By RAY KELLY
Orson Welles was David O. Selznick’s first choice to star as the brooding Edward Rochester in a big screen treatment of Jane Eyre. And when the famed producer signed Welles to the project in the waning days of 1942, he got far more than just a leading man in the deal.
In addition to his onscreen performance, Welles was heavily involved in shaping the look and feel of the movie. He also enlisted several talents with ties to his Mercury Theatre to work on Jane Eyre.
John Houseman, Welles’ partner in the Mercury Theatre, had already been hired by Selznick to work on a screenplay during rehearsals for the Broadway production of Native Son in the spring of 1941. Selznick’s choice for director, Robert Stevenson, traveled to New York to work with Houseman on a script. The British-born Stevenson had been eyed by RKO Pictures to direct Journey into Fear when it acquired the rights to the Eric Ambler novel in 1941, but he instead helmed Joan of Paris.
Although Selznick wanted Welles to star as Rochester from the start, the potential lead was under contract to RKO and preoccupied with The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey into Fear and the aborted It’s All True during much of 1942. As luck would have it for Selznick, RKO fired Welles a few months before 20th Century Fox signed a deal for Jane Eyre in November 1942. Welles inked his contract the following month. He would be paid $100,000; get top billing over Oscar winner Joan Fontaine; and serve as the film’s associate producer. The sum equalled what Welles was paid by RKO to star, produce and direct in Citizen Kane.
Following his ouster from RKO, Welles was hoping to earn money as an actor to purchase the footage he had shot in Brazil for It’s All True and complete the Latin American documentary. A Moviola was provided for Welles to assemble some of the It’s All True material during his lunch breaks on Jane Eyre in an attempt to attract potential investors, according to biographer Barbara Leaming.
Decades later, Welles would tell Peter Bogdanovich he was happy to star in Jane Eyre, and never coveted the director’s chair held by Stevenson. “(It’s) not my kind of picture. I was delighted to act in it, and very happy to do it, but I would never have chosen it. I think if I had a chance of directing sixty movies, Jane Eyre wouldn’t be one of them.”
Welles was quite familiar with Charlotte Brontë’s gothic romance. Before filming began, he had already played Rochester twice on radio; first in a Mercury Theatre on the Air production in 1938 and again at the close of his Campbell Playhouse series in 1940. Welles used an acetate disc of the former radio broadcast to prepare for the film.
Welles, along with Aldous Huxley, rewrote the Houseman-Stevenson screenplay. He also prepared the movie sets, which included the oppressive Lowood School and gloomy Thornfield Hall.
During the production, Selznick asked that Welles be involved in casting the supporting roles “because I know few people in the history of the business who have shown such a talent for exact casting, and for digging up new people.”
Welles interviewed juvenile actresses and selected relative newcomer Elizabeth Taylor to play Jane’s childhood friend. He also chose four players from his Mercury Theatre – Agnes Moorehead, Erskine Sanford, Eustace Wyatt and Edith Barrett – for various roles.
Welles successfully lobbied 20th Century Fox to hire composer Bernard Herrmann, who had worked with Welles on radio and the films Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Herrmann would base part of his score for Jane Eyre on the music he had written several years earlier for the Mercury Theatre on the Air radio production of Rebecca.
With several Mercury Theatre actors on board, a Hermann score in place and Welles having a hand in both the script and sets, Jane Eyre had a distinctly Wellesian feel — even if Welles was not the director.
In her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, Fontaine recalled Welles arriving three hours late for the start of rehearsals with an entourage in tow. As expected by the cast and crew, Welles attempted to steer direction of the film, she wrote, but was undisciplined and preoccupied with other matters. Further, Welles could not keep up the position throughout the production and Stevenson regained the reins of Jane Eyre.
Stevenson’s widow, Ursula, and two of his children characterized him as low-key and not seeking the limelight in the 2007 documentary short Locked in the Tower: The Men Behind ‘Jane Eyre.’ Stevenson helmed more than 50 motion pictures during his career and earned an Academy Award nomination for Mary Poppins, but it was said that he considered Jane Eyre to be his greatest artistic achievement.
The Hollywood Reporter noted on April 8, 1943 that Welles would be receiving an onscreen credit as associate producer on Jane Eyre. A little more than a week later, Selznick fired off a memo to 20th Century Fox expressing concern that such a screen credit might undermine Stevenson in Hollywood.
“You know as well as I do that Orson is such a personality that if he is credited as a producer, Stevenson’s credit is likely to degenerate into something of a stooge status, as has occurred with Norman Foster on Journey into Fear — and, mind you, on Journey into Fear, Orson chose not even to have his own name appear in connection with the production.”
In the weeks that followed, Selznick was apparently made aware of the significance of Welles’ contribution. In a July 15, 1943 letter to 20th Century Fox, a Selznick attorney agreed to Welles receiving a producer credit: “We have only just learned that Mr. Welles did a great deal more producing on the picture than we had previously known. We have been informed by people from your studio that Mr. Welles worked on the sets, changes in the script, in casting, among other things, and that he had charge of the editing.”
Ultimately, Welles declined the associate producer screen credit that he had been promised in his contract.
Based on remarks Welles made 30 years later later, he may have appreciated Selznick’s concern that Stevenson’s role as the director of Jane Eyre might be diminished in some circles. While not downplaying his own considerable input, Welles acknowledged that Stevenson deserved credit as the film’s director and had been placed in a difficult situation.
“I invented some of the shots – that’s part of being that kind of producer,” Welles told Bogdanovich. “And I collaborated on it, but I didn’t come around behind the camera and direct it.”
“Certainly I did a lot more than a producer ought to, but Stevenson didn’t mind that. And I don’t want to take credit away from him, all of which he deserves. It was an impossible situation for him because the basic setup is wrong if an actor is also a producer – it shouldn’t happen. In fact, we got along very well and there was no trouble.”
Welles and Stevenson may have crossed professional paths again. Stevenson directed the propaganda film Know Your Ally – Britain for the U.S. War Department in 1944. The narration, which includes work by Walter Huston, is uncredited, but Welles is believed to be among those who lent their voices to the 42-minute film.
As for the Master of Thornfield, Welles did not bid farewell to Brontë’s Jane Eyre with the film’s release. He would reprise the role of Rochester on the airwaves again for the Lux Radio Theater in 1944 and the Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air two year later.
Thirty five years after Jane Eyre‘s release, Fontaine reflected on working with Welles in an interview with People magazine: “Everything about him is oversize, including his ego. He’s larger than life. I think he is much better combining directing and acting, because he wants control. And he’s right; he’s a genius.”
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