New Yorker article

[NoFake]

From the main page:

This column features a hilarious riposte to The New Yorker magazine’s then recent article describing Welles’s new political activities as both columnist and speaker on world affairs. Apparently, The New Yorker sent along an attractive young female reporter (Juliette Riche) to draw Mr. Welles out about his serious new activities, but according to Welles, she ended up inventing much of what he told her!

Juliette Riche = the sneering, supercilious Julie Riche (OSOTW)? Fascinating...

[Glenn Anders]

Interesting, No Fake.

Is it possible that the writer of this passage was taking "the mickey out of you," what the English used to say? As someone requested of me, just the other day, do you have a source for this citation? The quotation refers to the New Yorker Magazine, but is ambiguous as to its specific source, date and subject matter .

You know how unscrupulous modern day hacks, fueled by Internet casualness and carelessness, may use material without attribution, and recently, I've begun to suspect that scamps like Todd Baesen and others (fair-weather "friends" of the kindly, open and supposedly naive Mr. Larry French) may have been putting us on with spurious references to solid critics and biographers like David Thomson, and then references to non-existent "critics" and fabricated figures. [Some claim that it has been going on for years!] Might "Juliette Riche" not be one of these?

I would think that, if a young reporter named Juliette Riche were assigned to then serious personages such as Orson Welles in the 1940's , and wrote whole cloth interviews of people like Welles, which were published in the New Yorker Magazine, there would be at least one reference to her in all of Googledom, aside from in your laconic forwarding.

And if you are correct in your tentative surmise, No Fake, we may be forced to believe that unaware Biographer Joseph McBride had Welles skewering two critical wolverines with one barb when he named his OSOTW character Juliette Riche. What a Wellsian irony! McBride, perhaps in ignorance, says in Whatever Happened to Orson Welles? that the character of Juliette Riche is supposed to be Pauline Kael. But the young New Yorker critic your anonymous writer (editor?) refers to, whose name Susan Strasberg carries in the film, is a better resemblance than that of the frumpy Ms. Kael.

[Curiously, McBride calls her "Juliette Riche." You call her "Julie Riche." And the IMDb lists her as simply "Juliet Rich." What's in a name, eh?]

Much has been made (especially here) of the damage Pauline Kael did to Welles' reputation by casting false aspersions on his authorship of CITIZEN KANE, but if one has ever read the notes Ms. Kael wrote for the Berkeley Cinema Guild in the late 1950's, when she was its manager/programmer (notes the theater re-used [basis of many an essay in I Lost it at the Movies], and which I read on coming to Frisco, after her departure, eventually for the New Yorker), it is clear how much she was in love with Welles' passion, talent, and courage; that she was a perceptive appreciator and booster of Welles and his latest films, at a time when we should remember Welles' stock was struggling in America. Much as she championed his truth-saying and movies, however, like many an amateur critic, she grew up, became a professional, and decided to separate hype and hoax from the reality.

On closer examination, you may find that you have presented us with an exotic and enigmatic box within a box . . . within a box. Welles would have appreciated that.

We must be vigilant nevertheless, No Fake, I'm sure you will agree.

Glenn Anders

[NoFake]

Glenn Anders wrote:

[Curiously, McBride calls her "Juliette Riche." You call her "Julie Riche." And the IMDb lists her as simply "Juliet Rich." What's in a name, eh?]

Actually, I got it from the screenplay (Locarno, 2005). But name spellings are inherently tricky.

On closer examination, you may find that you have presented us with an exotic and enigmatic box within a box . . . within a box. Welles would have appreciated that.

Indeed! Thorne Rooms, anyone...?

[Glenn Anders]

Gentlemen: My point was, did a New Yorker Magazine Journalist, "Juliette Riche," actually exist in 1945, as did, say, a Satinist grandmother of Orson Welles who was crazy about Aleister Crowley? The latter can be established, and the information contributes to previous discussions. If "Juliette Riche" published scurrilous material on Welles after an OSOTW-type interview, it is a wonderful irony, which challenges, perhaps, the conventional wisdom given to us by biographers respected here. If not, we are engaging in the kind of thing David Thomson is condemned for by wellesnetters, sometimes unfairly.

