Simon Callow Vol. III

[RayKelly]

Small tidbit from today's (Aug. 10, 2008) Sunday Times piece on Simon Callow:

This year alone he has toured with Thea Sharrock’s acclaimed production of Equus by Peter Shaffer, performed Shakespeare's sonnets at the Stratford Festival in Canada and is midway through the third and final volume of his epic biography of Orson Welles (although like most writers tumbling towards deadline, he doesn’t like to talk about it). “I like to work,” he explains. “I’m always slightly afraid not to be terribly busy.”

[RayKelly]

From The Times today (Sept. 5, 2008):

When Simon Callow, the actor who also writes biographies, spoke after dinner he told of the biographer's trials and tribulations: a vital tape wiped; discovering a Charles Laughton archive only after correcting his Laughton proofs; a Mrs Rogers, secretary to both Laughton and Orson Welles, who went blind before divulging the contents of her indubitably fascinating coded diary.
Callow has spent 20 years so far on Orson Welles, “an almost inexhaustible subject, complex, contradictory, a man of so many different gifts and impulses: to find the one person inside is almost impossible”. His first two volumes, 1,200 pages, have taken Welles, who died at 70, to the age of 32. With interruptions such as playing Captain Hook in pantomime this Christmas, Callow is at work on Volume Three, where (ignoring Welles's serial but “irrelevant” amorous escapades) he will reveal “the two loves that were crucial to an understanding of him”.

[Tony]

Who were they? I guess Oja and Paola.

[tonyw]

Well, if so, isn't that "original research"?

[Glenn Anders]

I would say, Mom and Hortense Hill.

But we shall have to see.

It's such fun, and so embarrassing to be surprised!

Glenn

[RayKelly]

If Vol. III picks up where Hello Americans left off, I'd guess these great loves occurred after the 1940s.

[Glenn Anders]

Peter, Ray: You are probably right -- after 1940, and conceivably any person or factor might be one of his two great loves, with Oja certainly a strong candidate for one of them.

I would just speculate, that after depicting Welles the boy as a spoiled showboater in The Road to Xanadu, and about face, a flawed but almost admirable political and romantic idealist in Hello Americans, Callow will want to begin to take the measure of his man in Volume III. Otherwise, Welles will appear just a kind of enigmatic mess. My supposition is that he will go back to those "loves" which shaped the best of "Orson Welles." By the end of Hello Americans, with a little help from Callow in his summing up, we should be able to see, all of a sudden, that sled over there in the corner, amid the junk of Welles' life.

At least, that appears to me Callow's plan, if he has one.

Glenn

[RayKelly]

... conceivably any person or factor might be one of his two great loves

If we are not limiting it to a romantic love, Roger Hill ought to be considered

[ToddBaesen]

It's almost surrealistic to think how obvious the answer to what Welles truly great love is - at least in terms of his work - because everyone already knows it: the work of William Shakespeare.

I was astonished to read that Welles had planned a version of FALSTAFF in the 1938 New Yorker profile of him while he was still at the Todd School, in Woodstock. It took him years to finally bring it to fruition, but it came to life on screen in 1967 when we got CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.

Meanwhile, while Welles only made three completed films from Shakespeare, there is no doubt he would have made many more if he had been given the chance and the money. The movie version of KING LEAR was looming large right before he died.

Here's just of few of his Shakespearian adaptations done in different mediums:


A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bedtime reading from his mother)

Richard III (Todd School)

Romeo and Juliet (with Katherine Cornell on tour)

Richard II (Falstaff & Five Kings)

The Merchant of Venice (Shylock) unfinished movie version and the Mercury Shakespeare reading edition

Henry IV, Part I (Falstaff and Five Kings)
Henry IV, Part II
Henry V

Julius Caesar (Mercury Theater on Broadway, radio versions and the Mercury Shakespeare reading edition.)

The Merry Wives of Windsor (Falstaff)

Hamlet (Todd School & radio versions)

Twelfth Night (Todd School and the Mercury Shakespeare reading edition.)

Othello (London stage & movie version)

King Lear (TV & stage versions, planned movie version)

Macbeth (WPA & Utah stage versions, movie version)

The Tempest (quoted in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND)

[Alan Brody]

How about food and drink?

[ToddBaesen]

It's Shakespeare and...

a bottle of his favorite vintage dated Paul Masson wine!

[Glenn Anders]

This insult from a man who does not even require a label on the bottle . . . at least a wine bottle. He is more discriminating in his requirements for Gin. Had Welles adopted Todd Baesen's taste for Gin, he would have been dead at forty!

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Ah, there lies the rub...

Calling me joke an insult, are we. And I thought yee was a real Scotsman!

Actually, it's not hard to blame Paul Masson for eventually replacing Orson Welles with John Gielgud as their TV spokesman, as Welles always looked quite heavy in those commercials. When Masson did replace Welles, the official reasoning given was that Masson wanted to introduce a series of "light Wines" and Orson would obviously not be a fit spokesman for such a venture.

But somehow SIR John Gielgud is never blamed for stooping to shill for a wine company, but Welles always is. In fact, come to think of it, what makes those Wine commercials memorable. Welles or Gielgud?

Obviously they are both great actors, but nobody talks about Gielgud's wine commercials. But everybody talks about Welles doing them. So Masson got their money's worth from Welles.

Ironically, as Welles said after being given an offer he could obviously refuse as Paul Masson's spokesman once again, shortly before he died: "No, I don't want to do anything again for their terrible wines."

What Welles really liked and could have endorsed with pleasure was Falstaff's favorite drink: Sherry Sack.

[Glenn Anders]

You have the game, Toddy!

A "Blood and Sand" for the gentleman.

It is a curious coincidence, that two such knights of the Theater should have been flogging wine from a vinyard, which though it still produces, has largely become a real estate development.

I always thought Welles should have stayed with Cresta Blanca. The wine was no more distinguished, but it was less pretentious.

Let's hope these wines kept our noblemen of the stage mellow.

Glenn