his eyeballs removed, so the answer there would be no. If I recall, money raised for him was going to help him buy/start a restaurant, but I don't know if that ever happened. Here's a web site with more on his case (and they were good enough to link Wellesnet):

Woodard site

[mteal]

That's a good website. The Woodard case was bigger then I thought. I didn't realize that it inspired Truman to eliminate segregation in the U.S. military. It says it also influenced the Brown decision, which I believe eliminated segregation in U.S. schools in the early 50s. Would it be fair to say that Welles deserves some indirect credit for all that, even though he was in Europe at the time? At the very least he contributed to public awareness of the crime, just as he also did with the other two criminal cases that he became involved with: The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Case of 1943, and The Domenici Affair in France.

[jaime marzol]

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store hadji sent me the woodard programs. they were quite riveting. some has been written about welles' insincerity towards these causes, it was just a soap box for him to stand on. that is such hogwash. parts of the woodard broadcast actually made me ill; when a witness said he saw a deputy pouring buckets of water over woodard's head, asking, "can you see yet?"

man's inhumanity to man never surprises me. i didn't know the guy that blinded woodard ever stood trial, and was found innocent by a racists jury. like the OJ case in reverse. color and not the crime become the issue. f*cked up world we live in.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

f*cked up world we live in

oh yeah. i'll agree to that.

especially the justice system. the rich and famous killers, like actors, are getting away with murder; the non-rich and famous killers, total strangers, are getting away with murder; and you get in more trouble for getting a speeding ticket, than murder, these days.

to put it shortly, if you want to go out and murder somebody, nows the time to do it.
if you want to spend the rest of your life in prison, do some other stupid crime that you can't get away with.

like that damn broad who drowned her kids in the tub? trying to get away with it my saying mental problem. UP YOURS BITCH! she knew what she was doin'?

sorry didn't mean for this to be so political off orson. but don't know much about his shows.

bye now!

[mteal]

I don't believe that Welles was using the Isaac Woodard case as a soapbox either, although Welles admittedly thrived on publicity. I think the Woodard case had a profound effect on Welles, and it shows in his films. The Woodard case is mentioned in one of the sketchbook shows, and you can detect subtle echoes of it perhaps in the interrogation scene in Sanchez's apartment from TOUCH OF EVIL and the interrogation of Joseph K at the beginning of THE TRIAL. And of course, the issue of racism is at the heart of OTHELLO too.

[mteal]

And one also has to wonder if elements of Linwood Shull, who according to one of the broadcasts was a police chief, found their way into Welles' characterization of Hank Quinlan.

[Eve_h]

I recently came across two not exactly new reports (both from 2003) concerning the Woodard case and Welles' involvement with it.
One mentions that Richard France was preparing a book on the Woodard case and the other one states that Robert Fischer - the German film critic and filmmaker who was Vice Director of the Munich Film Museum for five years in the nineties - was working on a documentary titled 'Burden of Proof - Orson Welles and the Ballad of Isaac Woodard'. I don't know if it's mere coincidence that a lecture France gave in 2003 did have a similiar title.

Richard France: Newsletter Spring 2003
and The Citadel Conference

Robert Fischer: Personal info

Does anyone know something about these projects and whether they're still in progress?
If it has been mentioned here before, I apologize for bringing it up again, but I couldn't find it on this site.

[Eve_h]

just for the record ...
Obviously Robert Fischer did make a film (about the same 'subject'?). Renamed "Citizen of America" it will be shown at the Locarno Film Festival.

[NoFake]

Going back to Eve_h’s question of whether it’s “mere coincidence” that a lecture Richard France gave in 2003 had a title (“Burden of Proof”) similar to that of the documentary Robert Fischer was working on (“Burden of Proof – Orson Welles and the Ballad of Isaac Woodard”) — I don’t think it is. Mr. France also wrote a play “Obediently Yours” containing a moving passage about the Woodard incident that makes extensive use of the broadcasts, which may well have been a key catalyst for the film.