(Editor’s note: Jonathan Lynn is best known as the director of such films as My Cousin Vinny and The Whole Nine Yards, as well as co-creator of the TV series Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. As an actor, he appeared in the Tailors, Four Clubmen and Merchant of Venice segments of Orson Welles unfinished 1969 CBS television project Orson’s Bag. During production, Lynn talked with Welles about subjects ranging from Citizen Kane to the Hollywood blacklist. He was gracious to share with Wellesnet the chapter on working with Orson Welles from his upcoming memoir.)
By JONATHAN LYNN
I received a call from Orson Welles’ manager asking me if I could go to Italy right away and do some filming for Mr Welles. I was twenty-five and and had acted in one film before, for one day. Of course I said yes, and embarked on my greatest adventure yet.
The film was tentatively titled Orson’s Bag and was to be a CBS TV ‘Special’. Orson was not only a brilliant film-maker, he was a ham and an entertainer and the show was to feature him in a variety of roles. He was to do some sleight of hand and a couple of illusions from his Las Vegas magic act, there was to be a cooking segment (he was, as you might imagine, a serious cook), a “swinging London” segment, and a Harry Lime segment in which he revisited Vienna but was too fat to get down the manhole into the sewer. Finally there would be a potted version of The Merchant Of Venice consisting of all of Shylock’s scenes.
I received a bunch of scenes to look at on the plane: a sketch with three elderly British colonels and a one-hundred year old butler in a Pall Mall club. I was to play the butler. It didn’t say who was playing any of the Colonels. There was another sketch in a bespoke tailor’s on Savile Row, in which Charles Gray and I were to play tailors (my fifth tailor in four years, Motel in Fiddler On The Roof and four others on TV as a result of type casting)) and Welles was to be an American customer whom they mocked. And finally, a copy of The Merchant, with instructions to learn the part of Lancelot Gobbo. The idea of the film was loosely explained to me by his manager, Anne Rogers, who had the dogged air of Margaret Rutherford. I had asked Anne how I got the part and she said that the writers of two of the sketches had recommended me, plus he’d seen my photo and okayed it. The writers turned out to be Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor, whom Welles had seen in a TV series called Broaden Your Mind, thought were funny and had hired to write the swinging London material.
I knew little about Welles. I’d admired Citizen Kane, of course, though without fully grasping the brilliance and revolutionary style of the film. I’d seen a couple of his other films too. All I really knew was that he was a legend. I assumed that because I was being flown to Venice I would be starting with Lancelot Gobbo so I tried to learn it and understand it. It wsn’t easy and I was pretty nervous.
I was met at the airport by the friendly assistant director, a bespectacled and earnest young ex-public school chap named Dorian [Bond]. I had acted in one film before so I knew enough to be surprised that Welles’s A.D. could be spared to meet me. This is normally just done by a driver. “Oh,” said Dorian, “we’re not shooting today.” It was a week-day. I wondered why. We set off in the car and drove away from Venice. It turned out that the filming was in Asolo, a small town in the hills about thirty miles away, and that we were all staying at the Villa Cipriani, the sister hotel to Cipriani’s, one of the grandest in Venice.
We arrived late in the evening. Dorian showed me to my room. Hanging there was a tailcoat, white shirt, black bow tie and black shoes. “There’s the butler’s costume. Mr Welles wants you on the set at seven-thirty am, ready in costume and make-up.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where do I go for make-up?”
“There’s no make-up department,” he said. “You do it yourself.”
“But…” I was stricken with anxiety. “It says in the script that the Butler is a hundred years old.”
“I know. Don’t suppose you brought any make-up with you?”
“No.”
Dorian sighed. “I’ll try and borrow some for you if you like. I’ll pick you up here at seven am.” And he was gone. I had a sleepless night.
The next morning Dorian showed me to the set, which turned out to be in the empty mansion next to the hotel. He ushered me in and promptly vanished. The room was shuttered and dark, with a stripe of dawn sunlight washing across the dusty parquet floor from one un-shuttered window. In the centre of the large empty room I saw the Legend himself, sitting on the floor, half in sunlight and half in shadow, with a felt tipped pen clutched in a massive fist, writing out his lines on big, white, home-made cue cards. He didn’t hear me come in. After a few moments I coughed nervously, to indicate my presence. He looked up and the magnificent bass voice resonated around the room.
