By MIKE TEAL
Orson Welles’s birthplace and his adopted hometown have certainly done him proud this month.
Woodstock, Illinois, wrapped up its celebration last weekend and Kenosha, Wisconsin, concludes its events on Sunday. One nice thing about both of these festivals, is that they have gone beyond the idea of Orson Welles as a mere filmmaker (as great as he was at that) and focused on other, lesser known aspects of his creativity as well, including symposiums on theater, radio, politics, etc.
For example, University of Michigan PhD. student Vincent Longo offered a very interesting lecture at both cities on Welles’s drawing and paintings, a ‘la the paintings presented by Beatrice Welles during the Sedona International Film Festival in February.
Longo’s slideshow lecture featured a collection of Welles work that included well-known items such as the print of Welles as destitute king, which he called, “The King or the Fool?”, and much lesser known pieces, such as nice prints from Danton’s Death and costume designs from Faustus and other theatre works, including some good ones from the Around the World stage production.
For his films, Welles rarely did storyboards, but often did sketches. There were many good sketches for the abondoned Heart of Darkness film project presented, a beautiful knight on horseback sketch for Chimes at Midnight, and a sketch from the 1983 King Lear, which I had never seen anywhere before. What’s interesting is that in many of these cases, as Longo points out, Welles did not often do sketches of lead characters, but focused more on side or background characters. Part of his genius was his ability to focus on the background details as well as the foreground action.
Welles was also a compulsive doodler and did a lot of them for friends at holidays, etc. These are featured prominently in the lecture as well. As Longo said, if he loved you he would do a doodle for you. It was his way of showing affection.
Another interesting and little-known fact related to this (but on a more personal note), was that Welles attached many doodles in letters to his first two wives. These sometimes reflected and revealed the troubles in his marriages, but often just his state of mind. There are some bleak looking pictures of the first apartment where he and Virginia Nicholson first lived when he went to New York, but many of the doodles to his wives try to demonstrate how lonely he was without them. When they were away he would draw self-portraits looking gloomy. One sent to Virginia after the birth of their baby Christopher simply says, “Forgive Me”, sent while she was still in the hospital. As with many things Wellesian, those words don’t prove anything, but suggest a lot.
I suggested to Mr. Longo after the lecture that he should try to put all of this fascinating material into some kind of book, but he replied that obtaining the rights to these artworks for a book – as opposed to a lecture – would be a lot thornier.
Hopefully, others will be able to see this lecture in the future. It represents an unusual, but very valuable, piece of research, and was a delightful show.
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Vincent Longo may be reached at the University of Michigan, (248) 361-9292 or email vilongo@umich.edu
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