I do like David Thomson because he began as one of those amateurs I mentioned in my post, who as time went on, could not accept silently all the fabulism which had risen around his boyhood hero, Orson Welles. He has approached his biographical works on Welles with a mixture of admiration, regret and whimsey, a cocktail which has not gone down well with Todd Baesen and others.

So my central question remains unanswered, did Juliette Riche actually exist?

Meanwhile, I shall try to straighten out who is "keats," and who is "NoFake."

Thorne Rooms, indeed!

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

A-ha! Peter: Had I known that Mr. French was the provider of the ambiguous reference, I would have understood. He depends far too much on the stuff Baesen picks up in his Midnight revels. I've been away in the Napa Wine Country for a few glorious days, and I have not been catching up with all the great stuff you sent to Larry. However, not to simply whip poor Baesen again (who may enjoy it), the source does seem originally to come from you. Right?

I shall have to read the Orson Welles columns and French's editorial comments carefully before touching this subject again.

Yes, you are correct, I am an amateur, in the best sense, I hope. That's why I tend to defend David Thomson. We have both parted with some of our illusions about Welles, reluctantly. When I saw Moby Dick Rehearsed, which you mention, in the Summer of 1955, a boy of 15, David Thomson, was seeing CITIZEN KANE for the first time at the Tooting Bec Classic Theater. He fell in love with Orson Welles and his work, as I had nearly fourteen years earlier, as Pauline Kael had back then.

Thomson credits (and at times curses, I imagine) Welles with causing an obsession on him, which turned into the love of Movies and things Hollywood. He gradually became a professional, but he never could quite shake his first love.

After I returned from the service, it was still quite hard to find much positive criticism of Welles' movies. The process of changing him into a joke was well underway. Among the relatively few writers who shared my love for him were Pauline Kael and David Thomson.

That's why I don't condemn them for their gradual misgivings.

I have had them, too, mostly since I've started posting here, really.

Hope that explains my "progress."

Thank you for your praise. I appreciate it.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

As Orson Welles says in F FOR FAKE, and according to Francois Truffaut, FFF was Welles reply to Ms. Kael's attack on his authorship of CITIZEN KANE:

What does it really matter, the name of the author...

Of course, that sentiment, while poetic and dreamy, especially as spoken by Welles in F FOR FAKE standing outside of Chartes, is, in today's world, simply not realistic - as these days, the author matters quite a bit - especially, if for no other reason, than the amount of money he will get from the residuals!

Plus, if the author didn't matter, why did Welles himself go to such great lengths to attack Pauline Kael's article, which as Peter G. notes, did actually contain some good points, but was certainly very wrong about Welles not writing any of the script for CITIZEN KANE.

As for the anonymous writer of the New Yorker and Time magazine pieces from 1945, I will quote from Jean Cocteau:

"Whence did it come and who wrote it? Julie Rich? Perhaps. Another? Probably. Do we not become others the moment after we've done writing? A posthumous article? That too is probable; are we not today yesterday's dead? Antehumous? The thought is not impossible. We have our ears glued to the mothering wombs these days, eager to detect the first peep of the prenatal poem that will break the record in child prodigy class."

[Roger Ryan]

Did Larry attach the name "Juliette Riche" to the blog entry simply as an in-joke? You know, assuming that all of us would recognize that the New Yorker reporter could have been a "Juliette Riche"-type and have a little laugh?

[Glenn Anders]

Gentlemen: I think Roger has the correct interpretation. The reference to "Juliette Rich" is a David Thomsonian in-joke. I am meeting with Todd Baesen tonight in the cellar of the Ha-Ra Club, where he promises to confirm that fact, and so, Peter, I hope that you have not needlessly spent too much time in your cellar, digging out the original sources.

Baesen has also clarified that Jean Cocteau DID make the statement attributed to him above, but he made it in defense of a book of his own, having nothing to do with Welles. You have to watch Mr. French and Mr. Baesen, when Baesen is plying his benefactor with Gimlets. Fortunately, Baesen opens his wallet rarely, and often only a moth flies out of it.

As for Thomson as biographer, I consider him a "perceptive," and at times, an intuitive writer, one who involves himself in his subject (perhaps, occasionally, I'll grant you, too much). For instance, Peter, we can see those qualities in the example you bring up of Welles being the "one who channeled Orson's spirit to conjure up a rape scene between him an [sic] actress from CITIZEN KANE . . ." There is no shortage of tales about Welles, in his youth, being persuasive and "aggressive" with women.

