Welles on London Clubs footage

[akio]

Clips from unrealized TV project

Anyone familiar with this project? By the looks of the german subtitles, I assume this is something that was shown on German television. Youtube.com also has the Citizen Kane trailer, some outtakes from his Paul Masson commercials, and a clever remake of The Hitchiker using Welles' radio broadcast as the soundtrack.

[Kevin Loy]

[quote="akio"][/quote]
Two of those actors (not counting Welles, of course) look like the same guys who were in the tailor scenes shown during One Man Band (I'm not sure of either of their names off-hand, though). I wonder if they were related in some way (or what the purpose of the tailor scene was anyway, despite its self-deprecating humor...."I presume that's your wallet, sir?" "No, that's me!"), since it was never really clarified in the documentary (or at least in the German version)

[Roger Ryan]

Yes, the "Gentlemen's Club" footage was intended to be part of the "Swinging London" episode of "Orson's Bag", a proposed TV show circa late 60s/early 70s. "Stately Homes", the tailor sketch, the Winston Churchill parody and the "One-Man Band" routine were also related to this unfinished TV show. The Munich Film Museum has been showing the segments edited together under the title "Orson Welles' London". I believe that Oja Kodar has told that Welles was very disappointed to have lost the dialogue track to the "Gentlemen's Club" as he thought this was the best of the "London" segments. Either way, it's great to see it just for Welles' expert make-up work (he did it all himself) to create four distinct caricatures.

[Store Hadji]

Fantastic make-up in that sequence. Too bad Welles didn't redub the dialogue later.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Great makeup, terrible comic pacing.
Welles desperately wanted to do comedy, but he just couldn't pull it off. [His unfunny cameo in CATCH-22 is downright painful to watch.]
No wonder ORSON'S BAG was never picked up by CBS. Had Welles succeeded in lining up interviews with Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Charles Lindbergh, the show might have been broadcast. I believe Welles also sent an interview request to Howard Hughes (via Noah Dietrich, CEO of the Hughes empire). This would have been around the time that Welles was working on F FOR FAKE.

[Store Hadji]

Hard for me to judge the timing without a soundtrack, though you may be right.

Welles was capable of being very funny in the Almanac radio series, though usually it was due to some ad-lib, not due to the scripts (which weren't great comedy.)

[Roger Ryan]

For accuracy's sake, the segment is now officially known as "Four Clubmen" and was actually shot in the exact same room as the tailor sketch with a few book shelves added. If Welles lacked a sense of comic timing (not convinced of this since the comedy in "Chimes At Midnight" plays quite well in my opinion), he did know how to emphasize humor with his camera placement. The framing in "Four Clubmen" made me laugh even without the audio and that wonderful shot in "The Trial" where the guard does that long walk to the camera along the catwalk is hilarious. Also, the Night Man scenes in TOE are framed and timed for maximum humor.

[Kevin Loy]

As far as comedy goes in the realm of Welles...well, humor is a very personalized thing for everybody. Without going into the scientific hubris, there are some people who think that Adam Sandler screaming like an incessant man-child is absolutely hilarious, while there are others who prefer humorous word-play, or clever sight gags, etc. I have to say that, while I don't think Welles was the greatest screen comedian ever, I don't think he was completely terrible. Granted, there were actors in his films who were certainly funnier than he was (the scene in Ambersons when Fanny starts shrieking at George right after the ball is pretty funny), and I think that was the key to whether his comedy worked or not.

I guess the argument regarding timing is worthwhile as well, though that has plagued a lot of directors. For example, a lot of people think that the end of the scene where James Gregory asks Angela Landsbury to give him "one simple number that would be easy for me to remember" in The Manchurian Candidate is pretty hilarious, but by the time that he delivered the punchline, I had already chuckled a bit (I mean, the bottle of Heinz was way too obvious) and moved on with the picture (myself personally, I found more humor in the incredibly bizarre conversation on the train..."Are you Arabic?"). Clever? Yes, but I also think that, say, a Biff Rose record from the late-60s is pretty clever as well, and I'm more likely to laugh at that.

That having been said, I think that the major part of the problem with "Swinging London" is that Welles was trying his hand at what is particularly (if you'll pardon the expression) British humor with those segments. Out of all of them, I thought that the tailor and Plumfield Manor segments were amusing, the Churchill bit was okay (but not nearly as amusing), and the "Carnaby Street" was over-done (though Orson's 'singing' is pretty funny). Overall, though, it certainly didn't leave me in stitches.

