The Beatrice News Watch

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Blunted: Thank you for the titles. Grobels' book on the Hustons is my favorite, too. [Perhaps it will soon be time for a revised addition; Danny's career seems to be emerging from his father's shadow, at last.] I have not read the Ray Bradbury book. John Huston, seemingly so different from Welles, was his perfect counterpart, in life and still in death. [Not so, Bradbury, I gather.]

Welles should have kidnapped Anjelica Huston, and put Beatrice up for adoption. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND would be in theaters by now.

As for Peter Viertel, check out Larry Grobel in The Hustons, pp 391-92:

"It must have taken considerable courage for Viertel to give White Hunter, Black Heart [the galleys of the novel] to Huston to read, but John was a good sport about the book, which represented a rather unflattering portrait of him. He not only read and commented on Viertel's effort, but he offered him, at Bogart's suggestion, another screenwriting assignment. Claud Cockburn's script for Beat the Devil hadn't measured up and Huston put both Tony Veiller and Peter Viertel on it."

That, Blunted, is rather like feeding the hand that bites you.

And so, much later, Viertel wrote another book on his experiences with Huston's workmates, you say? Lucky fellow. He married one of Huston's stars, too!

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You are quite right, Christopher. Perhaps, my problem is that I, too, am relatively new to "posts" and "threads" but not, I hope, to attempting to praise good work, wherever I find it, especially that of Orson Welles.

I did try to return the discussion to Beatrice Welles, but it was pretty well ignored.

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And I agree, Oscar. Although it is the most devious cliche of our time, it is time to "move on" to another "thread."

Glenn

[blunted by community]

glenn, GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE is an ok book, but it does give you 3 or 4 incidents that add that brush stroke to the huston portrait. i had never heard of it. i found it at www.half.com for 75-cents. bradburry's style of writing gets irritating at times. he really likes to paint something with much more words than it needs. instead of saying, 'it's night time,' he'll write half a page of crap to say 'its night time.'

christopher:
i've enjoyed this wording experience with glenn very much. i didn't take any of it personal, or let any of it upset me, and i was the one under attack. the only thing in this thread that put me off is you telling me to go elswhere.

we are fans discussing our favorite topic. i've been to boards where every one is friendly and no one agues with any one about anything. they are ghost towns because rarely anything of interest is brought out. this thread is loaded with facts, and has a huston book list. controversy brings out a lot of information, and interest from readers, thus the 600+ viewings this relatively new beatrice welles thread has. business is booming, due in part to my exchanges with glenn. and look at all the great information these excanges with glenn has brought out. if we constantly slap each other on the back, and congratulate each other, no one will want to read that.
.

[Christopher]

Hi, Blunted,

I'm learning how provocative you can be, but I'm not rising to the bait. I did not mean to put you off, quite the contrary, since I happen to agree with you that every discussion group needs a provocateur and devil's advocate in order to stay lively, interesting and informative. The French have a saying that might have been made for you, Blunted: "Il faut epater les bourgeois." It was something Orson Welles did all the time. Continue to enjoy your "wordings" with Glenn and you'll hear no more from me!

[Welles Fan]

This thread did become rancorous to some degree, but at least we had some posting action at Wellesnet for a change. blunted did relate the original Beatrice post to what he described as personality disorders, or a certain self-destructiveness in Orson and Beatrice.

The Chasens incident was mentioned, I think, as an example of Welles going a bit "over the top. It got sidetracked as "funny" or "sad", but really is a good example of how high-strung Welles was. As we discussed here a year or so ago, Welles was still quite young during the Federal Theatre years and the RKO years, and many of his pecadilloes were no more than what one would expect from a high-strung artistic person under a lot of pressure.

The only truly self-destructive thing Welles did IMO was to go to Brazil when he should have stayed at RKO editing Ambersons.

[Christopher]

For the record, Welles went to Brazil early in 1942 because he had been appointed Good Will Ambassador by Nelson Rockefeller, then Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and had been asked by the U. S. government to make a documentary. It was a honor that would have been difficult for him to refuse and an opportunity, as he put it in his own words during his last radio broadcast before he flew to Rio, to make a picture "for Americans in all the Americas -- a movie which might strengthen the good relations now binding the continents of the Western Hemisphere." It is also worth remembering that Welles agreed to make the Brazilian documentary during World War II as part of his contribution to the war effort since his flat feet, asthma and other health problems did not permit him to enlist.

Nothing in these facts suggests that Welles was being "self-destructive" in going to Brazil. He did make plans before he left to edit "Ambersons" in Rio, but already RKO was taking it away from him and using his absence as an opportunity to reshoot the ending, etc. There was no way he could known ahead of time that this was going to happen.

[blunted by community]

christopher:
bait? i'm very hurt you think like that. i would have no clue how to bait some one if i wanted to. it just seems to happen. every time i come around here it turns into a monkey zoo. i know jeff was probably watching, worried, like a bar owner watching 2 drunks about to get in a fist fight. i'm like that irritating customer that every time he shows up the locals get all riled.

there was no bait in my post, that was an honest, heart-felt answer from a good, christian man. i love all of mankind.
..........

as soon as RKO hosed schaffer, welles' ticket was up. welles was not liked at RKO. what strated the anti-welles faction at RKO was that welles didn't have to go through the head of production, who i think was pandro berman. welles answered directly to schaffer. that caused a lot of animosity for welles. once schaffer was fired, there was no saving ambersons, journey into fear, it's all true, or welles. it's a shame.

