By RAY KELLY
American: An Odyssey to 1947, a documentary that looks at Orson Welles’ life against the political landscape of the 1930s and ’40s, will have its premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival on October 13-20.
Writer-director Danny Wu (My Life in China During a Pandemic, Square One: Michael Jackson) told Wellesnet his documentary will span Welles’ life from his days at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, to arriving in Hollywood to direct Citizen Kane to his decision to leave for Europe during in the late 1940s. It is centered on his life and U.S. politics.
American will feature a collection of stories leading to the year 1947, one of which delving into Welles’ crusade to bring to justice the police officer who blinded Black serviceman Isaac Woodard.
In addition to talking to Woodard’s relatives, Wu has interviewed film scholars and authors Simon Callow, Harlon Lebo, Richard France, Catherine Benamou, Todd Tarbox, James Naremore, and Robert Carringer.
Wu sees Welles as someone “very politically educated, that he was very ahead of his time, and for the most part very consistent.”
“He stuck to his beliefs, even if it meant damaging his reputation, or losing ticket sales,” Wu said.
Audiences will see American for the first time on October 20, closing night of the Newport Beach Film Festival.
Wu graciously fielded a few questions about Welles, politics and American and shared a trailer for the film below.
American looks at Welles’s life and career in terms of the American political landscape. How much was he a product of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies?
I feel that for a lot of people, Orson’s career started with the War of the Worlds, and was an overnight success from there on out. For us, through the first half of our film, I really wanted to show the magic of Orson’s steady consistent rise to the top. When I look at Welles’ body of work, I feel that the two most important avenues to his growth as a creator were: 1 at the Todd School. and 2, with the WPA. Like the Todd School, I feel Orson benefited tremendously from working within the WPA system, and to be able to grow in a trial and error type of environment with (John) Houseman taking care of the logistics. I believe being able to just focus on his craft was instrumental to his growth as an artist. One can make the argument that without the New Deal, we wouldn’t have Orson Welles. I wouldn’t go that far, as in I don’t think he was so much a product of the New Deal, but I feel that the New Deal gave Orson an opportunity and space to develop in a way that would have been much more difficult without. And I also think from Orson’s point of view, the friendships he developed from the WPA, and seeing the attacks against the WPA from the reactionaries at the time, I feel that significantly shaped him politically as well.
Welles campaigned for FDR. How close was he to the president?
This is a bit of a subject that really interested me as well. I think if you ask 10 Welles or FDR scholars, you would get extremely different answers. In my opinion, was Orson a part of the Roosevelt brain trust? Probably not. But I feel to say there is no relationship between the two is equally disingenuous. What we know for sure is that Roosevelt respected the opinions of Orson Welles, Welles made suggestions to Roosevelt’s fourth campaign, travelled intensively to make speeches for FDR, and FDR even let Welles stand in for him in a “debate” with Thomas Dewey. When reading their correspondences, I get the sense FDR was someone that Welles had the utmost respect for, and Welles had even requested to visit the White House for a private meeting but was unable to because of an illness. In the film, it’s not really a subject that we dive too deep into, we really just show the deep respect they had for one another, and let the audience decide for themselves on that relationship.
Welles was classified 4-F by the draft board and did not serve in World War II. What contributions did he make to the war effort?
I think most significantly would be his involvement in the shooting of the government film It’s All True. There is a great documentary on that process that came out in 1993 that was made possible by my friend Catherine Benamou, who later went on to write a great book on that process as well. In our film, we really try to examine the difficult position that Welles was put in, with himself balancing what was happening in Hollywood, and what was happening in Brazil at the same time.
What impact did his radio program, Orson Welles Commentaries, have on the Truman administration and subsequent U.S. Department of Justice probe into the Isaac Woodard attack?
Without Welles’ commentaries, and his conviction to the case, the story would not have gotten nearly the amount of press that it did. The NAACP even stated that these broadcasts alone did more than anything to bring the case to the attention of the DOJ. However, I believe the bigger impact was the domino effect the case had on the civil rights movement. And this applies not only to Welles, but also to everyone who helped in the Woodard case at the time, including Joe Louis, and most importantly Woodard himself.
Julian Bond once said that the Isaac Woodard case was the spark that ignited the civil rights movement, and I believe he is correct. It laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement to follow, and was the reason for Truman to form the first council on civil rights, the first in the country.
Do you believe Welles left Hollywood in the late 1940s because of dwindling career opportunities, or was it as a result of his progressive politics and the House Un-American Activities Committee blacklist?
This is probably a question where I’m more comfortable to answer once people have seen the film, as it is one of the central themes that moves the story forward. It kind of acts as our Rosebud, why did Orson leave America? But for me right now, I don’t think it’s an either or question. But given the extreme difficult circumstances at the time, the decision was a relatively easy one.
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(American: An Odyssey to 1947 will be shown at the Newport Beach Film Festival on October 20 at 5 p.m. For tickets, visit nbff2022.eventive.org/
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