At first, I thought you referred to an incident concerning the very young Ann Baxter leaping from Welles' car, her clothes torn and disheveled, during the production of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. But I could find no remark of it in Thomson's Rosebud, and of course, she had nothing to do with CITIZEN KANE. [I think the tale must be in Simon Callow's well-received The Road to Xanadu.] I did find a paragraph, as you suggest, of a speculation that Welles had seduced Bob Meltzer's old girlfriend, Dorothy Comingore, and then dropped her.

I think it interesting to consider the context. In Rosebud, Thomson is talking about how Welles got that superb performance from Miss Comingore as Susan Kane, when the actress, a cast-off by Charlie Chaplin, had been only a minor RKO contract player previously, working in B-Westerns and Three Stooges Comedies. After a public discussion between Welles and Mankiewicz about her reading, in her presence, she was picked for this important part because of her physical type, (and I presume) because her salary would not be large, and because of Welles' conviction that he could get a performance out of her. Here is what Thomson writes:

"Comingore was cast, but she was always treated as the kind of woman men discussed openly in her presence. Welles was hard on her: he said it was the only way to treat her, for he was working toward the look of crushed hatred that Susan must have for Kane, and he reckoned that Comingore was not a good enough actress to pretend. She had to feel it. No one knows or recalls, or noticed, but it would have been in keeping if Welles had seduced Commingore once, brutally, and then dropped her. There is no feeling of conventional sexual infatuation in the movie between the older tycoon and the would be singer. Rather she is his instrument, the display of his power, his cruel creation. Dorothy Comingore is let us say perfect in KANE, but her career went nowhere afterward. The huge predictive authority in the way she was used came to pass." [P. 159]

Dorothy Comingore had only one or two decent parts after CITIZEN KANE, was black listed for her politics in 1951, was dead at 58, partly because alcoholism.

Is Thomson speculating here? Yes, he says so. But if we consider the famous, well-known story of how Welles drove the accomplished Agnes Moorehead through take after take of Aunt Fanny's "boiler room scene" until he got what he wanted, hysterical exhaustion, then the speculation about Dorothy Comingore's performance may be seen as an example of perception on Thomson's part. Welles was a director who could be ruthless in order to get a performance, especially when he was dealing with actresses.

He seems to have been a little easier on Susan Strasberg as Juliette Riche, in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, or perhaps she was an actress up to the job from the beginning.

I must prepare to go meet Larry French and Todd Baesen in the Summer noirdom of San Francisco.

Glenn Anders

[Glenn Anders]

Peter: I suppose that we are not going to change each other's minds.

Like Dutch (in form and style), Edmond Morris's equally praised and condemned memoir/biography of Ronald Reagan, which was published a few years afterward, Rosebud is a personal essay on a life and career, in this case, of Orson Welles. As such, the book is full of provocative assumptions and imaginative insights. The volume is not a biography in any strictly academic sense, nor is intended to be; it doesn't contain conventional notes.

I had a happy but unfortunate meeting with Todd Baesen this evening. [We could not bring our tithings current, and so were denied entrance to the Cellar of the Ha-Ra Club, missing Aleister Crowley's Midnight show.] During the course of what we managed to accomplish, I was shocked to learn that Baesen, possibly the most vociferous of Thomson's crtics at Wellesnet, constantly railing at the malicious LIES, the sheer fantasies, in Rosebud, has never read the book. He could not, offhand, name one of these lies or fantasies, but instead said his criticisms were based on a review of the book by Jonathan Rosenbaum. ["Hearsay, Your Honor, hearsay!"] To my mind, Thomson may have his failings as a biographer, but Baesen's admission destroys his authority as a critic.

In parallel, from many a careful reading and enjoyment of Rosebud, I limned Thomson's purpose in writing the book as an attempt to understand and explain the obsession Orson Welles and his career caused in the writer's own life. The book is primarily a bitter-sweet cathartic. As such, he is often no more inaccurate than Simon Callow is in The Road to Xanadu, but he is much kinder and more empathetic.

It is as if, out of soulful meditation, debate with his Conradian doppelganger, Thomson were adding to Rosebud little bits of himself, his joy and anguish over Orson Welles' enigma, as Welles added incidents from, and allusions to, his life in CITIZEN KANE.

No one may entirely immune from Baesen's weakness.

