King Lear DVD

[RayKelly]

I received this media advisory today from E1 Entertainment:

ORSON WELLES MAKES HIS DRAMATIC TELEVISION DEBUT AS SHAKESPEARE’S BELEAGUERED KING IN THIS LANDMARK RELEASE IN THE “OMNIBUS” SERIES

Shot live for the prestigious OMNIBUS Series, Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Third Man), made his dramatic television debut in OMNIBUS: KING LEAR as the beleaguered king betrayed by the greed of his daughters. This legendary performance is presented newly restored and re-mastered in the first authorized release since its original CBS live telecast on October 11, 1953.

Masterfully playing the title role in Peter Brook’s groundbreaking production of Shakespeare’s classic play, Welles is supported by an all-star cast featuring Alan Badel (“Shogun”, The Day of the Jackal), Beatrice Straight (Network, Poltergeist) and Bramwell Fletcher (The Mummy, The Scarlet Pimpernel). The milestone DVD features over 90 minutes of Shakespeare-related bonus performances including interviews/rehearsal footage with Brook and Virgil Thomson, demonstrations/discussions of scenes from Hamlet with Walter Kerr, and reports from the Yale University Shakespeare Festival by Alistair Cooke, and also contains a 16-page booklet with written contributions by the director Brook and the Orson Welles biographer Simon Callow.

Format : DVD/Single
Run time: 73 mins. + extras
Rating: n/a
Price: $29.98srp
Prebook/Street : January 12/February 9

[RayKelly]

Yes, it will be great to have it in better quality. It would have been nice if the clip of Welles performing King Lear on the Ed Sullivan Show from 1956 had been included. I'd also add on to the wish list of extras Welles' filmed 1983 pitch for a King Lear movie.

[Roger Ryan]

I'm not too keen on the DVD cover photo they used of Welles, clearly taken about twenty years after the KING LEAR production (reminds me of how a 1950s photo of Welles graced Callow's HELLO AMERICANS which dealt exclusively with the time period of 1941 - 1948). It's nice to see a higher quality release however.

[ToddBaesen]

Roger:

While I agree with you about the KING LEAR cover, wasn't the cover shot of Welles with two Brazilian singers from HELLO AMERICANS taken in 1942 during the making of IT'S ALL TRUE?

[RayKelly]

I'm not too keen on the DVD cover photo they used of Welles, clearly taken about twenty years after the KING LEAR production.

Not the first time (sadly) these things happen. I cannot find it in the archives, but wasn't it someone here (you, perhaps?) who first spotted the Man in the Shadow photo used on the 2-disc Touch of Evil cover?

[Alan Brody]

I agree about that cover. They should have used a picture from the production itself, although I'm glad they're relasing a higher quality print of the show. They say the irony of King Lear is that, although the character is in his 70s, it requires a much younger man to do justice to such a physically demanding part. Therefore, you have to wonder if Welles in the 1980s would have been up to it even if the French financing hadn't fallen apart. Welles was probably just about the right age when he did this show in the early 1950s.

[Store Hadji]

The print will still be a kinescope (filmed off a TV monitor,) so the quality will always be lacking. Lucky it was recorded at all.

And sorry to disagree, but the best Lear to my mind is the performance John Gielgud gave when he was 90.

[mido505]

Agree with you about Gielgud's Lear, Store, although I find parts of Scofield's Lear in Peter Brooks's film adaptation of the play to be extraordinarily powerful, although the film and the performance as a whole lags. Callow's description of Charles Laughton's highly controversial production of Lear in 1959 makes one's mouth water, and I still believe that the true tragedy of Welles's life is that he did not live to complete his stark, stripped down Lear film. BTW, has anyone here seen PROSPERO'S BOOK'S, Peter Greenaway's controversial and hallucinatory adaptation of THE TEMPEST, in which an 87-year-old Gielgud, surrounded by pissing cherubs, voices all the parts? Gielgud is just incredible, and there are some days when I think that was the greatest performance(s) that I've ever seen him give. Didn't Gielgud at one point late in life ask Welles to play Caliban to his Lear, but Welles turned it down because he didn't feel up to the part?