[jaime marzol]

funny. in florida a gentleman's club is where losers go to see naked women. in london it's where gentlemen go to get away from women. i don't suppose they have naked women in the gentlemen's clubs in london? so you don't need a lot of one dollar bills.

[Kevin Loy]

I never did think about that, though now that you mention it, I wonder if that title (at least here in the states) is a direct jab at the perceived prudishness of England (I should say "cliched prudishness") in contrast to the "liberated thoughts" of America (it is to laugh). Of course, any gentlemen's club is supposed to be a haven for discussion and thought...but something tells me that the US off-shoot is generally just a place for one sort of thought.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Perhaps Welles could direct humor better than he could play it. Or maybe it was the other way around. The man had a sense of humor, no question. That Bacchic Brobdingnagian laughter! But that didn't mean he had a gift for comedy, although I loved his smiling cobra Harry Lime, and Hank Quinlan had some funny moments (i.e. asking for a candy bar at the crime scene, fondling a bird egg and then crushing it accidentally). Welles' cynical adman Jonathan Lute in "I'll Never Forget What's'isname" is funny – Harry Lime cubed and gone to seed. Yeah, Lute is a hoot.
Outfitted like a deep sea diver, fat Jack Falstaff lurches across the smoky battlefield in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. I don't know why that scene always gets such a big laugh (its technical shoddiness might be a factor).
As Welles aged and became more obese, magisterial, bearded, sweaty and breathy, his acting suffered for it. Towards the end, he could no longer play a part convincingly. He was always Orson Welles, the ever expanding Personality. His work lost its edge and became more portentous and pretentious. THE DREAMERS looks like THE NIGHTMARES. It's sad watching the Vesuvian Welles trying to be amusing on all those Dean Martin roasts in the 70s and 80s. When it came to a sense of comic timing, Welles just didn't have "it".
And here he was lecturing Second City veteran Mike Nichols on the fine art of comedy while rehearsing his scenes as General Dreedle on the set of Catch-22. Sheesh!

[LA]

His work lost its edge and became more portentous and pretentious. THE DREAMERS looks like THE NIGHTMARES.

Well, you've probably seen more of that footage than I have, but what I've seen looks quite beautiful, far from pretentious, although I suppose it could be described as portentous if we take that to mean "momentous" or "awe-inspiring".

I don't think a slim, clean-shaven Welles with a perfectly dry face could have saved Where Is Parsifal?. Having said that, he does do something with the line about "the far-flung icy steppes of Chicago" (paraphrased) which made me laugh, though he didn't have much competition in that bizarrely awful film.

[jaime marzol]

i feel the opposite as harvey, and i've seen a lot of footage. the older welles got the more his work fascinates, and thrills me.

on gentlemen's clubs:
i think some club owner looking for something classy to put on his sign probaby coined it here in america to fit his bill. it is funny when you look at the cliche of our 2 cultures back to back. our gentlemen want to drink, drug, and cavort with naked women, and england's gentlement sit around in suits and do snuff while talking through their mustaches.

[Glenn Anders]

You might want to consider all the comedy guest appearances Welles made on American Radio, in the late 1930's and early 1940's, when he had considerable fame. An examination of his work on The Jack Benny Show, Charlie McCarthy, Rudy Vallee, etc., will show, I believe, the establishment of a pattern. He is presented as "a genius" who needs to be brought down, or a creator of very difficult dramatic concepts which must be parodied, or paradoxically, a figure not quite up to his reputation (as in his turns with "Jack" Barrymore.) References are made occasionally, even back then, to his weight problem.

The Jack Benny style seems to have been his model in comedy for a mass audience. Of course, over time, that style has not worn so well.

It seems self-serving, corny now, rather than self-deprecating.

Welles' humor was best when it was gentle, human, and off the cuff.

Glenn

[LA]

the older welles got the more his work fascinates, and thrills me.

Same here. It's probably, as I suspected, a question of taste.

...as is the fact that I found what little I've seen of Jack Benny quite funny. I haven't heard his radio stuff though. I'm always put off "old time radio" by the massive quantity of messages for sponsors. The Shadow is particularly amusing in that department - there's only about sixteen minutes of story in every episode, if memory serves.