For example, Peter, you single out Thomson's very words from my cited quote that I chose myself to emphasize. I repeat, Thomson is speculating in the passage I quote, he says so, and indeed he tells the reader he is doing that on almost every page of the volume.

Yet you ignore the other, far more important objection you had raised. Nowhere in the not quite two pages Thomson devotes to Dorothy Comingore [pp 158-159] does he write anything which would suggest that he is "one who channeled Orson's spirit to conjure up a rape scene between him an [sic] actress from CITIZEN KANE . . ." He never hints that Welles raped Dorothy Comingore. There is a great difference between rape and seduction, even if dropping the person after the seducing is a heartless, manipulative act.

I trust that you would agree, Peter, that facts are important, but truth moreso.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

I must strongly disagree with your post. Firstly, I've often talked to you about how I never read Thomson's book on Welles. Secondly, I have read many of the reviews about the book, both good and bad, and I've never heard anyone call it anything other than a straight biography of Orson Welles. Maybe you are correct, and it's Thomson's personal essay about Welles, but if it is, this is the first time I've ever heard the book described that way.

You go on to say: "The book is full of provocative assumptions and imaginative insights. The volume is not a biography in any strictly academic sense, nor is intended to be; it doesn't contain conventional notes."

Now, I will grant you this: If that is truly what the book is supposed to be, then I would have much less of a problem with it. But, if that is so, isn't what you are saying, that like "Orson and Me." Thomson's book is actually a work of fiction?

"Of course not," you'll reply, it's a book "full of provocative assumptions and imaginative insights."

Well, as you point out, I haven't read the book (thankfully), so I can't comment on it with any kind of critical "authority." But I have read the excerpt you posted, so I can say this:

I totally agree with Peter G. and think Thomson is a Horse's Ass!

From your quote from the book:

"No one knows or recalls, or noticed, but it would have been in keeping if Welles had seduced Commingore once, brutally, and then dropped her."

I dare say, with great conviction, that almost no one who admires Welles or knows anything about his work, would ever be able to write or even imagine such a sentence without some kind of evidence.

Firstly, as you yourself point out, this is a completely imaginary instance on Thomson's part of what Welles MIGHT have done to get a performance out of Dorothy Commingore. Did it really happen? Well, you'd probably say "yes" and and I'd say, "No," but taking your premise, that this is a "fictional biography," no proof is required. All right, but why would this be as Thompson claims "in keeping" with Welles directing of Commingore? Simply because Thomson imagines it that way? Frankly, I would imagine it in a completely different way, as could any one else who knows anything about Welles.

But the one thing we know for certain, is that from all the many actors who have worked for Welles, is when he was directing them in a picture or in a stage play, he commanded their love and respect. We also know that Welles stated many times that he felt he had to "make love to his actors." Of course, there is no doubt Welles could be a task master and say very harsh words to people working for him, but he generally never did that with his actors. So, show me where Dorothy Commingore, Anne Baxter, or any other actor who ever worked with Welles had a bad word to say about him as their director?

I'm not talking about whether he asked them to work for next to no money, or overtime, or come at a moments notice, but how he actually treated them as a director. Does Anne Baxter say anything bad about Welles in her autobiography? Does she claim he tried to seduce her, as you claim, from a report you read in a book on Welles where you remember some author saying "The very young Anne Baxter leaped from Welles' car, her clothes torn and disheveled, during the production of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS?"

I haven't read Baxter's autobiography, INTERMISSION, so maybe she does have bad words to say about Welles, but I really doubt it. In fact, I can't recall any actor having anything bad to say about Welles as a director. Of course critics like Thomson are quite a different matter. Theres no shortage of bad comments about Welles coming from them!

Which brings us to Agnes Moorehead's boiler room scene in AMBERSONS. Maybe Moorehead did 110 takes of that scene, but if she did, it was for a purpose. But that's a lot different than saying Welles tried to brutally assult or rape her, as Thomson suggests Welles did to Commingcore to get a realistic performance from her.

Which is why I'd have to say you make a very bad comparison between Moorehead and Commingore. Of course Welles wore Agnes Moorehead down with a huge number of takes. But that is part of any actor's job. Just ask Bette Davis or any other actor who worked for William Wyler or Stanley Kubrick. If Agnes Moorehead had to do 110 takes before Welles was satisfied, that was part of her job. Just like Jack Nicholson had to to 110 take for Stanley Kubrick before he was satisfied. But to say that Welles would seduce Commingore without a shred of evidence, just to get a performance out of her is - to me anyway - simply beyond the pale, especially, as I say, for anyone who has any knowledge of Welles working methods and his liberal, humanitarian instincts.