WARNING! - EUPHORIC FANTASY POSTING BELOW:

if there was ever a fork in the road for welles that might have lead his life in another direction, it would have been completing ambersons (or LADY FROM SHANGHAI, or TOUCH OF EVIL, but we'll stay with AMBERSONS for now).

i think that had ambersons been completed welles' way, even if it angered all the people that went to see it-press and audience, it might have been a hit. people would have gone to see what was pissing off every one so much.

YOU ARE NOW LEAVING EUPHORIC FANTASY AREA:

and RKO really, really butchered that film. i never realized how much till i mentioned the film to a friend a few years back, and he replied, "i can only watch ambersons when i'm in the mood for a sweet movie."

welles was highly advanced. he lost both his parents at a very early age. there was no one around to say NO. he had no discipline, and that hurt him terribly.

producers, by nature, are conservative. they don't want to understand some one like welles. it was just easier not to deal with him at all. a producer was better off getting a hack like richard fleischer to direct his film than he was getting a genius like welles that was going to run through all the money, give him ulcers, and throw a table of food at him. and i don't mean that welles was profligate with the money, but as he got older he attracted smaller and smaller producers. by the time he go to THE TRIAL, that was the bottom. those producers had no money at all, and debts at the studio that was going to make the sets for the trial, so they never made the sets. the salkinds were producers in the red, but look at the fine film that we have from working with broke producers.

[blunted by community]

that comment from my fiiend about ambersons being a sweet movie really crystalized a lot i my head. over the years having read so much about what it was, i forgot what it is and no longer realized that the average joe on the street considers it a sweet movie, and it's so far from that.

[Oscar Christie]

Blunto,

WARNING! - EUPHORIC FANTASY POSTING BELOW:

Using digital animation, why can't Ambersons be actually reconstructed?

The music is there, the stills set each scene, and we have the shooting script, so why not?

YOU ARE NOW LEAVING EUPHORIC FANTASY AREA:

[Welles Fan]

Yeah, I'm aware that Welles went to South America at the request of the Government (where's the eye-rolling smiley?). We constantly hear people defend the trip with the mantra "he was working for the Government!" Well, I think he could have said "no".

It appears that his trip had little to do with actually fostering Pan-American goodwill. He was filming the Carnival, and partying his ass off. How did any of this have anything to do with the "goodwill" of the trip? To me it was self-destructive because he had little to show for his efforts. I am not suggesting that Welles went to Brazil because of some subconscious self-destructive urge. However, we all have moments in which we take the wrong fork in the road, and look back and say "Doh! I wish I hadn't done that!" I think the (bogus) goodwill venture was just such a mistake for Welles.

He had already ruffled too many feathers when he and a bunch of Mercury people with no film experience essentially took over RKO. He certainly set himself up for a fall by leaving an unfinished film in the hands of people whose power at the studio was shaky.

I know hindsight is 20-20, but nothing I have ever read seems to point out any accomplishments coming out of the goodwill trip. If it was impossible to turn down the invitation, he should have at least have had assurances that the studio could not fire him, but he didn't. Does anyone really believe the Allies won WWII because of the tireless work of Welles and crew partying in Brazil? Besides, wasn't Brazil the haven for all the former Nazis who fled Europe at the end of the war?

However, as I've said in other posts, the only thing that was lost because of the trip was Ambersons. I, for one, resent the notion that Welles was a failure because he lost his studio contract. Had he stayed in the studio system, I really doubt we would have had Othello, Chimes, The Trial, etc. Welles was a very bold individual. Rather than accusing him of self-destructiveness, it may be more apt to say his boldness sometimes got the better of him and was at times, destructive.

[Welles Fan]

Oscar: I've wondered that, too. Of course, it would never happen. It would be expensive to do the CGI work required, but it would certainly be interesting to see, IMO.

[blunted by community]

oscar:
yes, it would be possible to do. there is enough material at the lilly to do ambersons, journey into fear, and the stranger.

some members here restored ambersons using the continuity in carringer's book, and whatever pictures they could rustle up, and it worked quite well. took me 3 days to get through the 2 hr and 20 min tape. but when i saw welles' screenplay i realized how badly butchered even the scenes that were left in for the second cut were (the continuity is for the second cut).

but like welles fan said, if it's going to be done right it would be very expensive. so they should hire cheap labor, like the 2 wellesnet members that have already done it.

[Glenn Anders]

Well, gang, I'm glad that Blunted and I have at least been entertaining you.

I GUESS.

Perhaps we could hire ourselves out at other sites to mend old threads.

