Moby Dick – Rehearsed

[L French]

I'll second that motion... How about it Glenn, can you write up your remembrance of things past?

Here's the credits to help you along...


MOBY DICK – REHEARSED
_

Presented at the Duke of York's Theater, London. An adaptation in two acts by Orson Welles, of Herman Melville's novel. Entire production staged by Orson Welles. Music by Anthony Collins. Lighting by Hilton Edwards. Stage decoration by Mary Owen. An Oscar Lowenstein and Wolf Mankowitz Production. Produced in association with Martin Gabel & Henry Margolis. Opened June 16, 1955, with the following cast:


Actor Manager/Capt. Ahab/Father Mapple..ORSON WELLES

Young Actor/Ishmael..………..……….........GORDON JACKSON

Serious Actor/Starbuck...……….…...……PATRICK McGOOHAN

Stage Manager/Flask...……………………............PETER SALLIS

Young Actress/Pip.....…………………..…….....JOAN PLOWRIGHT

Manager/Tashtego.....…….………………........JOSEPH CHELTON

Assist. Stage Manager/Bo'sun.…….………………....JOHN GRAY

Middle-aged Actor/Stubb..…………….………..WENSLEY PITHEY

Very Serious Actor/Elijah….…………..…..KENNETH WILLIAMS

Experienced Actor/Peleg……………….…JEFFERSON CLIFFORD


=====================================

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: Thank you for the praise. You really flatter me.

And thank you, Larry, for the cast list of Moby Dick Rehearsed.

My memory was that I had already done an entry on that memorable production, but I can't find it here, nor anywhere else.

It may take me a day or two to gather my impressions of the play. It has now been just about 50 years, so don't expect too much detail, but I will do my best.

Meanwhile, here are two reviews of movie versions of Moby Dick, one of which, as you know contains one of Welles best character bits, and the other which has an irony about Welles and Peck. Here are the URL's:

MOBY DICK (1956) --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-96C-5AE324D-39FB9287-prod1

MOBY DICK (1998) --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-2F6C-173B6D0C-3A14A29E-prod2

No, Tony, I have not seen Time Runs. Tell me about it, as I'm getting my memory fingers on.

Glenn

[tony williams]

Go to it, Glenn! Once you think back, it will be amazing how much you will be able to recall. I believe that BBC TV once did a version with Rod Steiger as Ahab and Claire Bloom as Pip when they were married but I never saw it.

Just use the magic word, "Rosebud" as an equivalent to Proust's madeleine so hopefully the memory of that magic performance will soon return.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Larry and Tony: Thank you.

Out all day on Monday, and off my feed yesterday.

At the risk of making a fool of myself before anyone with a copy of the script, Moby Dick Rehearsed, let me try to meet your request to tell you my memories of a London night, just about fifty years ago, this month.

Unlike impressions of a film which are concentrated by the camera and a single focal point on the screen, theater can be a more a more diffuse experience. Memory and time play tricks with one. But my concentration was certainly drawn to this production of Moby Dick Rehearsed. And the fact that so many of the cast -- Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner), Gordon Jackson (Upstairs, Downstairs), Kenneth Williams (the CARRY ON . . . series), and Joan Plowright (soon to be Mrs. Laurence Olivier, a distinguished stage actress in her own right) -- later became household names, only added to my pleasure and concentration over many years.

It was at the Duke of York's Theater in early July, I should think, of 1955. I was in the last six months of U.S. Army Service, which I'd spent mostly in England (Lakenheath, East Anglia). My beautiful girlfriend at the time, Rosemary Hayward, a graduate of Teatro Conti, who worked at Keith Prowse, the ticket bookers in Baker Street, called my attention to a three week engagement of an original play in two acts by Orson Welles, Moby Dick Rehearsed. Rosemary was very high on Welles, having enjoyed the Orson Welles Sketchbook series on BBC Television, and I had not too long before seen a revival of CITIZEN KANE, at the Baker Street Classic Cinema -- the first time I'd seen the film since I was a kid, fourteen years before. Rosemary saw Welles' play in its opening week and urged me to see it, too.

She got me tickets, and coming down by train, Friday afternoon, on a weekend pass from Brandon to Liverpool Street Station, I went over to Baker Street on the Bakerloo line, and picked them up from her. She had to work late, but we agreed to meet for a late supper to talk about the production.

It was a warm summer's night in London, the temperature all of 60 degrees, so heat-exhausting that the publicans were taking the rare step of serving bottles of imported Carlsberg Ale, perhaps with a drop of lime, from ice filled wooden buckets behind the bar.