And since you candidly admit Thomson is "imagining" the whole episode, it could also be imagined a whole different way, such as this:

Welles simply explains to Commingore the background of the scene, and lets her act it out. He doesn't have to "rape" her to get her to give a performance. And even if he did, he couldn't have possibly "dropped" her from his life, because she was still in most of the major scenes in the movie he was shooting. If he dropped her it couldn't have been until near the end of the shoot.

Conclusion: David Thomson can be described as:
A Horse who Eats Hat!

[Roger Ryan]

Does Anne Baxter say anything bad about Welles in her autobiography? Does she claim he tried to seduce her, as you claim, from a report you read in a book on Welles where you remember some author saying "The very young Anne Baxter leaped from Welles' car, her clothes torn and disheveled, during the production of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS?"

Anne Baxter does indeed recount the story of a drunken Welles driving home in a cab with her from a night on the town. She describes Welles grappling at her breasts while exclaiming "Oh, the beauty, the beauty". She then apparently kicked Welles out of the cab. The next day on the set, Welles reportedly apologized to her profusely and promised nothing like that would happen again. Baxter concludes her anecdote by stating that Welles did behave himself for the rest of the shoot and that he was one of the best directors she ever worked with.

I'll only add that I agree that Thomson's approach to biography is irresponsible at best, pathological at worst. The final straw for me was when he imagines an impotent Welles' heartbreak over Angie Dickinson sitting on his lap in the late 70s (implying that Welles couldn't possibly perform sexually and, therefore, must have been crushed by having a beauty like Dickinson so physically close to him)!

[tony]

rape, molesting, imoptence....

I love it when you guys get serious about Welles!

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: You are right. Aren't we having fun? The problem is that two of my correspondents here are under a severe handicap because one admits that he has never opened the book, Rosebud, and the other writes as if he had not read the actual text. Even when he has the book in front of him.

******

Roger: Thank you for confirming my memory that it was it was indeed Ann Baxter who recounted an incident (when she was no more than 19) that under circumstances of the day -- a 19 year-old being considered more of an innocent then than now -- might have been considered an "attempted rape."

[But unlike my memory, the spunky Miss Baxter kicked Welles out of her car. My memory also tells me that they had not been "out on the town," but that Welles had asked her to drive him somewhere. Am I wrong in that, too?]

Welles, contrary to what Todd Baesen wrote, had many, many problems with his leading ladies. This appears to have come about often in that he picked them for type, and treated them accordingly, as Thomson suggests several times in Rosebud, and is documented elsewhere. Thus, Dorothy Comingore was cast as Susan Alexander Kane in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS because she, in his opinion and that of others, looked both "the image of a kitten" and "cheap." Ruth Warrick, on the other hand, was sought out for Emily Norton Kane for her bearing, as one who might have been the niece of a President of the United States. In fact, according to Miss Warrick, Welles told her that he had picked her on account of the fact that she not only "looked like a lady, but she was a lady." [This did not, according to Thomson, prevent him "bed(ing) her."] You can easily see a pattern here, which extended over into Welles' treatment of women in general. (He tended to marry, for instance, women who were "princesses," literally and figuratively.)

I could bring up a considerable number of other examples of this kind of "psychological type casting" which Welles employed, but unlike Baesen with his unfortunate blindspot, you would already know them.

I have long stipulated that when it came to Welles directing actors, men or women, he was always admired, partly because he made them feel important, and did what was necessary to get superb performances from them. Actors remember such things because great directing supplies what their often insular judgment and egotism in the moment cannot. And they have to explain why, even as they were being perhaps uncomfortably manipulated in a number of cases, they got wonderful reviews in one part and lousy reviews in another.

The hallowed Simon Callow remarks in that interview for The Complete Mr. Arkadin box that, in interviewing scores of actors with whom Welles worked, he noticed a curious pattern. Almost to a person, there were accounts of the excitement at being chosen by Welles for a role, the wonderful acting experiences, but then . . . nothing, a sense of regret that (aside from some of the original Mercury veterans), they were dropped.