“You must be the Butler.”
“Yes sir. Good morning sir.”
“What’s your name?”
I told him. He nodded. “Why aren’t you in make-up?”
“I’m sorry – I’m afraid I don’t know how to do it, sir.”
He was intrigued. “You don’t know how to do your own make-up? You’re an actor, are you not?”
“Yes. I know how to do my make-up for the theatre but I didn’t know – I thought – you know, on a film – and it says he’s supposed to be a hundred years old – so I thought…”
“Would you like me to do it for you?”
“Well, I mean, whatever you…” I petered out helplessly.
Mr Welles sighed deeply and heaved himself up from the floor. It took a while. He towered above me. He was mountainously overweight. He took me by the arm and led me gently to a little dressing table by the window. He sat me down and scrutinized my face closely, breathing old cigar fumes over me. Then he looked at the make-up on the table. It was old-fashioned theatrical greasepaint. He picked up sticks of 5 and 9 and applied them roughly, in stripes, all over my face. He rubbed it in till he was satisfied with the basic colour. Then, painstakingly, with various darker colours, he drew lines all over my face. After about fifteen minutes he seemed content. “ Take a look at that”. I looked in the mirror. To me it looked like an amateurish stage make-up.
“What do you think?” he asked.
What I had been thinking was: Orson Welles is doing my make-up! Now I looked in the mirror and thought: it’s ridiculous. My face looked like a cross between a road map and bad Indian war paint. But what I said was: “Whatever you think, sir.”
He studied me in the mirror, over my shoulder. “I think it’s good” he said, “but you’ll need white hair.” He handed me a white tube. “This is Meltonian white shoe polish, put it on. Or there’s a wig there, try that maybe. Now while you’re doing that I’ve got to get on with writing these idiot cards for myself.”
I thought, there’s no make-up artist, no hairdresser, no prop man and no drivers. While I was trying on the wig Welles started talking about the day’s work. “Today we’re doing the scene in the gentleman’s club in Pall Mall.”
“Who’s playing the three British Colonels?” I asked.
“I am.”
“All three?”
“Yes, I’m playing them all, old chap,” he added in a not-awfully-good English accent. Again I simply nodded. After a while the camera crew arrived and started setting up. I asked him why there was no make-up artist. “I hate them,” he said. “They always get in the way. Just when you’re ready to roll, they pop into the shot with their wretched little powder puff. By the time you get them out of the way, the moment’s gone.”
Other people gradually arrived at the set. His secretary Irene Purcell, a friendly young Australian woman and the production manager, another Australian called Bill Cronshaw. Soon it was time to rehearse. “I thought I’d be in these three old leather arm-chairs,” he explained. “ And as it starts with your entrance, come in through that door with a drink on a silver platter.”
“Very doddery?”
“Very. So doddery that you might not make it as far as my chair.”
We tried. He laughed. We tried it differently He laughed more. He was a wonderful, encouraging audience. We shot it several times and by then it was eleven am. “How about a little red wine?” he offered.
Carafes of red were sent for from the hotel. We had a wine break, and soon after I was free, while Orson shot some of the shots of himself. I offered to stand there as an off-screen eye-line, but he politely declined. Bill Cronshaw explained. “He’s insecure about other actors watching him acting. He clears the room, so it’s just him and the camera people. Or me holding the idiot cards, because he doesn’t give a stuff what I think.” He chuckled.
That afternoon Charles Gray arrived. Tall, suave and very upper class in aspect, I later learned that this was just his persona, an act, somewhat like Terry-Thomas before him, and that he was really a lower middle-class kid from Bournemouth. We sat on the terrace of the Villa Cipriani. The evening sun shone, the sky was orange and pink, we looked out over the olive trees and I was struck once again, as I so often am, by the extraordinary contrasts and ups-and-downs in the career that I had chosen. Extremely short of ready money, I asked Bill Cronshaw if I needed to cash travellers cheques, but he assured me that everything in the hotel was paid for. I thought of Rita, my new wife, in Primrose Hill and regretted that she couldn’t share the pleasure of this elegant five star hotel with me, the like of which neither of us had ever seen.