Continuing on, I found the audience gathered at the Duke of York's, a classic theater with excellent sightlines, and though I was seated some distance from the stage, just beyond what was then called (perhaps, still) the Dress Circle, I was able to see clearly the action, take in the hall's magnificent high proscenium, admire its raked stage and a thrust, which came out a fair way into the house.

Some men, workmen of sorts by their dress, were milling around on the stage. They were tying off on either side of the stage heavy hemp ropes, which hung down from the flys, as if they were drapes, further defining the space. Other men were chatting, smoking cigarettes, reading over copies of a script, or moving around ladders and trolleys. The Stage Manager (Peter Sallis) gave directions and asked some of the men to assist him. All of this went on for a few minutes, as the Stage Manager strode back and forth, on and off stage, looking at this, adjusting that. Suddenly, on an entrance, he announced that "the Maestro" was on his way in, and we realized that, without quite knowing it, the play, set in a late Nineteenth Century repertory theater, had begun.

The Maestro or Actor Manager (Orson Welles), dressed very much as he does in F FOR FAKE, in a long cape, seven league boots, and an Italianate hat with feather, appeared with his protegee, a Young Actress (Joan Plowright). He ordered the cast and crew to take their places for a scene in The Merchant of Venice or King Lear, I can't remember which, but after a another few minutes, for reasons I've also forgotten, he called a halt to that. I think the gist of it was, that they were just not up to Shakespeare, and that instead he was going to have them do an old crowd-pleasing melodrama, Moby Dick, from their trunk, which they had presented to audiences at another theater a week or so before.

The Actor Manager assigned the cast to their previous parts, and when it was pointed out that they had no one to play Pip, the Black cabinboy, he assigned the young actress to the part.

Some of the ensemble complained at the change of plans, but the Actor Manager gave them firm orders. The ropes were brought down again and became the rigging of the Pequod. A stepladder was stowed Stage Left as a long boat. Some men were directed to sing sea chanteys. One to play a harmonica. The others took their places, the Actor Manager made a gesture, and the house went black.

A pin spot illuminated a man (Gordon Jackson), seated with hands around his knees, at the tip of the thrust.

"Call me, Ishmael."

Ishmael explained how he had come to Nantucket and become a part of the crew of the Pequod through his interview with Captain Peleg (Jefferson Clifford). I don't remember Queequeg, but the Indian harpoonier, Tashtego (Joseph Chelton), may have taken his place in the dramatization. The Actor Manager disappeared to reappear as Father Mapple, delivering his stern sermon about Jonah and the Whale, and on the necessity of free and godly men to do their duty in standing up against evil and tyranny in the World. Later still, he emerged as Captain Ahab to give the crew their mission, to seek the White Whale, Moby Dick, which had maimed him, and so many of their fellow seafarers.

To hunt him down to the ends of the earth, until he rolled over, spouting black blood.

Much talk and lore -- before, after and in between -- of whaling and the fearsomeness of Moby Dick, sometimes emended or corrected by the Actor Manager.

My memory does not record if there was an actual break between Act One and Act Two. If so, I must have remained in my seat, possibly enjoying a coffee and light refreshment, which back then, attractive young women in dark dresses, white aprons and little caps, brought on previous order to your seat.

Act Two definitely got us into deep water. There were whale hunts, storms, threats of mutiny, and the first sightings of Moby Dick, who appeared to swim somewhere above our heads. The crew climbed and scrambled up the rigging for a better look. Sheet metal and flashing lights became thunder and lightning. Captain Ahab kept the innocent Pip close to him, sending him (her) to and fro as a kind of gofer and confidant. Starbuck (Patrick McGoohan), the First Mate, led opposition to Ahab, who was ignoring the legitimate hunt, in order to go on his crazy quest for a murderous white whale.

At the climax of the play, almost the whole crew, carrying polls to serve as oars and harpoons, or maybe they just faked it, somehow managed to hang off the stepladder-long boat upended toward the audience, rocking back and forth (with Ahab at their apex, exhorting them onward), their eyes stark in the flashing of lights, and the sound of wind-dashed waves causing them to shriek, as they faced their monster -- US!!

It was an unforgettable moment in the theater.

And after the Pequod had been sundered, and Ishmael saved by the curtain, the players came out to ringing applause.

Then, following several bows, Orson Welles stepped forward to thank the audience. As he took a further step, a flyweight fell from on high with a startling, bursting thump to the stage, spraying white sand all over the boards where he had stood a second before. Welles chuckled intimately, leaned forward, and said that forces had been trying to keep him and his casts from us for years, but they would not succeed. He urged us to go dragoon our friends and acquaintances, if we had enjoyed what we had seen, to come back to the Duke of York's in the remaining week(s) of the run of Moby Dick Rehearsed.