As for Angie Dickinson sitting on Welles' lap when he was 57 and weighed over 350 pounds, we are speaking of something else entirely. Miss Dickinson, at the time, was a "hot number" girl friday of Sinatra and "the ratpack." She was employed by Welles' Magic Show to do what she was directed to do, to act as a PR come on for the show. Thomson writes: "On one of those occasions, Welles and Dickinson posed for a photograph that is touchingly comic and forlorn."

Have you seen the photograph(s)? You certainly agree, I hope, with Thomson's description. As anyone who has fought weight all his life (as I have), Welles in such a pose is displaying the exhaustion of carrying such bulk around, all the blood that must flow into that fat to keep it alive, the knowledge of how foolish he must look. Thomson is using this observation to suggest how, despite the best will in the world, and great creativity, heroic in the occasioal accomplishment, Welles was being sapped of the energy and tools to carry out his projects. Sexuality, in Thomson's view, was a clue to that decline.

That conclusion is hard to argue with, and very perceptive.

*****

Peter: Between Baesen's lazy lack of bothering to read what he is critiquing, and your "hazy recollections," considerable mischief may be produced.

Simply state facts accurately, if that is what you purport, and we shall have no quarrels. Is "seduced" [Thomson's word] the same as "raped" [your word]? It is not so much in the denotation of the words but in the connotation where your problem lies. You may think that Thomson (I presume that you have read the book) is off the wall in his approach, but you should be called on demonizing Thomson's point without providing its context, that these were among the techniques young Orson Welles used to draw those wonderful performances he got out of his actors.

That's all I'm saying.

[Many directors, I trust you understand, were not (nor are they, in the present day), necessarily loath to use such methods. Off the top of my head, I can note Welles' supposed great hero, John Ford, who often picked an "it" at the beginning of a shoot, and had the rest of the cast harass and dump on the poor guy to cause him to get out of himself, to excel; or Oliver Stone, who kept telling Michael Douglas what a rotten actor he was, to help produce the Oscar-winning "Gordon Gekko" in WALL STREET.]

You no doubt would have agreed with Glen Garnett, in the Toronto Sun, when he called Dutch: "1) An excellent novel and 2) The best written memoir we are ever likely to have by someone who knew Ronald Reagan but 3) An extraordinarily inept and inexcusably lazy biography."

The response I would make to your criticism, which you would apply to both Dutch and Rosebud, is that Morris was picked to write an "official biography" of Ronald Reagan because he had received a Pulitzer Prize for one on Teddy Roosevelt. Turned out that the prize winning book was almost entirely about Roosevelt's life before he went into professional politics, and that Morris was really interested in the "man within," had no particular interest in how Ronald Reagan acted as President. Because he was given extraordinary access to Reagan as he governed, Morris set out to detect what made Reagan tick. This approach intrigued some, but disgruntled many others, who like yourself, I gather, only care about "just the facts, m'am."

The difference is that Thomson never met Welles, so far as I know, but given, the abandonment of him by his father, the solace he found in movies, as a shy, "stammering" teenager, Thomson desperately wanted to understand his hero, and to see him succeed. Welles was the kind of rosebud that Thomson never had. These imaginings made for him the touchstone for his career, which has produced 17 books, including the renowned Biographical Dictionary of Film, half a dozen biographies and studies of Hollywood, and a number of novels based like jazz riffs on movie themes, plus a distinguished career in teaching, concentrating for many years on . . . Orson Welles. All these activities have tended to use the imaginative technique that you and others here decry.

David Thomson is a biographer as "story teller," in the tradition of James Boswell, Lytton Strachey, or today's Christopher Hichens.

So it is not so much Baesen's lack of knowledge about Thomson's works, I object to, but the pride, passion, almost anger he trumpets in his ignorance of Thomson's actual works and motives. Distinguished as he is in many areas, gimlets aside, this is his blind spot, as I say.

Peter: What I'm telling you is that the man many know as Todd Baesen told me last night, over the second of his beloved Gin Gimlets, that he had never read Rosebud, one of the most remarked upon books about Welles, and he was proud of the fact. That is not "hearsay," counselor; that is my direct testimony. Given that fact, I am dumfounded when you proceed to declare that it doesn't matter. "Even if it were true it would be irrelevant to my perception of Thomson; I can read all of Faulkner's novels and decide he sucks; a highschool student could hear from his buddies that Faulkner sucks and decide he agrees without reading the books; there's a difference between the former and the latter."