Dinner that night was with Orson (by this time I’d been invited to call him by his first name) at a large table in the corner of the Michelin-starred restaurant. He was pleased with me. He was delighted to meet Charles. I asked him one of those naïve questions, about whether he considered himself first and foremost a director, producer, writer, or actor? He replied, without hesitation, that he considered himself an actor first. It was immediately clear that he was happy in the company of actors whom he liked.
This, unfortunately, didn’t include Anthony Ainley, the third actor present at dinner. He asked Orson who his favourite film actor was and, before Orson could reply, added his opinion that Peter Sellers was the greatest of all. It was not this unfortunate man’s fault that he didn’t know that Orson hated Sellers, whom he had met when they worked together on Casino Royale, but it was clear within seconds. But not, sadly, to Anthony. I watched Orson change from genial host to brooding cloud as Anthony re-iterated again and again how funny, brilliant, dazzling, charming Peter Sellers was. Orson scowled and tried to change the subject but the unfortunate Anthony was still unable to see the signs.
Orson had reached dessert, and he chose the tarte tartin. After one taste he said “It’s burnt!”. He flipped it over and sure enough there was a burn on the bottom of the slice. Orson summoned a waiter, whom he berated, and then summoned the maitre d’hotel. Orson boomed at them about the absolute iniquity of serving a burnt dessert in a restaurant with pretensions to excellence. Both were grovellingly apologetic and wrung their hands like a pair of Uriah Heaps, but apparently not enough because Orson rose abruptly and swept over to the kitchen. He burst open the swing doors and we sat there quietly listening as he castigated the chef in Italian.
I woke up at six o’clock the following morning. I headed downstairs in case I was needed on set at seven or seven thirty. As I reached the top of the magnificent circular stairway I heard Orson’s unmistakable voice booming throughout the main lobby and Reception: “Dorian! Dorian! I want Anthony on the next plane to London.”
“Mr Welles, he’s in the scene this morning, it’s not finished.”
“I don’t care, just get him out of here. Take him to the airport.”
“But sir…”
“Dorian! You’re not listening to me, Dorian. Get rid of Anthony now!”
It was clear that the penalty for upsetting Mr Welles was that you were sent home in disgrace, never to return. At breakfast I asked Bill Cronshaw how they would complete Anthony’s scene without Anthony. Bill shrugged. “I expect he’ll ask me to stand-in. I’ll put on Anthony’s wig and coat and he’ll shoot it over my shoulder.”
“What’s the scene?”
“Part of The Merchant. In a powdered wig, from behind, nobody’ll ever know if it’s him or me.”
“But what about Anthony’s face. Won’t he need his face?”
“If Orson doesn’t like him, there’ll be very little of his face left in the final cut anyway.”
They finished the scene that day, as Bill had predicted. Mid-morning, I was told to get into my tailor’s outfit and Charles and I were summoned to the set, another room in the same house. Orson awaited us with a welcoming smile. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve put the mirror here for now. Here are a couple of tape measures. Put ‘em around your necks. We shot my entrance into the shop from the street, in London. So if I come in from over here, where would you like to be?”
Charles and I looked at each other. We had expected to be told what to do. He wasn’t going to speak, so I did. “Where’s the camera?” I asked.
“I have no idea. First we rehearse the scene, then I’ll decide how to shoot it.”
We had a lot of laughs as we rehearsed the scene and shot it in a completely relaxed atmosphere. It was obvious that my scenes from The Merchant were now imminent. I had learned Lancelot Gobbo’s lines but I had no clear picture of the character and I was becoming increasingly nervous.