[Alan Brody]

Haven't seen the Gielgud Lear, I'll check it out sometime. I did enjoy his Heartbreak House for the BBC, though. Can't say I was crazy about Prospero's Books, although I'll admit it's one of a kind. Maybe I'll give it another chance sometime. I also remember being somewhat disappointed by the Olivier Lear, done towards the end of his life, after hearing so many great things about it.

[Magentarose67]

Yay! I am finally getting the chance to see this! To me, Orson and Shakespeare go together like milk and cookies !

[mido505]

I'm not sure you mean Welles as the Fool and Gielgud as Lear or Welles as Caliban and Gielgud as Prospero; neither sounds so swell but that why they might have worked in the magic of theater.

Oops, my bad, I meant Welles as Caliban and Gielgud as Prospero.

According to Welles biographer Frank Brady, Gielgud made his offer to Welles in 1985, while Welles was trying to set up financing for his KING LEAR film. This was right around the time of the collapse of the CRADLE WILL ROCK project. Welles had just been diagnosed with diabetes, and was weakened by a recurring heart ailment. Writes Brady: "John Gielgud burst through Orson's depression. Gielgud thought he could raise enough British money for a film of THE TEMPEST, with himself playing Prospero to his menial servant Caliban, to be played by Orson...Orson was touched by Gielgud's offer, but felt he was too old for Caliban, and physically unable to play such a strenuous role. He sent the aging British actor, who was then seventy-nine, an appreciative, warmhearted note declining the offer."

A trivia entry for PROSPERO'S BOOKS at IMDB puts Gielgud's project (with Orson directing as well) around the time of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, and claims that financing for THE TEMPEST dried up when CHIMES failed at the box office. Brady's version coincides with something I read in one of Gielgud's memoirs years ago, so I suspect it is closer to the truth.

[Roger Ryan]

Roger:

While I agree with you about the KING LEAR cover, wasn't the cover shot of Welles with two Brazilian singers from HELLO AMERICANS taken in 1942 during the making of IT'S ALL TRUE?

One would think that would be appropriate, and it's possible that Callow or his editors thought the cover photo for HELLO AMERICANS was from the 1942 trip to Brazil, but it's not. There's a thread archived here in which this was discussed around the time the book was published. The general look of Welles' face, not to mention the hairline and style and lack of moustache (which I believe he wore throughout the Brazil trip) points to Welles in his late 30s, not 27. Someone uncovered a photo from 1952 I believe which shows Welles in the same suit he was wearing on the HA cover; I doubt Welles would have fit, or cared to wear, a suit that was over ten years old at that point.

Compare these strikingly similar photos: one is the Callow book cover photo and the other is an actual photo of Welles in Brazil in 1942 (a photo that would have been just as good as a cover photo for HELLO AMERICANS)...

[ToddBaesen]

How Bizarre. Just the fact that Welles is surrounded by two Brazilian singers made me think it was a shot from 1942, but comparing the shots Welles does look quite a bit older.

The question now is was this actually taken in Brazil, and if so what year?

The credit in HELLO AMERICANS goes to the Fundacao Nacional de Arte, so it must have been in Brazil, but I didn't realize Welles ever returned there... Maybe Catherine Benamou knows...

Meanwhile, according to this post on the main page, John Gielgud didn't ask Welles to play Caliban, but rather to direct him as Prospero in a film version of THE TEMPEST, shortly before Welles passed away:

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=646#more-646

[mido505]

Thanks for the link, Todd. According to those letters, it looks like Gielgud hoped to work with Welles on THE TEMPEST in 1966 and in 1985. Ah, the might-have-beens we'll never see! In the last letter, Gielgud refers to his "everlasting Tempest project", which finally came to fruition in PROSPERO'S BOOKS.