Rare photos of Orson Welles

[Glenn Anders]

Alan: I gained these gumshoes in a misspent youth -- nothing professional -- just happily having been posted to Suffolk by the U.S. Army, in a couple of years Welles was in London a lot.

You are probably right about Ms. Marchand in Picture #20. I think Eartha Kitt is a much better match for the lady that you have on ice in your own capture. Funny, how Welles liked to put his ladies in boxes. A psychologist might make something out of that.

Harvey: Forgive me. I did not mean to suggest that many of those Montgomery Clift photos did not come from the RAINTREE COUNTY shoot. Of course, by 1958, the car accident, his drug and alcohol dependence, and his general life style had indeed made him a wreck. I was only referring to the big picture that hits you [me] in the eye when I follow your link. That, I think, is clearly from THE BIG LIFT.

Sorry.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

Funny, how Welles liked to put his ladies in boxes.

Sounds like another "proof" that Welles committed the Black Dahlia murder.

[Glenn Anders]

Hmm (as they say), Hadji. I was just thinking of his magic act penchant for putting Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, and numerous other beautiful women in boxes, in order to make them disappear and reappear. It was as if he humorously, and in a psychological sense, wanted to have the woman around, when he wanted to have her around, and then put her away until another occasion. That would have been rather typical for a male of his time. But of course, he was not regarded as typical, and his bonhomie at also sawing ladies in half may have fixated attention on the murder of poor Elizabeth Short, "The Black Dahlia." In any case, we seem to have a rather satisfactory explanation in the memoir of that doctor's son, which came out recently.

BTW, Hadji, have you come across some of clips like this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p62gL-spAA

Glenn

[Christopher]

Glenn,

You're right, and you continue to amaze me with your powers of observation! The photo of Welles with his eldest daughter, Christopher, was taken in London, where she visited him several times in 1951 when she was thirteen years old. The date given for the photo -- January 1, 1952 -- is probably accurate because she spent New Year's with her father in London that year.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you very much, Christopher. It all comes from the fact that my beautiful, upper-class girlfriend in London, Rosemary Hayward, worked at the Keith Prowse ticket agency in Baker Street, loved the work of Orson Welles as much as I did, and was crazy about Walls' ice cream. I bought her a lot of those paper-wrapped ices, but they never seemed to put an inch on her slim waist.

[I, however, was more . . . Wellsian -- particularly as I grew older.]

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Harvey: I've just had my Laserdisc machine repaired, and thinking of your quest for Keenan Wynn in TOUCH OF EVIL, I played the film last night, paying attention to the peripheral characters. I think I've found Mr. Wynn, rather heavily made-up, as Welles is (unshaven, perspiring, etc.) in some of the picture.

Unless I'm mistaken, Keenan Wynn appears as a bartender in the scene, late in the film, where Sergeant Pete Menzies catches up with the bingeing Hank Quinlan in a saloon. Wynn appears in just two shots (not counting, maybe, his hand), when Menzies orders him to give Quinlan coffee. Wynn is dressed in a white shirt and apron. He wears a dark moustache, heavy eyebrows, and he says nothing. He scarcely registers in the noir darkness, unless one ignores the conversation, in which Quinlan describes the strangulation of his sweetheart. He is there as a screen and a visual contrast to the noir darkness.

It was interesting to me, on this viewing, purposely looking in the corners of the film, how much a catalogue and summing up of Welles' work TOUCH OF EVIL is. The film is a kind of double-down OTHELLO.

And for the first time, I noticed what others have, that the shadow of (apparently) Hank Quinlan is seen on a wall in the left of the frame, just as Vargas kisses his bride before the explosion.

[We are still playing Welles' game.]

Glenn