Meanwhile, he would remain our Obedient Servant.

Half an hour later, I was enjoying a glass of red wine with the lovely Rosemary at Genaro's in Soho, discussing Moby Dick Rehearsed, and preparing to devour a very strange, exotic Sicilian dish, unknown to the ordinary American at the time -- Pizza!

And so . . .

Ladies and Gentlemen [as I remember it all], that is the end of the story.

Glenn Anders

[Harvey Chartrand]

Thank you, Glenn, for your wonderful eyewitness account of a still-young Orson Welles delivering his last great performance for the legitimate theatre.
You took me back to better days. London in the fifties. How I envy you for having been there in those halcyon days.
Welles was so impressed by the young Patrick McGoohan that he wanted to work with him again. Sadly, this never happened.
It's strange how Welles scaled down his MOBY DICK project over the decades: first he wanted to direct his own full-length film version, but then John Huston got there first, so Welles settled for a cameo as Father Mapple; then he produced MOBY DICK REHEARSED (a work of genius, by all accounts) but was unable to film the stage play in its entirety for posterity; then in his dotage, he filmed himself reading excerpts from Melville's novel in tight closeup against a blank backdrop. Totally uncinematic. What did Welles have in mind? Perhaps he simply wanted to showcase his talent as an actor rather than as a director. The old dog wanted to show the world that he could still act.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, Harvey.

Yes, there was a real exhilaration in the English air, when I was lucky enough to serve there. [Half my training company went to Korea in the last, unsettled days following the Cease Fire which ended (in a sense) the Emergency, and some of them got their ears shot off.] We forget that rationing continued in Britain, as an economy measure, until long after World War II. Clothing did not come off rationing until 1949; food stocks until into the early 1950's; meat and sugar until shortly before I arrived in 1954. And so, when I went down to London in my tailored English suits, ate leg of lamb or that curious Sicilian pizza, I was sharing in a long deferred feast and celebration. [Mostly, without being made aware of it.] The Empire was still in tact; the wheels were turning at last; there was a new, young Queen; people were driving Jaguar XK-120's; British films, theater and ballet led the World; and Britons looked forward with great hope, pride, and genuine anticipation.

Yes, McGoohan is a curious case. Evidently, The Prisoner was both a curse and a blessing. The series made him world famous, but resulting tax problems caused him to leave Britain, and he never was able to capitalize on his obvious talent.

In regard to Welles' versions of Moby Dick: I'm sure that from early days, he dreamed of making Melville's novel into a film. It is both the most American, Worldly and Shakespearean of great works.

You might have added to your catalogue of adaptations of the novel that he had The Mercury Theater Summer Theater present Moby Dick . . . in an adaptation of one half hour! And so, he not only ended the project small, he started it small, too.

My guess is that Welles realized that the sums of money and physical energy needed to create a full scale movie of Moby Dick, such as Huston made, had gradually gone beyond his grasp. From that point, as he increasingly turned toward television and its techniques, he still harbored a notion of creating an intimate "first person" adaptation of the novel, perhaps incorporating footage he had shot of the stage play, and other material.

It has always puzzled me that no kinoscope was every made of the BBC broadcast of the play, or if one was made, that it has not survived. Perhaps, Welles personally took possession of the footage, and its now lost or in some vault.

Thank you again for your appreciation, Harvey.

Glenn

[tony]

Dear Glenn:

Fantastic. You are quite an evocative writer- I felt I was there. I'm so impressed with your recollections of Arkadin and Moby I think you should simply write an entire book of recollections of your experiences with Welles, starting with your boyhood viewing of Citizen Kane! Believe me, it would be a lot better than many of the recent Welles tomes.

Thanks so much for your wonderful effort- it's simply the best depiction of Moby rehearsed I've ever read.

Well done!

[tony williams]

Thanks again, Glenn. Patrick McGoohan intended to play Ahab in a stage production of MOBY DICK at the Royal Exchange Theatre Company in Manchester. It was intended to re-unite him with the director who had brought McGoohan to public attention with his stage performance of BRAND in the late 50s.

Unfortunately, McGoohan backed off at the last moment and the director put a chalk board notice up on the foyer blaming McGoohan for this action. The role went to Brian Cox, I think. It was a good production but lacking what McGoohan could have brought to it.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you so much, Tony, for your high praise.

And also for your suggestion about the book. It would be a short one, I'm afraid.

And thank you, Tony Williams, for the anecdote concerning Patrick McGoohan's second bite of the apple (or how he avoided it).

Still, I can very well imagine Brian Cox, in the late 50's, doing a very creditable Starbuck.