Dinner that night without Anthony was a great success. There was a newcomer, Olga Palinkas, known as Oja, a Yugoslav actress who was Orson’s current (and last) big love affair. She was about twenty-seven and achingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful. And, to my surprise, she was also friendly and funny. Orson was on great form, telling funny stories, and he did his impression of Charlie Chaplin which, considering the difference in their size, magically caught the essence of the little tramp.
I asked him who his three favourite directors were. “John Ford, John Ford and John Ford,” he said. I learned years later that this was his standard answer.
“Why?”
“He never moved the camera. Every frame is perfectly composed. All the pace and all the energy comes from the cutting.”
“But you move the camera all the time.”
He smiled sadly. “I’m not John Ford.”
His cameraman on Citizen Kane had been John Ford’s cameraman Gregg Toland, and he told me how he and Toland had watched Stagecoach every day for six weeks, carefully discussing every shot in it. He reminisced about Kane, about how he had mistreated Dorothy Comingore because she couldn’t act well enough so he’d made her cry and sprayed stuff down her throat to make her hoarse; he felt badly about it now. He described how they did the shot where the camera goes up and over the nightclub in a thunderstorm and in through the skylight: it was a model shot, and the storm was necessary because the flash of lightning masked the cut as the camera went through the glass of the skylight. These tricks of the trade astonished me. He talked about how his biggest regret was that he’d portrayed Marion Davies so unfairly – everyone knew that Charles Foster Kane was based on William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies was his mistress. Welles acknowledged that she was a nice person and an excellent actress, but his film implied that she was as worthless as Susan Alexander Kane. I asked if that was why Hearst disliked the film so much.
“No. The film says that Kane is a failure. That was what he really hated. And, to be fair, it wasn’t completely true of Hearst.”
“Did you ever meet him?” I asked.
“Once,’ he said. “In an elevator. I offered him tickets for the premiere of Citizen Kane He didn’t answer.”
Hearst had tried to set him up when he was promoting the film. “I was out to dinner in Buffalo and a cop came up to me. He whispered: ‘Don’t go back to your hotel room tonight. There’s a naked fourteen year old girl waiting in your bed and a photographer hiding in the closet. I didn’t go back to my room. I stayed up and went to the airport in the morning. They were trying to set me up.”
After dinner I was having a quiet drink with him on the terrace when he sat down beside me. He discovered I’d never had a Bellini, a mixture of champagne and fresh peach juice that had been invented at Harry’s Bar, the third Cipriani establishment in the Venice area. Not only had I never had one, I’d never heard of one. He ordered one for each of us. I asked him what we were shooting tomorrow.
“Some of The Merchant.”
“I gather you’re doing all of Shylock’s scenes?”
“All except one. I’m cutting the scene with Tubal.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to make an anti-Semitic film. But I’m sorry, because it’s a magnificent scene. Such language!” ‘One of them showed me a ring he had of your daughter for a monkey’. And Shylock says: ‘Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.’ What a beautiful line. But the problem is, Shylock cares more about his ducats than his daughter. The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now: two thousand ducats in that; and my other precious previous jewels. – I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! Would she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin!’ ”
Orson didn’t need his idiot boards for Shakespeare. “It’s one of Shylock’s most moving speeches but he puts the ducats first. And the jewels. I’m sure Shakespeare didn’t want to make his play anti-Semitic but you see my problem. So I have to cut it, don’t you think?”
I didn’t immediately answer him, because I didn’t know whether Shakespeare meant the play to be anti-semitic. My own view was that he probably didn’t give it much thought, one way or the other. Jews were conventional villains at that time. I managed what I hoped was an ambiguous nod.
He wouldn’t let it go. “You see, this is for television. This isn’t just going to be seen by sophisticates in London and New York. This is going to be seen across America, by people who’ve never been to a theatre, people who’ve maybe never even heard of Shakespeare, rednecks, everyone. I don’t want to present Jews in that light. So I feel I have to cut the scene, don’t you agree?”
“If that’s what you feel,” I said.
“But don’t you agree?”
