By RAY KELLY
Among Orson Welles’ final unrealized projects, perhaps none came closer to fruition than The Cradle Will Rock.
The autobiographical film would have been a retelling of Welles’ fabled 1937 Federal Theatre Project production of the controversial Marc Blitzstein musical on the labor movement. The government pulled support for the left-wing play before its opening, prompting Welles to march the audience to a shuttered theater for an improvised performance featuring Blitzstein as both cast and orchestra.
With an experienced producer at the helm and funding in place, Rupert Everett (Another Country) was tapped to play a 22-year-old Welles and Amy Irving (Micki + Maude) was cast as his first wife, Virginia Nicolson Welles.
Irving told The Washington Post in November 1984 that filming would start in two months. By January 1985, she was telling syndicated columnist Marilyn Beck shooting would begin the following month in Italy.
Welles pal John Huston revealed to The Los Angeles Times in May 1985 that The Cradle Will Rock producer Michael Fitzgerald — who had led Huston’s Wise Blood and Under the Volcano — was “having trouble getting a deal on a simply wonderful project called The Cradle Will Rock to be directed by Orson Welles. Orson! Can you imagine how many people want to see any picture Orson makes?”
Set construction was underway in Italy when the project collapsed that spring, according to executive producer John Landis, who laid the blame with Fitzgerald.
“Basically, the money people pulled out and it fell apart,” Landis said in a 2016 interview. “Like many of Orson’s projects it was a tragedy.”
Welles was crushed, telling biographer Barbara Leaming months before his death, ”This is the one I don’t understand at all. I don’t know how to write one more marketable. It just shows me that I really shouldn’t have stayed in this business, because it’s too ridiculous. I can’t keep any sort of integrity and make a more commercial project than this. It’s not expensive! There’s no rule that I haven’t observed.”
Proof of this can be found in an economical 36-page budget dated October 22, 1984, and Welles’ memos to the producers, now archived in the University of Michigan Library’s Special Collections.
The $5,570,000 budget specified a 55-day shoot — 50 days in Rome and the remaining five days in New York and possibly Los Angeles.
The detailed budget spells out the financial advantage of shooting in Rome rather than the U.S. Filming in Italy was $1.83 million cheaper than in the U.S. — a savings of nearly 25 percent. The movie would realize significant savings on production staff, additional talent and transportation, as well as camera and sound operations.
(There is an irony in a movie celebrating a pro-labor musical going out of its way to avoid having to deal with Hollywood unions.)
In an eight-page memo to production manager Tom Shaw, Welles discussed cost savings, unions and limiting the shoot in New York City to a day or two.
We have agreed that New York is where we begin, with L.A. (or wherever) following. That much has been settled. After that it’s pretty much what makes horse races. You would like to get a whole lot of the authentic “feel” of the city on the screen; and if we had one of those ridiculous big studio budgets to play with, I’d agree. But for exteriors we have mainly the long march from one theatre to another, which means block after block of “period” re-dressing. I have been spending some time in downtown L.A. and there are plenty of locations which, re-dressed, will do the job for us not only very well — but easier and cheaper. The same thing is, I believe, true of Denver and Seattle. L.A. is the easiest, but you may well have found that there are union reasons why we should stay clear of our home base…
ROCKEFELLER CENTER was there during the “March” in ’37, just as it is now — which means no special dressing whatever. In my view absolutely nothing else in the “March” sequence (that is, with the crowd going from theatre to theatre) requires or justifies going to New York at all. ROCKEFELLER CENTER — that is to say, the brief flashes we will use of it does not require any principal actors, or indeed any speaking parts unless (as per your suggestion) any of these actors live in New York, and would therefore have to be transported to the Coast rather than the other way around…
Shooting holes in the legend of Welles as a wastrel, he took pains in his memo to discuss how to keep the project on budget.
For example, the shots of Rockefeller Center would be accomplished from the street to avoid the expense of leasing of period automobiles.
Some Welles suggestions were simple — using a local script girl to record shots — and others more daring, like foregoing professional makeup artists. (“We’ll be returning to sanity and saving some money in the process.”)
Welles also discussed his plan to shoot the movie in black-and-white, cinematographer Gary Graver’s unspecified second unit role, and dubbing the audio for the New York scenes after filming. (“Why should we transport and pay, with living expenses, some gifted technician from Los Angeles whose work we won’t be using?”)
Most importantly, Welles insisted there was no need for producers to hire an art director because he could do it himself.