One thing I might have emphasized, I did not feel the need of in this company, was what a superb eye Welles had for talent. Dozens of performers, some of them with genius, were recognized by Welles.

Thanks again.

Glenn

[tadao]

Hi Glenn,

thanks so much for sharing your vivid and evocative recollections with us.

As far as I know, footage from the play was filmed by Associated Rediffusion, one of the fledgling ITV (Independent Television) companies, not the BBC. There's an interesting article quoted here: http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/0022101.html

From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Feb 2, 2005 0:31pm
Subject: In Search of the White Whale (Was Unfinished Welles (Was: Re: April Criterions)

Here's that letter about MOBY DICK, which appeared in the Autumn 1986
issue of SIGHT AND SOUND:

SIR,- If you seek the great white whale, you will not find him in the
whaling grounds but more likely in the vaults of HM Customs and
Excise.

Seriously, reading Jonathan Rosenbaum's article on Orson Welles I
delved deep into the fading memories of Associated Rediffusion TV. I
was a film editor and director from 1955 and remember the MOBY DICK
production. The whale was in the stalls and the ship on stage. Orson
insisted on shooting all his close-ups for the entire production in
one go with the camera canted to simulate the ship rolling about. As
a result, nobody believed it would ever cut together. It would have
been shot in 35mm B&W, possibly by ARTV's senior film cameraman Ted
Lloyd.

I remember a large number of cans turning up at the old Television
House in Kingsway in the late 60s, in bond, with a customs demand for
duty. Rediffusion in the dying days of its contract would not, of
course, pay so they would have been returned to bond. Which is where
they may be to this day.

I cannot remember what ARTV's involvement in the productions was,
except that Orson was shooting some programmes for ARTV in the early
days - 'Orson Welles in London', or similar. They would have been
edited by the late Bill Morton, who was one of the original film
editors with AR and who had worked with Orson in Spain - another
blind alley I fear.

So this may be of no value whatever, but someone might like to follow
it up.

Yours faithfully,
Jim Pople.
Thames Television.

---------------

The TV series mentioned in the penultimate paragraph was AROUND THE
WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES. The London episode actually includes a
reference to the production of MOBY DICK.
22152]

As far as I know, the film of "Moby Dick Rehearsed" was never finished, hence never broadcast; and shot on film, so not kinescoped (known as "telerecording" in British TV). As far as the footage surviving, it was most likely junked. With no opportunity for syndication, and prohibitive terms for repeat screenings, British TV companies routinely destroyed their telerecordings, often the unique copies of programmes and plays, until the late 1970s; filmed inserts and fragments fared no better. I believe Associated Rediffusion shows are particularly under-represented in the archives. The only hope for the survival of the "Moby Dick Rehearsed" footage, according to this article, would seem to be if it had survived in the vaults of H.M. Customs and Excise, although this article is nearly twenty years old, so if a search was ever made, I presume it bore no fruit.

[edit]I've just reread the previous thread on "Moby Dick Rehearsed", which seems to contradict the involvement of Associated Rediffusion in the filming, and indicate that the filming was organised "on spec" by Welles, possibly with the aim of selling it to the BBC's "Omnibus" programme. I'm not sure what the facts might be, but would speculate that Welles might have taken up filming himself after an abortive AR-TV production?[/edit]

I can't find any references to a BBC-TV production of "Moby Dick Rehearsed" with Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom, but I did find a reference to a BBC radio production in 1966, directed by H.B. Fortuin with music composed by Tristram Cary: http://users.senet.com.au/~trisc/RadioTV.html
No cast list or further details are given, but this would fit the dates given (Steiger and Bloom were married from 1959 to 1969, according to the IMDB). Perhaps this is what you're remembering, Tony?

[tony williams]

Yes, you're right.

Also, the Royal Exchange Production of MOBY DICK was sometime in the late 80s.

[R Kadin]

If I recall correctly, the Samuel French edition of the play I saw lists Steiger as appearing in its 1962 Broadway incarnation. (Jeff might know: I sent him the book-images.)

Of course, that doesn't rule out a possible BBC production with him in it; it's just that I would find it unusual, given the amount of polished and practised London-based talent for the Beebe to have used in his stead.

[phaedra]

Hi,

I hope someone out there can help me. My Dad is an absolutly huge fan of Orson, and has been talking about getting to see this Moby Dick Rehearsed which was on tv in 1955?? - I am not 100% sure . Anyway I would love to get a copy somewhere as a gift for him, can anyone help me??

Phaedra

[Jeff Wilson]

The film was started but never finished, as Welles abandoned the project. The footage is believed lost, although it may pop up someday if we're lucky.

[jaime marzol]

what your dad might have seen in 1955, is welles in king lear