He was demanding my opinion. I felt that I couldn’t lie. I had seen O’Toole’s great performance of Shylock at Stratford. I knew that it could be played with sympathy. “Well,” I said, “losing Jessica is a big moment in the play. Isn’t it an important scene? She stole from him and she betrayed him. She has married out, she married one of the Christians. She’s already dead to Shylock. So if you’re right that Shakespeare didn’t intend to write an anti-Semitic play, maybe there’s a way to make it work within your interpretation.”
His face clouded over. He sighed deeply, looked away and frowned. Then he ordered another Bellini for himself but – significantly – not for me. My heart sank. Why had I opened my big mouth? We sat in silence. The only sound was loud rhythmic hiss of the cicadas. His Bellini arrived. He picked it up, grunted goodnight, and plodded off to his room.
When I came down for breakfast crew people were sitting there in the dining room. Bill and Irene were there too. “What’s happening today?” I asked Dorian, looking for straws in the wind.
“I don’t know. He hasn’t told me yet.”
At that moment Welles hove into view. He sat down. Everyone looked at him, waiting for the day’s plan. He cast a brief glance in my direction, waited until the waiter poured his coffee, sipped it, and nodded in my direction. “Jon was needling me last night,” he said.
“No, I wasn’t, really…” I interjected.
“Jon was needling me last night,” he boomingly insisted. “He thinks there’s must be a way to make the Tubal scene work within my interpretation. He thinks I shouldn’t cut the scene. He thinks it’s a mistake to do that.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Quick as a flash: “That’s what Jon thinks.” He looked around the table, waiting for a response. Nobody spoke. Everybody averted their eyes. They were all wondering who should drive me to the airport. Orson continued: “And I think Jon’s right. So today we’re going to shoot the Tubal scene. And Jon’s going to play Tubal!”
And he smiled at me. From that moment on I could do nothing wrong.
* * *
Later that day we were out in the streets of Asolo, shooting my part of the scene. His shots were to be done later, without me of course, in another location. This was the first time that I realized that a film director can create geography and architecture. By shooting one view of the scene in front of a Venetian style building in Asolo and by shooting the reverse view a few weeks later in front of a different Venetian building in Split, Yugoslavia, Orson created a Venetian piazza on film that doesn’t exist in reality, without using any sets, visual effects or trick shots.
We spent the morning on the shot of my arrival with the bad news about Jessica. It took a long time because the sun kept going in and coming out during takes. There was also much traffic noise and aircraft above us en route to Venice but unlike a British or American director he didn’t care about that. “We dub it all later,” he said. “There’s no live sound in Fellini or Visconti, they just shoot a guide track, did you know that? Much quicker to shoot.”
There was a flaw in this approach. Months later I met the editor of Chimes At Midnight, a brilliant film by Welles about Sir John Falstaff, adapted from Shakespeare’s histories using pieces from Richard II to Henry V. This was his last masterpiece and, Welles told me, “my best film”. When it was being edited in Rome the editor didn’t have an accurate script because Welles hadn’t wanted a continuity girl on the picture (he felt about them the way he felt about make-up artists) and, to complicate things further, much of the guide track had been lost. So although the images were beautiful and the story seemed to be working he didn’t always know what the actors were saying. Before Welles left town the editor asked if he had a copy of the script. Welles said he would give it to him when they discussed the cut on the way to the airport. Outside check-in, Welles got out of the limousine and handed a package to the editor. “Here’s the script.” Relieved, the editor took it back to the cutting room, opened it – and found a copy of Shakespeare’s histories.
After a few false starts Orson got a take of my arrival that he liked. “Cut. Print that. Let’s move on.” He looked at me. “Happy with that?”
“Well…”
“What?”
“I think I can do it better.”
“It was fine. I liked it. There was nothing wrong with it.”
“Okay,” I said.
He studied me. “But you think you can do it better?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He turned to the crew. “Okay, we’re going again. Same set-up.”
We did it again. Orson beamed at me. “You were right. That was better.” He turned to the crew. “Always listen to the actor.”
