The conversations, recorded between 1983 and 1985, were edited by Peter Biskind and formed the basis of the best-seller “My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.”
Some Welles’ associates claim the late actor-director was unaware he was being recorded. At least one close associate declined to participate in the Radio 4 special “The Lost Tapes of Orson Welles.”
Jaglom maintained in an interview in February with Wellesnet that the tapes were made with Welles’ full cooperation. Jaglom said, the tapes and book “hides no warts from this very complex man, but blows away all the smoke and the crap, the myths and the lies.”
Britain’s The Guardian wrote of the BBC Radio 4 special:
Unlike so many celebrity interviews we get to hear today, these scratchy tapes are unfiltered by the pressures of public performance – neither party thought they’d be broadcast. Welles is still the great raconteur – but he’s also bitter, holding grudges against Hollywood and old colleagues; a wind-up merchant whose spur-of-the-moment rants (Irish-Americans: “They’ve become a new and terrible race”) are met with genuine amazement from the patient Jaglom (“I can’t believe you said that Orson!”). They also reveal someone who was lonely, the “shy and thin-skinned man underneath the bravado” – with Jaglom also witness to flashes of laughter, pleasure and the great ambition and drive that had made Welles such an original. In the second part, airing on Boxing Day next week, we’re promised more of Orson’s thoughts on work, competition and acting (his “only real disappointment”), as well as a story about how he used to get in trouble for keeping President Roosevelt up too late in the White House.
BBC Radio 4 will air the second installment of “The Lost Tapes of Orson Welles” on December 26.
Audio will be available online for a limited time at bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ls15g, though U.S. reisdents have had trouble accessing the player.
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