Blunted: My memory of Huston's experience with Ray Bradbury on MOBY DICK was that the director, considering the wildly imaginative work of this seminal American sci-fi writer, expected a vigorous collaborator, but found Bradbury to be something of a reclusive hypocondriac, who feared machinery. Still, they put together a pretty good screenplay. (After previous efforts, they were able to borrow some of the action setups, select striking locations, plan a unique film process, and make some interesting interpretations.)

While noting that you prefer brevity, Blunted, if you care to examine my remarks on Huston's MOBY DICK in greater detail, go to the URL below:

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-96C-5AE324D-39FB9287-prod1

I doubt, Blunted, in either Welles' or RKO's version, would there have been a box office success in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. My impression is that, after CITIZEN KANE, THE MAGNIFCENT AMBERSONS was quietly regarded as an anticlimax. (And . . . KANE, while a critical success, was not a financial one.) After "The War of the Worlds," the Moguls and the public had been disappointed when Welles had not made a wild penny dreadful Sci-fi picture. With the cuts and changed ending, neither critics nor audiences could have been expected to recognize the provocative criticism of the tragic role in America of women and the elderly, which Welles originally added to his adaptation of Tarkington's bucolic novel. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS we have, not the one we can imagine, IS a pretty "sweet movie."

And I believe Christopher is correct in his assessment of why Welles had little choice but to go to Brazil. Remember, World War II was not Vietnam or Iraq; it was our last Constitutionally declared war. The political left in America was united against Fascism in Europe, and the political right was interested in combatting the "Yellow Peril," and in expanding American business interests, in the Far East. At that moment, the Great Center easily recognized how our vaunted Pacific Fleet had been seriously damaged at Pearl Harbor a few months earlier. In 1942, the war effort was an unparalelled one in American History.

As Christopher points out, Welles had legitimate physical failings which would have put him at the back of any military column, in a time when every "real man" was voluteering, not sitting around counting his tax cuts and profits while egging on from a safe distance our wars of conquest, as we do today. Welles, ethically and in terms of his career, felt he had to do whatever he could for the war effort. Remember, that, in 1942, Nelson Rockefeller had been a New York patron and friend of sorts to Orson Welles. Remember, too, that RKO was in bankruptcy, and the Rockefellers were backing its recovery.

Consider that "The War of the World" show, plus his New Deal connections, plus his interest in what would become Civil Rights, plus his weekly -- sometimes several times a week -- network radio appearances in prime time, plus, of course, CITIZEN KANE, made Orson Welles a potentially highly dangerous figure to the traditional American power structure.

Welles was asked to go to South America in furtherance of the Administration's Good Neighbor Policy, one of the most highly publicized American national interests of the day. It was at a time, when there were widely held concerns that one or more of the South American dictatorships might go Nazi or Fascist. [J. Edgar Hoover, whose FBI had the newly given task of monitoring South America, now had an excuse to keep tabs on Welles.]

Welles had no choice but to accept the direct appeal of his old "friend," Nelson Rockefeller (whom my namesake lampoons in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI). Welles, after all, was, as someone remarked here, still a very young man (26), who suffered from an arrested teenage-like volatility.

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Finally, if there are enough stills from the missing scenes of . . . AMBERSONS, there is no reason why Oscar's reconstructuring could not be carried out. The professor who was with Rick Schmidlin the night I spoke with them said there are not enough stills to do the kind of job that Schmidlin did on GREED. (Schmidlin said that he had 600 from the discarded portions of GREED to work with.)

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A question for Blunted: Forgive me, is it COMPULSION that you are referring to when you bring up Richard Fleicher?

All the best.

Glenn

[Fat Annie]

Not sure if this complies with House Rules but...

One of the features I like about Wellesnet is the email.
If you have a thought that is essentially for one other
member you can email it to them.

It saves the other members a little time.

[Glenn Anders]

Looking at you post from several different angles, I must say, Annie, that I must throw in with Blunted. If you think that commenting, clarifying, asking questions, making suggestions, trying to answer questions, giving references and URL's on subjects related to Orson Welles are subject only for private Emails, I understand why someone (was it Christopher?) pointed out that Wellesnet Forum has a couple of hundred members, but about eight or ten persons who take part in the Forum opportunity with any regularity.

I have written 400 hundred pieces, highly regarded by some, for Epinions.com under the handle of Macresarf1. Over three hundred of the pieces deal with Movies; four or five are on Welles' films; another half dozen are about films featuring Welles; and another hundred or so invoke the name, influence or connection of Orson Welles.

Wellesforum is a diversion for me, which I take part in for love of the man's work, which I had hoped was the incentive for the active members. However, if I am making a chore for real Members; if real Members need to "save time," I know how I can save myself several hours a week of time myself.

We all waste time, and I have a lot of other things to do, and even a lot obligations on the Internet that I have been neglecting. It is much more satisfying to trade ideas with people who appreciate what you are trying to do.

You are right, Annie, I can Email you, Blunted, Oscar, Christopher, Colingwood, Jaime, Jeff, etc., any old time. Why bother with the Forum at all? I guess I just don't know the rules of useful discussion

Thanks for the tip. I read the message.

[Jeff Wilson]

Don't sweat Fat Annie, Glenn, he/she/it has been trying to cause trouble here for a while.