We were filming close to a café. He was telling me again that he considered himself an actor first and foremost when the proprietor, emerging with several carafes of red wine and glasses for all, interrupted us. Welles graciously accepted the wine, insisted that a glass be poured for everyone, and we sipped it. It was pretty rough and, knowing what Welles was like on the night of the burnt tarte tartin, I expected the worst. I was completely wrong. Welles pronounced it delicious, urged everyone to taste it and proposed a toast to the proprietor. Everyone applauded. Later that afternoon I asked him if he really thought it was good wine. “No,” he said. “But it was the best he had, he had no pretensions, he was hospitable and generous. He deserved our respect and thanks.”
That night at dinner the conversation turned to Josephine Baker, the black American singer who was currently playing at the Venice Lido. I had never heard of her. Orson was shocked and said that this had to be remedied immediately. Filming stopped at lunchtime the next day, a limo arrived to collect Charles Gray, Bill Cronshaw and me and off we went to Venice. There was heavy traffic so we got there too late for dinner before the show, which had been Orson’s plan for us. Instead we took a boat straight down the Grand Canal at sunset and across the lagoon to the Lido. This was first time I saw Venice, on a beautiful clear autumn evening. I had never seen anything so astonishing in my life and I still haven’t. Perhaps there isn’t anything more astonishing to see. Josephine Baker’s show was slightly mystifying; I knew nothing of her legendary life and achievements and all I saw was an elderly black lady singing with verve but not much else. There was a geriatric audience who loved her. She had great charm.
We took a vaporetto back across the lagoon, disembarked at the Palazzo Ducale and walked into Piazza San Marco. It was just before midnight and off-season. The square was completely empty, apart from the three of us. There was a full moon, a cloudless sky and thousands of stars shone brightly. I was unbelievably fortunate that the first time I saw the piazza it was empty, moonlit and magical.
Orson had been feeling a little seedy and was glad he gave himself the time off. The next day, between set-ups, Orson hung out on the lawn and chatted. He reminisced about his favourite actors. “I love Johnny G and Ralphy,” he said with passion and I believe he really did. “I don’t care for Larry.” He told me how he thought his biggest problem as an actor was his little snub nose. “I’m always changing it, every movie. It has no… no presence. No authority. It looks silly.” He chuckled. “I’m like Larry. He’s always worrying about his skinny legs, and padding them under his tights.” We talked about Don Stewart [Donald Ogden Stewart, screen writer of The Philadelphia Story and many many others, an ex-patriot refugee in London from the House Un-american activities Committee, and a friend of mine] and the Hollywood blacklist. “Iniquitous,” he said. “The whole thing. The people who ran the blacklist like Ward Bond and Ronnie Reagan and the studio chiefs, they were the worst. The guys that named names –“ he shrugged – “I sympathize with those who were protecting their families but the ones who named names to protect their swimming pools…” He sighed.
“Were you involved in any way?”
“I’m a liberal. I was never a Communist. I don’t know how they could all have been so foolish as to join: some were blacklisted, some went to jail, some named names, they all brought it on themselves by being so dumb to begin with.”
“Do you know any of the people who named names?”
“Most of them.”
“Are you on speaking terms with them?”
“Yes. I think it’s childish not to be on speaking terms with people. You can say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ to anybody. I think that Dalton Trumbo, one of the original Hollywood Ten and the writer of Exodus and Spartacus was right when he summed up the whole sorry story and said of those who were blacklisted and those who named names “We were all victims.”
On my last evening at Asolo I discovered that Welles was a committed practical joker. He told me this story: “Years ago, back in Hollywood, I was making a picture. I was the writer and producer and I was starring in it, but I was not directing it so I had time to spare. The picture had a very macho first assistant director. He was a big man, Texan, six foot four, kind of like Duke Wayne, and I heard that he hated homosexuals. So before we started shooting I got everyone to tell him that one of the duties of the first assistant on an Orson Welles picture was to stay behind on the set at 6 p.m. when we wrapped, and waltz with Mr Welles. I had everyone tell him this. I even paid for someone to fly out from the front office in New York to tell him. Anyway, when I walked on to the set on the first day of shooting, he broke out into a cold sweat!”
“Did you ever make him waltz with you?” I asked.
Orson looked at me with big, reproachful eyes. “How could you think I’d be so unsubtle? No. I’d just bring the conversation around to the latest Mantovani record.”
