By RAY KELLY
Todd Tarbox, grandson of Orson Welles’ beloved mentor, Roger “Skipper” Hill, has recently published “Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts,” which recounts their life-long relationship in a series of candid and often moving conversations.
Available online through Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other major retailers, “Friendship” is essential reading for those interested in Welles’ formative years in Woodstock, Illinois, and at the Todd School for Boys, where Hill was headmaster.
Conversations range from Welles’ unfinished film projects to his concern over the impact of a visit by his middle daughter, Rebecca, to his ex-wife Rita Hayworth, who was battling Alzheimer’s disease. These talks between old friends provide a glimpse into the private side of Welles. It has deservingly earned accolades from Welles’ authors like Jonathan Rosenbaum, Peter Bogdanovich, Simon Callow and Joseph McBride.
Tarbox graciously took time to field questions about “Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts.”
What inspired you to write “Friendship” as a play in three acts?
I was motivated principally by my grandfather’s and Orson’s shared passion for theater. Such a format provides directness and intimacy. By being presented as a play, there is only a modicum of interjecting myself into the narrative. This is a story about two remarkable beings. A play allows them to speak for themselves, free of my editorializing.
Do you think Roger and Orson would have been happy to see it written for the theater?
I would like to believe that they would be pleased, and deem “our” script does justice to their unique friendship.
It is rare to find friendships that last for so long. What do you think is the secret of Roger and Orson’s enduring friendship?
From the day Orson entered the Todd Seminary for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois on September 15, 1926, until the day he died on October 15, 1985, he and Roger Hill had a lifelong bond founded on numerous mutual interests and enthusiasms that quickly developed into, life-sustaining unconditional love.
“The only real existence we have,” Orson opines wisely “is the people we love.” There’s little question that Orson and Roger contributed significantly to making one another’s existence exceedingly real.
It is obvious from Barbara Leaming’s book that Orson was jealous of your father, Hascy Tarbox, who married Joanne, one of Roger’s daughters. He felt a competition for your grandfather’s affection. Was your dad ever jealous of Roger’s friendship with Orson?
My father and grandfather’s mutual admiration and affection was no less than my grandfather’s bond with Orson.
Allow my father to respond to the question of his relationship with Orson from an interview in Michael Dawson’s “Citizen Welles Vol. One Cradle to Kane” documentary, taped in January 1987
Michael Dawson: Will you tell us a little bit about the circumstances under which you met Orson at Todd?
Hascy Tarbox: We met in 1930, if you can believe that there was such a thing as 1930. I had come into the school at mid-term. I met Welles inadvertently because I was not able to be in the chorus line. I had dimpled knees that looked pretty good, but I had no rhythm. This was for a musical that Roger Hill was doing with the kids. Welles was even less adept at dance than I. Instead, he was doing a magic act, and I wound up being a gopher for Orson… In fact, that was my role in life for Welles during the few years we were associated. I then became an assistant in his magic act. I managed, inadvertently, to screw up every act that he had during his segment in the musical. It began by my denting all his disappearing bottles by dropping the whole bunch. That started the relationship. I think that I hold the record for being the longest burr under Orson’s saddle. Going back to 1930 and up until his demise.
After Orson left Todd, contact was primarily through Roger and Hortense Hill. I felt that there was hostility and, strangely enough, the only thing I really ever truly envied about Welles—with all of his tremendous amount of acclaim and talent—was that he had a small trust. God, I envied that. We were children of the Depression and I thought it was the neatest thing that his old man left him a trust. It was symbolic of a “lucky guy.” We really never lost contact, only because of Joanne’s father and mother, who were constantly in touch and I was, at best, a peripheral subject in Orson’s life. I was dumbfounded to hear him say, through Barbara Leaming, “Don’t go talk with Tarbox, he hates me.” It is fantastic that he harbored this. Orson had stuck me somewhere in his mind’s eye forty years ago — I had the advantage of watching him slowly change and shift and sag and develop. It wasn’t reciprocal. Therefore he thought of me as a fair-haired youth. There is some insecurity behind all of this and it is based on a very shaky childhood. There is a certain parallel between the two of us, the same sort of shaky backgrounds, even to disavowing fathers. My father was six foot something and dark and big, and I am five something and short and fair. And Orson was always making the same sort of disparaging remarks about his father, who was short, and he was big. I think that the Todd School for Boys was the only security that Orson ever had. Not only was it security, it was unquestioned approval by the authority, the head honcho. I think that he truly envied me for not leaving. I married Joanne and went to work at the school for a while and always stayed closely in contact with the goings and comings of her father and mother.
Michael Dawson: When Orson Welles became famous, what were your feelings?
Hascy Tarbox: That is a very profound question. His early fame didn’t surprise me. Welles simply walked out of the Todd campus and onto the scene, and I expected it. That is how naive I was because I had lived a totally isolated existence, and had never been exposed to any of the vicissitudes of life. His celebrity didn’t surprise me. I just automatically expected him to carry on where he left off on the Todd campus, as to coveting any of that, no, quite to the contrary. I think we would all like a certain amount of recognition. However, I wasn’t biting my wrists because I wasn’t famous. Actually, I have an instinct to become a hermit, which is a predisposition not shared by Orson. When given a choice, I have withdrawn into my own insular existence by preference. I am the only guy I know who ran a freelance operation as an illustrator and designer with an unlisted telephone out in the country, feeling that it was perfectly normal and natural.
Todd, do you think Orson would have become the artist he became if not for Roger?
Emerson in his essay on self-reliance provides a partial answer: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages… Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
Without my grandfather in Orson’s life, there’s little doubt that his professional life would have been rich in creative accomplishment in any number of fields. However, had Roger Hill never crossed Orson’s path, and not played an integral role in his life, no doubt Orson’s real existence would have been greatly diminished.
What portrait would you like audiences to draw of Roger Hill and Orson Welles from “Friendship?”
I would like readers come away from “Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts” entertained and engaged by Roger and Orson’s lively and loving six-decade exchanges.
It’s also my hope the book provides the audience – in some small, subtle measure – a renewed appreciation of the importance of their friends, who expand and enrich their real existence.
Todd Tarbox was born in Chicago in 1944, and attended The Todd School for Boys until it closed. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of the Americas, Mexico, D.F., and a master’s in arts degree from Harvard University. He is the author of “See the World,” “Imagine,” and co-editor with his wife of “Footprints of Young Explorers.” He is completing “A Magical Presence,” a book of letters from his father, Hascy Tarbox, that span four decades, as well as working on a book about a childhood friend who possessed inestimable talent, charisma, and promise – valedictorian of his suburban Milwaukee high school, a student athlete at Yale, class secretary, All-Ivy linebacker – and the impact of his death in Hong Kong a month after graduating. Tarbox is the father of Hascy Tarbox II, who lives with his wife, Jennifer, and four-year-old son, Charles in Denver. Tarbox and his wife, Shirley, live in Barrington Hills, Illinois.
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