Huck Finn

[Tony]

Just listened to Huck Finn, and it's wonderful. It's very unusual in that Welles wants to read (and hog) the novel, but Huck (played by Jackie Cooper) interrupts him and insists on telling (and living) the tale. Then the story begins, and we're in the story, when Welles keeps interrupting on false premises, such as he wants to give Huck a rest. They argue, and finally Huck wins and the story starts again. At the end, Huck returns- out of the story and into the studio, and apologizes to Welles for the disagreements. Then he says he'll never write another book, as it was to hard to live the first one (which he just relived again on this radio program).

The whole suspension of disbelief is challenged, played with, asserted and challenged again, yet the listener has no trouble with these shifts. I'm not sure if this happens in the novel, but clearly Welles was obviously toying with this idea of truth and lies (and the notion of reality) long before The Other side of the Wind and F For Fake, and of course Kane is full of it too. The whole Wellesian enterprise sometimes seems to me to be the process of playing with this idea of what is reality, what is truth, what is fake. The layers, levels and dimensions endlessly fascinated him, and perhaps it is this aspect of Welles which underlies his enduring interest, and perhaps his genius.

[Store Hadji]

This is a great episode. Welles is wonderfully (and quite intentionally) hammy in his role inside the story (though not, of course as host/narrator) and I can only wonder if Jackie Cooper was wearing that strange hat which he had worn in his movies earlier in the thirties.

Great observation, Tony, about Welles violating the frame of the story and juggling reality and fiction in inventive ways, as he did too with War of the Worlds. If memory serves, Huckleberry (oh, I've just been visited by Val Kilmer's line as Doc Holliday in Tombstone - "I'm your huckleberry!" Sorry for the digression) ... where was I? Oh. The radioplay was, I think anyway, written by Herman Mankiewicz. So we can debate or wonder or not even care if the gimmick of violating the frame was from Mank or introduced by Welles during "general theoretical discussions." Mank and Welles were a great team. As were Welles and Houseman. And Herrmann. And Toland. And the original Mercury players. A crime against humanity that they all couldn't have stayed together longer. Thank God they did so much in radio and so many of the episodes have survived.

Thanks for inspiring me to rant.

[Tony]

SH:
Thanks for the interesting response; fascinating, in fact, that Mank wrote the radioplay- I wonder what Kael might have turned that into!

The whole frame thing seems very pomo to me, and Welles obviously had postmodern tendencies almost from the beginning.

Have you ever heard the "Theatre of the Imagination" tape which features several of the Mercury players? All of them believe it was a tragedy that Welles and Housman broke up in 1941, and that Welles had never been as powerful after that.

Tony

[tonyw]

Yes, it is such a great radio production as good as Treasure Island fully justifying the title of Adrian Martin's essay in sensesofcinema.com concerning the radio adaptations - "An Abandoned Mine." But now we can excavate this generally neglected territory and see how it relates to the films.

[Store Hadji]

Welles called the death of radio (it was replaced by television) a great personal loss. He certainly was fluid and flexible in it. He could play any role and any age, without having putty noses to worry about. He also made a tremendous amount of money, as much as $1500 dollars a week, in the thirties, tax free (though the IRS would screw him on his losses from the Around the World stage show a few years later.) How much would 1500 1937 dollars be worth today? Personal loss indeed.

Welles obviously had postmodern tendencies almost from the beginning

What did he say to Peter Bogdanovich about Lady from Shanghai? Peter stated that was being ahead of his time, and Welles replied that was being in trouble.

Have you ever heard the "Theatre of the Imagination" tape which features several of the Mercury players?

That's a great tape. I bought that Voyager collection when they released it on tape in the 80s. I guess it came out on laserdisc after that, though I don't know if they included any extras. That one includes John Houseman's account of how Orson's script for The Man Who Was Thursday ran twenty minutes short, and Houseman had to scramble (during the broadcast) to find things for Welles to read as a "coming attraction" for the next series. Great story, but Thursday was actually 30 minutes too long, and the rehearsal dates from the day prior to broadcast. I wonder if it was a different episode Houseman remembered. A few from the end of the first series are lost, like the Julius Caesar broadcast and Jane Eyre. Maybe it's one of those.

fascinating, in fact, that Mank wrote the radioplay- I wonder what Kael might have turned that into!

Just another case of Welles screwing Mank out of credit, she would have said. (Backwards ran sentences until boggled the mind.)

All of them believe it was a tragedy that Welles and Houseman broke up in 1941, and that Welles had never been as powerful after that.