* * *
Soon the excitement was over. I’d done all my scenes. I was sent back to London carrying a dozen wig boxes, which aroused some suspicion with HM Custom and Excise. A couple of days after I was back in drab, wet London I got a call – the lab had scratched the negative so would I mind going out to Venice to do some of it again? Would I mind? I could hardly wait.
I was asked by Anne Rogers to take Orson’s coat and some cigars. The coat turned out to be the size of a small cashmere tent and the cigars were boxes of Churchill’s. When I got to Asolo the party resumed, just as before: magnificent food and wine every evening, occasional outings to Harry’s Bar near the Grand Canal (it was not a chain then) and anecdotes about Orson’s past. We talked one evening about The Third Man, which was and still is one of my favourite films and one of Orson’s great performances. I was astonished when he told me that he is only on screen for four minutes of the movie. He told me that when they fell behind schedule Carol Reed gave him a camera and asked him to direct some some second unit scenes, including the memorable scene where the cat finds Harry Lime hiding in a doorway. (I have since learned from Simon Callow that this story was a complete fabulation – Welles didn’t shoot any of The Third Man – but it never occurred to me that anyone would lie about a thing like that). Another night he told us how much he’d loved being a guest on the Dean Martin Show: Dean didn’t come to the rehearsals at all, preferring to rely on spontaneity, and when he finally showed up he was not nearly as drunk as he pretended to be when they were on the air. They met in the dressing room a few minutes before the show and he offered Orson a drink. Orson said no. “No?” said Dean Martin, jokingly shocked. “You can’t go out there alone.” It was Dean Martin who called his cue cards “idiot boards”. Orson adopted the term after that.
One night he told us about his voice over for Findus frozen peas. “An ad agency called and asked me to do a voice over. I said I would. Then they said would I please come in and audition. ‘Audition?’ I said. ‘Surely to God there’s someone in your little agency who knows what my voice sounds like?’ Well, they said they knew my voice but it was for the client. So I went in. I wanted the money, I was trying to finish Chimes At Midnight. I auditioned and they offered me the part! Well, they asked me to go to some little basement studio in Wardour Street to record it. I demanded payment in advance. After I’d gotten the cheque I told them ‘I can’t come to Wardour Street next week, I have to be in Paris.’ I told them to bring their little tape-recorder and meet me at the Georges Cinq Hotel next Wednesday at eleven am. So they flew over to Paris, came to the hotel at eleven – and were told that I had checked out the day before.” He chortled happily. “I left them a message telling them to call me at the Gritti Palace in Venice. They did, and I told them to meet me there on Friday. When they got there I was gone – they found a message telling them to come to Vienna.” Now he was laughing uproariously. “I made them chase me all around Europe with their shitty little tape recorder for ten days. They were sorry they made me audition.”
Later, back in England, I heard that there was a bootleg copy of the Orson Welles Findus recording session going around. I got a copy. Here’s part of the transcript:
Orson: “We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs. Buckley lives. Every July, peas grow there.”
Producer: That’s “In July”… can you emphasize the “In”? (Pause). “In July”.
Orson: There’s no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin it with ‘in’ and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say “In July” and I’ll go down on you.
Second Producer: I think all we were thinking about is that they didn’t want to…
Orson: He isn’t thinking!
Second Producer: Listen, can I just say one last…
Orson: Yeah?
Second Producer: It was my fault… I said “In July”… Could you believe “Every July”?
Orson: You didn’t say it. He said it. (scathing:) Your friend.
Producer: It’s “Every July.”
Orson: “Every July?”
Producer: So after the —
Orson: No you don’t really mean every July? That’s bad copy, it’s “In July”, of course it’s not every July. There’s too much directing around here!… Here, under protest! is “Beef burgers”. (Pause). “We know a little place in the American far west where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie fed beef and tastes” – this is a lot of shit, you know that?
Second Producer: Yeah.
Orson: You want one more?
Producer: Yeah, because we didn’t get the right reading…
Orson: The right reading is the one I gave you… I spend twenty times more time for you people than any other commercial I’ve ever made… you are such pests. Now what is it you want?
