A new podcast series based on the unpublished Polly Platt memoir It Was Worth It delves into her involvement in the The Other Side of the Wind and the relationship between Orson Welles and his collaborator, Oja Kodar.
The multi-episode Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman is part of the You Must Remember This podcasts produced by Karina Longworth. It details how Platt was dumped by then-husband Peter Bogdanovich, who fell for his The Last Picture Show star Cybill Shepherd. Platt, who died in 2011, went on to build her own successful Hollywood career with films like A Star in Born, Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment.
When her marriage ended, the mother of two felt she would be abandoned by Bogdanovich’s friends and high-profile contacts. But Frank Marshall, who was Bogdanovich’s assistant on Targets and location manager on The Last Picture Show, remained a good friend and later a houseguest.
In 1971, she was surprised when Welles asked her to come to Carefree, Arizona, and serve as a production designer on The Other Side of the Wind, which he was filming with Kodar. Platt brought Marshall and Neil Canton to work on the small crew.
Bogdanovich at that point had a relatively small part in Welles’ movie as a cineaste, though he would take on a much large role three years later.
“Orson and Oja had, of course, met Cybill with Peter and knew all about my shattered marriage,” Platt recalled. “Orson roared in the telephone line, ‘Come and work for me.’ I was more than grateful.”
Welles sent her shopping for ground beef, tapioca pudding, brandy and coffee before preparing a dinner of steak tartare. It was followed by brandy and watching the Arizona sunset before working on the script for the shoot.
“I was recovering from heartache and Orson was infinitely helpful about that,” Platt recalled. “He said, ‘You’re not unhappy. You would only be unhappy if Peter had left you for a woman as intelligent as you are. Don’t you know that Peter would rather be unhappy with Cybill than happy with you?’ Then he would laugh uproariously. It was infectious and I would laugh too.”
Welles, 56, was married to Paola Mori as he conducted his own an extramarital relationship with Kodar “willfully blind,” Platt says, that Kodar, 30, was having a passionate affair with a riding instructor during the filming of The Other Side of the Wind.
After a day of shooting, Platt recalled how the crew would listen as Kodar read from a novel she was writing about a woman living in Arizona with her older lover, while having an affair with a Russian horse riding instructor.
“Brilliant [Welles] would assert – clapping when she read her scenes to us. I didn’t find them brilliant at all and wondered why he pandered to her,” Platt said. “What Orson didn’t know, but I did, was that Oja was, in fact, having an affair with the Russian man who was teaching her how to ride.”
Kodar went riding with the instructor daily and “make mad love on the horse blankets… sometimes I would go out riding with Oja and I had to ride around alone in the desert until they were done,” Platt stated.
Platt recalled how Kodar would tell her how she and her riding instructor had sex in a cave, and the next day or so the lovemaking in the cave would turn up in her novel.
(For his part, Marshall tells Longworth in the podcast: “Looking back on all of this, Karina, when you look at the movie now and when I think back on how Oja was always naked – who knows what was going on. I was the innocent.”)
The more glamorous Kodar taught Platt how to apply makeup and false eyelashes. The two women would go to “local bars dressed to the nines and dance together to country western music,” Platt stated.
Platt recalled her time in Carefree as critical to her healing from a broken marriage and moving forward with her subsequent career as a producer and production designer.
“The adventures of Orson and Oja made me start living again,” Platt said.
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(Episode 4 of the podcast Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman can be streamed online at youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes)
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