I think Welles did tremendous things without Houseman. Like Citizen Kane. Houseman's only involvement was as Mank's junior writer and nurse maid. Welles was incompetent at dealing with the money men. He certainly could have used Houseman to keep the studios happy.

a great radio production as good as Treasure Island

Most of the Mercury radio shows were great, while he kept the original New York family together (sounds like mobsters, doesn't it?) They drifted aparted after Charles Koerner kicked the Mercury off the RKO lot while Welles was still doing his job down in Brazil. I keep wondering if Koerner (Coroner) was a Hearst minion. We've talked on other threads about the Hearst machine actively destroying the careers of such as Welles and Dorothy Comingore for years after Kane. I wonder if anyone has found such a link. Welles' radio shows became a bit crap after the family disbanded. Some other fantastic shows they did together were the Les Miserables series, Hell on Ice, The Count of Monte Cristo and many others. After they picked up Campbell's Soup as a sponsor, they switched from doing the classics to doing adaptions of current popular novels and films instead. I'm sure this was Campbell's exerting their editorial influence - stories to appeal to those who eat Campbell's chicken soup. That reminds me of that great story Welles told of conditioning announcer Ernest Chappell to finally say Campbell's rooster soup on air one night. If that broadcast survived I haven't heard it. Anyway, Welles got sick of Campbell's interference and the Campbell Playhouse signed off. And Welles picked up Lady Esther Cosmetics instead! Gods, he was better off with a sustaining show, with no sponsor to wreck his vision.

now we can excavate this generally neglected territory and see how it relates to the films.

There are several radio shows which precursored Welles' work in films and stage. The speech about the "guy with an edge" from Lady from Shanghai first appeared in an episode of Hello Americans from 1942. Mr. Arkadin was based on two shows Welles had written for The Lives of Harry Lime (itself based on the movie The 3rd Man) in 1951, Man of Mystery and Blackmail Is a Nasty Word. The only surviving document of Cole Porter's songs for the 1946 stage production of Around the World were broadcast as a Mercury Summer Theatre show during the play's run. The famous beard Orson arrived in Hollywood wearing was grown for his vaudeville version of The Green Goddess, which he had first done as a Campbell's Playhouse broadcast in 1939. While Welles did a stage version of Moby Dick in the fifties and a film version in the seventies, he first did it as an episode of The Mercury Summer Theatre in 1946. While he filmed Macbeth in 1948, he had first done it on record in 1940, part of The Mercury Shakespeare series. While he filmed The Merchant of Venice in the sixties, he had first done it on record in 1938. He later turned his Harry Lime radioplay The Dead Candidate into the screenplay and novel VIP. When Welles guested on other people's shows in the early forties, they would plug his films, like Kane and Ambersons. Ambersons, of course, was first done on the radio. When Hollywood came calling, they wanted him to film The War of the Worlds. Welles made a running joke out of how great the film Jane Eyre was on his 1944 show Orson Welles Almanac. While Welles didn't direct the film of Jane Eyre, he had done it on radio a few times, and part of Benny Herrmann's musical score for the film was first done for Welles' radio version. Welles worked with a lot of the top stars in Hollywood on the radio, like Katherine Hepburn in the Campbell's broadcast A Farewell to Arms (by his friend Ernest) and Laurence Olivier in Beau Geste. Most everybody in The Mercury Welles had met in radio in New York. Agnes Moorhead costarred as Margot Lane on The Shadow. Benny Herrmann was conducting for The Columbia Workshop. Ray Collins and Joseph Cotten were doing School of the Air of the Americas with Welles in 1934. They all came from radio.

Radio was a proving-ground and literal sounding-board for Welles. A personal loss indeed.

[Glenn Anders]

Store Hadji: Houseman seems to be right about Welles' love of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. In it, as you and others have suggested here, one can see absurdity and delusion lurking below "reality," especially in matters of intrigue, which is the key to what we are now calling Welles' "post modernism."

As you point out, however, "The Man Who Was Thursday" actually went long, and so, is an unlikely source for the anecdote Houseman relates in
The Theater of the Imagination. More likely, as I've suggested somewhere in the past, the true source of the fiasco is the Campbell Playhouse production of "There's Always a Woman":

12/17/39 #41 There's Always A Woman by Wilson Collison w/Marie Wilson, Mary Taylor

Billed as an original work, it actually was based on Collison's story and a pair of 1938 movies, knockoffs of "The Thin Man" series.

Of the Welles' radio productions I've listened to, this one strikes me as being the vehicle where he is very seriously in trouble. In fact, at midpoint, he brings on the entire cast, introduces them, and has them comment on the characters they play. The existing record suggests strongly Houseman's tale of writers desperately scribbling pages to fill a 20 minute shortfall, as the players upstairs try to fill the gap.

Perhaps, Houseman decided that a literate group in his audience would remember The Man Who Was Thursday, whereas few listeners would recall There's Always a Woman. The change of titles made a better memoir.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

Or Houseman just forgot which show it was. Still, there are some missing episodes, so I'll give his memory the benefit of the doubt (other than which episode it was.)

I've never listened to There's Always a Woman; I need to. I haven't explored The Campbell Playhouse shows very much. Too many pop novel and movie adaptions, too many romances, not enough classics as Welles had done prior to Campbell's interfering with the choice of story to be broadcast.

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, just as well, for Houseman's "The Man Who Was Thusday" tale.

To touch again for a moment on the Huckleberry Finn adaptation:

Welles was giving an ironic twist to his CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT theme because he had the older man mentoring the younger one, in a story which is about the escape of a son from his drunken father. One suddenly remembers Welles troubled relationship with his own father.

Welles' material, as suggested, presented in a style far ahead of its time.

Glenn