In Memoriam links of interest

[tonyw]

Roger, He certainly did. In the recent issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors 39 (2017) is a detailed interview with Peter Sallis by
David Wilson conducted on 1 February 1921. On p.59, he not only mentions dubbing on THE TRIAL, his appreciation of Welles but also the missing film version of the play, all filmed "except his own part."

It's still lying there, somewhere, perhaps in Columbia's archives. We did it in the Hackney Empire...The tragedy is that nobody has ever seen it because if it still exists it is probably lying on the floor somewhere."

[Wellesnet]

Juan Luis Buñuel, worked on ‘Don Quixote,’ dead at 83:
http://www.wellesnet.com/juan-luis-bunu ... e-dead-83/

[Wellesnet]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... 87-1075818

In his later years Dillman was interviewed about his time working with Orson Welles:
http://www.americanlegends.com/intervie ... elles.html

[Wellesnet]

Directed Welles in Ferry to Hong Kong.Also directed three Bond movies:
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment ... Live-Twice

"Gilbert: Working with Laurance Olivier was one of the great moments of my life, and it taught me a very important lesson on how to be kind to your fellow actors. That lesson came back years later when I worked with Orson Welles, which was a nightmare beyond all imagining. He never cared about his fellow actors, went his own way, didn't want to listen to the director, didn't care. He was a nightmare.

BBC: You were directing him. Did you take him on? He was infamous for being a very tough, big character. Did you have fights with him?

Gilbert: I tried, but it was very difficult, because he was clever, and he knew that if he got sick, I would get the blame because eventually there was no more insurance.

BBC: This was the film, FERRY TO HONG KONG. How did it turn out, given Orson's behavior?

Lewis: Dreadful. It was my nightmare film. Everything was wrong with it.

BBC: But principally him?

Lewis: Principally him.

[Terry]

That's one I've managed never to see. Curt Jurgens seems far worse in it than Welles, who appears to have been filmed with extras after the rest of the cast went home. Someone gave him pants that were too tight to boot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdb1HhnnZak

[Le Chiffre]

Maybe those tight pants helped Welles get in touch with his inner twit. I think one could make a fairly amusing 1-hour cut of the film, just by eliminating most of the non-Welles scenes. I think Curt Jurgens just phoned it in once he realized Welles had turned the whole thing into a farce.

[tonyw]

On the recent UK Arrow DVD release of CITY OF THE DEAD, Sir Christopher supplies an interesting interview that begins with his experiences working on MOBY DICK REHEARSED and his explicit statement that it was filmed.

[RayKelly]

From a piece I wrote nearly 2 years ago:

Welles filmed between 40 and 75 minutes of the production with much of the original cast at the Hackney Empire and Scala theaters in London. (Christopher Lee was brought in to sub for Peter Sallis as Stage Manager/Flask.). Welles hoped to sell the finished product to CBS' Omnibus, which had presented a live abridged version of King Lear directed by Peter Brooks and starring Welles in 1953. However, Welles was unhappy with the initial results and quickly abandoned the idea.

"We shot for three days and it was obvious it wasn't going to be any good, so we stopped," Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming. "There was no film made at all. We only did one and a half scenes. I said, 'Let's not go on and waste our money, because it's not going to be any good.'"

In his autobiography, Kenneth Williams said the dim atmospheric stage lighting rendered some of the footage shot by Welles unusable.

"It was to be a film of the play and from the outset Orson was at loggerheads with the lighting cameraman who vainly protested that theatrical arclamps were insufficient for filming. 'You're not Rembrandt painting with light,' he was told. 'Shoot the scene'. When the rushes revealed stygian gloom, it had to be filmed all over again."

However, fellow co-star Patrick McGoohan in 1986 recalled watching 40 minutes of rushes three decades earlier and being impressed with what he saw.

There have been online reports that a badly decomposed copy exists at the Munich Film Museum by those who misunderstood remarks made by Jonathan Rosenbaum. The noted film scholar told Wellesnet in 2003 that some film cans marked Moby Dick Rehearsed were in the museum's possession, but that the contents were not from the 1955 stage show.

But that did not curb hopes – or stop rumors– that the London footage may exist somewhere in the Munich archive. Sadly, museum director Stefan Drössler assured us that is not the case.

"You can be assured that if we would have any of the footage of the 1950s version, I would have preserved it somehow and presented in Welles conferences or retrospectives. I had some conversations with Christopher Lee about it and followed unsuccessfully several tracks. At the Locarno festival (in 2005) and in some of the Welles centenary retrospectives, I presented a detailed lecture about Orson and Moby Dick. During the shooting in July 1955, Orson didn’t film his own scenes. He wanted to do it later. The filmed material was supposed to be shipped to Italy. Anyway, at a certain point it seems to have been chopped by the customs. There is no record or hint that Orson ever continued the shooting or worked on the editing. Only a few photos from the shooting in London survive."

[Wellesnet]

RIP Burt Reynolds, major Hollywood star of the 1970s. Reynolds was a good friend of Orson Welles, and the first guest of his 1978 talk show pilot, "The Orson Welles Show". Welles was reportedly a big admirer of Reynolds' 1977 car-chase hit, "Smokey and the Bandit." Reynolds was 82.

[tonyw]

Reynolds also appeared in two Robert Aldrich films, the last being the neo-noir HUSTLE (1975). In certain films, Aldrich attempted to continue the Welles stylistic tradition as I've suggested in my "Welles, Toland, Aldrich, and Baroque" Expressionism" contribution to the previous Silver-Ursini contribution so there are many interesting threads here.

[RayKelly]

We only recently learned of the loss of French cinematographer Edmond Richard.  He passed away on June 5, 2018  at the age of 91.

Richard made his debut as as director of photography on Orson Welles' The Trial. Later, he served as cinematographer on Chimes at Midnight, the aborted Treasure Island  and the unfinished Don Quixote.

He was working in Zagreb as a special effects operator and technical and artistic advisor in 1961, when he met Welles, who was scouting locations for The Trial.

Amongst his other awards, he was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1979 and won the César for Best Cinematography in 1983 for his work on Robert Hossein’s Les Misérables. In 2010, he was awarded the Prix Henri-Langlois by the Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma de Patrimoine in Vincennes.

He  is survived by his son, Patrick, his daughter Dominique,  a granddaughter and his great grandchildren.

[Terry]

CBS news segment from 1988

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=055xM-1qG3o

[Le Chiffre]

That's an odd coincidence, that Houseman died one day after the 50th anniversary of WOTW.

[Wellesnet]

From Wellesnet Facebook:

Joseph McBride: He also plays one of Falstaff's idiotic recruits in CHIMES. A sad loss. Great cameraman. CHIMES is a masterpiece of cinematography as well as direction.

Michael Hinerman: Richard began his professional career as an engineer, and co-invented the Eclair Cameflex, the lightweight 35mm camera that became one of Welles's favorites.

[Wellesnet]

Bernardo Bertolucci, whose epic “The Last Emperor” won nine Oscars and who influenced generations of filmmakers with other groundbreaking works such as “The Conformist” and “Last Tango in Paris, died on November 26, 2018. He was 77.

Some Welles connections noted by Massimiliano Studer: In the script for "The Other Side of the Wind," Betolucci is a party guest. Also, Paul Bowles, composer of "Too Much Johnson," has a role in "Il tè nel deserto" "(The Sheltering Sky)."
Joseph McBride noted that Welles paid a jocular tribute by having the Mr. Pister character irritably correct Norman Foster when he calls him "Bascolucci." McBride noted that Bertolucci attended the Hollywood Foreign Press luncheon tribute to Welles.