Right, Baesen is the school boy here, and you are taking my part. Correct? You have read Rosebud, I take it. If so, mark that for all the blurbs, Library of Congress notations, and ISBN numbers, etc, the book is called Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles. No where in the text does Thomson describe what he's doing as biography.

Glad that we agree, Peter, that his novels are fascinating.

BTW, David Thomson is a rather serene, laid back man, who lives quietly with his wife and children in San Francisco, when he is not off on business trips to Hollywood, New York and London, where he writes for various papers and gives lectures, often about his decades of studying Orson Welles and his career. I've met him casually several times, most memorably, one evening at a book reading, when Baesen all but called Thomson (wrongly) a liar to his face, and refused to go over to greet him afterward. I tried to get Thomson to come across the street for a drink with us, but he had to pick up his children at a school function. His wife is also a distinguished photographer. He no doubt has, as do we all, his own personal secrets.

We may have to wait until next year to find some answers, when Thomson brings out the first volume of his autobiography: Just Tell the Story.

Meanwhile, I'll have to let you "stand by your comments" that Thomson is, as you put it rather crudely (perhaps, from being in too close intellectual proximity with Toddy Baesen), "a horse's A*ss."

******

Baesen: Tsk, tsk. Look at all the trouble you are causing. I think you slipped back to the Club after I went home.

Forgive me, fella, but you are making yourself look like a fool in public.

The simple solution for your confusions is to READ THE BOOK. Find a copy of Rosebud, read it thoroughly, and then you will be able to agree WITH or counter my assessment from a position of some standing. As Peter suggests, you will be able to depend upon "facts."

At the moment, you are standing in midair on a series of assertions drawn from tertiary sources, not one of which seems to have left you with much that is factual about Rosebud.

When you have actually read the book instead of expanding on prejudices third hand, as you have been doing here for years, Toddy, we can argue sensibly.

For instance: "So, show me where Dorothy Commingore, Anne Baxter, or any other actor who ever worked with Welles had a bad word to say about him as their director?" Hmm . . . in addition to what I've said above: George Colouris, Joan Fontaine -- there's quite a list if you want me to dig them out.

Anyway, I enjoyed your company last night at the City Club presentation of THE COME ON. I noticed how you were panting at the sight of Ann Baxter in that white two-piece bathing suit.

Down, Toddy, down!

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Sorry, I repeat posted.

[ToddBaesen]

I must admit this is getting to be sort of like a Grateful Dead concert: What a long strange trip it's been... Obviously nobody's is going to change their opinion, because they have already been set in stone.

But both Roger and Glenn have made interesting points: Welles' attempted seduction of Anne Baxter! When I read Roger's account of Baxter's story, I couldn't help but think of the rape scene in FRENZY. Barry Foster saying over and over again, "Lovely, Lovely" while he's about to rape his latest victim. So Glenn you get points for that, as I was certainly wrong about Welles trying to seduce Baxter, but I was right about Baxter's opinion of Welles as a director: One of the best she ever had!

Meanwhile, as you rightly point out, I have not read Thomson's biography of Welles, but on the other hand, you seem incapable of accepting the fact that the book was sold and marketed as a biography. As such it is totally unacceptable, as the reviews Peter have posted point out.

Which brings me to Tony's comment: rape, molesting, impotence...

Very interesting, and no doubt Welles was probably thinking about just such tawdry subjects when he was directing TOUCH OF EVIL...

Certainly Universal's publicity dept. was... see there ad quotes about the new TOUCH OF EVIL DVD:

TANYA… a million sordid secrets in her sin-twisted mind!

Of course Tanya was supposed to be a "Madame" of a bordello. But the clear implication is Susan does get "raped" in the Mirador Hotel scene, by all those Mexican boys (and Mercedes McCambridge). So, was Welles thinking about his own past experiences with Anne Baxter or (less likely) Dorothy Commingore? And was Welles (as Quinlan) lustful gazing at Tanya, simply meant to see her as Quinlan's Obsure Object of Desire from his long ago past? Even if Quinlan could have sex with Tanya, presumably he would have been unable to perform, since he had been drinking so heavily, which would have most certainly made him "impotent."