Producer: Nothing.
Orson: In your depths of your ignorance – what is it you want? Whatever it is you want I just can’t deliver it ‘cause I just can’t see it.
Producer: That’s, that’s absolutely fine. It really was.
Orson: No money is worth this shit.
* * *
My screenplay of A Proper Man wasn’t getting anywhere, in spite of Christopher Miles’ interest. One evening I plucked up the courage to mention it to Orson. I told him the story of how Gielgud had liked it and asked if he would read it. He said he would. I was surprised however, on the evening before I left, when Orson asked me to have a drink with him after dinner and discussed my script with me in considerable detail. He had read it with care and respect. My second week with Orson had been as joyful as the first. I returned to London with various packages and a certain sadness that it was over, only to be summoned again a few days later, this time for re-shoots. He’d had some new thoughts.
By now, filming with Orson was becoming a way of life. He was sufficiently relaxed with me to ask me to stand behind the camera for his eye-line in Shylock’s dialogue with Tubal. I was fascinated by how he kept the film rolling while he did a simple exit through a door about fifteen times in succession, all different, giving himself a huge choice in the cutting room.
He remained as charming to me as ever but I could see that there were tensions, and problems looming with CBS. They had given him a budget and the money. He was running out of it. And he was trying to pick up shots from other incomplete movies. He was planning a move to Split in Yugoslavia, now Croatia, where they had Venetian buildings and where he could complete Shylock and where there was also a Mediterranean coastline. He would be able to pick up shots for Dead Reckoning too, starring Jeanne Moreau. So I have to admit that I wasn’t wholly surprised when, a couple of weeks after my third and final visit to Asolo, I was phoned by Anne Rogers asking if I could spare some time to do a little more filming with Mr Welles in Yugoslavia. “The only thing is, she added, “would you mind taking a package for him?”
The front door bell rang the following morning at the appointed time. I went downstairs, expecting to find the usual car to take me to Heathrow, and instead I found a flustered Mrs Rogers in the hall. Beside her was an enormous thing, wrapped in canvas, about six feet high and four feet wide. “This is it,” she said. “Will this be all right? Can you manage it?”
How could I say no? “Of course. What is it?’
“It’s an inflatable dinghy. Mr Welles needs it for Dead Reckoning.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Thank you. By the way, there is one thing – Mr Welles says please don’t declare it to the Yugoslav Customs.”
Orson had arranged a Rolls Royce for me – or rather, for the dinghy, which with much pushing, pulling and shoving we somehow managed to stuff into the back seat. I checked it in at Heathrow, and at Split in Croatia I did what I was told: I didn’t declare it. It was simple: as it came out of the hold I organized four porters and a big baggage cart and we strolled right through without any questions being raised. Everyone assumed we were officially cleared – after all, who would be foolish enough to try to smuggle such a huge parcel into a communist country?
Orson was delighted when I saw him, but his delight was mitigated later in the day – he had told the Italian camera crew to do the same with their cameras, they had been caught, detained in jail and their equipment confiscated. It took a little while for that to be sorted out.
The food in the hotel in Split was pretty bad. Everything was greasy. This was designed, presumably, to fatten you up and help keep you warm in the winter. They could have even made a greasy boiled egg. If you ordered a steak, they poured all the fat over it onto your plate even if you begged them not to. The Italian film crew were not at all happy with the food and eventually downed tools, saying that they would only go back to work if Welles brought Italian caterers over to Split.
Another joyous week followed. We filmed bits and pieces, lunched in the only local restaurant that the Italian crew deemed acceptable, were offered local slivovitz by the proprietor, and Orson made a charming goodbye speech to me on my last day.
I was looking forward to seeing the finished film… but it was never finished. Orson either ran out of money, ideas or energy. It lies in bits and pieces on the shelf, among his many other incomplete films. Recently at an Orson Welles Retrospective in Los Angeles I saw some of my shots for the first time. The sound was missing, of course.
© Jonathan Lynn – All rights reserved
__________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.