He also disclosed his plan to use assistants of top magicians (likely Jim Steinmeyer) to reproduce scenes from two Federal Theatre Project productions.
I was a set designer in the theatre and have worked as “Art Director”‘ on my own films whenever the job was simple enough not to interfere with my other work. In the case of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK we have only two brief sequences which call for what might rather pompously be called “Creative” art direction. These are the short scenes from the stage production of DOCTOR FAUSTUS and the dress rehearsal of the scenic version of THE CRADLE. I did the original and know precisely what will be needed for the movie adaptation. In a strange way, since both are in fact, illusions, both are really, in a way, magic tricks… And I do not mean Special Effects. The experts we need are not the high-priced specialists who whizz us out into the far corners of the galaxy. No, what we will be using are the technicians behind the star magicians you see on TV, where there’s always the promise (true) that “no camera trickery” will be employed. These guys, in their special field, are geniuses. I mean the men behind Doug Henning and Copperfield. What they deal in would absolutely flummox the best prop man, or the cleverest special effects man in the business. The two shows of which we have flashes in our movie were essentially magic shows, and that’s how they should be re-interpreted and realized on the screen. These are the only sets. They will be made, and made to function in a movie studio, by magical technicians. The other sets are real locations.
The memo adds weight to a comment the character of young Orson Welles makes to John Houseman in the unfilmed screenplay: “I never carry more than I spend.”
Beyond the budget, a six-page, draft contract between Welles and Fitzgerald’s Ithaca Films Inc., dba Cradle Productions Inc., addressed obvious concerns both parties had about creative control, communication and money.
Welles’ was promised final cut by Fitzgerald and the producers were guaranteed regular reports from Welles during the shoot.
The producers outlined a plan to disperse payments to Welles throughout the project, along with a sizable bonus for delivering The Cradle Will Rock on time and on budget.
The December 1, 1984 draft agreement submitted to Welles by Fitzgerald for his review included the following provisions:
- $200,000 to be paid to Welles for writing the screenplay; payable on the start of principal photography
- $300,000 for Welles to direct the film; 10% paid on commencement of rehearsals; 60% in equal weekly installments during principle photography; 15% on completion of dubbing and scoring; and the final 15% on completion of services.
- $200,000 bonus payable within 90 days after delivery of answer print but only if the film is “timely delivered within the budget mutually approved by you and Cradle (currently $5,570,000).
- First class airfare, and $3,000 daily non-accountable funds for expenses
- Welles would agree to exclusive services throughout principal photography; then first call, first priority until completion of the film
- Regular meetings between Welles and the producer’s representatives, specifically on matters involving changes in budget or schedule
- Final cut by Welles, provided the finished film was delivered within 16 weeks after the conclusion of principal photography
- “Written and directed by Orson Welles” credit both on screen and in paid advertisements
Sadly, it was all for naught. No other backers were found during what turned out to be the final months of Welles’ life.
It has been reported that shortly before Welles’ death The Cradle Will Rock budget was slashed to $3 million in an unsuccessful bid to attract European investors. (Welles infamously tried to entice Steven Spielberg, Irving’s then-husband, into backing the film over lunch at Ma Maison.)
The Cradle Will Rock was not resurrected by Fitzgerald after Welles’ death on October 10, 1985.
Welles’ screenplay was published as a limited edition hardcover book by Santa Teresa Press with an afterword by Jonathan Rosenbaum in October 1994. Some dealers now sell the book for as much as $89, though reasonably priced copies are available at a fraction of that price through James Pepper Rare Books of Santa Barbara, California.
When the story of Welles’ Depression-era stage collaboration with Blitzstein finally made it to the big screen, it was not based on the Welles script — and it arrived in a form he likely would not have appreciated.
Buena Vista Pictures released writer-director Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock on December 10, 1999. It was a fictionalized account that earned mixed reviews from critics and bombed at the box office.
The Chicago Sun-Times‘ Roger Ebert noted Angus Macfadyen’s depiction of young Welles “comes across as an obnoxious and often drunken genius,” while The Boston Herald‘s James Verniere described the character as “a preening, tantrum-throwing limousine liberal.”
Robbins’ movie took in less than $3 million at the box office worldwide — and it cost $36 million to make!
(Special thanks to Philip A. Hallman, curator for the University of Michigan Library’s Screen Arts Mavericks & Makers collections in Ann Arbor.)
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